Advance Healthcare by Embracing the Leader Within

AHIMA recently published a whitepaper showing that hospitals and health systems still face challenges related to the collection, coding, and use of social determinants of health (SDOH) data. These determinants account for 80 percent of our country’s health outcomes.

The whitepaper shows that healthcare professionals need more training and education on SDOH data collection, coding, sharing, and use.

This news reveals that important advances in healthcare partly hinge on our ability to meet the moment and to sharpen our technical skills. But we also need to excel as individual leaders in order to affect lasting change.

In other words: It’s not only what we do that matters, but how we do it.

Leadership at its basic level is influence. Day in and day out, we each are presented with opportunities to exert that influence. Whether we're in a formal leadership role or not, each of us can inspire, engage, and connect with others.

The better we hone our communication skills, the better leaders we become. Our ability to judge and discern, to make effective decisions, and to work well with others are integral to our success in whatever position we hold.

It’s no secret that change in healthcare is accelerating, and health information roles are changing just as quickly. Embrace this change. Keep learning. As you find more opportunity, you will also find that your ability to lead will make you more effective in whatever you do — especially as we climb the ladders of our careers.

So how do you find the leader within you?

It often starts with being vulnerable. We may have to push ourselves out of our comfort zones in an entirely new way.

You know you’re on the right track when you learn to push through your discomfort and insert yourself into conversations that need your voice. At AHIMA, we call this “boldness with intention.”

You might not always feel welcomed when you embrace your boldness. But you will be onto something.

You are also becoming a better leader when you hone your resilience — when you can pick yourself back up and say, “That didn't work. Let me try a different approach.”

Your leadership is coming through when you practice an open-minded approach to problem solving. If you don’t see an obvious solution to a problem or if you feel that you don’t have what it takes to help someone, you know that being open to understanding that person’s goals anyway can make all the difference. Instead of immediately saying, “I can’t do what you’re asking,” you are leading when you become curious about addressing their root problem or underlying purpose. 

It's not easy to engage others from across a computer screen, to develop relationships to move a dialogue forward when you aren’t face-to-face. Working on these social skills, though, can empower you to grow into your ability to be inspirational — to paint a vision that inspires people to want to walk alongside of you.

In this urgent movement to advance data collection, sharing, and use, let us become better leaders along the way.

Wylecia Wiggs Harris is the chief executive officer of AHIMA.