From Clinician to Leader: How Physicians Can Thrive in Leadership Roles
You’ve spent years mastering your diagnosis, treatment, and patient care. Medical training and practice reward expertise, the ability to assess, decide, and act quickly. Through diligence and continual learning, you’ve become an expert in your field. You may even have expanded your impact by teaching trainees or contributing to research.
Stepping into a leadership role in healthcare calls for an entirely new set of skills, ones that often feel counterintuitive to our clinical identity. Many physicians find themselves leading teams or departments without formal leadership training.
In a recent survey, only 18% of physicians reported having access to any business or administrative training during their medical school education. In comparison, just 21% of physicians indicated that their organizations offered formal physician leadership training (Jackson Physician Search).
It’s no wonder that the transition from clinician to leader can feel overwhelming. Many healthcare leaders find the transition from clinician to leader filled with uncertainty and self-doubt.
The Shift from Clinician to Leader
Moving from clinician to leader requires a mindset shift. Both roles are essential in teams and organizations, but serve different purposes.
Clinicians work on the front lines caring for patients and may also teach or conduct research. They make sure that things get done. While many physician leaders are also clinicians, their primary role is to envision the future of the organization. They make sure that the vision and expectations are clearly communicated and that the team is engaged. Having clarity about when to function in a given capacity can improve relationships and the team's overall functioning.
Here are some other ways in which clinicians and leaders differ:
“The skills that made you an excellent clinician aren’t always the ones that make you an effective leader.”
Understanding the clinician vs the leader mindset
Both clinicians and leaders serve key functions in organizations. However, their roles meet different needs to create highly effective teams and organizations.
Clinician
Clinical expertise: Healthcare training equips physicians and other healthcare providers to become experts in their respective fields. Quick assessment and decision making, communication, and collaboration facilitate high functioning in their roles.
Task management: As clinicians progress in their careers, continually learning and self-improvement help them become even better practitioners. Some expand their work into teaching or research as they broaden their knowledge base and skill sets.
Solving problems: The focus is on self-improvement and self-development. Both serve to help clinicians improve their ability to manage issues on a day-to-day basis.
Immediate interventions: Clinicians consider all factors that impact their day-to-day functioning. This includes everything from how and when they see their patients to partnering with their patients to address their medical needs.
Leader
Works through influence: Leaders hold the vision for teams and organizations and strategize to carry out that vision. This means clearly articulating the vision and gaining buy-in from the team.
Aligns others to act: Highly effective leaders develop others to work at their best, enabling them to carry on the organization's work. In medical settings, leaders help the team achieve optimal healthcare delivery in all ways possible for the institution. For example, growing academic credibility by bringing on renowned researchers.
Empowers problem-solving: Leaders think ahead, collaborate, and innovate to ensure that the organization is moving in the right direction. They also look ahead to potential challenges or changes to develop plans that will lead their teams and organizations through such challenges.
Long-term strategy: Leaders are most effective when they understand how each team member is most effective and create an environment that supports their thriving.
Identifying your leadership growing pains
When transitioning from a clinician’s perspective to a leader’s perspective, you can check in with your mindset to see which role you're functioning in. New leaders may feel more comfortable wearing the clinician hat. It’s helpful to ask yourself what role you feel more comfortable in by looking at some of your habitual behaviors or behaviors under stress.
Do you over-rely on your clinical expertise and skills rather than team facilitation? Instead of overloading his schedule with OR time, one surgery medical director realized that he could reduce his surgical caseload. This gave junior faculty more OR time to develop their skills and freed up time for the medical director to focus on administrative responsibilities.
Do you tend to micromanage rather than delegate? One client realized that, even as the division chief leading the meetings, she always left with the longest to-do list.
Are you avoiding having difficult conversations? Learning how to approach difficult conversations with the intention of listening and meeting everyone’s unmet needs helped a division director feel confident in engaging her team in crucial conversations.
Are you struggling with ambiguity and slower decision cycles? An emergency medicine medical director realized that understanding the pace and decision process of healthcare professionals from different specialties was essential in creating a collaborative team.
Neglecting self-care due to a high responsibility load? An interim clinical lead in an outpatient clinic decided that, with a young family and heavy patient load, a promotion was not in her best interest.
These questions don’t reflect failure. They’re signs that an old identity is outgrowing its limits.
5 Strategies to Thrive in Leadership
Shifting from a clinician to a leadership role can be challenging, but recognizing your habits, preferences, strengths, and areas for improvement can support your growth and development. With a dose of self-compassion, you can help clarify your leadership identity and lead with confidence.
Here are 5 tips to help you succeed:
Redefine Success – Move from “Did I do it right?” to “Did my team grow, deliver, and feel supported?”
Adopt a Coaching Mindset – Approach your work with curiosity, listen deeply, ask powerful questions, and empower others to take action.
Build Emotional Agility – Learn to manage uncertainty, regulate reactions, and stay curious under pressure.
Strengthen Systems Thinking – Expand focus from patient-level care to organization-level impact by intentionally engaging and learning from leaders across departments in your organization.
Prioritize Reflection and Renewal – Support the energy and commitment leadership requires by building a practice of recharging into your daily routine.
“Curiosity is one of your most powerful leadership tools.”
Physician leadership is unique as it calls for all parts if you to show up for the work. Leadership doesn’t replace your identity as a healer; it expands it.
“What would it look like if you brought the same curiosity you use in medicine to your own growth as a leader?”