Follow the leader: part 2 – leadership pillar 1 – developing the vision

This series of four articles opens by discussing the concept of leadership and its importance in the fast changing world of dental practice. Styles of leadership are considered and the opportunity to develop your leadership skills is affirmed. Leadership is not something that you have to be born to; the art can be developed. Three pillars of leadership are proposed namely:

These articles aim to give the reader some straightforward ideas for developing leadership skills and a set of further reading references to help with further development.

Developing your practice Vision is about setting inspirational direction to bring success in the future. A Vision will need more uplifting language than a performance target! Once more it is easy to conclude that a leader with vision must be something of a magician with skills beyond mere mortals. Kotter in 1990 helps allay this misconception when he states:1

‘Visions and strategies do not have to be brilliantly innovative: in fact, some of the best are not. Effective business visions regularly have an almost mundane quality, usually consisting of ideas that are already well known.’