Young Leaders in Optometry

In this post, we’d like to share a lesson from John Calvin Maxwell about leadership for young leaders and how they get buy-in when they still don’t have a successful record. It is almost impossible for young leaders eager to share their knowledge, thoughts, ideas, and vision to find people and followers to immediately join their team and help to accomplish those ideas. The reason is not that they are not rightful, it’s because they don’t have enough credibility and their work and accomplishments are not known. At this stage, what they need is to earn people’s trust through character and competence. And how they build these will determine their leadership success or failure.

We often hear successful Optometrists speak about their early days as cold starting a practice with few to no patients per week. When young leaders start a new position with new responsibilities the temporary trust they obtain is a function of the culture of people they are interacting with, the credibility of their predecessor, and the influence of the people who put them into this position or endorsed them to this position; In optometry, their alma mater, their internship, their specialty, and their social circle, connections, and friends.

No doubt, if the environment and the culture are negative young leaders will have a hard time penetrating and getting accepted. If the environment is more positive and the culture is open it will be easier for them to prove themselves because during this early period what they say and what they do and accomplish weigh more than who they are and who their connections are. And if they can demonstrate character and competence their credibility and their reputation will grow to the point when who they are will eventually have more influence than what they say.

John Maxwell emphasized that for young leaders to demonstrate competence at their start, they should embrace working hard, thinking ahead, demonstrating excellence, and following through. And to demonstrate character young leaders should first and foremost care about the people they lead, make things right, and always tell the truth demonstrating consistency between words and actions. This way followers know they can trust them as young competent leaders and they will never lose faith in them.