I walked into a busy healthcare facility in the heartland of Singapore. The security guard initiated surprising hospitality-like eye contact and asked me what I needed (not part of his security job!). I said “I have a meeting with Dr. X” (certainly not your usual visitor request in a healthcare facility).

Surprisingly, he walked me personally to the door of Dr. X, checked for his presence in the room, before allowing me to contact Dr. X on my mobile.

During the 10min waiting time before I met Dr. X, two other staff approached me to see how they could assist me (they were obviously paying attention to my “non patient-like” body language)

A Unique Work Culture

That surprised me. This was no ordinary work culture.

THAT was no ordinary security guard (not even an employee of the organisation, merely contracted to provide security services). But his hospitality spoke volumes about how psychologically invested he was in his job.
There were many other patients in the healthcare facility, all presumably waiting. The three personnel’s actions demonstrated the amazing level of staff engagement in this place. There was nothing that happened that didn’t concern anyone. No one had to wait for others before taking action to serve.

Dr. X possesses a unique ability to focus on incremental improvement (#developer) of his people while pushing for high standards (#maximizer). This allows him to patiently nurture junior staff yet engage high-flyers to drive excellence. No one left behind.

Arranger-Achiever-Responsibility

He does work well independently (#achiever), yet is adept at delegation (#arranger), all these while maintaining a real ownership of everything that happened in his center (#responsibility). An effective manager who leads from the front.

Consistency-Relator

He invests time fairly among his huge staff team (#consistency), yet manages to make all of them his inner circle (#relator). People felt close to him without sensing any favouritism or cliques. Relatable leader to all staff.

We could go on about the half-dozen combinations we explored during strengths-based executive coaching, but it was clear that Dr. X’s excellence arose from his ability to apply contrasting talents effectively to meet the multi-faceted demands on a healthcare leader.

Dr. X demonstrated an ability to use his unique soft-skills, coupled with his domain knowledge and skills as a medical doctor, to become an effective leader.

The Strengths-Based Coaching helped him to become aware of what he did (unconsciously) to become so good at his job. What was formerly incidental, once brought into conscious space, paves the way for intentional development & application. 

Strengths-coaching now empowers him to do more:

1. Selectively add more hard skills & knowledge to expand contribution into other areas (e.g. medical research)
2. Intentionally maximise contribution with job functions that bring out his best soft-skills (a.k.a. career planning, people management & job redesign)

The coaching will have sparked a potentially significant leap, helping him to contribute even more.