Last month, I wrote about effective leadership and how it relies less on how well you dictate and more on how well you radiate the energy you want to see in your work environments.

If you wish to see kindness reflected, be kind.

If you want your busy practice to feel calm, slow down.

In clinical settings, physicians tend to micromanage the details and execution of a plan. And rightly so! You rely on our medical training and leadership competencies to accurately diagnose and treat medical problems. As a patient, you don’t want your surgeon shrugging and saying: “Meh... good enough.”

While the efficient control of dictatorship can help save lives in critical clinical settings, micromanagement can take a toll on our personal well-being.

It consumes mental and emotional energy. And when it comes to handling our administrative teams, this can be especially exhausting.

Clinical education does not typically include executive management or administrative management training. This can lead to conflict for physicians who attempt to micromanage the staff of their independent practice or within siloed hospital system hierarchies.

The key then is to recognize the limitations of our authority.

While we can decide how many sutures to throw into an incision, we cannot fundamentally dictate to our staff how to do their jobs.

This is a truth.

We can empower our staff by trusting in their administrative expertise—just as we expect our patients to trust in our medical training and competencies.

We must accept that the only thing that we can dictate is our own words and actions.

At first this can seem distressing but letting go frees us from the burden of trying to control too much, which can lead to burnout.

The next time you’re feeling that pressure to control, step back and ask yourself if this is a situation that you need to dictate or does it call for you to let go and radiate?