What is your origin story as a leader, and how does it compare to the people working on the front line of your team?

Did you start off operating at the sharp edge of the field and work your way through different roles until joining senior leadership? Or, did you enter the organization through a different path than the front line, picking up skills and experience from different fields and traditions before taking on the work of leading your current group?

At the Mission Critical Team Institute, we work with high-performance teams across medicine, fire, sport, aerospace, and the military. Recently, we have noticed two distinct patterns of organizational structure in these elite teams that differ considerably in their leadership pipelines.

In some organizations, the pathway to leadership always starts on the front line. Every chief in the fire service started as a firefighter, and the medical director of every intensive care unit spent time as a practitioner before taking on leadership duties.

In other organizations, most leaders come from different professional backgrounds. The CEO or COO of a hospital system may come from business, finance, or operations, for example, and step into the role with no direct experience at the bedside.

While both patterns can yield high-performing teams that work complex problems successfully, there are substantial differences in how these teams operate.

In this post, we define the front........

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