Lessons of experience: Key events and lessons learned of effective chief medical officers at freestanding children's hospitals

This exploratory study examines the key developmental job experiences and the lessons learned that had the greatest impact on improving the leadership ability of 10 chief medical officers (CMOs) in freestanding children's hospitals. Interviews with the CMOs were digitally recorded and transcribed. The transcribed interviews were qualitatively coded for the key events and lessons learned by CMOs. The coded data were analyzed for patterns and trends. Analysis of the data revealed that the lessons most often learned by CMOs involved areas of growth in personal and interpersonal leadership skills and values. The most frequent key events mentioned by CMOs were business failures, values playing out and mentors. Values playing out are events that involve value-laden insights that CMOs drew from these experiences. CMOs learned valuable lessons from these events, leading to CMOs developing a broad spectrum of skills, abilities, attitudes, philosophies, perspectives, knowledge and values from job related experiences. This finding is consistent with McCall, Lombardo and Morrison (1988).