Leaders Growing Leaders: Designing a Tier-Based Leadership Program for Surgeons

BACKGROUND: Leadership has emerged as a crucial component of professional development for physicians in academic medicine. Most leadership skills can be learned and therefore best practices of delivering leadership development are in high demand. For practicing surgeons, specific strategies to teach leadership have been lacking. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper is to describe the structure of a tier-based leadership development program called Leaders Growing Leaders, to identify the major curricular components to each tier including measures and outcomes, and to share lessons learned for those who may want to begin a similar leadership development program.