Leading with Excellence: Empowering Cancer Registry Managers for Success

By Kendra E. Johnson, MPH, ODS-C

“Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.” – John Maxwell.

Cancer registry leaders are pivotal to the success of the oncology service line. Their role is not only to lead the registry team but also to manage registry data effectively. Strong leadership and management in cancer registries ultimately enhance the care received by each cancer patient and improve the quality of data that drives advancements in cancer care.

Essential Leadership Skills for Cancer Registry Managers:

Communication

• Articulate goals and expectations.
• Foster open and honest dialogue with and among team members.
• Utilize multiple channels to communicate effectively across the organization.

Motivation and Engagement:

• Create a supportive environment that recognizes individual and team contributions.
• Encourage participation in decision-making to increase engagement.
• Set challenging yet attainable goals that motivate staff.

Problem-Solving:

• Approach problems systematically to identify root causes.
• Encourage creative solutions from team members.
• Use data-driven analysis to support decision-making.

Decision-Making:

• Gather comprehensive information before making decisions.
• Involve team members in the decision-making process to gain diverse perspectives.
• Be decisive and transparent about the reasons behind decisions.

Empowering Your Team

As a leader in the Cancer Registry, it is imperative to empower your team. You are the department visionary, expert, and servant. Creating a specific cancer registry vision that aligns with your organization will inspire and motivate your team. Elevate your emotional intelligence and ensure you are building positive relationships. Communication and empathy are vital. Successful leaders are servants—your position is to serve your team.

Training and Development:

• Provide ongoing education and training.
• Encourage professional growth.
• Utilize and create mentorship programs.

Delegation:

• Clearly define responsibilities and expectations.
• Match tasks with team members’ skills and career goals.
• Trust team members to perform, providing support but avoiding micromanagement.

Feedback and Recognition:

• Regularly provide constructive feedback to guide performance.
• Recognize and reward achievements in a timely and public manner.
• Foster a culture of appreciation and open feedback among the team.

3 Key People-Focused Leadership Strategies

Feedback and Continuous Improvement

Effective leadership involves creating feedback loops where you can continuously give and receive feedback to improve. Avoid creating loops of only constructive criticism. Aggressive, demeaning, and highly critical leaders lead to stagnant teams, low productivity, low morale, and low retention.

Various methods can propel your team forward and improve data collection in the cancer registry. Implement one strategy at a time. Remember, we are not just capturing data; we are telling each patient’s cancer story in a statistically significant way that translates data into meaningful outcome improvements and programmatic developments.

Leading with excellence in the cancer registry involves managing data with precision and empowering your team to achieve their best. You can create a thriving, productive environment that improves cancer care and registry data quality by focusing on data integrity, standardization, usability, and people-focused leadership.

Embrace these principles and watch your team and the data they manage reach new heights of success.

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