Can a Moose Inspire Leadership?
Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA Conflict in organizations is pervasive; the challenge for health care leaders is to handle it constructively. It is often useful to externalize conflict in order to resolve it. The metaphor of a “moose on the table” can be used to externalize conflict and provide some distance from the source of tension, making it easier to deal with. The moose symbolizes painful issues no one wants to confront; yet a leader will always address them. Randall Tobias, chairman emeritus of Eli Lily and former vice chairman at AT&T, frequently used the moose metaphor as a leadership tool. In Tobias’s book, Put the Moose on the Table, current Lily chairman and CEO Sidney Taurel observes: “We had a tendency [at Lily] to sometimes not say things as they really were in order not to offend one another. That can be very counterproductive. So we adopted Randy’s phrase ‘get the moose on the table’ as a lighthearted way to signal that we needed to speak openly and honestly about an issue at
