The DO Book Club, Sept. 2026: ‘Let Me Lead: Escaping The Experience Bias And Excelling As An Early-Career Professional’

Seger Morris, DO, MBA, did not have a direct path into medicine. In fact, he finished his college degree at age 20 thinking he would make an impact in the financial services industry. He eventually landed a job at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. This job would plant a seed for what he now knows about business.

In his roles at Enterprise, Dr. Morris discovered the grueling truth of ageism and came to the conclusion that time doesn’t always equal experience. At 25, he left the company in search of something more and then wrote a book about how he finished college early.

Eventually he found his way to medical school. After residency, Dr. Morris served as a physician leader in different settings, including hospitalist and ambulatory internal medicine practices, clinical documentation integrity, healthcare quality and safety and medical education. Today, he mentors early-career physicians on how to lead and why it’s important.

Dr. Morris wrote the newly published “Let Me Lead: Escaping the Experience Bias and Excelling as an Early Career Professional” for young professionals who are seeking to gain leadership skills, but may face adversity (such as ageism) while pursuing higher leadership positions. With an intention to shed light on his own experiences and wisdom, Dr. Morris writes about different leadership styles, the types of leaders you would want on your team, work-life synergy and mentorship.

“Let Me Lead” was released on Sept. 1 and is available everywhere books are sold.

Unique leadership insights

I asked Dr. Morris why he chose to include this quote by author Trond Undheim: “Leadership is an attitude, not a position.”

He responded by emphasizing the importance of walking the walk, noting that as Stephen M.R. Covey puts it in the book “The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything:” “We judge ourselves by our intent and others by their actions.”

People don’t want to be commanded—they want to be inspired by why you do something.

Paradoxically, Dr. Morris added, “Leadership is about influence, not authority. To scale your impact, seek to scale your influence by letting go of authority.”

If you want to become a better leader, what are you doing in your alone time to grow into that role? Parenting offers a clear example: If you tell your children one thing and they see you doing another, they will question the disconnect.

True leadership means leading with purpose. Integrity is the thread that connects your inner world to your outer one. The real question becomes: What values are you feeding when no one is watching?

Top 4 physician leadership tips

I asked Dr. Morris to list his top four tips based on how leadership has shaped him and how his life experiences have molded his leadership style.

1. “Wisdom is the intuition to know the best path forward without hard evidence.”
2. “Something my current self would now say to my younger self is to pay more attention to how success should feel than how it should look, and spend your day-to-day building better habits.”
3. “What I learned most about myself through leadership was to be comfortable with my natural talents (and not-so-talents)—people respond best to tactful authenticity.”
4. “The one thing being a father has taught me about leadership is that trying to control people is a fool’s errand and is exhausting for everyone involved.”

Dr. Morris emphasizes that intuition is the result of passion and alignment and the POSH ROAR framework, which I describe below. Emerging leaders can combine the structural framework and their own experiences to produce an intuitive leadership style that is authentic to them. He also states that instead of having a checklist of what one should accomplish, one should view success and milestones through the Synergy Blueprint, where one focuses on building sustainable habits and views success as an internal state. He believes this will combat ageism and burnout.

Furthermore, he also mentions that people respond better to genuine leadership. People can see when someone is pretending. When a leader is able to be transparent and admit their strengths and weaknesses, it creates a sense of psychological safety. Dr. Morris also bridges the gap between rising leaders and established leaders. When those in positions of authority micromanage, it stunts the growth and creativity of the individual and organization.

How following and leading are connected

While in medical school, Dr. Morris attended a conference in Las Vegas called OMEL: Osteopathic Medical Education in Leadership. One speaker he distinctly remembered started out a speech saying, “To be a good leader, you must first be a good follower.”

Dr. Morris clarified that you don’t have to be a follower first to be a good leader, but there is value in being a good follower.

People want to follow—that’s why there are religions and mentorship. Becoming a good follower of the right leaders will help you understand the strategies leaders employ to inspire people, which will ultimately serve you well when you are a leader yourself.

Leadership, work and life

In our conversation, Dr. Morris further described that there is no such thing as a work-life balance. That idea will lead to guilt and trade-offs. Being in “alignment” means you are falling into someone else’s plan with little input in your purpose, reward or demands of that plan.

Alignment can thus change very quickly. Instead, he stresses work-life synergy, where you can bring together the parts of your life that are important to you. In the book, Dr. Morris offers a solution to this through an acronym: POSH ROAR.

Position for success with POSH, which stands for purpose, opportunity, strategy and habits. Then, stay on track by measuring success with ROAR, which stands for results, outcomes, actions and rewards. Both are required to frame the way you lead to create your desired impact at work and at home. 

Building a team

Later in the conversation, I ask Dr. Morris who he would recommend on a team for someone who is great at starting projects but has difficulties making decisions or setting boundaries. Simply put, he said, “Find someone who would be great at making decisions.”

He stressed the importance of not having clones of who you are on the team. Different perspectives, personalities and working styles are important. You want complementary natural talent—people are less likely to burn out when they are on teams like this.

Finding your leadership style

When Dr. Morris was building the team for the Baptist North Mississippi internal medicine residency program, he made sure to have diversity across race, sex, experience, training setting, doctoral degree and cultural backgrounds. This allowed him to assemble a group with executive, influencing, strategic and relational skills.

At the same time, he emphasized that while focusing on your natural talents is essential, it is still important to work on your weaknesses so they do not undermine your leadership style.

To learn more

If you want to further your leadership skills, request mentoring or hear him speak, you can visit Dr. Morris’s website.

Related reading:

The DO Book Club, June 2026: ‘The Making of a (Pardoned) Felon’

The DO Book Club, July 2026: Summer beach reads with a medical twist