|
By Kristin Baird
A few years ago, I was invited to meet with the executive team of a healthcare system. The team included two CEOs – one led the hospitals and the other oversaw the medical practices. While waiting in the lobby prior to the meeting, I saw a beautiful display featuring their values. I was impressed that the values were so prominently displayed. To me, it implied that they were foundational to the organization. Respect and dignity were two of the values listed. When it was time for the meeting to begin, both CEOs were absent, and we were told to wait for them. One was 15 minutes late and the other was 20 minutes late. Only when they were both in the room, was I invited to begin my presentation. I was only five minutes into my presentation when I noticed that both CEOs were reading and responding to emails on their phones. Within minutes, several other executives followed suit. At one point, one of the CEOs took a phone call and stepped out of the meeting for a few minutes but told me to keep going with a dismissive hand gesture. VALUES START AT THE TOP The CEO’s behavior was appalling. What they modeled for the rest of the executive team was blatant disrespect. No wonder they all followed suit. Ironically, I was invited to speak with them about their culture which gave me a clear starting point. There was no way they were going to make significant culture change until they began living their values. The whole experience was awkward for me but gave me a great opportunity to re-introduce the CEOs to the values and how they are clearly not a driving force in their leadership. I called each of them separately to discuss my observations and point out that they had clearly breached two of their core values including respect and dignity. Both were apologetic and clearly taken aback that I would confront them. They both told me no one had ever called them out on their behavior before. The next day they asked the executive team to reconvene. They apologized for their behavior at the previous day’s meeting and committed to begin living the values consciously and consistently. Our discussion created a new beginning and over the next several months they made great strides in the culture. They took ownership and committed to making the values more than a display on the wall. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success!
0 Comments
By Kristin Baird
If your recruiting efforts include hiring Gen Z, now is a good time to review your hiring practices. “I can get a job anywhere. I’m looking for a culture.” This statement was made by a bright and talented Gen Z woman at the top of her graduate class. Her education and qualifications make her a desirable candidate for just about any organization. It was clear that she will have her pick of jobs. Here is what I gleaned from our conversation:
WHAT’S IN A CULTURE? Like many millennials and Gen Zs, she wants:
MAKE THE MOST OF THE INTERVIEW I was recently talking with an experienced manager who was having difficulty hiring for open positions. In our coaching conversation, I asked her to walk me through a typical interview. “Carla” described her process for reviewing the resume with the candidate and having them review the job description. There are a few major flaws in this approach:
A great employee relationship starts with a single interview. How are you making the most of those precious interview opportunities? Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
It’s almost Christmas which means your already-hard-working staff is now working holiday shifts. It’s always a balance between maintaining high-quality care and leaving a little space and time for some lighthearted festivities. Years ago, I heard a healthcare leader talk about the four hospitals within every hospital. He said that there was the daytime hospital, the nighttime hospital, the weekend hospital, and the holiday hospital. He went on to say that, while all four existed in the same facility, each operated differently with its own set of cultural norms and related practices. In other words, what you see at 11:00 am may not be the same as what you experience at 11:00 pm, on weekends, or Christmas Day. I’ve worked as a nurse on the PM, night shifts, and day shifts. I can tell you each shift had its own pace and set of responsibilities. Holidays could be a bit more relaxed and allow for a bit of festivity. CARVING OUT ROOM FOR THE HOLIDAY With Christmas and New Year’s just around the corner, it’s time to tune in to your team and set the tone for the holidays. Now, more than ever with staffing issues and high census, it’s important to stay connected to the team working through the holidays. Do they have what they need? Will they be seeing you (their leader) on the holidays? How will you show your appreciation? After all, they are sacrificing time at home with family. Helping them make the most of working over the holidays is key. While you want to make sure that the patient experience remains positive, high quality, and trust-generating, there is still room for sharing the holiday spirit among those dedicated associates who are covering the holiday shifts. As a nurse, I have fond memories of our holiday potlucks, secret Santa, and white elephant gift exchanges. The break room was usually full of goodies and offered a nice reprieve from the hustle of the unit. These are all important for building camaraderie and engagement. Encourage your team to enjoy the holiday spirit, but always – always – keep the patients’ needs at the center of every action. Make sure your “Holiday Hospital” delivers on the brand promise just as consistently as any other day. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
Today’s workforce has more choices than ever before about how and for whom they work. That’s why employers must think differently about recruitment and retention strategies especially in healthcare settings. Why? Because the loss of staffing continuity can have life-threatening impact on patient outcomes; not to mention staff morale. Last week, I was speaking with a CEO about her recruitment challenges. Operating with a lean structure, she was devastated with three resignations in just under two weeks. While many healthcare organizations have recruitment challenges, they can be magnified for those in rural settings or those struggling to maintain competitive wages. EMPLOYERS MUST DO RECRUITMENT TO FILL POSITIONS BUT ALSO NEED TO RETAIN THE ONES THEY HAVE. Here’s the chicken and the egg situation. I’ve witnessed organizations spending huge amounts of money on recruitment tactics and very little on retention strategy to address the high levels of employee turnover. When you have good employees, what are you doing to ensure that you are creating and sustaining a culture where they not only want to stay but are actively recommending your company to family and friends? This is the multi-million-dollar question. RECRUITMENT ISN’T GOING TO BE AS BIG AN ISSUE IF LEADERS FIRST FOCUS ON RETENTION AND KEEPING THE GOOD ASSOCIATES THEY ALREADY HAVE. Sign-on bonuses are a tactic that attract candidates but do not influence retention. In fact, I have found sign-on bonuses to be counterproductive. Long-term, loyal employees are often resentful of sign-on bonuses especially when their wages are stagnant. During a focus group, one 20-year veteran nurse said of sign-on bonuses, “I’m insulted. I have given two decades to this organization and they (administration) will be paying a new hire a bonus while I will be the one helping to bring her up to speed.” This sentiment is not unusual. Another nurse stated, “I guess I will have to leave and reapply to get in on this good deal.” Culture and employee engagement are the backbone of retention. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
“I thought she was a really strong supervisor. I had no idea she was creating friction in the department.” This was a statement made by someone I coach after she learned, while conducting stay interviews, that two of her staff were about to resign because of conflict with a shift supervisor. Drilling down into the situation with her, this manager discovered that she had a blind spot for the supervisor, preventing her from seeing the impact on the team. Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual. Many leaders have blind spots preventing them from identifying poor leadership that can erode morale and hurt employee engagement. However, proper coaching frequently reveals these blind spots and can be essential in course corrections. Proper coaching can help you keep the good employees you have In this case, the manager had promoted a staff member to shift supervisor. During her onboarding process, they focused on priority tasks to be accomplished during every shift. Because the tasks were consistently accomplished, the manager saw the supervisor as a solid performer. The problem was that she expected leadership but trained a taskmaster without emphasizing the leadership skills needed to foster a cohesive and engaged team. When hiring anyone who will be leading others, it’s imperative to set expectations and provide the tools needed to create a high-performing team and proper employee engagement. This requires more than a task checklist. Help the new leader understand the department vision and values, clarify expectations and how results will be measured, and offer support and leadership development. Never underestimate the impact of supervisors, shift coordinators and charge nurses on employee retention. I once had a director say, “Oh she is just a supervisor. Everyone really reports to the manager,” when discussing morale issues. That may be true on paper, but the direct reporting relationship and power structure means the supervisor has significant impact on the daily work environment. Watch, listen, and learn. Your blind spots may be creating a revolving door. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
It takes more than smile lessons and a pocket full of gift cards to create a well-founded service recovery culture. There are three fundamental elements necessary to promote a well-founded service recovery culture including: 1. ADOPTING A PROACTIVE POSITION 2. MONITORING AND RESPONDING EFFECTIVELY 3. LEARNING AND IMPROVING ADOPTING A PROACTIVE POSITION This step begins by first understanding executive beliefs and attitudes. Will they help or hinder progress with all other steps? Will they be able to empower staff to take action? Senior leaders must get crystal clear about what the frontline can do to resolve service issues before training begins. This is essential and skipping this step will result in confusion and distrust. In a previous blog, I wrote about the need to empower employees with the tools needed for success rather than paying lip service. Being proactive means preparing leaders to hire for service recovery aptitude and attitude as well as preparing them to coach and how to reinforce skills gained in training. Having service recovery standards, training, and tools in place sets the organization up for greater consistency and to promote a well founded service recovery culture. MONITORING AND RESPONDING EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENTLY This step requires having trained staff and reliable systems to help spot issues, take action, and track and monitor for closed-loop resolution. We often see well-meaning patient experience leaders creating “service recovery kits”. They consist of gift cards to distribute in service recovery situations. This is fine if it is done in conjunction with other means of service recovery actions to connect the trends with the root problem. Most organizations already track recipients because there is a monetary value assigned. However, if the monitoring and tracking ends with how the gift cards are distributed, you miss a huge opportunity for quality improvement. Track how the issue was resolved, by whom, and how fast. This will promote a well founded service recovery culture. LEARNING AND IMPROVING This step is essential in preventing future issues. Once data on the service recovery side is collected, what will you do with it? Mining data will help you identify trends and determine how issues can be prevented. In an article from MIT Sloan Management Review, authors state, “The vast majority of companies do not take advantage of the learning opportunities afforded by service failures.” Service recovery training is important. But you will be far more successful if that seed is planted in the fertile soil of a distinctive and well-founded service recovery culture. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
Over the course of my career, I’ve been on both the sending and receiving sides of feedback. I’ve come to know that continuous improvement requires that you be able to do both well. Training, preparation, and practice are all essential in building feedback skills. Many leaders seek skill development in delivering feedback. They also benefit by preparing for various reactions to their feedback. Our firm does a lot of training and development for various groups ranging from front line associates to physicians and executives. We frequently work with leaders on how to give feedback. Giving effective feedback requires clarity, respect, and emotionalintelligence. This will ensure key points are communicated and received effectively. How do you react when you are on the receiving end of feedback? MANY PEOPLE LEARN HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK, BUT FEW ARE TAUGHT SKILLS TO RESPOND TO FEEDBACK GRACIOUSLY. HOW YOU RESPOND CAN BE A MATTER OF INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY AND EXPERIENCE. It seems there is little training and supporting in helping people to RECEIVE feedback. My observations show more focus is given to the sender and little, if any, to the receiver. Working on one without the other can set you up for failure. Why? Because if the recipient hears feedback as criticism, the result will be defensiveness, anger or hurt feelings. This is not effective feedback. But if the receiver hears feedback as helpful information, the result can be motivational and clarifying. TO BUILD A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT, YOU NEED TO HELP PEOPLE GIVE AND RECEIVE FEEDBACK. When individuals within an organization reach emotional intelligence to receive feedback graciously, and see it as an opportunity to improve, it will elevate the entire team. This is key to effective feedback. Getting to that point takes conscious effort. If we spend as much effort helping people learn to receive feedback as we do in giving it then we will make advancements much more quickly. Creating a culture of continuous improvement means becoming one where everyone takes ownership for the good of the organization. A culture where everyone holds themselves and others accountable for effective feedback. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
Connecting to purpose can make all the difference in engagement and job satisfaction. To counteract the Great Resignation or the “Big Quit” plaguing the country, we must look closely at the way we do work. This includes how we help our team members connect to purpose. Many of us who work in healthcare talk about the work as a calling. When I speak with nurses and other healthcare workers, I hear one thing a lot. They chose healthcare careers because they wanted to do work that makes a difference. They quickly become discouraged when they feel their executive leadership does not share that same sense of purpose. THE SENIOR LEADERSHIP CONNECTION Organizations whose leaders live the mission, vision, and values do much to foster this connection to purpose and engagement at all levels. One nurse leader recently told me, “I’m tired of putting on a brave face for my staff and telling them that our senior leaders hear them and feel their pain. The truth is that they don’t. I strive every day to foster a strong sense of purpose through one-to-one discussions. By helping them see the value of their work, I’m building engagement. And it’s raising the morale while feeding their sense of purpose.” In a recent Fast Company article, author Marc Inzelstien cites a McKinsey survey: “Respondents who indicated they were “living their purpose” at work were much more likely than those not doing so to sustain or improve their levels of work effectiveness, and they had four times higher engagement and five times higher well-being. Yet only one-third of respondents believe their organizations strongly connect actions to purpose.” HOW TO FOSTER CONNECTING TO PURPOSE Help staff connect to purpose by:
Here are a few conversation starters to help your staff connect to purpose:
In addition to fostering a strong connection to purpose, leaders must support employee wellbeing and see them as more than a body filling a shift. A study from Harvard Business Review found that while 87% of companies surveyed agreed that it was very or extremely crucial that managers support employee wellbeing, only one quarter do much about it. We must remember that healthcare organizations are first and foremost places of human interactions, not just medical transactions. Creating supportive interactions and social connections among our team members will foster greater engagement. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
Have you ever noticed that people tend to preface the word feedback with a qualifier such as positive or negative? The truth is feedback isn’t positive or negative. It’s feedback. Period. The dictionary defines feedback as: information about reactions to a product, a person’s performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement. I might say, “I have received valuable feedback from my team.” Being valuable to me doesn’t mean that the feedback was all good news and praise, nor does it imply that it was bad. It was information that will help me make improvements. A healthy culture where people are committed to excellence requires everyone to be open to both giving and receiving feedback. When trying to build a culture of feedback it is important to drop the qualifier. This makes the information less judgmental and more targeted at improvement. Imagine if I walked up to you and asked, “May I give you some negative feedback?” You’d probably have visceral, defensive reaction before I even opened my mouth. If, however, I ask, “May I give you some feedback?” You may be curious and probably not as defensive. Especially if the culture fosters open giving and receiving feedback. CHANGING THE TONE A few years ago, I had hired an employee who came from a dysfunctional culture. When I said, “Let’s talk after lunch, I’d like to give you feedback from the meeting,” he looked terrified. Noticing this I said, “It’s all good.” I could see him visibly relax. He said, “When someone tells me they are going to give me feedback it usually isn’t good. Even if they call it constructive feedback, I expect to get bad news.” My guess is that he hadn’t been getting feedback. He was being criticized. In the Forbes[i] article, Five Essential Differences Between Criticism and Feedback, authors Jim Ludema and Amber Johnson make a very clear, and useful distinction between the two. IT’S THE LEADER’S JOB TO HELP PEOPLE GET ACCUSTOMED TO GIVING AND RECEIVING FEEDBACK OPENLY. It’s the leader’s job to help people get accustomed to giving and receiving feedback openly and graciously. Making it positive or negative defeats the purpose. Focus on future improvements and you’ll find people accept feedback openly. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Kristin Baird
Nobody likes a micromanager, someone who hovers wanting to know every detail of what you do. But don’t confuse micromanaging with holding people accountable. The two are miles apart in how they affect the employees and culture. HOLDING PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE IS ESSENTIAL TO ACHIEVING GOALS AND GETTING THE DESIRED RESULTS. A leader holds the team and individuals accountable by setting clear expectations and goals and offering regular feedback without hovering. I feel compelled to distinction explain micromanaging and accountability after a recent conversation I had while coaching. The manager I spoke to was experiencing several behavior issues among his team members. When I asked him how held them accountable, he said, “I don’t want to be a micro-manager.”[i] As we spoke, he realized he had been ignoring issues that needed to be dealt with. He was confusing accountability with micro-management. Once he recognized the difference, he was able to make huge strides with his team. We use the word accountability frequently in healthcare and understandably so. Without accountability, patients die, infections spread like wildfire, and safety issues explode. No one argues with the need for accountability in clinical practices. But it gets fuzzy for some leaders when it comes to holding others accountable for service behavior. They shy away from confronting staff on things like tone of voice or attitude. “It’s just too subjective,” one manager told me. And there it is. The word subjective. THE CULPRIT THAT MAKES US SHRINK AWAY FROM A CRUCIAL CONVERSATION. It’s important for every leader to know the difference between accountability and micro-management. Not sure if you are a micro-manger? This article from Forbes[ii] gives great insight into the signs of micromanaging. It also spotlights the impact micromanaging has on business. “Micromanagers are detrimental to the success of a business and the mental health of everyone involved.” You don’t have to micromanage to hold others accountable, but you do need to be clear about expectations, goals, and responsibilities. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! |
Archives
March 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed