Keeping Your Team Engaged
Keeping your team engaged starts with understanding and identifying the three different levels of engagement: Rowers, Riders, and Resisters!
- Rowers —Engaged Employees are passionate about their work. They feel connected and loyal to the practice. They’re always looking for ways to improve performance and patient care, with an eye on the big picture of helping the practice succeed. Their success is founded on the practice’s success!
- Riders—Not Engaged Employees are essentially checked out and can be difficult to spot. Usually, they’re coasting through their day by putting in time without energy or passion. They’re thinking about lunch, who just called their phone, or what they are going to do when they get off work.
- Resisters—Actively Disengaged Employees are unhappy at work and demonstrate it in both words and actions. They monopolize the doctor/manager’s time (always having issues that need addressing), have more on-the-job accidents, create more quality concerns, are sick more often and miss more days. They undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish and thereby sabotage the practice.
Clear and Consistent Expectations
Expectations begin with an open and candid conversation clarifying standards and the results desired.
You’ll want to go deep enough to explain what, who, when, where, why and how. When jobs are delegated, things are often left unsaid. Assumptions are made, resulting in frustration for the doctor, manager, and employee!
If the employee is not clear on expectations, they cannot possibly meet them. If you’re thinking they should “just know” that, or “I already told them once…I don’t need to tell them again”, your results will be limited!
“If you don’t ask for what you want, don’t be angry when you don’t get it.”
~Judy Kay Mausolf
Appropriate Equipment and Supplies
Next, you need to make sure your team has the appropriate equipment and supplies to maximize efficiency for the results you want. It demonstrates to the employees that their work is valued because you are willing to give them the support needed to do their job correctly.
For example, a specific instrument to aid your hygienist in safely cleaning around dental implants. It is important to ask employees if they have what they need to be able to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. The initial cost is outweighed by the ROI of increased performance, service, and productivity.
I have found men are usually much better at getting the right equipment and supplies, whereas women will try to make do.
This summer my husband Steve and I went a little crazy, filling our deck with pots of flowers, succulents, and evergreens! Needless to say, it became a huge watering chore for me because we did not have a hose up on the deck.
I have been traveling a lot more for business…which means Steve became the water boy. Surprise!
I came home to find a faucet and short hose up on the deck. Watering is now so easy it is fun! The chore that used to take me half an hour or more now takes under 10 minutes!
We have just tripled my productivity and increased job satisfaction by having the appropriate equipment and supplies.
Focusing on Strengths
We focus on identifying and building on each team member’s strengths. This one step alone can boost productivity by as much as 12.5%.
The best opportunity for people to grow and develop is to help them discover their innate talents; it just naturally creates a feeling of well-being when we can do something well. We enjoy our work more. Focusing on a team member’s strengths is a far more effective and positive approach than constantly focusing on their weaknesses.
When employees know what they’re good at, they are more engaged, produce a higher level of performance, and are less likely to leave the practice.
Research shows that the management style of focusing on the positive strengths reduces active disengagement to 1%. Whereas a negative focus management style produces 22% disengagement. Surprisingly, being ignored causes the most damage at 40% disengagement!
The old saying, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all!” is not a successful management style. It delivers the most negative outcome of all.
Which response would your employees say best reflects the management style in your practice?
My manager (or doctor):
- Focuses on my strengths or positive characteristics.
- Focuses on my weaknesses or negative characteristics.
- Does not say anything at all, and I feel ignored and invisible.
Leadership teams can help engage your staff by creating clear and consistent expectations, providing appropriate supplies/equipment, and focusing on strengths!
Contact Judy Kay today if you would like to learn more about how she can help you get your team ENGAGED and WORKING together to build a happier, healthier, and higher-performing culture!
