Walking into a new job as a practice manager is an exciting experience, yet daunting when you don’t know the hospital culture. Even a skilled manager in place for years faces daily challenges. For both, securing the team’s trust, communicating superbly and possessing change management skills are essential to ensuring positive outcomes and staff retention. Here are tips and tricks to achieve team buy-in and engaged, proactive employees.
Foster Trust
Trust goes a long way, but a practice manager must develop it with every team member, including veterinarians. With trust comes respect, both of which are earned over time. Try these nine approaches:
1. ONE-ON-ONE CHECK-INS AND COACHING SESSIONS
Check-ins should be informal and feel like a natural conversation. “Hey, how are you doing today? You seem a little under the weather,” or “Share with me the things that make it hard for you to do your job.” Never divulge the responses to another team member.
Coaching sessions might be more formal and seek to address bad or potentially troubling behavior. (Don’t deal with a supposed event weeks later.) Seek to understand what caused the behavior, discuss its impact on others and develop a mutual solution. Behavior(s) that must be addressed again requires more formality and documentation.
2. STRIVE TO UNDERSTAND
Everyone has ideas, perceptions and goals, which a practice manager should seek to understand to gain trust and respect. Find out what gets each team member excited and lean on the person’s strengths to stimulate learning and growth.
3. TAKE THEIR IDEAS SERIOUSLY
With experience come changes a practice manager would like to implement. However, no matter how good the ideas are, they will fail without team buy-in. Use check-ins to solicit suggestions, understand the team member’s perspective and provide positive feedback. Build on an idea using open-ended questions to help the team member take ownership of it. Celebrate and give full credit to the person or group that offered it.
4. GROW INDIVIDUALS
Team members have goals and desired growth areas. Help them achieve their dreams and be the best they can be individually. Create a strategic growth plan for everyone, guide them to resources and coach them to greatness.
5. BE TRANSPARENT
You can’t share everything, but team members want to contribute to the practice’s goals and see the hospital succeed. However, problems occur when the manager or practice owner withholds information about business expectations, hardships and financials. Remember, team members can have different perceptions and might make up stories when they don’t know something. For example, employees see “all the money” rolling into the practice each day but don’t know about all the expenses. Be transparent with the team to prevent erroneous stories.
6. BE VULNERABLE
Great leaders are vulnerable, admit mistakes and appreciate performance feedback. Accepting criticism with a smile is challenging, but that is how leaders grow and demonstrate the behaviors expected of others.
7. MAINTAIN CONFIDENTIALITY
Never share with subordinates who said what. You won’t establish trust if you reveal confidential details, even once. Perception is reality, and team members will say, “If she said that about Kimberly, what does she say about me?”
8. HOLD COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS
Trust, transparency and respect break down if you avoid uncomfortable conversations. Be courageous and seek to understand. Addressing poor behavior as soon as it happens prevents you from becoming frustrated and makes conversations easier. The goal of coaching team members is to make them the best they can be. It includes courageous conversations.
9. BE CONSISTENT
Once you implement one-on-one check-ins, coaching sessions and team meetings, don’t stop. Inconsistency creates doubt in the team. If you expect everyone to deliver consistent client and patient care, you must demonstrate the same behavior.
Enhance Communication
A lack of communication from practice leadership contributes to staff departures. Practice managers shouldn’t be afraid of overcommunicating and repeating the same message in multiple ways to ensure everyone hears it. Use one-on-one sessions, team meetings and an internal platform such as Slack or Teams to maintain communication and engagement.
Communicate your practice’s goals loudly and clearly. Share the business’s vision, mission/purpose statement, core values and strategic plan. A team forms when everyone understands the hospital’s direction (vision), how it will be achieved (purpose) and the expected behaviors (values). When united team members have each other’s back, the pettiness that used to be present will disappear. At that point, the team takes emotional ownership of the practice’s success.
Teams Matter
A practice manager must set clear expectations, starting with detailed job descriptions, an onboarding process and training programs. Everyone should contribute to the practice’s goals by collaborating, demonstrating core values and understanding how each position supports the objectives. For example, receptionists might be the least appreciated, least trained and lowest-paid team members. Yet, they deliver first and last impressions to pet owners, make or break client relationships, control the lobby chaos and create value during the visit. Let them know their contributions matter and train them to deliver the highest value possible.
Managing Change
Why do teams resist change? Sometimes, it’s “Because this is how we have always done things.” There’s more to it, however. People resist change because:
- They don’t understand the why behind a change.
- Their personal behaviors and patterns are set.
- Historically, changes quickly reverted to “the way we have always done things.”
Change management is easier to accomplish through trust and effective communication. Here are three tips:
- Seek to understand why something is done a certain way and follow up by explaining why doing it differently “will make your job easier and achieve the practice’s goals.”
- New habits take weeks to form. After implementing a change, wait 30 days before addressing the lack of team buy-in. Then, schedule a team meeting to evaluate the change and, if needed, pivot. Once new behaviors are learned, comfort levels increase and change occurs.
- Herd the team to success. People often default to the old ways, which is human nature, but courageous and kind conversations will move everyone forward.
Lead with pride and positivity rather than frustration.
LOST TIME
47% of the practice managers surveyed by the Veterinary Hospital Managers Association said they spend an hour or more a day on non-management tasks.