Never miss a chance to lead

Transcript Overview Resources What does it take to have a great day at work in your practice? I’m sure there are a lot of different ways to answer that question!  Maybe it’s providing the best medical care for patients, having procedures and office visits run smoothly and on time, or hitting every vein on the first

Transcript Overview Resources Let’s talk about another way to create or sustain a fully engaged team.  At first, it sounds pretty simple.  If you want an engaged practice, hire engaged employees.  The people that are most likely to be fully engaged in your practice are the ones who have been fully engaged in other places. When

Transcript Overview Resources Sometimes, we reach that place.  That situation where we have done all of our good leadership things.  We have supported, coached, developed, invested, and built a culture for success.  And still, some employees simply choose, for whatever reason, not to make progress towards change that supports the practice’s vision.  When that happens

Transcript Overview Resources In our discussion of things we must do to create more employee engagement, I would like us to think about the critical need to ask our team more questions.  If there’s any secret or magic dust or miraculous skill associated with leadership it is the consistent practice of asking questions that make

Transcript Overview Resources In the previous module, we talked about the importance of coaching effectively, which contributes heavily to development, but it’s just one part of a more complete learning and development process. Developing others shows them they are valuable because we often spend our most important resource, time, to help them learn, improve, develop new

Transcript Overview Resources challenging part of the process for you?”  Or, “Boy, that client was pretty intense.  Is there anything you would have said differently to him if you’d that conversation over again after thinking about it?”  Even if we can’t help them directly, we can support them as they learn using other resources.  “Samantha

Transcript Overview Resources I mentioned already that involvement helps support engagement and it’s much easier for employees to stay fully engaged in meetings that are discussions rather than lectures.  For instance, imagine sitting at a table with some people at dinner and having nothing to say or contribute as others share their thoughts and stories. 

Transcript Overview Resources The first leadership action for building or sustaining an engaged practice team is to create a vision for your practice.  One of the best ways to create clarity and alignment is to have something to align with.  If everyone on the team can articulate what the future looks like and what the

Transcript Overview Resources Creating and sustaining a fully engaged practice team, building a place where your vets, technicians, front desk staff, groomers, assistants, and kennel team are excited to come to work, show up to do their best, and are proud to be part of an amazing workplace.When you build a team like this, a

Transcript Overview Resources We’ve covered seven of the eight components that help build or sustain a fully engaged team.  They are: create a vision, organize collaborative meetings, coach effectively, focus on learning, ask questions, act fast when employees opt out, and hire people with a history of engagement. The final leadership action that often gets overlooked

Transcript Overview Resources If you have been through Parts I and II of this course, you know by now that leaders make a huge difference in the engagement of employees.  We are the ones who create engagement or disengagement based on our approach, our actions, and our interactions. In Part III of this course, we will

Transcript Overview Resources How did you do?  How do you feel?  Was it difficult going through those?  We just explored eight things that leaders do that consistently and effectively destroy the engagement of our team.  They are: hoarding information, refusing to trust employees, focusing on blame, not listening to the team, taking all the credit,

Transcript Overview Resources It’s a simple fact that no one really works better when they are micromanaged.  Micromanaging is hovering over someone’s shoulder, checking every bit of their work, and repeating things that they likely already know.  I don’t know anyone who rolls out of bed and says, “Yes, I get to be micromanaged today.”  

Transcript Overview Resources In the past several modules, we’ve discussed some leader behaviors that will crush employee engagement: hoarding information, not trusting employees, focusing on blame, not listening, taking all the credit, and having all the answers.  This next leader behavior is a tough one.  And this is a long module so stop it now

Transcript Overview Resources Think about this for a moment.  If you have a child, and many of you may actually be in this situation, and they come home from school and say, “I don’t know how to solve this math problem on my homework.”  Do you just say, “Oh, the answer’s 23.”  Or do you

Transcript Overview Resources Sometimes, as managers, we feel like we are taking care of everything and we’re doing a lot to ensure the practice runs smoothly and efficiently.  But if we’re doing leadership right, the team is helping too.  If they don’t get recognized for that, then they don’t feel valued and it also feels

Transcript Overview Resources When I work with veterinary practices, one of the questions I initially ask is, “How are problems solved here?”  I also ask, “If you have a good idea about how to make things better, what do you do with it?”  I’m amazed by some of the answers I hear from staff members. 

Transcript Overview Resources So far, we’ve talked about how hoarding information and refusing to trust our team are deal breakers for creating an engaging environment where talented people want to work.  Now let’s talk about blame. When a mistake is made in our practice, how we handle it sends clear, strong messages to our team.  Did

Transcript Overview Resources Some employee handbooks are filled with rules that are a result of the negative actions of others in the past.  In the handbook, it may state that we don’t allow cellphones out of the lockers or that we dock pay if someone fails to clock in.  We might also do lots of

Transcript Overview Resources Often as a leader in a practice, we have information that we don’t share with the rest of the team.  Maybe it’s how well we’re doing financially as a practice, where we’d like to be better or different, changes that are coming soon, or just ideas about what we could become. When it

Transcript Overview Resources In Part I of this course series, we looked at the components that drive engagement and even attract engaged people to your practice.  Most people are fully engaged in a world where people feel things are fair, their work is valued, they have clarity on how to succeed, they have the opportunity