Where New Bosses Should Start - Your Practice Ain’t Perfect - Joe Mull

Описание: In this episode of Your Practice Ain’t Perfect, we’re talking about Where New Bosses Should Start.

Joe Mull, M.Ed is a practice manager leadership trainer and keynote speaker who works with healthcare organizations that want their practice leaders to engage, inspire, and succeed. As an expert in employee engagement and healthcare leadership development, Joe gives physicians and managers the skills and tools they need to engineer teams that work hard, get along, and wow patients. After more than a decade in healthcare, Joe knows that when leaders develop skills related to leadership, communication, and teambuilding, they can stop putting fires out every day and prevent them from sparking in the first place. Bring Joe in to keynote your conference, design and facilitate a retreat, or beef up your practice leader training. For more info or to book Joe now visit www.joemull.com.

"The most successful people managers know that trust and respect are the magic dust of leadership. Trust is earned slowly but can be burned quickly. If you’re a new leader like Robyn, those first days in charge MATTER. Here are 4 tips for Where New Bosses Should Start:

First: Ask for their ideas, opinions, and challenges

When a new boss shows up and starts barking orders in the first week, it can push employees away. And, it makes you look like an arrogant know-it-all. Instead of directing on day one, start asking the boots on the ground about their needs and wants.

Leading is often about listening. In those early weeks, commit to drawing out the insights and concerns of your direct reports. Most of them aren’t going to share stuff with you unless you commit to asking very specific questions often. So ask: What’s the hardest part of your job? What do you need that you aren’t getting? If you could change anything around here, what would it be?

This isn’t something you do just once. Do it constantly at first, and then consistently during your tenure. Those early questions will be general, but over time ask more specific questions about their feedback and ideas, related to specific processes and problems. Make it a part of the leadership habit that becomes a part of the culture of working for you.

Number Two: Expect courtesy and respect

I’m not talking about to YOU, I’m talking about to EVERYONE on the team. Experienced leaders know that the quality of the interactions that take place on a team influence everything else. That’s why the best bosses insist on courtesy and respect in all communication between team members. If you are a new boss, make it clear to your team that how they treat each matters a great deal to you and campaign for respectful communication at all times. You will help your cause by creating opportunities for them to get to know each other better beyond the tasks and responsibilities of their jobs and by teaching them how to communicate in healthy ways even when they’re tired, or stressed, or pissed.

Third: Connect their work to a powerful purpose

If you want employees to care and try and give their all, they have to believe their work matters. All of it, even the boring, mundane parts of the job. Work to create line of sight between the work employees do and the difference it makes in the lives of others. You got a team sitting in cubicles doing accounting all day and don’t know how to make that inspiring? Getting the numbers right matters! Talk about all the ways accuracy and detail impacts real people – families, jobs, livelihoods. Talk about all the angst and drama that’s created for REAL people, both inside the organization and outside, when those numbers are wrong. Help them see that when they get it all right, they’re actually heroes preventing a whole host of pitfalls and anguish for real people. Champion a cause that is truly worthy of their time, attention, and effort, and you will get all of that and more, from your team.

One final tip for new bosses everywhere and it’s not a DO, it’s a DON’T: Don’t complain about your employees to other employees!

Without fail, the quickest way to erase your credibility, sow the seeds of drama, and demolish a culture of trust and respect is to talk to your people about other people. It is remarkable to me how many leaders do this, every single day, in daily conversation. It’s usually little things, like saying “Oh, that’s just the way they are” or “No, he’s not very good at that.” I can’t stress this enough for new bosses everywhere: Keep any and all negative comments or opinions about your direct reports to yourself, if they must be discussed, do it behind closed doors with YOUR boss. As a general rule, remember what your mother taught you: If you don’t have anything nice to say when your employees are in earshot, don’t say anything at all about somebody else."

Joe Mull- Speaker, Author, Trainer
www.joemull.com
Twitter:@joemull77