One question has been asked of me more times than any other during my career. "How do you transition to a new facility and turn it around so fast?" I have accomplished this task by establishing my role as a "change agent". Being a change agent is what has branded me and my leadership style as I have move from facility to facility over the past several years.
The success of change has many facets. One that makes the most significant change is the concept of supervision leadership. How we supervise and lead is essential to overall operations, staff development, and performance growth.
There are four components that I have practiced, as a leader, in each health care facility that I have operated.
Understanding Human Behavior: This incorporates identifying, implementing, and understanding your own personality as well as the traits and characteristics of others. Through this understanding, you learn how to successfully motivate, encourage and inspire teammates, employees, stakeholders and customers. How many times have you ever worked for someone who treated you poorly, disrespectfully, or through fear? Do you remember how this felt? Do you treat people this way? Look at yourself first. This is self awareness. There are several personality tests you can use or distribute to your staff. You can administer these tests to your team, or hire someone to administer them for you. Either way, you want to know what makes your staff "tick". What makes them wake up every day excited to come to work? What are their work styles? Do they like to work independently or do they work best with a lot of direction? Understanding human behavior is so vast you could spend a lifetime studying the details. As a leader you just need to know the basics. Who you are and who are your staff?
Respect: Say no more, right? You are probably thinking, "That's a given!" Respect is the difference between a successful leader and an unsuccessful leader. Respect is earned, not awarded through academic or career success. Respect by definition is to show or feel honor, hold in high regard, or show consideration for. Humility is a disposition to be humble or lack of false pride. Humility as a leader produces an image of servant leadership. This fabrication generates respect. The respect that is needed to be successful and to promote unity amongst the team is through servant leadership. When you are respected for your work, and you approach your team in a humble manner, you can create an unspoken bond that unites the leaders on your team. Respect and humility combined allows you the opportunity to make mistakes and not be judged. When you are respected by your team, you can progress smoothly in your own work. When you are not respected, you create a divide.
Communication: If you did a Google search today on communication, your search would come up with over 351 million results. For the purpose of making it simple to follow I will touch base on three key areas.
1) Channels of Communication: For me, there are only four of them I focus on: Sender, Receiver, Message, and Feedback. Sender sends the message. The receiver receives the message. And finally the receiver gives feedback so that the sender knows that the receiver received the right message. All four steps are critical. If one is missed, then the communication can and most likely will not be complete.
2) Non-Verbal Communication: What the body face and eyes express is priceless. You can learn more about how someone is receiving a message by their body language and facial expressions than by any spoken word. And, it is just as important when you meet with someone, you should be aware of not only their expressions but yours as well.
3) Good Listener: Simple. Make eye contact, stop what you are doing, don't interrupt, take notes and paraphrase.
Corrective Action: A corrective action is an attempt to change a behavior, address a weakness in performance, correct a policy violation, or train for enhancement in certain areas. Corrective action is not always written but I would recommend writing down any action that was taken in order to support a pattern. I have witnessed supervisors or leaders fail because they were afraid to practice corrective action. This is a very important tool to be successful as a leader. Help your staff to identify these areas and what steps need to be put in place to correct them. Identifying accountability for one's own actions gains respect for you as a leader, as well as leaders within your facility. This pertains to everyone from you as an administrator to all line staff. Show your own self-respect and humility by openly identifying your own accountability in your own role, and be transparent when you are the one being held accountable for both good and bad. Always address this area with facts, not feelings. Be fair, honest, and consistent. Your goal with any corrective action is to improve performance.
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