15 Aug How the Wrong Management Mindset is Holding Your Practice Back
The title pretty much sums up everything this blog post is about. You see, I’m someone who doesn’t believe in sugarcoating things.
Always remember that in the healthcare industry or in any industry, in general, poor leadership could cost you a lot of money.
Tangible losses are opportunities, sales, and good employees. On the other hand, intangible losses are innovation, morale, etc. Poor management can significantly ruin your business. Leaders and managers are the backbones of every business as they are the ones who hold things together while providing the right support needed for the practice to be able to move forward and running smoothly.
So, while we all know a good manager can steer a business towards greater heights, bad leadership can of course have the opposite effect. You see, there are three fundamental types mindsets you need be able to step into and combine as an effective manager.
The Reflective Mindset
This is the ability to see behind in order to look ahead. As a practitioner, reflection is a skill you’re taught right from the start so you’re one step ahead, but it’s also important to remember to reflect on the little everyday actions that make your team work – not just the major events.
The Analytical Mindset
There is a huge amount of data available in all industries today, which can leave us over-analysing and slow to act – sometimes called ‘analysis paralysis’. As a manager the hard numbers are important, but you must try not to get bogged down in them – remember to look at the soft data as well, meaning patient safety and care are always front of mind.
The Worldly Mindset
Having a cultural appreciation of the patient population you work with helps you to understand more about the challenges and opportunities that your patients have – from how they access your service or clinic to what treatment plans they successfully implement, and how they communicate and interact with you.
So what happens if you’re not combining those mindsets? Or if those on your leadership team just aren’t the right fit for the position? Well it’s very well possible to ruin your company with bad leadership. In your healthcare practice, your employees expect you and their managers to inspire and direct them. They do honestly prefer clear-cut KPI’s and KPA’s so that they can achieve success – otherwise their aimlessly going about their duties. A good manager understands the nuances of effective leadership…but what if they don’t?
Low Motivation
Those who don’t excel in inspiring their teams or are unable to steer a ship successfully could lead to lower motivation among employees. With this kind of manager running a healthcare practice, the team will feel like they don’t need to try hard because their boss is incompetent anyway. As a result, some employees will try to undermine the manager, and they will instead focus on what has gone wrong instead of focusing on improvements and success.
Employees who are not shown appreciation for a job well done or those who aren’t given credit will stop giving their best. And when your employees become less motivated, creativity and innovation will go to waste.
Missed Work
If your employees are not happy to come to work every day, it will be easy for them to miss work. With a negative work environment, even toxic employees could end up getting legitimately sick, as a result of fear and stress.
Missed days in the healthcare industry could cut back in productivity, and this will have an impact on your patients.
Turnover and Associated Costs
Most employees are willing to learn more and expand their horizon in following a clear career path. However, a poor manager can end up totally derailing these intentions. I’ve seen some offering more opportunities for employees to learn and end up micromanaging everything because they fear that everyone will learn things they don’t know. As a result, employees will stop trying to climb the ladder for success because they don’t want to interact with a poor leader.
So what does this have to do with turnover? If employees stop growing, they will stagnate. Soon, they will look outside for more opportunities to grow. This could mean moving to another business or with your competitors.
Remember that high turnover could significantly cost you a lot of money. You’ll need to spend more on hiring and training people, and you will lose forward momentum with customers and miss a lot of potential sales.
Missed Objectives
To reach the vision and objectives you have for the practice you must be able to set goals, measure the progress and do coaching when needed. If these goals are too low, employees won’t be motivated to reach them and could end up feeling frustrated, as they will have difficulty in reaching their targets.
Profitability
You may have already seen where this all will lead – lost profits. Strong leaders are important because they keep the entire ship running and come up with ways to strategically improve and maintain profits.
In the end, for your healthcare practice to succeed, you need to become a great leader. Being unable to engage, inspire, motivate, train, and coach employees will only cost you in many ways and could eventually put you out of business.
For more hints on how to become a better manager and whip your staff into shape, head to my online Masterclass which will reveal some of my best leadership development secrets.
