Give your employees good feedback!
By Cassandra Shepard

Your patients first come in contact with your staff before you ever get a chance to WOW them.

That makes it critical for you to invest in your staff's development and cultivate your own superstar team.

Developing a high-caliber staff involves a three-pronged approach. Just like a three-legged stool will topple if one leg is missing, so too will your efforts at taking your practice to the next level without these methods. The three prongs are: performance appraisal, performance problem resolution, and commitment to staff development.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

You cannot deliver great service or have a great practice without a great team. Conduct yearly reviews (quarterly is even better) with each team member as a way of recognizing their performance and also resolving any performance gaps.

The content of the performance appraisal should address everything that it takes to get the job done successfully: skills, patient relations, accountability, teamwork, and willingness to learn.

PERFORMANCE PROBLEM RESOLUTION

Delivering positive feedback is painless. Discussing a performance problem is harder, because you may have to deal with an employee's emotional responses.

Difficult or not, giving constructive feedback is important to your practice. The keys to having these tough talks are to discuss the performance as soon as possible and to have the conversation in private to avoid embarrassing the staff member.

Don't make the mistake of letting the situation grow worse because you thought the problem would take care of itself or would just go away.

Follow these steps to give feedback with confidence and professionalism:
1. Position the discussion. State the purpose of the meeting, current performance, and your expectations.

For example: State: "Sue, I'd like to talk with you about the tone you used today while on the phone. On three separate calls you sounded impatient, sighed heavily, and seemed to interrupt the callers. As you know, being warm and considerate to our patients is very important to us having a great practice."

2. Determine the cause of the problem. Ask the person why he thinks the problem is occurring. Asking shows that you are not jumping to conclusions and will give him an opportunity to share his point of view.

Then, paraphrase what has been said to confirm you heard it. (Paraphrasing does not mean that you agree with the employee's point of view.)

3. Identify acceptable solutions. Get the employee's input on how to solve the problem. Ask: "How do you think you can handle that differently in the future?"

When employees come up with solutions, they are more likely to follow through with them.

If the employee has no solutions to offer, suggest your own. "Let me offer a solution."

4. Verify responsibilities. To get performance back on track, outline who does what and when.

For example: "Let's go over what you are going to do. From now on you will use empathic statements to deescalate the caller. I'll look into a workshop for handling difficult people."

End the discussion by expressing confidence in the person's ability to meet the performance standard in the future. "I'm sure that once these steps are taken, you'll be back on track delighting our patients."

5. Conduct follow-up sessions. Schedule a follow-up meeting and continue to monitor the behavior. Catch the person doing things right and extend congratulations on improvements. If the person's performance still needs improving, cycle back through the steps one more time before moving to more corrective action.

COMMITMENT TO STAFF DEVELOPMENT

Your staff has a responsibility to improve performance — but you also have a responsibility toward their improvement.

Here's how you can contribute to your staff's success:

Providing a supportive environment for your team's personal and professional development increases loyalty, improves morale, and enhances their involvement in your practice's success. By following these steps, you will have done everything you can to create a winning team that WOWS your patients.

SIDEBARS:
Staff performance appraisal
When an employee becomes emotional, what do you do?

Cassandra Shepard, CPBA, CPVA, is president of Prosperity Solutions, LLC. She worked as a human resources executive for Fortune 500 companies for 12 years, and is now coaching chiropractors and alternative health practitioners. She can be reached at 719-282-9355 or www.bookyourpracticesolid.com.