Resource Centers:(News, information, and tools to support your practice)
April 2008
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5 leadership tactics assure a pivotal business year
The year 2007 may seem like a distant memory, but look back at it anyway. If you feel a vague sense of discontent, take time now to focus on leadership — your leadership.
Solid business results that stand the test of time do so for one reason and one reason only — consistently excellent leadership. Products and services change with the demands of the market. Individual leaders come and go. The key is to create an organizational culture that ensures great leadership today and tomorrow.
In other words, you need a long-term fix — not a magic bullet, trendy program du jour, or charismatic leader.
You need a culture built on good, solid, time-tested leadership principles.
Organizations should institute proven, across-the-board behaviors that don’t depend on particular individuals. This is evidence-based leadership which enables companies of all types to create results that last.
These practices are not complicated. They’re simple, commonsense tactics you can start doing right away. In fact, if you implement the following five ideas, you’ll see dramatic changes in your practice by the end of this year.
1. Get rid of low performers. Now. Let’s say employee Carol consistently comes in late, gets “headaches” every other (nonpayday) Friday, and spends more time cheerily chatting up co-workers than she does working.
Others do notice — and they do become resentful. But, worse than merely causing contention in the ranks, turning a blind-eye to the "Carols" in your organization squelches profitability. Why? Because middle performers get pulled to the low-performer level, while high performers either disengage or leave.
Too many of us give low performance a pass. The remedy involves implementing a structured series of high-middle-low performer conversations. It’s easier not to confront low performers, but until you move them up or out, your practice will never advance beyond short-term gains. The low performer is an anchor holding everyone else back. Quit looking the other way.
2. Accentuate the positive. The next time you’re having lunch in a restaurant, listen to nearby conversations. You will probably hear people griping about workloads, difficult clients, annoying co-workers, or the ridiculousness of corporate policy.
Everyone does it, but perhaps they’d think twice if they realized how harmful it is to their company. The solution is to hone the fine art of managing up.
Managing up means you position your people, products, or company in a positive light. Managing up doesn’t just happen; you have to make it happen in a systematic way. Help employees understand what can happen when negativity is allowed to breed — good people quit and patients leave — and they’ll be more likely to stop doing it.
3. Make a real connection with employees — every day. Medical doctors make daily rounds. Start making rounds in
Rounding helps you communicate openly with your employees, allowing you to find out what is and isn’t going well for them. But remember, it’s not just empty “face time” — it’s rounding for outcomes, which means the process has a serious purpose.
To round for outcomes, take an hour a day to touch base with employees, make a personal connection, recognize success, find out what’s going well, and determine what improvements can be made. Rounding is the heart and soul of building an emotional bank account with your employees because it shows them day in and day out that you care.
4. Say thanks. In fact, write thank-you notes to employees who do an excellent job.
A thank-you note is a powerful tool. People love receiving thank-you notes. They cherish them.
The best thank-you notes are:
• Specific, not general. A thank-you note that focuses on something specific the recipient has done is far more effective than one that reads, “Hey, nice job!”
• Handwritten, if possible. Most people would rather receive a three-sentence, handwritten note than a two-page, typed letter. It’s more authentic and special.
• Sent to the employee’s home. When an employee receives a thank-you note at home, it feels more personal than one laid on her desk along with a stack of reports and memos.
5. Don’t just recruit great employees. Re-recruit them.
More than 25 percent of employees who leave positions do so in the first 90 days of employment. To retain a new team member, the leader needs to build a relationship. Scheduling one-on-one meetings — the first at 30 days and the second at 90 days — has enormous impact on retention that directly turns into savings for your organization.
If these meetings are handled successfully, new-employee turnover is reduced by 66 percent. I suggest using a structured list of questions to discover not only what’s not going well, but also what is going well. You can be certain your new employee is comparing her first few weeks.
When things aren't going so well, a lot of leaders panic and start doing things that make employees less satisfied. Don't make that mistake. Your job is to create happy, loyal, productive employees. They, in turn, wil create happy, loyal, profitable customers.
They are the two sides of the same coin-and that coin is the currency that buys you results that last.
Quint Studer, a former hospital president, is founder and CEO of Studer Group. headed in Gulf Breeze, Fla. He is also the author of Results that Last: Hardwiring Wires that Will Take Your Company to the Top (Wiley, 2007). He can be contacted by e-mail at quint@studergroup.com or through his Web site, www.studergroup.com.
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