As professionals and leaders, we want to be a source of support and encouragement to our staff.
However, in the flow of everyday life, that isn’t always the case. Also, glitches in our system of care are more likely to happen over time. These can occur for a number of reasons, such as someone not feeling well physically, significant stressors in other areas of life, one of the staff being out for the day or just due to common, everyday mistakes.
The truth is, if we are willing to be honest with ourselves, “life happens,” and when it does, we (and our staff) are not always providing care at the highest possible level.
The challenge as a leader: What do we do (and how do we respond) when the quality of our services and work aren’t up to the level we desire?
Common responses to glitches in our system of care
If you are either a performance-driven achiever or a compulsive perfectionist, your response will be to “try harder.” You’ll want to “buckle down” and review your practice systems. You will look for inefficiencies in the workflow, explore places where there needs to be tighter supervision and identify the “weak link” staff member who needs to be trained more and held accountable. In short, you ratchet up the stress in the daily experiences of your staff, which leads to anxiety, lack of confidence, fear, indecisiveness, curt communication and a lower-quality experience for your patients.
While this type of “system check” is not bad in and of itself, an overemphasis on corrective action will not typically yield the results you desire. Rather, the system (and its component staff members) can overheat and burn out. Now you are looking for a new receptionist.
Basic realities
Sometimes it is helpful to remind ourselves of some of the basic realities of life, such as not everything goes as we would like, people make mistakes and no one is perfect.
Reality check #1
So, when one of your staff either makes a mistake (intentional or not) or doesn’t complete a task as you want it to be done, stop and ask yourself a couple of questions:
- Do I ever have a bad day?
- Have I not done something exactly right in the past week or month?
Welcome to the human race. Obviously, we all make mistakes. Moreover, we all occasionally have a “bad day” where we don’t feel well or we are in a bad mood, and our work (or how we interact with others) shows it. That doesn’t mean we are terrible at what we do or need to be punished.
Reality check #2
Have you ever been (or known someone who is) in a difficult season of life, where issues outside of work are influencing your performance? I have. My wife and I had twins and were sleep-deprived for two years. I was a Child Protective Services caseworker at the time, and I clearly was not the best worker in my unit. I was exhausted and stressed. Other life circumstances can affect us or our colleagues, including physical pain, our significant other being in the hospital, financial stressors, responsibility for a senior adult, raising a difficult child, marital problems, the list goes on. And during these seasons, we are not at our best professionally.
During these seasons, we typically don’t need more training or to receive disciplinary action at work. We need support and encouragement.
The real need: Support and encouragement
Sometimes we need to remember another life reality: Employees are people, not just production units. We all have lives outside of work. We have physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs. We are not robots, and if we try to live life mechanically, like a robot, negative results occur. Parts of our lives start to not work well; we can get depressed or anxious, develop addictions and let our relationships deteriorate.
Show support and encouragement to your staff in ways that are uniquely meaningful to each individual. Do this in conjunction with dealing with performance issues. Don’t wait for a staff member to become a “star” or an expert before communicating support and encouragement to them.
The relationship between appreciation and encouragement
Appreciation and encouragement are closely linked together. In fact, one can argue they are essentially the same actions but with a different time focus. Appreciation is communicating gratitude to a colleague for something they have done. For example, they helped check in patients at the front desk when it was exceptionally busy and they have demonstrated the character quality “dependability” over time. “Amy, I truly am thankful for your dependability; whatever I ask you to do, I know it will get done.” The focus of appreciation is primarily on the past.
Conversely, the focus of encouragement is on the present and future. In the middle of our daily work, we can run into situations where we encounter unexpected barriers and challenges to achieving our goal, such as an expected package not being delivered or unscheduled patients showing up on an already busy day. During these times, staff members may need a word of support and encouragement or a practical action of support to help keep them from becoming discouraged or feeling overwhelmed. The issue isn’t that they aren’t doing their job; it is that circumstances out of their control are making work more difficult.
Final thoughts on support and encouragement
A final reality to consider is you and your staff members differ in what helps you feel valued, appreciated and encouraged. You can support your staff in good times and bad by showing appreciation in ways that are meaningful to them (as opposed to the way that makes you feel valued). You can build a supportive and encouraging workplace even when people make mistakes and when they have skills needing further development. And, here’s a final piece of reality to note: Your staff will accept correction better and be more willing to change when they feel valued as staff members.
PAUL WHITE, PHD, is a psychologist, workplace culture expert and best-selling author. He and Gary Chapman, PhD (author of the #1 New York Times Best Seller, The 5 Love Languages), co-authored The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, which has sold more than 600,000 copies. For more information on their online assessment and training resources, go to appreciationatwork.com.
