...the fastest way to achieve peak performance is to treat all employees as if they were volunteers Let’s face it—health care is a team “sport.” No matter what your current role, sooner or later you’ll end up being a team leader. And when that happens, your success depends on your team members’ willingness to go the extra mile. (Hint: if you are not yet a team leader, read this anyway because the time to practice is now.) Here are six strategies to keep your team members “juiced.” 1. Treat all team members as if they are volunteers. I refer to this as the most important leadership principle of all time. I discovered it while I was a Board member of one of my professional associations and the Chair for the Council on Education. In that role the Board looked to me to implement new Standards of Education, which had been in limbo for countless years. A team of 12 professionals was on my committee. All highly educated, all volunteers, all having their own agenda. I quickly became aware that all the “crutches” that I relied on during my “day job” did not work. For example, one of my committee members, let’s call her Julie, was really gung-ho. Any time there was a project to be done she was the first one to volunteer. There was only one problem—Julie seldom delivered. Forget delivering on time, she just did not deliver. At work, when any of my team members did that, I could counsel them and if that did not work I could use the ultimate “crutch”— I could fire them. Trying that with Julie, however, produced just the opposite results. Her response: “Hey I don’t need this; I’m outta here—more time with the family.” After banging my head against the proverbial brick wall several times I finally figured out that my autocratic strategies simply did not work with volunteers. I had to develop an entirely different skill set to motivate these people. And after I had mastered them, I transferred these new strategies to my “day job.” For me this was a defining moment that enabled me to transform myself from an autocratic manager to a highly effective leader. What was that concept? Are you ready for it? This is BIG! Drum roll please! Treat all employees as if they are volunteers.
Now, stop and think, what would you say to your team members if indeed they were volunteers? How about: "Please." "Thank you!" "Can I count on you?" "I need your help." "I really appreciate what you’ve done." "Thanks for being on my team!" "Thanks for showing up." And now the one that blows the autocratic managers away: "Could you do me a favor?" That one just doesn’t sit well with lots of managers. Here are some of the things they’ve said to me: "What are you talking about? You’re paying them; they owe you a good job." Or "You’ve got to be nuts. They are not doing you any favor, it’s their job," and so on. All really good arguments, and all really, really incorrect. (If you agree with any of these, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Because the only thing pay will do is get team members to show up, and stay with you. (Not bad, but certainly not peak performance.) And the fastest way to achieve peak performance is to treat all employees as if they are volunteers. 2. Catch team members doing things almost right! Most of us were taught to supervise team members by catching them making mistakes. Someone even gave it a name: management by exception. Unfortunately most team members will live up or in this case down, to your expectation. To reverse this, you will need to learn to catch team members doing things right. No wait, let me modify that, catch team members doing things almost right! The problem is that if you are a perfectionist some of your team members just have a tough time getting it right, especially if right is defined as the way you would have done it. Then you must compliment or recognize that positive performance in some way. In other words, you must learn to Continued on page 106