We touched on this last week and I’d like to get more specific.
You know the saying ‘if you aren’t growing you are dying.’ Well, if you aren’t learning you are going backwards. I get the same complaints from team members as I do from doctors…
Inadequate training and skills.
It must feel really embarrassing when people admit this. Real professionals shouldn’t go a day accepting incompetence for the fundamental skills that are required for daily operations.
You can’t train gradually and expect to hit your goals.
You can master a skill over time but you must have a plan for accelerated training so that the entire team is running full speed every single day with every single patient.
The way to do this is to have a system, a path and a plan for everyone. It happens with positional training as well as overall team training. Of course, this is all coupled with individual development where deficiencies might exist.
How do you do this…
You start by giving honest assessments to each team member. Let them also give assessments over themselves.
Then you ask them what existing skills they know they need to improve, what things to they wish they knew more about and what things they want to take on as a new challenge.
Finally, you put it all into your calendar as a structured plan with timelines to accomplish all of this.
Here is a tip: professionals, champions and the most successful people see training and practice as important (if not MORE important) than the real thing – than game time.
This week, work through this with each team member and as a group. Layout your schedule for training for existing people and then have each department make a new team member protocol to avoid this type of problem from persisting in the future.
And let your team members dream, grow and challenge themselves. These are the type of people you want, so you have to feed their minds if you want them to feed your practice growth. It is your responsibility to give them the opportunity to become more valuable to you and themselves.
