Since April we’ve sailed the seas with two ships of our leadership fleet – Mentorship and Relationship. How’s your sailing going? Who on your crew has now been mentored…and is now mentoring others? What relationships among your “shipmates” have you leaned into to strengthen?
We now enter June, a fine month for sunny sky sailing. We conclude our voyage aboard our final leadership vessel – Stewardship.
STEWARDSHIP
Healthcare as an industry is in hardship. To raise the championship trophy of positive outcomes (quality, finance, satisfaction, engagement, or market share-related) in such a challenging time requires tremendous dedication and survivorship. We must learn to maximize the time, talents, energy, efforts, and limited resources available to make the best impact on the lives of those we serve. Challenge yourself and your teams to raise the bar of efficiency and lower the cost.
In what way might you tighten up your stewardship practices?
Try one of these tactics to assist your stewardship:
- Look for waste. Waste has no room in our work. Streamline processes, eliminate redundancies and excess hand-offs, eradicate unnecessary actions that don’t provide value, and prohibit defects. We don’t have the luxury of excess—particularly in our staffing or funding. We’re all faced with the challenge of delivering more with less. Encourage ownership—empower employees to be sleuths of waste, finding it and exterminating it from existence. By removing waste, we may find available resources are sufficient. As in, people can be freed up to do other necessary work or even achieve other tasks that weren’t previously possible.
For example: One team I worked with reduced the steps it took to perform outpatient EKGs, saving 0.34 miles (yes, miles!) and nearly 7 minutes of walking time per procedure. Doing that 4 times a day, 5 days a week allowed them to free up 2.25 hours per week (117 hours a year) for other patient care delivery. What could your staff accomplish with an extra 117 hours a year?
- Step back and see the work with fresh eyes. View the tasks you do and the performance of those on your teams as if you weren’t aware how it worked. Ask “why” more often. As in, “Why DO we do it that way?” Objectify it—write it out, time it, track it, watch the flow and note the motion and people it takes to accomplish a task. People do the best they can; they give the energy they can. Processes often fail them, making it hard for our teams to be successful in achieving outcomes. Make the work, work for us, not against us. Substitute blame with understanding of the process that people work within that hinders their achievement.
- Embrace wellness. Employees who are in a good space mentally and emotionally are more productive, more engaged, and offer better service to others. Look out for your team’s overall health—physical, mental, spiritual. Support participation in initiatives that nurtures their wellness. Be sensitive when resiliency is being stretched and caringly intervene—for your team as a whole and for its individual members.
Become the captain of new ships: Mentorship, Relationship, and Stewardship. May your fleet as a leader flourish!
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“Leadership is neither showmanship nor dictatorship. Leadership is a stewardship and a partnership.” – Rick Warren
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Explore these workshops and programs offered by our RWHC Education Team to further develop your Stewardship skills:
- Lean Residency
- Empowering Employee Problem-Solving: Soliciting Group Input & Team Decision-Making
- Coach ‘Em to Keep ‘Em: Retaining Our Workforce
- Culture Matters: Building Blocks for a Retention Culture
- Manage Stress Before It Manages You
- Refueling the Heart – Are You Running on Empty?
To learn more, visit: https://www.rwhc.com/Services/Educational-Services/Leadership-Series or email me at: csearles@rwhc.com.
Also consider joining our Leadership Bites series: https://www.rwhc.com/Services/Educational-Services/Leadership-Bites
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Corrie Searles, MPT, Leadership Development Educator
In Corrie’s role as Leadership Development Educator at the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative (RWHC), her aim is to empower leaders--formal and informal--to create positive influence that enables others to serve well.
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