In this episode of Your Practice Ain’t Perfect, we’re talking about How Great Bosses Reply to Staff Ideas. Joe Mull, M.Ed is a practice manager leadership trainer and keynote speaker who works with healthcare organizations that want their practice leaders to engage, inspire, and succeed. As an expert in employee engagement and healthcare leadership development, Joe gives physicians and managers the skills and tools they need to engineer teams that work hard, get along, and wow patients. After more than a decade in healthcare, Joe knows that when leaders develop skills related to leadership, communication, and teambuilding, they can stop putting fires out every day and prevent them from sparking in the first place. Bring Joe in to keynote your conference, design and facilitate a retreat, or beef up your practice leader training. For more info or to book Joe now visit www.joemull.com. "Every day, I advise, train, and coach leaders on how to be better bosses. Often this involves giving leaders insight into the conditions they must create in the work place to get employees to care and try and give their all. As often as possible, I try to talk about the small interactions that take place every day that often feel inconsequential but hold the key to getting teams firing on all cylinders. That’s why, in this episode of Your Practice Ain’t Perfect, I’m going to share with you a very specific kind of reaction that the very best leaders have when employees share ideas or make suggestions. And there’s a pretty good chance it’s something you aren’t doing often enough, if at all. I’ll tell you more after the opening credits, so don’t go anywhere. A few years ago, a midsize primary care practice group asked me to advise their physician owners on how to respond to their most recent employee engagement survey. They were concerned that scores weren’t high enough, and they were specifically distraught that one of the lowest scoring items on the survey were employee perceptions of how much senior leaders cared about what employees thought or what they faced every day. Before I got involved, the physician leaders responded to the survey by holding an all-staff meeting where they described in detail all of the effort they were putting forth to support employees, what their mission, vision, and values were, and their commitment to serving patients at the highest level across the organization. I asked later, "How much talking did the staff do or how many questions did they ask?" I was told “Not much. The doctors did most of the talking.” I hate to break it to you, I told them, but that meeting was a waste of time, and might’ve made things worse. What these doctors should have done at their all-staff meeting was simply express that they were committed to improving in the areas of concern on the survey. They should’ve told the staff we want to know how we can improve or what we can do differently around here to better meet your needs. Then, they should have stopped talking. They should have spent the rest of that meeting drawing out staff ideas and suggestions, big and small, with the doctors demonstrating a commitment to simply listen and take it all in. As staff shared their thoughts, the doctors could have simply said, "Thank you for sharing that," or "OK, we’ll work on that." As you interact with members of your team every single day, it’s probably common that some of them share ideas, or make suggestions, or give voice to concerns. How often do you immediately respond to these statements with validation or dismissal? What I mean is do you respond by agreeing with the premise of what they said? Disagreeing? Minimizing? Successful leaders know that one of the critical elements of employee engagement is that employees feel their voices are being heard. When individual contributors give voice to a thought, idea, or suggestion, and your reaction immediately labels it as worthwhile or not, you skip right over an opportunity to nurture that employee's engagement. Instead of reacting to the comment in the moment, simply thank them for sharing it. Just acknowledge that they’ve chosen to share an insight and leave it at that for a while. You can follow up later as to what you can or will do with their suggestion. This approach keeps the focus on the employee having a voice. When employees share ideas, opinions, or suggestions, the best bosses genuinely listen and say thank you. Want your employees to be more engaged? Want to nurture trust and respect in the workplace? Stop reacting to every suggestion as valid or not, and instead say, "Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate that." Joe Mull- Speaker, Author, Trainer www.joemull.com Twitter:@joemull77