Throughout the month of May, the Studer Group is hosting a free Gratitude Symposium The Gratitude Symposium by Quint Studer (heysummit.com) featuring forty-five well-known experts banding together to present a series of lectures geared towards thanking, teaching, and inspiring those in working in healthcare.
As we continue to strengthen our service line efforts in Private Duty Home Care at NAHC around Leadership, I wanted to take the time to share with you not only this symposium, but also highlight a specific presentation from Linda Deering Dean, RN, MSN.
Linda is a national coach and executive speaker, but also a nurse by trade and at heart. Her presentation entitled, “Outstanding Leadership is a Choice” was a really timely conversation as we reflect on the future of the private duty home care industry and how we need to attract and cultivate not only more caregivers but also new leadership talent to support the future expansion of care and services in the home.
In her 21 minute video lecture, Linda spoke fondly of her career as a nurse, but mentioned that as a leader she “would never have had a great career if I didn’t have great leaders who helped me long the way. Leadership makes all the difference.” And she went on to share a very relevant quote from Robert Cooper, “Outstanding leadership- is the ability to accomplish results through people.” For me some of the most important key take-aways from her presentation focused on our responsibility as leaders.
In home care leaders are responsible for so many things. There are core business outcomes and key performance indicators to stay abreast of. But we are also responsible for building the future, for cultivating future bench-strength and the talent that may one day be running the home care agencies that are providing care to us. We are as leaders “owners of all aspects of the organizational culture- the sociology, the results, the relationships, the trust, the engagement, and most importantly the love.” We are there to help our employees and future leaders thrive.
Linda outlined three important key actions leaders should work towards honing their skills at in order to create a culture that engages and grows our employees:
- Talk about what is going well- takes a lot of skill and practice to sense and share the good first, rather than the critical- complimented behavior gets replicated and repeated
- Compliment and praise- not just a thank you- you must share the details, what and how
- Own your own role modeling- careful what you emit, careful with your actions, what you do and say is what others will start to emulate and model
While her key actions may seem simplistic sometimes as leaders who must remember to lead with the good rather than focus on the more critical. However, the biggest key take-away today for me was the notion that “No one becomes a great leader overnight…it’s a lifelong journey.”
How are you as a leader working to build the next generation of leaders in home care? How are you leading with gratitude in your roles as we work towards building the future of home care together?