Leading your Team
What changes have we seen in just a little over three weeks?
Working from home and Social distancing are possibly top of the list of the massive changes we are all experiencing…
Working from home
• Spending much more time with the family or people you share a house with.
• Pets out of routine
• Same four walls
• Change to exercise routines
• Changes to eating/drinking habits
• Change to work routines
• Lack of space to work effectively
Social Distancing
• Separated from friends and family
• Queuing for the supermarket for essentials takes longer than the actual shop itself and walking around the corner of an aisle like you are in a horror movie
• Moving away subtly from someone that’s come too close but not wanting to seem rude (definitely a British trait I imagine).
• Talking to your loved ones via Zoom, once you’ve finally taught your elderly relatives how to do it, and spending the next 40 minutes looking up their nostrils.
• Not seeing your work colleagues, some of whom you spend 5 days a week with for many years.
• Not being able to help your patients in the way they need when you have spent years providing the best care possible. It goes against everything we feel as healthcare professionals.
• Holidays cancelled
• Events/Special occasions cancelled
So, while we navigate our way through quarantine and its challenges, it is so important to try and focus on what we can do rather than our restrictions, and this applies more than ever within our teams. How we as managers and leaders interact with them and our patients….they haven’t gone anywhere (they’re literally not allowed to!) and how we interact through these unprecedented times will be remembered…..so on a positive note we can do the following:
We can be flexible and adapt to any new guidance to the best of our ability and remember what our mission, vision and values are…now more than ever you should put these to work. That is something you can do!
We are still committed to our customers, each other, and still share the same commitment to excellent care, albeit restricted.
As most of us have said at some point, “It’s the small things that count”
As a practice we have had a huge amount (and growing number) of patients contact us for help and advice or sometimes even just a “ooh I didn’t think you would be answering the phone today”. Not needing anything but to check we are still there and to have a natter. That might be as important to them as getting them access to an Urgent Dental Care Centre for raging, unmanageable toothache.
We have had past patients return because we have helped them and they have even reinstated their “registration” or membership plan. We have had patients who have been ranting about us having to close on review sites or social media do amazing reviews because we have delivered a tooth repair kit or antibiotics through their door to save them going to a pharmacy.
We have had a huge amount of support and understanding from suppliers and others in the industry and offers to provide financial help.
Again, we will remember people’s kindness and they will remember yours…. which as healthcare providers is gold!
As managers and leaders, hopefully you have instilled the need for kindness, professionalism and empathy for colleagues, patients, friends and family, within your team and will have a strong, enthusiastic team that will give everything to help your practices recover.
A very wise friend* told me last week that situations like these don’t change people’s goodness but simply reveal what’s already there, and alongside my team and many of my friends and colleagues in the dental world, I am blessed. The best leaders and managers are those that surround themselves with the best people, which in times of need like these, flourish and find positives in these situations.
They will be the teams and practices that will come back better than before once we are able to reopen again.
*my wise friend is Mark Topley, The CSR Coach, and he will be very pleased to know that I do listen occasionally!