BLOG: Raising your awareness of your interactions with lay staff

Read more blog posts by John B. Pinto

Doctors often ask me, “How tough should I be with my staff?” Consider America’s marsupial, the humble opossum. Biologists know that “playing possum” is not some coy act. The animals actually pass out from sheer terror.

Do your staff members look similarly dazed when you approach them? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, are you ophthalmology’s Rodney Dangerfield, so meek that you get no respect?

Either extreme is bad for business. Too rough, and your staff will flinch when you come around the corner, avoid taking on new duties and hide all their mistakes from you. Too easy, and staff will neither respect your leadership position nor respond to your requests.

Getting the staff “pucker factor” just right is an art often practiced but rarely mastered. Milquetoast doctors go through life wondering why they’re chronically dissed. The most successful doctor-leaders are naturals whose supervisory skills are so adroit they verge on manipulation without being obvious or obnoxious.

Applying the right pressure to your people — and the right release — starts with being sensitive to others, not a particularly surgeon-like trait, right? So before you try anything else on the way to being a better people manager, ask yourself these four questions about your interaction with each member of your staff:

1. What is this person’s fundamental mood? Most particularly, how receptive are they? Staff who are in a chronically happy and receptive mood are a snap to manage. It’s hard to gain basic job compliance from dour, unhappy staff, much less superior work.

2. What outcome do you want from your interaction with this person at this moment? If it’s a clinical staff member, you may desire a more careful preliminary workup of your next patient. If it’s a surgical counselor, the performance standard you seek is that every qualified, medically appropriate lead is converted to a surgical patient today.

3. What incentives can you offer this person to move them closer to achieving your desired outcome? For most staff, this is nothing more than your consistent respect and positive, public reinforcement.

4. Do staff seem to be proactively attentive to your needs, or do you have to ask for everything? The former can make clinical work a pleasure. The latter is obviously exhausting and frustrating.

John B. Pinto, Practice Consultant and OSN Section Editor, focuses his blog on ophthalmic strategic planning, economics and benchmarking, marketing, cost containment, revenue enhancement, physician leadership and personnel/physician career development issues.