Soothing staff anxiety during challenging times

ByJohn B. Pinto

Remember that good economic times can paper over poor leadership habits. If your style as an owner has veered in the past to the gruff and the negative, you may now no longer be in a position to exchange endless pay raises for love and inspirational leadership. Scrupulous leadership, which takes honesty and frequent situation updates, is the key right now. If as a physician you've been the somewhat shy, invisible leader of your practice (letting an administrator be your proxy), now is the time to circulate the office often, learn everyone's name and learn how they're each contributing to your success. And then keep it up. If this works at times like this, just imagine what a great leader you'll be after "The Great Recession" is over. Some coaching pearls:

Staff morale can be more positively impacted by their interaction with you as a physician, and by your specific positive comments about their performance, than by any other single influence in the workplace. Don't just praise the technicians you see every day, but also the billing staff and front desk clerks.
Hold plenty of meetings (all-hands, departmental, even quick "team spirit" huddles in advance of each clinic session).
Invite and answer questions about "How it's all going to work out." Do what you can to counter the negative daily news feeds.
Let your staff know why a career in medicine — and especially a career in eye care — is so valued at times like these.
Emphasize the positive in every staff communication. Be especially careful about the things you put in writing. As a doctor or manager, it's easy to dryly write about the practice's misfortunes in a way that feels good to you — getting things off your chest — but that will absolutely freak out the troops.
Balance anything negative you feel you must report with the silver lining: "It appears that we are down 7% in patient visits and 9% in collections this year. However, because of our new flex-staffing program, and the way we've been able to trim the cost.
of supplies, I'm happy to report we're only going to be trimming about 5% of staff hours over the balance of this year, starting with voluntary reductions. And as soon as the economy turns around, we hope to rapidly restore everyone possible to their former hours."
Make sure the entire team stays top-line focused. Profit enhancement in the largely fixed-cost business of eye care is more a matter of revenue enhancement than cost containment. Just three more patients per day will increase profits by $100,000+ per year in the typical practice.