How To Build Relationships Remotely
5 actions to create meaningful conversations in our new normal Virtual work has been an adjustment for all of us, but many of the leaders I coach have been pleasantly surprised by their team’s performance working remotely. Most say work is getting done as well (or better), meetings are more efficient, and team members appreciate…
Who on your team do you know least-well?
Get them talking: Who on your crew do you know the least-well? Why is that? Are they new… or is there something else? Keep them talking: What would the payoff be if you got to know that person just a bit better? What’s something simple you could do to build that relationship today? Points to…
How do you handle it when you screw up?
Get them talking: How do you handle it when you make a mistake? What do you do? What do you say to others… and yourself? Keep them talking: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made recently? Tell me that story. What did you learn from that mistake? Did it change the way you work? What about…
What’s your end-of-day routine?
Get them talking What’s your end-of-day routine? What do you and your crew do at the end of each shift to make sure you’re ready to go in the morning? Keep them talking What could you do this afternoon, to make your morning go a little better? Points to consider Writer have an expression: park…
When is someone most-likely to be injured?
Get them talking: When is someone most-likely to get hurt around here? What time of day? Which day of the week? Why? Keep them talking: What are some other times we need to be “extra-careful” about safety? What can we do to help people avoid becoming complacent about the risks we face? Points to consider:…
Daily Team Huddles: Five Keys to Success
You can learn a great deal about someone by watching how they start their day. The same applies for teams. The way a team leader runs the start-of-shift meeting sets the tone for the day. That’s why it’s so important for senior managers and leaders to start their days out in the field, or on…
What are your strengths as a leader?
Get them talking: What are your strengths as a leader? What parts of this job come easiest for you? Keep them talking: How can we take advantage of your strengths — give you more chances to do the things you’re good at? Does it feel uncomfortable to talk about ‘strengths’? Why is it often easier…
What metrics do you use to run your crew?
Get them talking: What data or “metrics” are most important to and useful to you? What information do you use to understand how your team is doing, and how they’re contributing to the overall project? Keep them talking: Where do you get your information? Do you get it often enough? What’s some information you’re show…
What do you think of our foreman meetings?
Get them talking: What do you think of our foreman meetings? Keep them talking: What do you remember about our last one? Are you looking forward to our next one? What could we do to make these meetings more useful to you? Points to consider: No-one is more important to the performance of our…
How are your least-experienced teammates doing?
Get them talking: Who is the least experience member of your crew? Do you have any new-hires or first-year apprentices working for you? How are they doing? Who is really showing potential… and who may not make it? Keep them talking: What was it like for you when you joined the trades? Who made a difference…
Five Steps for Developing Leaders in the Field
This is a summary of our Aug 20 webinar. To watch a video of the session, click here. No one has a greater effect on your bottom line or your team’s safety, morale and culture, than your frontline leaders. Are you doing enough to develop them? Training can help: but often it doesn’t. It’s hard to pull…
What’s your approach to coaching?
Get them talking: Tell me about the last time you “coached” someone. How did that go? What’s the difference between “coaching” and “teaching” or “telling someone what to do”? Keep them talking: Did you play sports when you were younger? Who was your favorite coach? What made them different from the others? Have you been…
What’s a task you wish your crew would do faster… or slower?
Get them talking: What’s a task you wish your crew would do faster? What’s something you wish they’d do more slowly and carefully? Keep the them talking: How do you influence the way your crew works? It’s one thing to tell people what to do, or teach someone how to do a new task… but getting our…
What would you change if you were in charge?
Get them talking: What’s something you would change if you were running this company? How would you make us safer, more profitable, more successful with our customers? Keep them talking: What’s something you’re looking forward to doing or being in charge of if and when you get promoted to the next level? What level of…
How do you get your crew to focus before going to work?
Get them talking: How do you get your crew to focus — and think about safety — before they go to work? Keep them talking: What gets in the way of people thinking about safety when they start their work in the morning? What are some tasks or situations where you tend to get-right-to-it… without pausing…
Leading people from a different generation
Get them talking: Who on your crew is much older than you are? Who is younger? How is that going? Keep them talking: What have you learned about working with people from a “different generation”? What do you think folks said about you and your peers when you were starting… and what will they say about you…
Conversations about the “new normal”
Leading a team is never easy, but it’s especially difficult this summer. We’re all coping with new ‘hassles’: wearing masks, social distancing, working remotely, etc. Many of our teammates are anxious about off-the-job challenges. And the news / social media discussion of current events increases risk of conflict and drama within teams. As managers, it’s up…
What’s something you’ve failed at recently?
Get them talking: What’s something you’ve failed at recently? Have you gone back and tried again? What did you learn from your failure? Keep them talking: Can you think of a time when you overcame repeated failures before you finally mastered a new skill or tool? Tell me about that. We all hate to…
How have you been affected by safety?
Get them talking: How have you been affected by safety? Have you, or some you know, been involved in an accident on or off the job? Keep them talking: How did the experience affect you? How did it change the way you work, or drive… or do certain tasks? Have you told that story to our…
How would you describe our culture?
Get people talking: How would you describe our culture here? Keep them talking: Where do you see our culture… when do you notice it? What could we be doing to strengthen our culture? How can we do to bring new people on-board with the way we think and work here? Points to consider: Culture is vital to…
Do you have what you need to be successful?
Get them talking: Do you have everything you need to be successful? Keep them talking What can I do… what can you do… to make it easier for you to do your best work? What’s your reaction to this question? Would you be comfortable asking your crew what they need? Why do we sometimes decide not to ask…
Who would you talk to if you were having hard time?
Get them talking: If you were having a hard time, would you be comfortable speaking to me about it? Would would you turn to if you needed help? Keep them talking: How do you feel about asking for help when you need it? What gets in the way? Have you ever been given the chance…
What makes you good at your job?
Get them talking: What makes you good at your job? What skills and knowledge make you successful? What is it about your personality that helps you succeed? Keep them talking: Is it difficult or uncomfortable to talk about your strengths? Why? Why is it useful for leaders to know what they’re good at? What are…
What’s something the bosses should know about, but don’t?
Get them talking: What’s something that’s happening around here that the bosses should know about but don’t? Maybe something that’s going well… or a problem that needs solving? What could we do about it? Keep them talking: If you were a senior manager here, what would you do to stay in tune with what’s…
Who is your customer?
Get them talking Who is your customer? We know who our company’s customers are… but what about you, personally? Keep them talking Another way to ask it: what do you spend most of your time doing and who do you do it for? Are your customers satisfied with your work? How do you know? Who…
What’s your motto?
Get them talking What’s your motto? If you had to choose a phrase or quote that summed up how you work / live, what would it be? Keep them talking Do you know anyone who has a motto – or a “thing” they say all the time? Why is it be useful to have a…
Last week: Three-by-Three Leadership Challenge
This month we challenged each of you to make time each day to reach out to three people and ask them three questions: How are you? What’s your plan for today? What can I do to help you? How’s it gone? Have these questions been useful to you? Can you incorporate these into your day…
Three-by-Three Leadership Challenge
One of the best way to develop less-experienced leaders is to get them talking and thinking about leadership each day. We send out good, conversation-worthy questions each week and ask you to use them with your teams. With the stress COVID-19 is putting on our communities, our economy, our teams and our families, we need leadership and conversation…
With Business Turned Upside Down, CEOs Face Monumental Leadership Challenge
From the Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2020 By Chip Cutter and Jennifer Maloney The new coronavirus’s spread in America has prompted corporations to close offices, factories and stores, sending tens of millions of people home, where a swath of the workforce—from customer-service representatives to chief executive officers—have had to figure out new ways to work. A San Francisco…
What are you learning about leading in a ‘crisis’?
Get them talking How has this COVID-19 situation affected you as a leader? Keep them talking What are some things you’re doing differently this week? Are you having different conversations or noticing different things? How is this “crisis” going to influence the way you lead in the future? Points to consider Many of our teammates…
Conversations that help
Making time to connect, check in, and have genuine person-to-person conversations will pay off in ways we might not imagine — and this applies at home, as well as work.
Here are five conversation-worthy questions to get people talking, thinking and connecting during these uncertain times
COVID-19
Get them talking How are you? How is COVID-19 affecting you and your family? Keep them talking What about your crew? How are they doing? What can we do to help people deal with distractions and stay focused on hazards here on the job? There’s a lot of talk about “social distancing”. Are you doing…
Setting goals for your crew
Get them talking What’s your goal for your crew this week? Keep them talking If we asked your crew, would they know what the goal is? How did you set that goal? Do you involve your crew in the process? What’s your planning process like? Do you have a goal for next week? Do you…
Developing your crew
Get them talking What training does your crew need? What’s a ‘skill gap’ within your team? Keep them talking Is there a task or process that only one or two people know how to do? Is there a piece of equipment that only one person knows how to operate? What are some ways we could make…
Sharing project performance information with frontline leaders
Get them talking How are we doing on this project? Are we on-track? Are we making or losing money? Keep them talking Maybe you don’t really know… that’s okay! But what’s your best guess? Where do you get information about project performance? Do we talk about the business side of our work often enough? How…
What’s part of your job that you’ve mastered?
Get them talking What’s a part of your job that you’ve mastered – like, you could teach others how to do it? What’s part of your job you’re still figuring out? Keep them talking Think about the parts of your job that you’re good at: why are you good at those things? What do those…
Getting Front-line Leaders to Own Safety
Last week a client said, “Our biggest safety challenge is our foremen. When it comes to safety, they’re just not that interested. We have to nag them to complete paperwork or submit safety meeting rosters. When they talk to their guys each morning, they barely mention safety. How can we get them to own safety?” Sound familiar? At Humanus Solutions, we…
Making sure your crew works a full shift
Get them talking Does your team ever knock off too early before break or end-of-shift? How do you handle that? Keep them talking What’s your expectation of your crew: when do you expect them to stop working and start cleaning up? Have you told them that? Are you in your work area at the end…
Effective morning routine
Get them talking Tell me about your morning routine. What do you do in the morning to set yourself and your team up for success? Keep them talking How early do you get to work? Does that give you enough time to get ready for the day? What do you do to review your plan…
Ensuring your team is fit for duty
Get them talking What do you do when you suspect someone on your crew is “under-the-influence” or not “fit for duty”? Keep them talking Have you ever been around when showed up to work drunk? What happened? What are some clues – how would you know if someone was under the influence? What are some…
Effective morning meetings
Get them talking Do you “huddle” with your crew in the morning? How did it go today? What’s your goal for these meetings? Keep them talking What topics do you cover in your morning meeting? How do you make sure people are awake and enaged? What do you do when folks zone out? Who do…
Preventing serious injuries and fatalities
Get them talking How could someone get killed on this jobsite? Keep them talking What can we do to help people “stay awake” to this risk? Why is it useful to think about this question? How does it get us to think about safety differently? Our industry has become safer and safer over the years. …
What are your goals for this year?
Get them talking What are your goals for 2020? What’s something you want to do or learn this year? Keep them talking What’s part of your job you’d like to get better at? How can I help you? What about off the job – what are you and your family looking forward to this year?…
Get Your Team Reading (and Thinking) Together
One of the best ways to spark new thinking within a team is by reading a book together. When teams read together, they think together. They look at their business with fresh eyes and have discussions that might not happen otherwise. Team reading projects create a common language: a short-hand for describing situations and solutions. Reading about other…
What will you remember about 2019?
Get them talking What will you remember about this year? What were your highlights and lowlights in 2019? Keep them talking If we were writing a book about your life, what would we call the chapter about 2019? What’s something you learned this year… a lesson you want to take with you into 2020? What’s…
Five ways to accelerate development of frontline leaders
Frontline leaders are the lynchpin of every organization: no one has a greater influence over productivity, quality, safety and morale than foremen, crew chiefs and first-level supervisors. And yet most companies struggle to invest time and energy in developing these leaders. More training isn’t the answer: what really works is frequent attention, engagement and support from more…
Safety during holiday weeks
Get them talking Next week is a holiday. Is your crew working? What do we need to pay extra attention to during weeks when lots of people are taking time off? Keep them talking What tasks do you have lined up for your crew next week? Do you have enough folks with the right skills…
Jason McCarty on Productivity
Excerpt from: McCarty, Jason. Construction Leadership Success: The Construction Foreman’s Definitive Guide for Running Safe, Efficient, and Profitable Projects (pp. 35-40). Chapter 4 – Production: Who Has the Biggest Impact? The only possible answer to the question of who impacts production the most is the foreman. There is no other one individual who impacts a…
How do you affect the bottom line?
Get them talking How does the way you do your job affect our company’s bottom-line? Keep them talking How do construction companies make (or lose) money? If you were explaining it to your kid, what would you say? How does the job you do affect whether or not we make money? What are the two…
The difference between ‘important’ and ‘urgent’
Get them talking What’s the most important part of your job? What are the few things you must do in order to be successful? Keep them talking Which of those things are you really good at? Which ones do you need to work on? What gets in the way of doing these “most important” things each…
What’s going well lately?
Get them talking What’s going well lately? Keep them talking What are you feeling good about? What’s something you or your crew has accomplished, figured out or gotten better at? Does this question seem strange? Why do we tend to talk more about problems than successes? Do you have conversations like this with your team?…
Get your crew involved in daily pre-task hazard identification
Get them talking How do you get your crew involved in your daily pre-task hazard assessment? Keep them talking Tell me about the form you and your crew are expected to fill out. What do you like / not like about it? Why do you think we ask you to complete this form? What’s the purpose?…
Handling ‘prima donnas’ on your crew
Get them talking How do you handle “prima donnas” – people who are good at their job, but bad for the team? Keep them talking Do you have someone you’d just as soon let go, except for the fact that they do such good work? How do you know when it’s time to bite the…
Assigning work: setting clear expectations
Get them talking What do you say when assigning work to someone? How do you make sure they understand your instructions? Keep them talking Do you ever have situations where you thought someone understood what you wanted them to do… but they didn’t? What happened? It’s one thing to tell someone what you need done…
Reducing rework by eliminating common mistakes
Get them talking What ‘rework’ does your team do regulalry? What are the few mistakes we make that cost us most time and effort? Keep them talking What mistakes does your crew make that has you say, “Oh man! Not this again!?” What do the best ‘craftsmen’ on your crew do differently than the rest…
Connection between housekeeping and safety
Get them talking How’s the housekeeping in your area? What are the connections between housekeeping and safety? Keep them talking What’s the “trick” to maintaining housekeeping on a jobsite? Where do visitors (and clients!) enter your work area… what do they see? What message does the condition of that area send? Be honest: what sort…
Removing barriers to communication within your team
Get them talking Who has joined your crew recently? Are they “part of the team” yet? How can you make it easier for them to connect with the crew? Keep them talking What extra safety hazards do new folks face? How can me make it easier for them to ask for help… and for others…
Organizational Assessments: Five questions to answer before sending out another survey
Clients often contact us for help with “assessments”. We love to help leaders understand how people in their organization think and feel and what drives certain behavior. But before we go to work, we always ask five questions: What decision will you make based on the results of this assessment? Answering this question usually takes a bit…
Putting on your tools
Get them talking How often do you pick up your tools and work with your crew? Keep them talking What’s the pay-off of working beside your team… of showing them “you’ve still got it”? Is there a downside? What’s the problem with doing this too often? What gets in the way of you picking up…
Leaders Guide: Building Better Foremen through Questions
The best foremen plan work, anticipate problems and address issues before they escalate. But inexperienced foremen are usually reactive. How can we develop our young leaders and teach them to think ahead? At Humanus Solutions, we believe the best way to develop leaders is to teach them habits – ways of thinking and acting – that produce…
Teaching foremen to ask the right questions
The construction industry is facing a shortage of effective, seasoned frontline leaders. We need inexperienced foremen to become effective leaders… quickly! The best foremen plan work, anticipate problems and address team issues before they escalate. Inexperienced foremen are often a step behind, waiting for direction and reacting to problems after they occur. This means less productivity, lower morale…
Getting people involved in start of shift meetings
Get them talking How do you get people to participate in your start of shift huddle? What’s the trick to getting people involved? Keep them talking What’s the purpose of our start of shift meetings? Why do we do them? What are you looking for when you meet your crew in the moring? How do…
Keeping a daily log or notebook
Get them talking Tell me about your daily log / notebook. How do you keep track of to do’s, assignments and events? Keep them talking What’s your process? What goes in the book and why? What stuff do you choose not to record in the book? What do you do when your notebook is full? Do you…
What are you doing for Safety Week?
Get them talking What are you doing for Safety Week this year? Keep them talking The SafetyWeek theme this year is “safe by choice”. What safety-related choices do your team members make every day? Lots of folks have meetings and make speeches about safety. How can we get more people talking? How can we get…
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
By Chip and Dan Heath Excerpts: We all have defining moments in our lives—meaningful experiences that stand out in our memory. Many of them owe a great deal to chance: But is that true? Must our defining moments just happen to us? Defining moments shape our lives, but we don’t have to wait for them to happen.…
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
This book gives you seven questions and the tools to make them an everyday way to work less hard and have more impact.
Pitch Perfect: How to Say it Right The First Time, Every Time
As attention deficits grow, the techniques we use to keep people’s attention need to be more and more effective.
Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team
If we want to feel an undying passion for our work, if we want to feel we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves, we all need to know our WHY.
Building habits from the inside out
Behavior change is tough…and changing our own behavior can be the toughest of all. Take a page from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits and start behavior change from the inside out. Commit to being differently, and then back it up by acting differently.
Five Leadership Habits that Engage People
Our daily, ‘automatic’ behavior sends a strong message. Here are five leadership habits which will engage people, open lines of communication, and promote the desired mindset.
Twenty-five Questions to Get Foremen Talking (and Thinking)
Next time you’re tempted to make a speech at your foremen’s meeting, ask them a question first. Here twenty-five questions to get your front-line leaders thinking.
Upgrade Your Foremen’s Meeting
No one has greater influence over daily performance than front-line leaders. So why do most organizations have such lousy foremen’s meetings? Here are five steps to make your foremen’s meeting matter.
Habits and Rituals: Making Routine Behaviors Matter
The things we do most often send a powerful message about what matters to us. Here are habits and rituals you can use to influence performance within your team.
Twenty Questions to Ask During “Now What?” Leadership Moments
Twenty-one questions to think about and discuss with your team the next time you face a ‘now what!?’ leadership moment.
Now What!? Leveraging Moments of Doubt
Moments of doubt offer the opportunity to look within – at ourselves and how we relate to our work and our team – to find breakthrough solutions.
Twenty-one Listening Tour Questions
A ‘Listening Tour’ is a way for leaders to engage their organization in a conversation. Good questions are vital to a successful Listening Tour — here are twenty-one to get you started.
Surveys stink: leadership 'listening tours' are a better solution
Surveys rarely lead to effective action: teams get mired in analyzing the results, debating the meaning of various numbers, and arguing over what people really meant by their responses. There’s a better way: ‘listening tours’ allow leaders to have real conversations with employees to understand how people think and feel.
Make your Safety Committee matter: six steps to business NOT as usual
Safety Committees are often ineffective, perfunctory and poorly-attended. Here are six tips for using your committee to foster leadership and personal responsibility, while also fulfilling a regulatory requirement.
Developing Front-line Leaders: What Really Works
But you don’t need a training program to develop front-line leaders – you have what you need to do this yourself. What really works is sustained attention and conversation. Here are five steps you can take.
Twenty Questions to Get Folks Talking About Front-line Leadership
Questions to ask anyone: Who was the best boss you ever had? What did they do that set them apart from the rest? Who stands out around here as a leader? How do they influence you and the rest of the team? What makes someone a ‘leader’? Do you have to have a certain job title…
Twenty Questions About Start-of-Shift meetings
Twenty questions you can ask to get people thinking and talking about how to make our daily start-of-shift meetings matter.
Foremen! Make your start-of-shift meetings matter
It’s up to foremen to ensure their crews start the day right. Unfortunately, most start-of-shift meetings are dull and disengaging. You can do better. With a little effort, you can set your team up for success as they start their day.
Are your teams’ start-of-shift meetings working?
Are you getting good value for the time and money your folks’ spend in daily start-of-shift meetings? Here are four easy steps you can follow to ensure your teams are having meetings that matter each day.
The Heart of Leadership
After all these years, why do we forget to put people at the center of our leadership?
Organizational "rituals": make your meetings matter
If you want people to feel engaged, make your regular meetings engaging!
This is what I do
My own version of an acoustic set: no drums, bass, or backup singers. No big show. Just a simple description of what I do.
It's time to take on what you've been tolerating
When we tolerate something, we demonstrate acceptance… even approval.
Developing front-line leaders: miracles, moves and moments
Many of our clients are facing a crisis of front-line leadership. Their most-experienced foremen and supervisors are retiring, and they’re struggling to find folks who will take their place. The question “how do we find our next supervisors” implies that leadership is a quality or attribute — that someone has it or they don’t. In…
Meetings send messages; make yours count!
Meetings are the bane of modern work-life: they take up time and attention and often provide little value. But meetings — what we talk about, who talks and how we talk — send messages to everyone who participates. Meetings tell people, “this is what’s important to us; this is how we work together; this is…
Culture change: you've got what you need to get started.
In our work we urge leaders to attend to their “whole” organization. Many managers have a bias for systems, processes and programs; we challenge them to attend to culture and shared values too. Managers often focus on actions and results; we ask them to also think about the mindset, intentions and attitudes that influence actions.…
Five Safety Habits for Senior Managers
Last week I suggested behaviors that cause safety in the workplace; I also suggested habits that help front-line leaders promote the desired behaviors. Today I’d like to discuss senior managers and how they can create safety within their organizations. Folks at the top of any organization face a paradox: on the one hand, they are…
Six safety habits for front-line leaders
I recently wrote about five habits that ‘create safety’: connecting, asking, focusing, scanning and speaking-up. Many organizations use policies and processes to drive these behaviors: forms to fill out, rosters to sign, cards to submit, etc. These processes are rarely effective. Usually workers do the bare minimum to comply, ‘pencil-whipping’ the forms before they go…
Five habits that 'create safety'
Most workplaces feature a set of ‘cardinal rules’ or ‘life-saving policies’ — a critical few requirements that have been proven to protect people from harm. I’d like to propose five ‘cardinal habits’ or ‘life-saving behaviors’ that create a safer workplace. Review this list of behaviors; I doubt any of these are new to you. But…
There is no 'knob' for culture
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – Peter Drucker Pick up any business magazine and you’ll likely see the word ‘culture’; no matter the industry, when someone talks about improving organizational performance, they often call for ‘culture change’. But how many of the articles talk about how to do it?…
Five Lessons about Workplace Safety
Construction is a dangerous business — always has been, and likely always will be. But each year a handful of projects create breakthroughs in safety: they work million of labor hours without hurting, much less killing, anyone. Year after year, a handful of companies not only injure fewer people than their peers, they eliminate serious…
Twenty questions to get folks talking (and thinking) about safety
Nowadays most organizations start meetings with a “safety moment”. Someone comes up with a topic (often at the last moment) and says a few words, reminding people to be aware of something or avoid a certain hazard. These dull, perfunctory speeches do more harm than good: they reinforce the notion that safety is about “going through the…
Attention safety cheerleaders: knock it off with the "zero" stuff
Today I attended an all-hands meeting on a large construction site. It was okay — the usual stuff: a reminder about the importance of safety, words of praise for the work that’s been done, a preview of the work ahead and a plea to smoke/eat/park in the designated areas. The presentation didn’t change the world,…
Readiness for culture change: are you ready to take on the ACHE/NPSF Blueprint for Success?
In May the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and the NPSF Lucian Leape Institute released a white paper titled Leading a Culture of Safety: A Blueprint for Success. Most white papers on patient safety call for culture change, but offer little advice as to how. The Blueprint for Success paper is different: it provides a…
Are your safety metrics helping or hurting?
It’s an age-old management rule: what gets measured gets done. But there’s a corollary to that rule: what the bosses wants, the bosses get — whether or not that’s the right thing is up to them. The metrics we use tell people what we want. Our performance measures broadcast our desires to the organization: do…
Prerequisite for Change: Respect
“70% of change programs fail to achieve their desired impact.” – McKinsey Quarterly Transformation Executive Survey Most change programs fail. Some produce short-term gains, but less than a third result in lasting change. Why? Pick your poison: insufficient vision, lack of buy-in, poor communication, failure to engage middle-management, not enough training, too fast (or slow)…
An open letter to leaders in Healthcare
Why do leaders in healthcare today tolerate the preventable deaths of patients in their care? Is patient safety an intractable issue too large to fully take on? Could it be both worker- and patient safety doesn’t rise to the same level of priority as revenue and growth? Or with everything confronting healthcare today, is change…
Meetings that matter: How to get your team talking… and thinking
Think about the meetings you’ve attended during the past week: how many of them did you leave thinking, “Wow. That was really useful. I’m glad we had that conversation.” And how often did you feel frustration or resignation during a meeting: “I spend the whole day at meetings discussing the status of my work. When…
Addressing the Crisis of Physician Burnout
Earlier this week, Health Affairs Blog published an essay by a group of health care CEOs declaring physician burnout a public health crisis, and recommending steps to address it. The authors concern is genuine and their recommendations should be heeded. But their proposal reveals a paradox that lies behind many of the crises in health…
Strengthening front-line supervisors… more training won't help
I recently came across this post on LinkedIn: “I’m looking for ideas in how to better equip our front line supervisors. It could be training, but I’m thinking something that will not only strengthen their ability to lead in safety but in all aspects.” In my experience, the performance of supervisors — and indeed, anyone…