My Management Style...or maybe just How to Get Along with People

I am not crazy about the fact that I haven't written a blog post since Thanksgiving.  I am by NO MEANS a professional blogger, but I really enjoyed it when I was keeping up with it about once a week.  I'm really  sad to see some of my oldest friends let their blogs go by the wayside when that was my main way of staying up with their current lives.  I don't plan on letting that happen, but I don't like to write just anything in order to just have something to post.  Don't get me wrong.  During the Christmas season I thought of a few things I could write about but none of them seemed "blog worthy."  I wanted to write about my ways of coping with my Christmas control issues but it wouldn't have made for a very long post as I'm only a little less controlling and uptight than I used to be.  I do have strategies though that, when implemented, make me an easier person to get along with when it comes to all of the extra stuff that goes along with the real reason for Christmas.  Now that Christmas has come and gone I have moved on.

Today brought to light something that might be blog-worthy.  For me blog-worthy is something that is really funny, has some sort of take-away, causes me to be transparent in a way that might be helpful to someone, or all of the above rolled in to one amazing blog post.  For the record, I am really hoping that 2012 isn't as eventful as 2011.  If you go back and read in the February to April section of 2011 you'll understand why I'm praying to have to really search for something to write about this year.  So, here's the first one for this year and it's actually something that I wrote 8 years ago.  One of my co-workers, Tracie, reminded me of this little bulleted list describing my management style that I wrote all those years ago when I spoke to a group of peers in my company.  It was a regional meeting and given that I had been around for 7 years at that point in a management position I guess our consultant thought I had something to share.  Tracie reminded me of this because we have a new supervisor in the office and whenever I have a new supervisor I bring out this list to describe my management style and to, hopefully, give them some advice in working with their own employees.  I had forgotten about it since it's been five years since I looked at it and I hope I still do all of these.  Admittedly, some days are better than others.  I can always do better.  In reading this list, it may seem a little specific (I'm a nurse who happens to be in management for a hospice agency and I supervise people who are also supervisors).  However, I think many of these will hit home to my readers, regardless of whether you are in management or you work in an office environment or you just have to simply get along with people.  Maybe I should have titled it "How to Get Along with People."  By the way, "PCC" stands for "Patient Care Coordinator" and is the title of the supervisors who report to me.  Anyway, here you go, and I hope there is some take-away for you.  I'll try to come up with something that I didn't pull out of the far reaches of my computer for my next post.

My Management Style

(In relation to clinical supervision)

• Hire the right people.  Don’t just hire someone because of their ability to accomplish the tasks listed on their job description.  Make sure they will fit in with the group.  Try to find people that will have varying strengths and weaknesses and will be able to contribute different things to the group.  NO WARM BODIES.
• Respect isn’t automatic just because of the position you hold.  It has to be earned—on many different levels.  If the PCCs respected my ability to make clinical decisions, yet they saw me always taking the position of saving a buck for the company, would they really respect what I always say about the patient being the top priority?
• It is in your best interest, as a manager, to take a genuine personal interest in your employees.  If you show you care for them on a personal level they will be more likely to give you 100% on a professional level.  I view my employees as my “patients.”  They are the source of my satisfaction as a nurse in feeling that I care for others and can feed into their lives by making this a positive work environment.
• Use your nursing assessment skills to gauge each individual on a daily basis.  Become someone who is adept at reading people and treat each person as an individual.  Don’t let interpersonal conflicts or bad feelings fester.  Intervene without taking sides.  Be Switzerland.
• Try to always remain calm, even if chaos is trying to push in on all sides.  Your staff will take your lead and respond in like manner.  Likewise, always remain positive and give people the benefit of the doubt.  Remember, you hired the right people.  Show them that you believe in them.
• Don’t view your employees or treat them as if they work for you.  They are, after all, employees of the company.  I try not to refer to them as “my PCCs.” 
• Don’t be afraid to delegate.  Remember, once again, that you hired the right people.  If they were bright enough for you to offer them the position, trust them to do their job.
• Remember, this is a team environment.  If one of the PCCs, or more, is out of the office, I pitch right in and help with the clinical tasks.  You are not above doing an admission, a visit, or even answering the phones.
• Play the devil’s advocate.  This will help them to broaden their viewpoint and will teach them to make decisions independently.  Your knowledge base must be sufficient for you to be successful at this. 
• Don’t micromanage.  It is your job to look at the “big picture.”  This is one of your most important job functions.  Teach them to also look at the big picture.  Their “picture” will not be as big as yours, as your viewpoint is much greater, but they can learn to see it in their own team.
• A big plus is having an administrator who trusts your ability to make sound clinical decisions that will have an overall positive financial impact on the branch.  I have always been blessed with this.  If you are micromanaged, you can’t do your job effectively.  Of course, you have no control over this.
• Maintain confidentiality no matter what.  Whether it is regarding your employees’ personal lives, or work issues regarding field employees, learn to keep a secret.  If you can’t be trusted, you can’t help anyone.  They won’t come to you for support or advice.
• Don’t ever play favorites or undermine their peers to the others.  Each quality person that you hired has her own strengths and weaknesses and should be treated individually.
• Be able to identify your own weaknesses and work to overcome those.  As your program grows you may identify weaknesses you didn’t realize when managing a smaller program. 
• Expect mistakes to be made—both by you and others.  Because you hired the right people, they will be harder on themselves than you ever could be.  Turn mistakes into opportunities to learn and don’t broadcast them to the rest of the team unless it is as a productive lesson to help others learn.  Quality people will be able to learn from others’ mistakes.
• Be a person who is quick to acknowledge a job well done.  It doesn’t take away from you to recognize someone else’s accomplishments, it adds to you. 
• Never stop trying to do a better job.  Look for ways to learn to foster teamwork and improve your management style.
• Remember, people are usually smarter than you give them credit for.  They will identify a critical attitude and negative atmosphere without much prompting.  Always work to maintain a positive work environment.  This is especially important in the work that we do.  Dying is depressing enough without the workplace also being a drag.
• Always remember that no one is irreplaceable.  If you left tomorrow, your branch would not fold up and cease to exist.  A sign of a good manager is that the office runs just as smoothly in your absence as in your presence.  If you’ve done your job the way you are supposed to, you will have a well-oiled machine that looks easy and as if it happened by accident.