One Smart Cookie

One of Redgate’s clients is new to management. She is a very clever, experienced health professional yet smart enough to know that knowing how to treat and diagnose patients does not mean that she will also know how to lead and manage people (a common myth in Australian healthcare settings) so she is doing leadership and management training to help her feel more comfortable and competent in her new role.
The leadership program involves a lot of self assessment and reflection- because you can’t manage anyone –until you can manage and know yourself. This client knows she is naturally very task oriented-an essential management skill -and she also knows that she is self contained, private, almost an introvert and gets impatient with people who waffle or wants lots of hand holding and reassurance-characteristics that can lead team members to see such leaders as aloof and disinterested. She is aware of this potential barrier to building staff morale, trust and productivity and has come up with a smart system to address it.
My client knows that she needs to make personal contact with her team frequently and that she needs to make those contacts positive and affirming .To help herself do this she has a checklist with every team members name on it that she looks at the end of every week to record her progress. Her goal is to have at least one positive face to face (not email) contact with each person a week.

Not rocket science as they say-just a methodical approach to ensuring core leadership behaviour of reaching out in a supportive way to all team members becomes second nature!

How is she progressing? Three months down the track, she is meeting her weekly positive contact goals, the team is working well, there are no performance issues and she is growing in confidence.