00:00:04:08 – 00:00:53:05
Jay Shorr
Welcome to Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. I’m your host, Jay Shorr. I’m the CEO and founder of Shorr Solutions, a national and award-winning consulting firm, assisting aesthetic and surgical practices with their operational, administrative and financial success. I have an amazing team of practice management experts and clients across the U.S. and as an industry expert with firsthand experience owning a multi-million-dollar cosmetic dermatology and plastic surgery practice.
Listen in as I lend you my expertise and best tips to successfully manage and grow your aesthetic practice. I will also be bringing in guests along the way, so get ready to be equipped to operate your aesthetic practice strategically and profitably. Welcome to Shorr Solutions: The Podcast.
00:00:55:22 – 00:01:41:21
Welcome to another episode of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast and I’m your host, Jay Shorr.
Today we’re going to speak about an incredible topic that keeps coming up day after day. Between my staff and I and our client base. This isn’t a new problem. This is an ongoing problem. And to be quite honest with you, I don’t know that this problem or opportunity is going to go away anytime soon, because as you’ve always heard me say, our number one resource in business is our human resource.
So, today’s topic is going to be called Coach or Terminate? The Typical HR Dilemmas and Mastering Solutions.
00:01:43:16 – 00:03:28:01
So first of all, what is coaching and why is it essential before deciding to terminate someone? Well, we have to determine what those reasons are. So, here’s how we do it. First of all, we should always be praising achievements and growth in our company and in our staff.
Secondly, we need to identify any performance issues that they’re facing right from the very beginning. So, it’s never I didn’t know that that was an issue. We have to explain why this change of development is important, because many times we have changes each and every day in our business, hopefully to improve our business. But people don’t understand why we have change and people don’t like change.
So we have to explain why these developments are important. And then really, we have to ask the employee for their perspective because what we might think isn’t what they might think. Remember, you may have heard me say the old golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But I’ve changed that a long time ago.
And the new golden rule is do unto others as they would want done unto themselves. And that’s why we have to ask the employee for their perspective of the change. Next, we really need to identify the barriers to improvement, because if an employee doesn’t feel that there is a barrier. Us as leaders and us as coaches have to identify what those barriers are and then more importantly, collaborate on those solutions.
We have to set smart goals with them and we have to actually write and effectuate a good action plan.
00:03:29:03 – 00:05:03:04
So, question. Can coaching effectively correct a person’s negative behavior or attitude? Boy, do I love this one, because a negative attitude sometimes just comes with the territory. We just didn’t pick it up when we hired the person. And fortunately, you can coach a negative employee and transform them into be a top performer.
I personally believe that anyone can become an A player, a team A player. It simply revolves around someone having positive attitudes, along with a desire to want to learn and constantly improve. So, allow me to share six different approaches for how to coach an employee with a negative attitude. First, give them productive outlets and technology. Two, give them some autonomy and responsibility.
Three, We have to listen to the root cause because what we might think they may not be thinking. Number four, get them to adjust their delivery on negative comments. You have heard the old expression It’s not what you said, but it’s how you said it. Then we have to clarify the impact that it has on the team because negative impact on each and just one employee can have a devastating effect on the rest of the team, especially in today’s terminology, If they’re besties. BFFs. Now I know I’m an old guy, all right, but I hear what the new terms are. And lastly, number six, we have to increase their confidence.
00:05:04:17 – 00:06:57:11
So, what are the top coaching strategies for helping employees or not meeting expectations? One. Recognize that there’s a problem. Then conduct a meeting and ask questions to establish what causes the employee to underperform.
Next, reiterate the job expectations. Because when we hire an employee and we don’t have a good effective job description and what we expect from them. Wow. When it comes time to do a performance review, we have never reiterated what those job expectations or job qualifications are, and then we’re disappointed that they never reach them when we never really went over with them in the very beginning what they were.
So we need to manage those employees expectations and then develop an action plan together. Nobody wants anything shoved down their throat. Even me. My team knows the best way to get to me are with facts. Sergeant Friday from Dragnet years ago had it perfectly. “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.” And my team comes to me with an action plan, with facts.
Because their opinion, although I respect it, may not necessarily be what gets me. But when they can share something with me that I may not have thought of, that’s the best way to get to me. And then ensure regular check ins and follow ups. Don’t have a policy that you shoved down somebody’s throat and then never, ever go back and check in.
And then lastly, we need to recognize the progress because if all we ever do is chastise somebody and in coaching strategies, we never recognize the progress. They’re never going to feel appreciated.
00:06:58:22 – 00:08:06:07
So, leads me to another question How many opportunities should we provide to an employee to improve their performance? once the employee receives the performance improvement plan and they reach the established start date?
The ball is mostly in their court. We as business owners already know what we have in store. Sometimes we want to terminate them immediately. Sometimes we’re just such caregivers that we never want to terminate at all. And that is a major problem. So how long does a process improvement plan last? Typically, 30, 60, 90 days. The timeline has to be tailored to the individual employee specific goals and how long it’s going to take to accomplish them.
Because if we tell somebody you’ve got 30 days to improve and actually realistically the progress plan improve that we have given them is actually a 60 or a 90 day goal. We haven’t been fair to them and in turn we’re not really fair to ourselves.
00:08:07:11 – 00:09:33:17
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00:09:35:16 – 00:10:45:17
So, if an employee maintains a poor attitude or low performance, even after the coaching, how do we determine when it’s time to let them go? That’s very easy to me.
I’ve given you all the tools. I’ve coached you. I brought in external consultants. I brought in HR professionals. I’ve had other staff members. And then you just don’t get it. Well, at that time, maybe it’s just time to cut the cord. Maybe the employee themselves really wanted to go, But they didn’t want to quit either to let you down. They didn’t think that the problems they were creating were as egregious and that termination was imminent. Don’t waste time. Hire slowly, fire quickly. I believe in coaching. I believe in giving them all the tools of the trade. But when an employee maintains that poor attitude and low performance, even after we’ve coached them and we’ve given them that 30, 60, 90 days performance improvement plan and they still don’t get it, we have to let them go.
00:10:46:17 – 00:11:25:23
So what are the zero tolerance items that mandate immediate termination? That to me, quite simple is the easiest thing to determine. Number one, theft. Number two, insubordination. Number three, ineffective and unsafe work conditions that affect a safe and efficacious work environment for my staff, your staff and the patients. Three, alcohol. Drugs. So let me repeat zero tolerance. Theft. Not caring about the safety and efficacy of the patient and the staff. Drugs and alcohol. And the lack of protection of each and every one of the providers licenses.
00:11:42:04 – 00:12:28:09
So, from a process and protocols perspective, what can an aesthetic practice and any medical practice owner for that point do to handle noncompliant employees? You have to maintain your rationality, place responsibility where it belongs. Don’t you take all the blame and don’t place all the blame on somebody else. Explain the directives. Set reasonable goals and timeline limits. Be prepared to enforce your limits and don’t have sympathy when you do it. I’ve always said a staff member fires themselves. I didn’t have to do it. I just effectuated the physical termination. Don’t stress the negative and summarize after everything has been done.
00:12:29:03 – 00:14:32:13
So as a former practice owner, I’d like to share experiences on how I handled difficult and underperforming employees. The first thing I did was coach. I coach all the time, each and every day to my medical practice when I owned it to my team of consultants that I do when I teach at the university here in Florida.
I coach them. I even bring in other managers. I even bring other life coaches and business coaches to help me because I’m not always right. I’m right most of the time, haha. But there are times that I may see something with only one set of eyes and that’s not good. I set specific goals with timelines all the time in the medical practice and in my consulting business now.
I do interim performance reviews because I don’t believe in doing a performance review when it’s tied with financial remuneration and that is a problem. Most people think of, okay, how much is my raise going to be when I do the performance review? Well, I always do an interim performance review because it allows me to share with the team what their opportunities for improvement are, so that when it finally comes time for their annual or whatever time line, I said it could be tied into their financial remuneration, raise bonus or whatever that is, and then lastly, I either keep you or I terminate you.
This is not a semi-retirement home. This is a business. All of you have a business. Remember, medicine is one of the most respected professions today. It’s a science. In our world, it’s a way to keep people looking young and beautiful, but never lose sight of the fact that medicine is a business. And we have to treat it like the business that it is.
00:14:33:18 – 00:15:28:19
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I have been able to bring to you my perspective of coach or terminate. It’s one of the hardest things we have to do because we actually put ourselves in the employee’s place. I never like to terminate anybody. Remember what I said? They terminate themselves. We guide them, we coach them, we give them opportunities.
Employment is a use/use situation us as the employer use and hopefully maintain and retain our staff to get the job done. And in turn employees use us as the employer for a paycheck. I always hope it’s a win/win situation. With that, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. Good luck. God bless.
00:15:30:07 – 00:17:12:02
So that wraps up today’s episode of Shorr Solutions: The podcast. If we mentioned any website links, you can find them in our show notes to work directly with me and our award-winning team of consultants to increase efficiency, increase revenue and decrease costs in your aesthetic practice, schedule a free consult with us today.
We will help you establish and refine your aesthetic practice’s protocols for maximum efficiency and productivity, decrease your expenses and increase your profitability with an expert financial analysis of your business. Attract more patients, convert calls to consults, convert consults to treatments and keep patients coming back for more. With our sales training, coaching and complimentary access to our conversion cascade online course.
Recruit, hire and train new team members and manage any staff turnover with our human resource expertise plus more, head over to our show notes and click on the link to schedule a free 30-minute consult with us today.
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