Healthcare today is an ever-changing and diversified field that brings new and exciting challenges. With new technology and modern medicine, we as healthcare professionals are faced with rapid growth and deviations that are implemented into our practices. From our styles of care, patient customer service, and even the way we work efficiently as a group to make our practice run seamlessly. As leaders, it is our responsibility to direct our team to success, by creating pathways and molding our employees into a strong and affluential entity. Because of rapid growth, many elements must come together to make patient care successful. Internal communication is key to successful management, this helps build a cohesive team with the same goals and visions and shapes us into a successful practice. Becoming a strong leader and implementing new working styles can be challenging but through mentoring and creating trusting relationships we can form better skillsets, positively transform our teams and better assist our growing practice.
Mentoring
One goal we are trying to currently implement is cross-training. From my experience, I believe cross-training has helped acquire the attributes that enabled me to achieve the title I have today, possess core strengths in successfully leading our team. Cross-training enables employees to increase not only their value but helps stimulate and improve employee satisfaction through successfully taking on various job functions. Per Robbins and Judge, “Successful mentors are good teachers. They present ideas clearly, listen well and empathize with protégés problems (Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. 2019, Pg. 417)”. Through managing a medical office, I believe it is important for us as mentors to inspire and bring out the best in our employees while expanding our personal and professional development. Ongoing education and training are very crucial and encourages growth within our practice and organization. One example is front desk staff, although their main job priority is to properly check-in patients and give them clear cut details after their appointment, it is advantageous that they are also well-informed about other duties pertaining to patient care. Staff needs to comprehend and learn the process of billing, knowledge of orders about specific lab work and even medical records. As managers, we implement cross-training which creates a strong pipeline of leaders and engages employees to develop goals for the future. Encouraging cross-training and mentoring our employees helps us discover new talents and reveals leadership potential, which aids in growing our team from within. By using new skillsets, we inspire employees to take on new roles. This boosts confidence levels of our employees and helps expose our team members to potential job advancement opportunities. We as managers try to motivate employees to take on positions that are out of their comfort zone, in doing so we reassuringly explain how these tasks are developmental tools that can help transition them into bigger roles. Cross-Training through mentoring is not only great for creating pathways to new opportunities for employees but is beneficial to us as managers when going through transitions, employees with these learned skill sets now know how to step in and help with these duties making our workplace more sustainable. Mentoring efficiently and effectively guides and contributes to teaching our employees important job aspects and assists in establishing future goals enabling employees with a higher sense of achievement in career development (Wu, S. Y., Turban, D. B., & Cheung, Y. H. (2012). Knowing that their abilities are valued, and their roles play significant parts within our team, employees aspire towards mobility and career growth which can help them better collaborate with others while working harder to help accomplish big goals in creating a confident, driven, and committed workforce. This also benefits our patients who trust heavily on employee connection between performance and personal developments skills, positive attitude, and proficiency.
Trusting Relationships
Being professionals within the healthcare world, we are trained to adapt to change quickly. As a manager, creating a culture of trust is a very valuable part of business, it helps us reinforce and strengthens inter-organizational relationships. Trust promotes effective communication and teamwork, vertically from managers and employees as well as horizontal between co-workers. As leaders we want our teams to entrust that we will uphold an excellent workplace experience allowing them to achieve their best work, every day. If we provided inconsistent levels of service causing employees to encounter problems every day reducing their productivity levels, their trust towards their managers will decrease, affecting working relationships within the department (Janine Victor, & Crystal Hoole 2017). Employees develop a sense of empowerment when they know their managers have the best intentions for their staff (Stephen Bear. 2018). This also changes and improves motivational dynamics through productivity, strong relationships and retention. We can see that change is harder to achieve in our practice when there is a lack of trust. By developing meaningful relationships, managers can ensure change is accepted by all. Focusing on each individual of our team helps us managers understand and better interpret their strengths and weaknesses. Providing a sense of security makes us feel safe, creating deepened relationships helping us to become less vulnerable and easily confide in each other about aspects of our work. If the trust becomes broken it is hard to repair that relationship and establish again. People are less likely to entrust and follow the direction of leaders they perceive as dishonest (Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. 2019, Pg. 415). When mutual respect is created, employees are more effective, willing to help each other and exert extra effort to increase productivity. By increasing trusting relationships through engagement, promotion of growth and rewarding achievements we can have a positive impact within our organization.
Conclusion
In summary, leaders can have a more positive impact during change through mentoring and trusting relationships. Both are essential building blocks that help create a safe and productive work environment in an ever-changing workplace. Leaders are better able to appreciate and accept uniqueness helping to utilize employee’s skillsets while being tactful with the behavior we exhibit and the relationships we create within our team. Mentoring affords us, managers, the opportunity to construct impactful experiences and create progressive opportunities for the future ensuring employee success. Because of these elements, we can help staff determine strategies to improve work performance and growth. While employees obtain new skills, they also feel confident knowing we have their best interest in developing deepened relationships and providing perseverance during change. By implementing both our teams can grow while overcoming changes within the workplace, feeling entrusted and inspired with an increased sense of purpose and responsibly.
References
- Janine Victor, & Crystal Hoole. (2017). The influence of organisational rewards on workplace trust and work engagement. South African Journal of Human Resource Management, (0), e1. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajhrm.v15i0.853
- Robbins, S. & Judge, T. (2019). Organizational behavior. New York, NY: Pearson.
- Stephen Bear. (2018). Enhancing Learning for Participants in Workplace Mentoring Programmes.International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, (1), 35. https://doi.org/10.24384/000462
- Wu, S. Y., Turban, D. B., & Cheung, Y. H. (2012). Social skill in workplace mentoring relationships. Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, (2). Retrieved fromhttp://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=edsbig&AN=edsbig.A294371195&site=eds-live&scope=site
