From the College” recently introduced the idea of tapping into your employees’ values as a way to build and maintain a high-functioning, successful, and loyal staff. This process is part of a larger management cycle—the Five Rs of physician leadership. Simply put, the Five Rs are designed to help physician leaders move from managing managers to coaching leaders. The Five Rs are recruitment, realization, recognition, redirection, and retention.
G. Eric Allenbaugh writes, “Coaching is defined as an ongoing face-to-face process on influencing behavior by which the manager and employee collaborate to assist in achieving: increased job knowledge; improved skills in carrying out job responsibilities; higher level of job satisfaction; a stronger, more positive working relationship; and opportunities for personal and professional growth.”1
As a physician leader, the coaching approach to management will help you tap into the values of the staff that help run your business. Because coaching establishes a two-way relationship, where both parties are contributing, valued, and viewed as assets, this type of leadership style will help you establish the best-case scenario for your employees, your department or practice, and yourself.
Let’s take a look at two of the Five Rs and examine how a coach would approach them.
Recruitment
Whether you inherited your staff or are building one from scratch, you will eventually need to attract new employees to your practice or department. Depending on growth and turnover, this is a step with which you will become very familiar. Filling a vacancy can be a time-consuming and frustrating task for any leader. Knowing where to look for qualified candidates, how to narrow the pool, and what to ask in the interview will help make the process easier.
Looking for Candidates: There are many ways to recruit employees, but it is important to note that the word “recruiting” is a verb, and finding the right match takes action—looking for candidates is much more than casting bait and waiting.
One of the top places to search for candidates is on the Internet. Posting your job opening and reviewing résumés posted online will give you a large number of candidates to consider. Consider going outside of your own Web site to post openings and search résumés; go to sites that offer these services, and give great consideration to those that specifically advertise jobs in health care, because this will help you when you begin to narrow the candidate pool.
If your needs are highly specialized, you want to look beyond your market, or you just want to know a person is actively sifting through candidates, you may need to retain a recruiter to help you. Recruiters are trained in placing quality candidates in quality jobs and are often the key to filling positions.
Of course, before there was the Internet and before people had recruiters to turn to, those looking to fill vacancies relied on networking. This time-tested way of finding quality candidates is still solid enough to depend on today. Reaching out to your colleagues is a great way to fill a vacant position. Networking at local, national, and international events is also a good idea. After all, your colleagues have an excellent grasp on what it takes to work in rheumatology and can often make the most helpful and thoughtful recommendations.
Narrowing the Pool: If you have put the time and effort into a thorough initial search, less work will be needed to narrow the candidate pool. Narrowing the pool entails reviewing résumés and cover letters to determine the candidates you will interview.
Edward J. O’Connor, PhD, professor of management and health administration, University of Colorado in Denver, suggests that, when in doubt, physician leaders should look for three specifics in potential employees:
- Intelligence: “Smarter employees, on average, are more proficient employees,” he says.
- Conscientiousness: Dr. O’Connor advises physician leaders to, “select conscientious people, if you are looking for a single personality trait,” because “conscientious employees are dependable, reliable, thorough, organized, and persistent.”
- Ability to fit into the culture: All it takes is one ill-fitted employee to cause waves in culture. When searching for the right person, Dr. O’Connor says physician leaders should, “hire people who fit [in order] to improve performance and cut turnover.”
You won’t be able to pinpoint all of these things while narrowing the pool, but if you find that a candidate is lacking in one of these areas, consider carefully before inviting him or her for an interview.
Interviews: As a physician leader who is filling a vacant position, you are concerned with finding the best talent in the smallest amount of time and for the best possible price. This can be nerve racking.
Being prepared before you pick up the phone or sit down with an interviewee is your best protection against wasted time, such as discussions about certain topics (compensation, time off, or benefits) too soon in the process, and—most importantly—dropping the right candidate or moving forward with the wrong candidate.
There is an extraordinary amount of information available to help you prepare for interviewing candidates. Looking on the Web, at your library, and within your own institution’s resources is a good way to start preparing.
Dr. O’Connor offers four basic interview tips:
- Ask open-ended questions (and then keep quiet): “Don’t ask [a candidate] if he or she is a conscientious person; of course they will say yes.” Instead, Dr. O’Connor suggests that you ask open-ended questions such as, “Tell me about a time when you showed conscientiousness in your last position,” and then wait for the candidate to tell the story. He also suggests that you ask for more than one example of the same thing to look for patterns and to take note of the spontaneous direction the candidate will take.
- Listen for specifics: When you ask open-ended questions, the candidate will likely feel compelled to give specific information. Dr. O’Connor suggests looking for multiple examples and repeated behaviors as a way of sifting through the good interviewers and the candidates who truly fit the bill.
- Observe clues to talents: Dr. O’Connor suggests that you try to hone in on the talents that aren’t directly discussed. During conversation, look for clues to these talents, such as noting when a candidate mentions creative problem solving as a strong suit. That may not necessarily be a part of the job description, but it is certainly a skill from which most employers would benefit.
- Know what to look for: Only ask questions that will separate the top performers from the rest of the group, Dr. O’Connor advises. If you have a clear idea of what and who you are looking for, you can tailor your interviews to find the best candidates.
Not all interviews look and sound the same. A list of the top 10 interview questions will certainly help you break the ice, but you must also prepare questions and guide conversations in a way that will reveal if you have found the smartest and most conscientious candidate who will fit into the culture of your practice, institution, or department.
Finding the Coach: Out of desperation, a manager might gloss over some important details about a job description—or leave them out altogether—to fill a vacancy. A skilled coach, however, will be open and honest about the details of the position and the potential for growth in the future. This is because skilled coaches know that withholding information and providing false expectations is a great way to quickly lose a new employee.
Realization
Once you have hired a new staff person, you will move to the second of the Five Rs: Realization.
The social penetration theory, or onion theory as it is commonly called, tells us that self-disclosure occurs in phases. No one reveals him or herself completely at first—neither in their personal lives nor their professional lives. Therefore, physician leaders gradually will learn more about the personalities, abilities, values, and shortcomings of their employees and should make the effort to work toward that discovery on a regular basis—particularly at the beginning of employment.
Many of the things covered during realization will have been discussed during recruitment, but this is your opportunity to dig deeper and tap into your new employee’s personality, values, and work style. During realization, the physician leader should provide more information about:
- In-depth details about the job (including specifics about goals and objectives as well as expectations);
- Details about his or her management style; and
- Details about the culture of the practice, institution, or department.
The physician leader should also work to reveal more information about the new employee’s:
- Work and communication styles;
- Motivations;
- Professional goals; and
- Management preferences.
Realization doesn’t happen in one day, but investing in this part of the process is vitally important. Dr. O’Connor says, “It does take time to be an effective leader; that’s the simple truth. In reality, if one does not invest the time up front, one often pays the bill later in poor performance and by investing time to clean up problems that result. It’s rather like the old Fram Oil Filter commercial—‘You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.’ ”
Finding the Coach: Managers are often hyper-focused on filling a position and getting back to work. Because of this, these managers miss the opportunity to ensure a new employee starts off with everything he or she needs to successfully fill the position. A skilled coach will take the time to outline expectations and go over procedures and duties in detail. Skilled coaches also know that this cannot be accomplished in one day and, therefore, check back often throughout the new employee’s first several months on the job to ensure everything is crystal clear.
Recruitment and realization are just two of the Five Rs of physician leadership. A great leader is not only skilled at finding and placing quality employees, he or she is also skilled at guiding and retaining them. Next month, “From the College” will continue to look at the Five Rs of physician leadership and how you can use them to find, train, and keep the best employees.
Reference
- Allenbaugh GE. Coaching: A Management Tool for a More Effective Work Performance. Management Review.1983;72(5):21-26.
