5 Principles to Building a High Performance Management Team
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Brand Your Practice podcast, where you get to learn about marketing, growing, and scaling your private practice. I'm Brent Stutzman. And today, we're gonna be talking about 5 principles to building a high performance management team. And to help me do that is Steve Allred. Steve is an executive coach at Practice Freedom You.
Brent Stutzman:He helps clinical entrepreneurs break through the barriers to enable growth beyond 7 figures so they can prioritize their time on the most impactful parts of their business that brings the freedom, security, and back into their life. If you've already surpassed million the $1,000,000 mark and aspire to grow your practice further, aiming for the 3 to $5,000,000 range without becoming overly tied to the business, then Steve is the person to guide you on that journey. He works with growth minded practice owners who believe that people are the most important strength of the business and unlocking their power is the key to sustainable growth and success. Welcome to the show, Steve.
Steve Allred:Thanks, Brent. It's great to be here.
Brent Stutzman:Well, before we jump in today's topic, I'd like for you to share with the our audience here, a little bit about what you were doing before you became an executive coach at Practice Freedom U.
Steve Allred:Sure. You know, during the last 12 years, I worked with a provider network that really focused on helping private practice owners manage the whole process that comes with, dealing with payers, contracts, and claims and all of that. So get had a great chance to just really see what worked, what didn't, and and help practice owners and get know them a lot better. You know, my background's in physical therapy. I've worked with national home health care companies, building teams that led the development and and rollout of clinical programs across, gosh, about 250, 300 different locations across the country and and provided oversight.
Steve Allred:And and I've worked I actually even had a stint working at Blue Cross behind behind the big curtain as far as contracting and payer network, and really learned how that whole process works. So it's giving me a pretty broad perspective of what goes into building teams and making, practices thrive, financially and economically.
Brent Stutzman:Oh, good. Well, yeah. Well, that's really great to have that behind the scenes, look into those things and also the experience as well. So thanks for jumping on the podcast and let's let's jump into, the first the first principle that you're gonna share with us.
Steve Allred:So really the the first one is making sure that you've got clarity around what your role is going to be, and the goals that you have behind building this management team. You know, I had a client once that says, you know, said, okay. I need to build my management team. And I asked the question, why? You know, what are you trying to accomplish?
Steve Allred:And after discussing what her goals were for the practice, it really came down to that she wanted to develop, specialized niches and needed more clinical leaders rather than a management team. And so we revamped what that whole structure would look like and understanding what your role is. So, for example, if if you wanna build a management team and you hire a clinic director, but you still wanna stay involved in day to day, processes and leadership, you know, you're really gonna make that clinic director more of an assistant director and not really allow them to thrive. And so understanding that your role changes as soon as you begin to, build that management team and being clear on what your goals are so that you can then clarify what everybody else's roles and responsibilities. One of the biggest killers of any team is when there's role confusion.
Steve Allred:Because then people stop. They just stop doing. They stop executing. They stop working together because they don't know where they fit in. And it starts with the owner having clarity about what they really wanna accomplish.
Steve Allred:Yeah. You know, and I've seen that in a lot of different, organizations. And in fact, I've been in organizations where there was real confusion. And I was on the receiving end of it, and I didn't know who was doing what, who was responsible. And when I asked for clarification, the answer was, well, we're all responsible.
Steve Allred:Well, when everyone's responsible, no one is. Everybody's expecting somebody else to do it or you're afraid of stepping on toes. You don't know where you stop and where you end in terms of the overall team and organization. So the clarity is really the first place that you have to start, and really decide, what do I wanna be as the owner? Do I wanna be the do I still wanna be a clinician?
Steve Allred:Do I want to be the clinic director, and do I have to have my hand in everything? Or am I willing and ready to make that leap where I step out of day to day, I train people, and I trust them? And when we do that, it becomes just electrifying what it does to the organization because people now have a place to step into because you've stepped out, fill that role, and you also have the chance to step back and look at the overall organization as a whole and see things that you never saw before.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah.
Steve Allred:And where you're going.
Brent Stutzman:I love that. Yeah. Role clarity is really important. Having I love that. The other one is, yeah.
Brent Stutzman:What is it that you want to do? Because, when when I've worked with practice owners, some some just wanna see clients. Like, they just love the actual client work and don't wanna have the day to day kind of responsibilities. Some actually just love doing supervision. And if they could just do supervision of their of of the interns or whatever that might be and get out of the day to day.
Brent Stutzman:But also, I also I also know because the the the the struggle for practice owners is stepping out of the way, like, giving the the new hire or that clinical director the freedom to do their job and the practice owner is sometimes will self sabotage.
Steve Allred:Mhmm. Right?
Brent Stutzman:Step in, you know, instead of coaching up or, like, just do it themselves. I kinda go back to their old ways of managing all the things. I'm curious if you if you've seen that, you can speak to that.
Steve Allred:You know, absolutely. It's human nature is we go where we are comfortable. We avoid what's uncomfortable. So stepping out of the role of, I bootstrapped this clinic. I know everything about it.
Steve Allred:I know how it all runs to step into a role of, now I'm a CEO. I'm not involved day to day. That's uncomfortable. And sometimes owners wanna just step back into what they know and what's comfortable. But the problem is they begin to sabotage because now everybody else in the organization is still looking to the owner Mhmm.
Steve Allred:As the as that day to day leader. So that director is rendered kind of an assistant director at best, and I've I've seen that in a clinic where they hired a director, but they were still treating, and they were still involved day to day, and people still went to the owner instead of the clinic director. And the clinic director was beginning to wonder, you know, do I know what I'm doing? Am I doing something wrong?
Brent Stutzman:Mhmm. And it
Steve Allred:was just not stepping out of that role. So this so if that's your goal, if you wanna stay in that role, that's okay. Just build a team within that context. You you know, don't hire that director. You might hire an assistant director.
Steve Allred:You might hire a manager over certain areas, Mhmm. But you're still the day to day leader if you're there every single day. One of the key things that we tell owners is as soon as you start to build your management team, get rid of your office. Get rid of your office and stay out of the clinic. And when you go literally just get out.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. Stay out of stay out of the kitchen. Stay out of the, your office area.
Steve Allred:If you're if you're hiring a cook, get out of the kitchen. Yeah. Yeah. But when you go into back into the practice, go with purpose. Don't just go there to spend the day.
Steve Allred:If you've got meetings, go. Have those meetings and then leave. If you're there to touch base and say hi to everybody because they still wanna see you, awesome. Go. Build a culture.
Steve Allred:Help people understand the vision, and leave. Don't just sit there and camp because then people will come to you Yeah. And you're gonna find yourself sucked back into the details.
Brent Stutzman:And you gotta flex that muscle. When they do, it'd be like, actually go talk to my clinical director. That's a great question for my clinical director, you know. And don't don't get sucked into the temptation to answer, and to kind of like, you know, feel that importance. Right?
Brent Stutzman:Because you're gonna feel that void. You're gonna feel that void as a as a leader of people coming to you for everything, and that just has to change. So And
Steve Allred:the another key principle in that, and that gets into the, number 4, fostering trust. But when questions come up, if it's really egregious that maybe the director gave incorrect information or your operations manager gave incorrect information that really has to be corrected then and there, okay, that's fine, but it's probably gonna be rare. Take that person aside and say, hey. Here's how I understand the problem. Here's the answer you gave.
Steve Allred:Here's some additional information. How would you like to go about making sure everybody understands? Because if you correct them in the moment, you just cut their knees out. You have made them look like they don't know what they're doing, and now they lack the trust that you've got their back. Yeah.
Steve Allred:So really understanding your role there is role is important. You know? And once you do that, the next thing you have to decide is what are my values? How do how are we going to work within our leadership team? How will I lead?
Steve Allred:You know, a lot of times, I've I've had people send me their values, and they sound great, and they look really nice framed on a wall, and that's all they are. Values are not something to know, they are something to live, And you have to live by those leadership values of hopefully, you know, trans things like transparency, trust, authenticity. Whatever it is that you value as a leader, make sure that they're established, that your leadership team knows, lives, and abides by them. Because that's that really defines how you work and what grounds you as a leader so that you don't get lost in the process. Because, you know, let's say trust.
Steve Allred:You know, I've I've seen owners just by accident, not with really any malintent, but by accident, do something that undermined the trust, and trust was a leadership value. But what that did is it allowed them to go back to that person and say, you know what? I value trust. We have to be able to trust each other. I did this, and I can tell it made you feel this way, which undermined that trust.
Steve Allred:And that goes against my value values, and I wanna correct what I did and how I'm leading. And that restored the trust and it was a great learning lesson for both of them, for both individuals. And and then things went along smoothly. But until that conversation took place, no amount of apologies mattered because trust had to be restored. And that was a a critical leadership value for that individual.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. That's one of my one of my things in my own organization is values. Like, always be building trust. So you're either, like, building trust or there's trust that's eroding by your words and actions. Right.
Brent Stutzman:So, because that's, you know what what's it's that line that's, like, you know, building trust really takes years, but it can fall apart in a matter of seconds. Absolutely. And, and so, yeah, that's a that's a really important reminder about understanding your values, which will also be helpful when you're trying to hire a clinical director or something. Like, these are the values I have. So they come with those under they understand those expectations of, of what those values are for them to be able to embody as well.
Steve Allred:It's you know, values are the context. We can talk about profits, we can talk about clinical quality, we can talk about growth all we want. Values give us context, and values keep us grounded because it's saying, here's how we're going to grow. We're gonna grow with authenticity. We're gonna grow with transparency.
Steve Allred:We're gonna build trust. We're gonna have fun along the way. We're gonna build teamwork. Because if when you make decisions, and this is somebody asked me as well. How do I how do I help people understand the values?
Steve Allred:And so the next time they come with to you with a question about what to do, ask them, how does this fit in within our values? Which value does this address? This question and answer. And what would be an answer that is consistent with our values? Get them thinking about how it applies.
Steve Allred:And in my opinion, if somebody makes a decision that's consistent with the values, but maybe it's not the best decision. That's okay. I'm gonna sit down, I'll talk with them, and I will help and we'll learn together. We'll debrief it. That's one of the things we do a lot in coaching is debrief because that's where we learn.
Steve Allred:So we'll learn from it, but I'm not gonna go get angry at somebody because they made their own decision, because they were trying to do it within consistent with our values.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. And I'll say one more thing before we move on to the next point is that another way to build a culture around your values is to do shout outs. So if you have team meetings, you can say this person did this and this really aligns with this value in our in our company. And I just wanna highlight that and say good job or something like that. So being able to point out actions that your team is doing and aligning those to the values.
Brent Stutzman:You know, we have in one organization I
Steve Allred:was in, we had, accountability was one of our values. And we take ownership of what we do. And one one of the individuals made a they they made a mistake. I mean, just flat out. They made a mistake that could have caused unfortunately, it didn't, but it could have caused, a patient harm, and and it was a serious thing.
Steve Allred:You know, we were in a heavily regulated industry, and anything and everything that we did got reported to the state. And and if it was truly a mistake, then it got investigated by the state. But they, you know, so they made this mistake, but then they came back and says, I made the mistake. I called the physician. I've got an appointment set up for the patient, I've documented it, I've reported it to the state, do I need to report it to the investigative body?
Steve Allred:And the answer is yes, and so they did. And they said so basically, I made a mistake. Here's what I've done. Here's the solution to clean up the mistake before it even came to light. And and as soon as, you know, as soon as they realized they've made a mistake, they did that.
Steve Allred:So we were in a meeting just like you said to call it out. We were in a team meeting, and we said, hey. You know, we have been working on reducing these types of clinical errors because they are serious. Mhmm. So and so made a clinical error, but we wanna highlight how they handled it.
Steve Allred:Mhmm. Yeah. Walk through all the steps that they went through and said, this does not diminish the the the the error, but we we want to emphasize this is living the value of accountability. And people were like, I get it. Mhmm.
Steve Allred:I understand now. Now it becomes something that's real because now they know how to apply that value, not just what are our values. I can list them off and let me go back to how I I do things. You know?
Brent Stutzman:Yeah.
Steve Allred:Yep. Right. Yeah. So Yeah.
Brent Stutzman:It's a great story for that. Thank you.
Steve Allred:You know, the next thing, you know, as an owner, you know, you start off. You're the sole clinician. Maybe you eventually add another therapist. You add a front desk person to help you out. As soon as you get enough people in there and it's no longer you're able to just kind of lean over to the next person because they're right there and you're everybody's watching what everybody's doing.
Steve Allred:You have to start establishing systems, processes, procedures of how how will you schedule a patient? How will you handle a reschedule? How do you handle any process basically in your organization? That's kind of your first layer of your operating system. Yeah.
Steve Allred:Now when you start to add managers, directors, you have to create a management system on top of your operating system. And it's how do we establish accountabilities and create a system for managing that. So who's accountable for what? Mhmm. What does that mean?
Steve Allred:What are you responsible for, and how do you give that accountability back? One of the challenges I see that owners have in establishing that system is, you know, you hear it when they say, well, I said you know, I asked for this person to give me this report back or they haven't given me any updates, you know, and and I keep having to chase them down. I'm like, okay. You got this all wrong, all wrong. It is not your job to chase them down.
Steve Allred:It is their job to come back to you and give an accounting a a a a stewardship, if you will, of that accountability. And so if you're working with your billing manager, they should be coming to you because you established a weekly routine, which is part of your system. You have an agenda of what's covered. They understand what metrics and and how you're looking at billing, what's what is key and important. So they come to you and are prepared and said, here's how we are doing.
Steve Allred:Here's our net rate per visit. Here's our collection rate. Here's our days in AR. Here's here's all the claims that are outstanding that that are past 60, and here's what we're doing with them. They're giving you that report, and then you're giving feedback, not the other way around.
Steve Allred:Yeah. Okay? Because then they own the process that they have to manage, and they're giving that management report back to you to so that you can make sure things are working properly. That's part of your management process. So it's the meetings that you have, the agendas, the way that you communicate.
Steve Allred:You know, Jeff Bezos talks about, at Amazon, how they didn't have PowerPoints, and they had quick meetings because people would put their entire all the content of their meeting in a memo, and they would put the memos together and it was the expectation that you read the memos and came prepared with questions. So you had dialogue and discussion, decision making, not reporting out something that anyone could read in a memo. Yeah. So that's the system.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. The account is, for those keeping track, this is 0.3 on the, established accountabilities. And this is actually probably one of the hardest things for practice owners to do. Because before it was kinda like very family or, you know, this family feel
Steve Allred:Yes.
Brent Stutzman:Was a fair, you know, you kind of do your job. And and now as you begin to scale up, it's like, okay. Now I have to ask clinicians to fill out these weekly sheets. How many appointments? How many were paid appointments?
Brent Stutzman:You know, just so you can keep track. Right? There's the accountability. Otherwise, you just don't know anything that's going on in your business. Like, you need to have your own dashboard and then you set up the rhythm of accountability and what that looks like.
Brent Stutzman:And that can be really daunting. And for I know I know for therapists, it's like, you know, they don't they don't like to be tracked. You know, maybe most people don't. But there is this really great quote. I don't know who said it.
Brent Stutzman:I heard it somewhere that, amateurs don't want to be measured, but professionals do. So, like, professional golfers, whatever they want, soccer players, whoever they want all the stats all the time because they want to know in those in the margins where can they get a little bit better. Like, they want to be measured. Right. And so as you're thinking about as you're growing your clinical team and you're like they, like, they have to be okay with being measured and being held, like, account like, accountable to that.
Brent Stutzman:And I know that's a culture thing for a lot of practice owners, like, you kinda have to build that in as you as you scale up, but it's absolutely essential if you wanna if you do wanna scale up to that 6, 7 figure.
Steve Allred:It's it's the only way. I mean, think about it. You know, as a clinician, if I'm treating a patient and I don't do any objective tests, I don't take any vital signs, I don't do any kind of testing. I have no idea how where that person is and how they're responding to what I do. And so that basically the the data that that we use in accountability, they're like the vital signs.
Steve Allred:They tell us how the system is working. And so, you know, that go back to point number 2, establishing leadership values. You know, one of mine is be purpose driven and data informed. Mhmm. I'm always driven by my purpose, but I use data to inform me how am I doing, where am I going.
Steve Allred:And that gives me insights as to the decisions I need to make that are consistent with the rest of my purpose and my mission and vision and values.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah.
Steve Allred:And so that is part of the a value system of mine, and it's also part of any kind of management system that I have when I'm managing people is that we use data to inform us because that's an expectation. You know, we we have systems to collect it, it might be an EMR, it could be billing reports coming from your billing company, wherever it comes from, but that tells us because when somebody says if I say, how are you doing? Oh, I'm doing fine. Oh, we're doing great. I have no idea what that means.
Steve Allred:Yeah. And if I'm going to step out and be the CEO, I can't be watching them all the time. So I need that data to tell me how is the system working, and it's the language that we use. And that's part of teaching and training your team as part of that accountability in that management system, that becomes really critical. And when you do that, it becomes liberating because now we all understand.
Steve Allred:As long as we realize that the data is not the end goal, It's the purpose. Mhmm. Mhmm. That it just informs us of how we're doing towards our to our, to our purpose.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah.
Steve Allred:And realize when you establish that, you may be mentoring and training people. You can't just give them an accountability and say go. They may you know, everybody's had different skill sets, so you have to make sure and develop them and train them in a way that they understand how to do their role if you're building a team, you know, that's come with you from kind of the grassroots era into now a more formalized structure.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Let's keep going. Thank you, Steve.
Steve Allred:K. So the next thing, is really fostering trust. And we talked a little bit about that. You know, that comes, in my opinion, from transparency. It becomes training, support.
Steve Allred:People need to know that you as a leader have their back. That you're not gonna undermine them, that you're not going to embarrass them, and that you trust each other, that you're on the same page. And it goes the other way as well because the owner needs to trust that his management team has the same mission, vision, and values, and purpose that under that, you know, kind of pins up the whole the whole company. And so by building that and that comes through my great presentation you can find on YouTube about Navy SEALs, and he talks in 4 grids if you've probably seen that. But he talks about high trust and high performance.
Steve Allred:And he said we want high performance, upper right corner, and we'll take medium performance as long as it's high trust. Sometimes we'll even take low performance if it's high trust. He said high performance, low trust? No. That's that's the person that's that's toxic.
Steve Allred:They're they're cancerous to the the culture. Get rid of them as quickly as you can. Low performance, low trust, that's obviously a no brainer. But it was just interesting how important trust is to a team that probably most of the world considers one of the highest performing teams out there. Because they literally have to trust each other that everybody will do their job, do it well, and that they will stay engaged, and they have singular purpose of their of their mission.
Steve Allred:Right.
Brent Stutzman:And they don't give up.
Steve Allred:And they don't give up. You know? It's it's it's can I trust you with what is most dear to me?
Brent Stutzman:Mhmm.
Steve Allred:And and do we have that trust? Understand that there might be times, like I referred to earlier, where a leader or an owner does something that breaks that trust. Well, it's not gone forever with some humility, some vulnerability, and authenticity to go back and say, hey. I did this. I can tell I undermined trust with you, and I'm sorry.
Steve Allred:Mhmm. That that violated my trust my values. I did not have that intent, but I realized my behavior created this situation. I would like to fix it. Yeah.
Steve Allred:I want you to know that I recognize it, and I'm changing my behavior, and this is what I will do going forward.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. Repairing is really important.
Steve Allred:It is. I mean, we're we're human. We make mistakes. But that's where that authenticity to say, hey. I made a mistake.
Steve Allred:And and as an owner, most have never been in that leader type of a leadership role where you're managing a team Mhmm. For the first time if you're building that team. And so you're gonna make mistakes. Just own it because what it does is it allows your team to own their mistakes and know that it's safe to do so and say, hey. I made this mistake.
Steve Allred:Here's what I've done. Here's what I'm fixing it. It's not gonna happen again because I've learned from it, and then the owners, you know, gonna can trust that. You know, I was talking to a friend of mine a while back and talking about this trust. They were came to the end of the year, and they were $250,000 short on revenue and cash collection.
Steve Allred:They couldn't figure it out. And so the sales, the head of sales was racking his brain and he went back through and he found out that he made a mistake, quoted something wrong that they had to honor. And so he went back to the CEO of the company and said, here's my resignation. I'm the one that made the mistake. That's just not acceptable, and, you know, it cost the company $250,000.
Steve Allred:And the CEO looked at him, took his resignation, and handed it back to him, and said, I just paid $250,000 for you to learn this lesson. I know you will never make again, and you will make sure nobody else makes again. Why would I give that up? Get back to work. Yeah.
Steve Allred:There is trust there.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. Yeah. And repair. I mean, that's huge.
Steve Allred:Yeah. And repair. You know, so, so that trust is really critical. That's what allows a team to come together and work together. You'll find if you're out of tune, and I I can see in your background, you've got a guitar, so you get this.
Steve Allred:You can hear when something's at 2 instruments are out of tune. You can almost, you know, if you were to look at it on a wave oscillator, you'll see this wave where they're just they're not in sync. And that happens in a in a management team when there's low trust.
Brent Stutzman:Mhmm.
Steve Allred:Maybe there's a lack of transparency. Maybe it's because, you know, in your head as an owner, you're making decisions, and you're working through all the issues, and then you just come out and announce it. And so people are like, where did this come from? So they don't know what to trust. But whatever it is, if you find yourself with a team that is out of sync, that's the first place I'm gonna look.
Steve Allred:It's what are the trust levels.
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. No. That's helpful. Sorry. I was just writing one of that down that I like that analogy about trust and being out of tune.
Brent Stutzman:I was like, oh, I'm gonna use that. I was like, yeah, it's really helpful. Well, how about this? Before we go on, I want to remind the listener about TheraSaaS. You know, we designed TheraSaaS because many of my clients were using post it notes and Google Sheets to keep track of new client leads.
Brent Stutzman:But clients were still falling through the cracks and money was being left on the table. TheraSaaS is a powerful HIPAA compliant intake CRM software for practice owners to quickly capture, connect, and qualify prospective clients. With their SaaS, you just put a custom form on your website that potential leads can fill out. And when they do fill that out, it goes into your they go into your visual pipeline so you can always keep track of the progress of them becoming a paying client. With Veritas, you can automate 80% of those repetitive tasks that take so much time or those little micro transactions that happen as they are on the path becoming a client.
Brent Stutzman:It can automate up to 80% of those. And you also have a simple dashboard with real time analytics. You always know your marketing efforts and how they are going. So going back to, you know, data is the vital signs about, how your practice is doing. And Therasys can help keep track of that data for you, especially in your marketing and intake efforts.
Brent Stutzman:So to get started, it's simple. If you wanna check out Therasys, just go to therasaaS.com, therasaaS.com, and see how TherasaaS works and how our customers just love it. Step 2, if you're interested, just go to the sign up form and you can get a demo with me or someone on my team and get started and see if it's a good fit and if their SaaS is a good fit for your practice. It takes 1 hour to implement on the technical side and it takes 1 hour to train your team. It's that simple.
Brent Stutzman:It said that the riches are in the niches and the fortune is in the follow-up. TheraSaaS was specifically designed for the follow-up process. It has empowered solo practice owners to grow quickly and group practice owners to supercharge their intake team. See if Therasas is a good fit for your practice today. Just go to therasas.comtherasaas.com and schedule your demo call.
Brent Stutzman:Alright, Steve. Let's get to our final point.
Steve Allred:Alright. Final point is authenticity. It you know, this is where people need to know that you're real. They just want you. They don't want you to be playing a certain role or that you gotta act a certain way.
Steve Allred:Just be real. Be authentic in what your leadership role is, and be self aware. And that self awareness helps with that authenticity because you need to understand, as I build my team, what is my behavior, and how does it impact the rest of the team? Am I leading well? Am I am I clear?
Steve Allred:Am I transparent? Do they do they know who I am? You know, a colleague of mine was he was in the financial services industry and doing big deals with companies, doing financial advising in terms of how to structure debt, how to structure an acquisition, how to structure, you know, 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars, if not more. And, one of the individuals made a a claim about my colleague to say, well, you know, he he said this and he said we could, you know, do do a variety of things. And the people around him said, no way.
Steve Allred:We know who he is. We know how he works, and he is the same wherever you go so that is totally inconsistent with who he is. Because he was authentic and transparent in everything that he did, the people who were part of the deal knew how he worked and he was consistent with that, and that allowed, the deal to go through without it being derailed by some of the claims. So being authentic, being vulnerable, it's okay to say you don't know everything. In fact, why would you want to be the smartest person in the room?
Steve Allred:Steve Jobs says we hire the smartest people and then we have them tell us what to do. Hire somebody who's really really good at billing. Hire somebody who's really really good at the front desk and let them guide you and say here's where we can make improvements and that are consistent with our values and our purpose and what we're doing. Trust them and and be vulnerable enough to allow that that feedback to you. Or if you have somebody that's trusted on your management team that comes back to you and says, hey, Brent.
Steve Allred:You know, when you do these sorts of things, it really, really causes confusion and undermines the trust within the team. You know? And if you can be vulnerable enough to listen to that and say, hey. Thanks. You know, I needed that feedback.
Steve Allred:Let me make some changes. People are gonna know that you're real and that they're gonna trust them. And then really know what you know. Don't try and don't try and pretend that you know something that you don't. People see it.
Steve Allred:Yeah. You know they they do and you know eventually they're either gonna quietly just not pay attention to you or they're gonna call you out on it. So know what you know, do what you do, and then build a team around you that fills in the gaps so that you can accomplish what, what is really critical for your organization. And so that authenticity, again, it goes back into building that trust. It helps you manage the team and the systems that you have in place, and it's gonna tie into your leadership values because it's really about who we are.
Steve Allred:And I think what's important is that then the non management folks within your organization know that they can trust you. That's the biggest thing. Okay. And we trust the management team that they're gonna make the right decisions even if they're hard. Yeah.
Steve Allred:You know, when I was when I was at a previous company during COVID, I was working for a large organization. They had probably about 900 to a 1000 clinics at the time, and they had to bring that down 50% in about 3 weeks, 2 to 3 weeks' time. Wow. From staffing, from clinics, everything. I mean, it was just us, slam it into a brick wall.
Steve Allred:And and they came to the executives and leaders and said, we need you to not take a salary, we need to cut your salary, you know, we've got to do all these things. Because there was trust and authenticity of who they were, I know who they were as as leaders. I wasn't happy, but at the same time, I knew that they were making decisions in the best interest and self preservation of the company so that in their own words, we're still here after this is all over. Yeah. You know?
Steve Allred:That's a lot that's a wrong time to try and build authenticity and trust. Right. But but it's hard to play if you have it. Yeah. So, you know, I I really look to principles rather than steps because I find when people just follow steps, they don't understand why they're doing what they're doing.
Steve Allred:And following principles allows them to say, okay, how do I apply this principle in my organization, and make it effective for for us?
Brent Stutzman:Yeah. Well, thank you, Steve. Thanks for sharing the those 5, 5 principles. And I think we're really coming back to the idea of trust when it comes to leadership. Mhmm.
Brent Stutzman:I just almost that was kind of a common thread throughout these principles. You know, you're either building it or eroding it by not being authentic or not being vulnerable, not being clear.
Steve Allred:Yeah.
Brent Stutzman:But the goals and goal, you know, goal clarity, all those things. So how can people, like, how can they find out more about you or get in touch with you?
Steve Allred:They can go to practicefreedomu.com and, you know, there's a section on coaches. They can reach me at [email protected], and you have a link to a a link where they can set up a a call with me. And I'm happy to talk talk to somebody, just answer questions, and give them feedback in any way that's helpful. Okay. Well,
Brent Stutzman:great. Well, please check out those links. They'll be in the show notes as well. Just a reminder to all the listeners that all the content on the Brand Your Practice website, podcasts, and other media reflects my own opinions and should not be taken as legal advice, financial advice, or investment advice. Please seek out the guidance for a professionally trained and licensed individual before making any decisions.
Brent Stutzman:Some links in the descriptions may be affiliate links. Alright, folks. Thanks for listening. If you found the conversation useful, subscribe to the podcast and please join me again the next time on the Brand Your Practice podcast.
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