By Rand O’Leary, FACHE
Throughout my life, I have seen that it is true that your thoughts become your words, and your words become your actions. I wonder if it is possible to reverse-engineer this adage, using our actions and words to impact our thoughts. As another old saying goes: whatever you feed will grow. How do we feed positive thinking? Through kindness and gratitude in word and deed.
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Over the past 18 months, we've seen burnout strike healthcare professionals and leaders at levels previously unseen. Colleagues are retiring, dedicated providers are leaving, and countless others across the country are taking time away for stress and mental health renewal.
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While individual resilience is important, especially in turbulent times, organizational resilience is also crucial. According to BSI, organizational resilience is “the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper.” This goes far beyond risk management and is in fact a key trait in an organization that not only survives but thrives in times of crisis.
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What makes a good organization great? A strong team working together with a clearly defined purpose. The cohesiveness and organizational might that builds strong teams often begins at the top, with leadership leading by example and focused on achieving objectives at every level.
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While building a culture of trust is essential to a leadership team’s growth and success, the fear of conflict can stop any positive growth in its tracks. Conflict happens, especially in business, and the key is to embrace rather than avoid it. As Patrick Lencioni writes in the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, “All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow.”
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When it comes to building a strong leadership team, choosing top talent isn’t the only priority; building a culture of trust is also essential to growth and success. According to a recent PwC survey of more than 1,400 CEOs worldwide, more than half of organizational leaders believe a lack of trust is a serious threat to the success of their teams and their business. However, if you are aware of the importance of trust, and actively working to make it part of your workplace culture, you can use it as an asset to your organizational function, rather than a liability.
Environments where trust is a key component encourage innovation, increase the pace of decision making, and often team members outpace their competition. The Workplace Therapist Brandon Smith insists, “Trust enables teams to not just take risks but also to move more quickly. There’s little second-guessing in high trust environments because team members assume there’s positive intent.”
It’s hard for teams to move forward effectively if they don’t trust each another. Instead of innovating, they are second-guessing each other, unnecessarily reworking tasks, or relying on one or two key team members to get the work done. I have found that when you have trust, things move much more efficiently. You have the ability to take the risk because your team feels comfortable and supported. Trust is key, and risk, innovation, growth, and expansion can only happen when you have a solid foundation of trust to build upon.
To maximize your organizational potential and lead in your sector and community, you have to create a climate of trust and transparency.
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Gallup’s State of the American Workplace reports that while the U.S. has more than 100 million full-time employees, only about one-third of them could be considered engaged at work. These are the staffers leaders dream about - they love their jobs and just make their organizations better. At the other end of the spectrum, 16% of employees are actively disengaged and generally miserable at work, and the remaining 51% of employees are not engaged at all – they’re just there.
For a leader, those are some sobering statistics, and should serve as a wakeup call. While engagement is important, chances are, you don’t just want your employees to engage, you want them to be inspired. Suze Orman once said you cannot inspire unless you’re inspired yourself. That means as a leader you should have passion – for the work, for the mission, and for what that means to people and the communities you serve.
Inspired employees impact an organization’s bottom line too, and studies have shown that inspired employees are more than twice as productive as satisfied employees. Inspiring behavior unleashes the energy within people to do their best work. It also helps them connect with an organization’s purpose and meaning.
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