Conference Preview: How to Engage Your Team
“The OR Manager Conference is the perfect place to network and interact with your colleagues. This is where you not only have the opportunity to focus on updated clinical and administrative offerings, but to engage in fellowship with your peers. It is one of the highlights of my year. I have been doubly blessed by not only attending these events but also having the honor of speaking and telling my story about our processes at the past three conferences,” says Cindy Kildgore, MSHA, BSN, RN, CNOR, perioperative services director for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
This year Cindy is a presenter on the topic “Your Path to Success? A Roadmap for a Highly Engaged Team.” Although employee satisfaction an reduce turnover, engagement has the added benefit of greater productivity. Vanderbilt leadership has found that applying concepts from the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals, by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling, helps to enhance engagement. The authors explain how using the disciplines can help organizations achieve desired outcomes.
• Focus on the wildly important. When you focus on the “wildly” important, you focus on less to achieve more. Narrowing your focus to a few highly important goals increases the likelihood of success.
• “Take the pulse of your staff. Find out what their greatest concerns, goals, and ideas are, identify the top ones, and then begin to execute.”• Act on the lead measures. Lead measures tell you if you’re likely to achieve your goals. For example, turnover rates can show you trends for those leaving the organization, but at Vanderbilt, leaders also collect information from current staff. “We do the ‘stay interview’ every 6 months as part of our regular one-to-one meeting,” Cindy says. “We ask them why they stay with the organization and how we can help them in their career path.” This helps identify lack of engagement early before someone decides to leave.
• Act on the lead measures. Lead measures tell you if you’re likely to achieve your goals. For example, turnover rates can show you trends for those leaving the organization, but at Vanderbilt, leaders also collect information from current staff. “We do the ‘stay interview’ every 6 months as part of our regular one-to-one meeting,” Cindy says. “We ask them why they stay with the organization and how we can help them in their career path.” This helps identify lack of engagement early before someone decides to leave.• Keep a compelling scoreboard. The scoreboard, ideally designed by
• Keep a compelling scoreboard. The scoreboard, ideally designed by staff themselves, allows everyone to see progress. At Vanderbilt, each service line receives scorecards for hand hygiene, surgical site infections, turnover time, and staff retention. The scorecards rank each item as red, yellow, or green. “When we reach green, we celebrate.”
• Create a cadence of accountability. Accountability is achieved through regular and frequent meetings to assess progress. In the case of engagement, this is enacted as a daily morning huddle that includes all perioperative services disciplines. “We follow an outline that reviews first-case starts, delays, throughput for the coming day, announcements, and follow-up from issues brought forward the day before.” Each discipline is held responsible for follow-up, and quarterly reports are reviewed to measure improvement. “This has brought about engagement from every department because they must share publicly their results and data. We’ve seen a vast improvement,” says Cindy.
• Leaders need to know when to step back. “A lot of it has to do with not micromanaging them. If you give them the processes and allow them to function independently, they can do their best work,” she says.
• Professional development is an avenue to help leaders become better at engaging staff, which, in turn, will help them be engaged. Vanderbilt provides options designed to hone leaders’ skills. “We have an entire selection of free classes they can take on different topics, such as how to deal with difficult behavior, and an online managers’ toolbox so they can enrich and enhance their leadership style,” says Cindy. “Leaders need to ask front-line managers about their career goals and provide support to help them meet those goals.
“Your Path to Success? A Roadmap for a Highly Engaged Team”
Tuesday, October 3, 2–3:15 pm Sun C
Presenters: Cindy L. Kildgore, MSHA, BSN, RN, CNOR and Susanna S. Walsh, BSN, RNFA, CNOR, CSSM
Carisa Brewster
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