Category Archives: Healthcare

Learning the Hard Way

Making Mistakes – Right Management

mistake

Management guru, Peter Drucker once said, “The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make– for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise, he is sure to be mediocre.” At one time or another, everyone makes mistakes, some more catastrophic than others. But the trick is to effectively manage the mistake with humility so that it’s not career ending. Here are some tips to keep in mind when you have made a mistake at work.

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Drucker’s Insight on Leadership

The Effective Leader

leader In two previous articles, we discussed results-based leadership and some of the possible methods of making that happen. I want to share with you some of the thoughts written by the late Peter F. Drucker in an article entitled What Makes an Effective Executive published in the June 2004 issue of Harvard Business Review. In this article, he provides excellent insights into the development of your leadership style. His analysis is broken down into three major categories with steps within each. They include:… Read the rest

Growing the Leader within Us

Leadership is a verb, not a noun. Leadership is action, not a position. Leadership is defined by leader what we do, not the role we are in. Some people in “leadership roles” are excellent leaders. But too many are bosses, “snoopervisors,” technocrats, bureaucrats, managers, commanders, chiefs, and the like. Conversely, many people who have no formal leadership role are excellent leaders. In today’s fast changing world, we all need to be leaders.… Read the rest

Coaching Leadership

The Leader as a Coach

coach Much like a football team that is playing in the Super Bowl, having a game plan and the desire to win is important. Unfortunately, my Steelers will not have a chance to repeat this year. However, winning depends on execution. One of your primary roles as a leader is that of a coach. Coaches reinforce the results they believe people are capable of achieving.

One way to develop a winning team is to surround yourself with extraordinary people. Another is to surround yourself with ordinary people who through your leadership and coaching achieve extraordinary results. As Sam Walton once said “ … there’s absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary working people can do if they’re given the opportunity and the encouragement and the incentive to be their best.”… Read the rest

Changing Habits

Our Live of Habits

habits Every morning I have a routine to start my day. I get up, brush my teeth, floss, rinse with mouthwash, shower and put in my contact lens. If for some reason that routine is disturbed, I might find myself later in the day wondering why I can’t see well. Have you ever found yourself leaving home and going in the wrong direction in your car because you are not going to work that day, but to a different destination. These are two examples of the habits that develop over time into routines… Read the rest

Results in Leadership

Getting Leadership Results

In our previous article, Leadership, Back to Basics, the difference between the Characteristic Model of Leadership and the Results Based Model was explored. It was concluded that the Results Based Model provided any individual the best means of performing their leadership role, because it concentrated on the achievement of goals versus the difficult modification of an individual’s personality. The next question is that after this conclusion, how to motivate the team or followers to achieve those desired results.

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Keys to Success

The Great M’s of Success

success marketing Those who have studied successful leaders over the last 300 years or more have found certain traits successful leaders had in common that accounted to their achievements.

These success techniques not only helped them forward but also sustained them even in times of depression, recession, or other personal disasters.

The Great M’s of Success in business and life are Mentoring, Masterminding, Marketing, and Motivation.

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Leadership Power

Authority vs. Power

Successful leaders are individuals with high levels of personal power. Understanding the difference between personal power and granted authority is a significant distinction. Many people have the tendency to use the words authority and power interchangeably; however, these terms refer to two very different aspects of leadership.

Authority is the right granted from a person or organization to another to represent or to act in a specified way. For example, a CEO of a company is given the authority by the Board of Directors to run the company. In turn, the CEO places managers in positions of authority over the various divisions, business units, or departments of the organization.… Read the rest

Leadership. Why and How

Leadership, Back to Basics

It is often the case that a Board of Directors, whether it is for a Fortune 500 company or a local non-profit, has to recruit and evaluate candidates for the position of CEO or President. When asked what they are looking for during this selection process, the most common answer is leadership. But why do they look for a candidate with leadership skills and how do they determine if that candidate will be an effective leader. Most importantly, they are looking for a person who can accomplish tasks and achieve results. Let’s consider that way first and then two models for determining an individual’s leadership ability.… Read the rest

Building Trust

How Leaders Create Trust

trust Surveys of employees often ask what is the one attribute they look for in an effective leader. Trust always near the top of the list. Whether you are a manager, supervisor, salesman or team lead it is important to be trusted by those you deal with on a regular basis. Once that trust is lost, it is difficult to impossible to regained.Here are some suggestions on building and maintaining trust.… Read the rest

Your Next Conference

How to Get the Most out of Your Next Conference

Success in your career depends upon how well you manage your professional development. A prime source of this development comes from being a member of a professional association that relates to your career. As a member, you can attend conferences where you advance your skills and meet people who can help you.

Some people, however, treat conferences as a paid vacation. They party, they skip sessions, and they return home with little more than a stack of receipts. That costs them (or their business) money and contributes nothing to professional growth.

Here’s how to get the most out of your next conference.… Read the rest

Possible Workshops

Pep Up Your Next Meeting with a Workshop

workshop

What goals do you have for your next conference or business meeting? Why go through the time and expense of bring a group of employees together? Why do association members want to spend their time and money coming to your annual meeting? It just can’t be because we always do it.

Here are some possible goals you should consider:

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Customer Loyalty

Developing a Customer Loyalty Plan

RLS Focused Salutation has done a number of workshops for companies, non-profits and associations. One of those workshops is based on a process we use to develop loyal customers, donors or members. The link below will take you to a short YouTube video which provides the basics for one of those workshops.

http://youtu.be/AQD8nHp_0bc?hd=1

… Read the rest

Use of Time Video

Uncluttering Your Use of Time

The video below show the content of a one-hour workshop to be used for business or organizational meetings. The video is 15 minutes in length and indicates some of the subjects covered in the workshop. Our workshop are not lecture but are facilitated sessions where the participants don’t just sit and listen but become actively involved. Consider for comany meetings, amnnual associatioon meetings and lunchand learn sessions. Contact us for more information.

bob@plangoals.com

Click on the link below

Uncluttering Your Use of Time

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Better Use of Time

Decluttering Your Use of Time

goals Nine out of ten managers and leaders tell us that they wish they could make better use of their time. They look for programs in what is called Time Management. We have found that what is really needed is not a management program, but an overall strategy in determining the goals to be achieved and how they can be integrated into our daily workday habit… Read the rest

Rewards vs Recognition

Rewards vs Recognition as an Employee Motivator

As a business or organizational leader, we often need to consider ways to motivate people. One business owner was lamenting about the lack of motivation in his sales staff and remarked that if they were all on straight commission there would be a much greater level of performance. Let’s consider two of the most common approaches to motivation; rewards and recognition.

Rewards

Webster defines rewards as, the giving of either money or another kind of payment for something good which has been done. Reward practices we have seen include piecework incentives, sales commissions, and prizes for performance. Piecework was very common in the manufacturing of goods where an employee was paid by the number of products they produced.… Read the rest

Recognition Awards

Employee Recognition Awards Create Progress

awards In difficult situations, when companies are in crisis and can only be saved by major effort, group morale often rises to far higher levels than before. Individual objections and objectives are bypassed in the collective drive to do what must be done. This is where recognition awards take importance. High group morale can enrich individual motivation and performance remarkably! These are two types of awards: planned and unplanned.

Planned Awards:

1. Recognition Awards

On its basic concept, recognition awards are effective ways of increasing and boosting people’s morale. It encourages them to be accepting of and have a desire for change at all times. The change they will make is not entirely for the advantage of the company, but to their own personal achievement as well.… Read the rest

Best Practices in Performance Management

Recognition as Part of Performance Management

Performance Management is a system developed out of the best practice of top performing organizations to provide managers with a structured approach to the key retention criteria.Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager:

pays attention to their work
provides them with a job to match their skills, knowledge and experience gives them opportunities to grow and develop
judges their performance objectively

Most Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.

Appraisals

Traditionally, the annual appraisal is the only meeting during the year when an average or better worker will meet his or her boss to discuss performance. People with poor performance can and do have a regular audience with their manager; sometimes on a weekly basis.… Read the rest

Avoiding Employee Failure

The Downward Spiral of Employee Performance

As a manager or organizational leader, you must be constantly aware of the environment you create. The environment can prove to be one where people perform well or one where people feel unappreciated and destined for failure. In a March 1998 article in Harvard Business Review, The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome, Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux discuss this exact situation.

Have you ever experienced a situation in an organization where, although you have been appointed to a responsible position, you don’t seem to be part of the in-crowd. Meetings are held without extending you an invitation. Your superior by-passes you, talking directly with your subordinates when requiring information or making decisions. You inclusion in social functions is often an afterthought.… Read the rest

Employee Absence

Steps to Stop Absence and Make People Happy At Work

absence If you’re an employer or manager, then work place absence is costing you money, inconvenience, and upsetting your customers. So we all know, not all days taken off work are due to genuine sickness. Many employees “take a sickie” because their morale is low and they just don’t like or can’t do their work.

The challenge for employers and managers is to make people happier at work. If people are happy at work, they are less likely to take a day off every time they wake up with a stuffy nose.

Some bosses think that paying more money, improving job security, or working conditions is the answer. It isn’t and it’s also something that can be very hard to achieve.… Read the rest