104 Physician Leadership - the magic ratio you need to maximize trust, engagement and performance on your teams

Speaker A: 00:00:00

In this episode, let's take a little deeper. Dive into the concept of trust, the cornerstone of any healthy workplace culture. Trust that someone has my back.

Trust that my contribution will be used to the best of our abilities. Trust that I can be open, truthful, honest and transparent and not be vulnerable in the workplace. Let's talk about the formula.

The five to one formula that lets you build trust with all of your direct reports and your boss. Check it out. Let's get started.

Speaker A: 00:00:33

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Stop Physician Burnout podcast, a physician leadership podcast where you will learn the skills so that we can join together and lead the charge to physician well being skills to earn the respect of your colleagues in the front line, skills to exercise true influence in the C suite and take back your job, your practice, your career and your life. All of these tools have been proven effective in my 40,000 doctor physician coaching and training practice.

And if I know one thing, I know you're super busy. So let's get started.

Speaker A: 00:01:09

When we talk about trust, it's important to have a metaphor in mind. And the one I like is your trust account.

It's a little bucket that exists between you and any individual in the organization that contains the amount of trust between the two of you. It can have a positive level where you trust what the person says and you trust that you can give your best around that person and it'll be accepted.

It can be negative. Your trust account is negative and you don't believe anything a particular person says and it can be neutral.

But the key is that trust is the best and most powerful foundation for your organizational culture.

And it is something as a leader, you can manage the levels of trust between you and each of your direct reports, you and the bosses of the chain of command that are important to your work, quality of life. How do you do that? Well, like a little bucket, like an account. It helps to be making deposits so that the account always has a positive balance.

How do you do that? Simply have a positive interaction with this person every once in a while. The more frequent the interactions, the higher the trust account.

As long as the interactions are friendly, supportive, positive, encouraging, maybe even saying thank you. This is how you build trust so that people participate on your teams willingly and openly.

This is how you build your leadership skill, your reputation. You can actually build a bubble of trust around you and all of your teams by the way you treat your people.

But that's not normally how things go because I've asked thousands of doctors in live settings to let me know what they think about this scenario. Let's see what you think.

Imagine it's a clinical day, and you're seeing patients, and your receptionist comes in between two patients and says, hey, your boss is out in the lobby and wants to see you between your next two patients. Just think about it. Is that a good thing? What do you think? What's the likelihood that this is a good thing?

He's coming to pat you on the back for something good.

Now, that's a bit of a trick question, because I've asked that to thousands of doctors, and I've only had maybe a handful of hands raised that that was a good scenario, because 99 times out of 100, the boss is there because you're in trouble, and the little voice in your head is saying, oh, crap, what did I do? Now? That is a low trust environment. There have been no positive interactions between you and that person to give you a positive trust balance.

So for you, the leadership lesson is this.

Have regular meetings with all of your direct reports and the bosses up the chain of command from you that are most responsible for your work, quality of life, and effectiveness. Now, what do I mean by a meeting?

It can be as simple as a cup of coffee in five minutes to check in to see how they're doing, to ask if you can help in any way, and to maintain that positive interaction between you and them so that when you need a contribution from them or you have to work overtime or have some special activity that you need them to comply with, you have a trust account and a trust balance to draw upon. This is a core skill of being a team leader, a department chair, a program director.

It's an important aspect of managing your boss, which are some lessons that we're going to get to in future episodes, and it all depends on regular touches. Now, is there a ratio for this? Yes, there actually is.

It comes from the relationship psychology industry and specifically from the Gottman G o t t m a n, Gottman Institute.

And their studies have shown that in relationships, whether it's at the workplace or at home, five to one is the ratio that you're looking for, meaning five positive interactions for every negative one. How do you build up the five? You have regular meetings, have regular meetings, brief meetings.

I would say once a month, certainly once a quarter with your boss, for sure. Because remember, at five to one, if you're having a meeting once a month, how long is it going to take to get you to five to one? About half a year.

So the more frequent your meetings, the more quickly you get to five to one and maintain that positive trust balance.

But what happens in healthcare is we get too busy, forget to schedule the meetings, forget to reschedule them when you get pulled away and can't make the originally scheduled meeting. This is a discipline that's so important to culture and healthcare that almost no leaders do well.

However, when you do, when you can build an envelope of people who trust you around you, on your teams, and up the chain of command, it can be magic for you and them drives your leadership effectiveness. Their performance and engagement and satisfaction lowers your turnover rates. Everything's better with a higher trust ratio.

And there's even another thing to think about. There's a book out there by Stephen Covey's song called the speed of Trust. Interesting. Mixed metaphor, right? But think about it.

Think about the teams that you've worked on in the past where the team rocked and rolled and got it done. What was the level of trust between those people?

Think about the teams in the past that just blew up under their own weight, didn't get anything accomplished. Think about the trust between those people. So just know.

Trust is a currency, a wavelength, an account that exists between you and all your direct reports, and you can manage the balance in that account, and it can give you what seems like a magic power of support and influence to your teams. That's it for today. Good luck in your leadership adventures and with your team, schedule those meetings and carry them out. Simple, positive meetings.

You know, food often helps too. Cup of coffee? Maybe a a donut? I like apple fritters, by the way.

Until I see you in the next podcast, keep breathing and have a great rest of your day.