My favorite analogy I lead by and coach to others is “people will not always remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel”. In every personal and professional interaction, I have I ALWAYS try to focus on this, and, I can execute on this 95% of the time. The other 5%, well….I’m working on that.

By living by this approach, I have had many successes. First, you must have empathy to do this. Walk a mile in someone shoes, 2^nd thing I have learned to do, is read people very quickly. And when I say read people I’m not talking about I’m a psychic medium and can hear your passed-on relatives (even though that would be pretty cool) I have learned to identify what is important to that person or that group within 2-5 minutes and put my passion towards that. (book recommendation here, How to Instantly connect with anyone by Leil Lowndes – https://amzn.to/2CMXysJ)

About six months ago I was in a large joint operating committee, also known to us as a JOC, with a facility group here in Utah, and I was going over the items on the agenda and starting to speak about them. I could instantly tell they where not engaged, or “feeling” what I was saying, it felt like I was the principal and they had been called to my office for getting in trouble. So, I changed my course in that meeting, since I know they would have left that meeting not “feeling” the way I wanted them to, which was a valued partner to my organization.

What I did to fix it and have them feel me? Instead of focusing on their metrics that where not hitting our targets I focused on the ones that where. I also stated I wanted to help their local teams understand the “whys” to our metrics, and would do what I call a “road show” (this term is from shows we would put on in the Mormon Churches around the valley as a kid, google it) which would help the front line team in each facility be more engaged and understand the impact that we are trying to make in Utah’s health care!

And it worked! After about the 3^rd meeting, with 3 more to go the Vice President came to me and told me what a difference it was making, they where all actually “feeling” what I was saying. Ahhhhh little bread crumbs of success.

March 2017, coach up or coach out. Sometimes you just have walkers and riders on your bus (don’t laugh, this is a real thing, Ron Clark, Move Your Bus – https://amzn.to/2CnEXlW ) and they are not propelling your bus forward at all. I took over a team of nurses that reviewed hospital admissions for appropriate status (I know, a lot of big words in medical jargon, but follow me) their job was to review the clinical records and determine if they met inpatient or observation status and forward appropriate cases to the medical directors for review. Now mind you, the easy path is inpatient review, takes 30 minutes to complete and move to the next case, but, by doing this on inappropriate cases you are not being good stewards of the all mighty Medicare dollars we all work hard to contribute to (in other words it costs a LOT more money).

I came in, I watched and observed how each nurse did their reviews, I worked with this team to come up with a standardized process they would all use, and, I set CLEAR expectations. This is where I learned 2 valuable lessons, first, not everyone will like you no matter how hard you try, don’t take it personal, its them, not you, two, sometimes people are not willing to make needed changes to help a company succeed. This is where I learned the very valuable “coach out” lesson. by doing that I could make room for the right runners on the bus to MOVE it forward to success.

But wait, this sounds like a success not a part of my current epic failure? Right, it was a success, and failures are always lined with them, but, this was where I needed to “let it go” (yes, I’m singing the frozen song in my head right now) and turn it completely over to the manager to run with…..but, I didn’t….May, 2017……