What Type of Information to Share in a Pediatric Practice Team Meeting

In every team meeting, the kind of information you share and the way you share it makes a big difference in how well your staff will respond to that news. As much as possible, share only positive information. Focus on celebrating wins and recognizing your team’s accomplishments. 

Let’s say a staff member is doing a great number of visits or billable hours or having a great percent of arrivals—recognize and celebrate that! The idea is that you want to recognize and celebrate what you want more of. Talk about the staff who are doing a great job and you encourage more staff to follow suit. 

Why Emphasize the Positive in Staff Meetings

In running a practice, a lot of owners just leave the positive staff alone and spend the most of their time on people who are causing problems or complaining the most. Be careful to spend the majority of your time on those who are doing great. Recognize, celebrate, and promote their accomplishments. When you share information like this, you’re developing the right culture in your practice. You’re saying to your staff, “This is who we are. We’re striving for this positivity and wins.” Or, “Let’s celebrate this new speech therapist who just started with us!”

Flood your team meetings with good news. You can celebrate birthdays and weddings and babies. Celebrate wins and good news in your group meetings—that’s what they should be about. 

Announce Changes the Staff Will Welcome

In your meetings, you may need to release a new policy or an updated procedure. If you don’t think the update is going to cause any negative reaction, then go ahead and share it. Perhaps you’re making a change that they’re going to welcome. For example, you tell them, “We pay for six holidays a year. Now we’re going to pay for seven.” That news is probably going to be welcomed. Go ahead and announce that in a team meeting. 

You’re probably not going to get anyone saying, “No, no, no, I don’t want you to give me an extra day off.” It’s amazing how a few people can get upset about positive things, but hopefully it’s going to be welcome news with most of your team. Therefore, for updates to policy that you think are going to be welcomed or celebrated, go ahead and share them in a team meeting.

Share Good News on Progress and Goals with Your Staff 

Share any progress that you’re making, for example, progress toward the company’s goals. You can tell your team, “Now in 2025, here are our new goals. We want to grow here and we want to do better there.” Sharing company goals and progress toward goals will probably be welcome news to all so you can share that. 

You might be thinking about that one person who’s going to say, “Oh, sure, we have to increase our visits every year. They’re going to make us work harder.” The solution would be just to share goals in general terms. 

The other information that’s easy to share is holiday planning. Your staff can easily accept information on how you’re going to transition from school to summer, and from summer to school. You might need to discuss plans for weather events. Everybody is used to that. You can share that information in a group. 

Training Your Staff to Participate in Great Group Meetings

Training your staff so they contribute to great group meetings is an important part of your onboarding. Be sure to provide this instruction whenever you bring on a new staff member. Tell them, “Group meetings are for positive exchange of information. If you have a concern or a complaint or a disagreement with anything shared in a group meeting, the group meeting is not the place to bring that up. That is a company policy. That is our culture. We bring up disagreements, upsets, concerns in one-on-one meetings.” That should be a policy for the whole staff so make sure it’s trained in when onboarding. 

Dealing with Difficult Staff Members in a Group Setting

Suppose you’re in a group meeting and Sally raises her hand and starts to talk about problems. Here’s a script to help you in that situation: “Sally, thank you so much. You’re always the problem-solver, right? I love the problem-solving that Sally brings to our team. But we don’t have time for problem-solving in our group meetings. I’m going to have you get with your manager, Julie. You two will meet and discuss that because I want to make sure your voice is heard. But these discussions and concerns need to be brought up per policy and training in a one-on-one setting. Then you can bring those solutions back to the team later.” 

Group meetings are to announce solutions. They are not problem-solving sessions. Carefully train your staff on this policy before you ever have to deal with it in a meeting.

Find Plenty More Helpful Tips in Our Lemonade Library

In my 25 years in practice, I must have encountered every problem possible! I want you to have the advantage of my experience, which is why we built up a huge number of instructive videos in our Lemonade Library. Get registered and look for Lemonades that help you run your group meetings with ease. 

About Diane Crecelius

Diane Crecelius is a physical therapist and founder of a multi-million-dollar, multi-location practice with well over 3,000 visits per week and 200 staff! In the past several years, Diane has worked tirelessly to support Peds-A-Palooza™ Community & Conferences and the success of Private Practice Owners. Diane has presented at nearly every Peds-A-Palooza™ live and virtual conference since the first sold-out conference in 2018. Her extensive knowledge derives from her decades in practice and from being trained and consulted by Survival Strategies, Inc. She uses this training to help Private Practice Owners learn how to thrive and expand while keeping their stress low.