Coaching Pediatric Practice Staff on Problem-Solving

As a Private Practice Owner, one way you can engage your staff in helping you run a successful practice is by getting them involved in solving the problems of the practice. The best structure that invites this engagement, in my experience, is establishing one-on-one meetings that include them in the problem-solving process. I’m going to share the way I’ve learned to communicate with staff in these one-on-one meetings that gets the best results. In fact, this is also how you train or mentor your staff into becoming better problem-solvers.

This works whether you are talking with your best employee or your most challenging employee.

Engage Staff by Interviewing Them on Their Successes

When I start these meetings, I want to first find out what’s going really well on this person’s job. I’ll talk about the goals they’ve been accomplishing. It might go like this:

“Tell me about your week since we’ve last spoken. What’s going well? What else? What else? Tell me more.” After you ask a question, you want to be a great listener. My pauses after asking a question will probably average ten seconds. The more you pause, the more they’ll say.

“Oh, come on, you got one more. One more success. Or share something someone else had as a success. I love to hear it. Oh, awesome.” These one-on-one meetings are not just to talk about problems. Celebrate successes. Get excited with them.

Encourage Staff Involvement by Learning About Their Challenges

Once you’re done with that subject, then you tell them, “Now tell me about your greatest challenges this week.” They’re going to get used to this pattern quickly, so hopefully they’re going to come with some ideas on how to solve problems they have encountered recently. If they don’t bring along solutions, instruct them that the pattern of the meeting is reviewing problems and brainstorming solutions.

You might say, “I want you to come ready to share because I love to hear it. I like to hear the good and the bad. I want to celebrate the good with you and we’re going to problem-solve together how to address the bad. Would that be okay?”

Get their permission and elicit their agreement. For example, you might say, “Tell me about the challenges you’ve had this week. What else? That’s rough. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Tell me what else. Yeah, tell me more. Okay, give me one more.”

 Invite Staff to Offer Solutions to Practice Problems

At that point, you would change gears and say, “So we have four things here that I really want to break down and work out with you. Would that be okay if we set some goals around this? If we had some communication and came up with solutions together, would that be okay?” Get their agreement.

Then take up problem number one. “How do you think we should solve it?”

They might reply, “I don’t know.” You come back with, “Okay. What ideas do you have? Anything?” Just brainstorm.

Inspire Staff to Take an Active Role in Problem-Solving

By communicating in this way, you’re trying to try to pull solutions out of them. You’re coaching them along, inspiring them and empowering them to come up with the solutions on their own versus you solving the problems.

If you solve their problems, guess what’s going to happen? They’ll come back to you to solve the next problem. You’ve got to coach them up to start solving their own problems. Mentor them by asking them questions and leading them to the answer.

Then the next time a problem comes up, they hear you on their shoulder going, “What do you think we should do about it?”

Return Control and Independence to Your Employees

People love to feel in control over their situations. Therefore, give your teammates back their control. Quit taking it from them. Quit solving all their problems. You think you’re helping but you’re not. You took away their control, their power, their independence, their ability to problem-solve.

Coach them up to be able to solve problems on their own and that will be the real win for each employee. It’s going to be a win for you too.

Coach Staff to Implement Solutions Without Your Help

Now you’re going to coach them on implementing the solutions they came up with. First, get their agreement on the solution. That might go like this: “So you think we should try this solution? Fantastic. Tell me how you’re going to do it. And when you’re going to have that solution completed.” Write that target date down. Let them tell you about the solution and let them set the deadlines.

You want to end the meeting by summarizing the accomplishments of the discussion. For example, you might say, “Let’s summarize here what our takeaways are. Okay, so here are the four challenges that you presented. Are there any more we should be talking about today? Did something come to mind when we were talking? Get ’em down there on the list. And then here’s notes about what solutions will be implemented by when.”

Most of this part of the meeting should consist of the teammate talking about the solutions they will implement.

Benefits of Staff Problem-Solving

Once you show them they can solve their own problems, they’re going to come back to you with fewer and fewer problems. That’s because all you’re going to do is help them to solve problems. They’ll learn that you’re not going to take on the work.

What if a policy needs to be written to solve a problem? I would also ask them to try their hand at writing the policy. It’s easy enough if you say, “Could you take a stab at this and outline how you’d like to see that policy go?”

Let Your Staff Share in Management of Your Practice

The key is this: Don’t let people come and keep dumping work on you. They can share in the work. As they do this, the policies of the practice will more greatly reflect their wants and needs. That will bring about better retention.

For you, this practice of training staff to solve their own problems will result in less exhaustion.

Empower Your Staff and Let Them Know They are Listened To

At the end of the meeting, you should ask them these questions: “Do you feel like I have heard you today? Have I given you the support that you want and need? Do you feel empowered and inspired with a plan and control so that you can handle this next situation?”

Because that’s my role. I don’t want to do the work for them. I want to teach them to do it for themselves.”

If your employee is a parent, pull that mom heartstring or dad heartstring and say, “How powerful would it be for you to help your children solve all their own problems? They’ll have no complaints in their life because all they’re going to do is solve their own problems.”  They’ll get the point.

Get the Help You Need Now to Take Charge of Your Employees

If running a meeting like this feels too challenging for you, it just means that you need more training and support. You can get the help you need right now from our Lemonade Library. Get logged in and look for Lemonades on building strong communication and management skills. You can soon be having more effective one-on-one or group meetings with your staff!

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.