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This is the Grow Your Clinic podcast from Clinic Mastery. We help progressive health professionals to lead inspired teams, transform client experiences, and build clinics for good. Now, it's time to grow your clinic.
JACK: And here we go! Welcome back to the Grow Your Clinic Podcast. Jack O'Brien, your host, as always, got Ben Lynch with me, my co-host. Ben, welcome to the podcast. How are you?
BEN: Welcome. Hello, good to see you.. I'm doing good. How are you?
JACK: Super well, as the same goes. Before we kick off, we usually talk coffee, but I'm curious, at the time of recording, it's after lunch and I know you start your day with a nice clean desk but by the end of the day, it's chaos. Now for those watching on video, on YouTube, I'm going to ask Ben to show us and he's not prepped for this. Something interesting on his desk.
BEN: Oh, I’m definitely not!
JACK: So for me, I'm... this is my current-pre workout of choice for those listening to the audio, it's No-Doz Plus, it's a breakfast of champions, as I would say it gets me buzzed and ready for a workout in the morning and that lives on my desk here. Ben, what about you? What have you got for us? Something interesting?
BEN: I'm going to flip my camera here, and I'm gonna actually show you what's on my desk. oh, a couple of post-it notes over here and my iPad as well.
JACK: Very clean.
BEN: I know, I picked the time to do it.
JACK: Folks, if you're listening to this podcast, you're welcome to zip over to our YouTube channel. You can search ‘Clinic Mastery,’ or ‘Grow Your Clinic’ and you will find it on the YouTubes. But last, to indulge your ears and eardrums for the next five or 10 minutes. Let's talk team, Ben, as we unpack the Grow Your Clinic book that's coming at the end of 2021. There's seven degrees covered in the book, today we're talking about the degree team, and specifically nurturing your team. What's the genesis of this idea when it comes to the book?
BEN: Good context and perhaps a reference for everyone, for each of the 7 Degrees, we've captured a Venn diagram for each one of those seven degrees so that you'd kind of see the territory, you know, the landscape of each of those degrees. And so this is one section of a three part Venn diagram, which is nurture. And in all of that, Jack, I forgot the question, but I thought it was an important context.
JACK: It is an important context! So when it comes to the team degree, we're talking about attracting training and mentoring and then nurture. So we talk about clinics like we are so passionate about helping clinics to lead inspired teams. And what we find, Ben, is that clinic owners often come to us right, look and say they need more team members, or they need more clients as another example and sometimes nurturing the team members that you've got is one of the key components that gets overlooked. So let's unpack a little bit of what we cover in the book when it comes to nurturing your team members. What are some of the things that are involved?
BEN: There are three areas that we look at when it comes to nurturing. Number one is connection with the individual that is on your team or individuals...
JACK: You mean they’re not just service providers.
BEN: No. We want to create this personalized connection.
JACK: Humans!
BEN: I always love.. You and I talk often about Pat Lencioni’s work.
JACK: Yes.
BEN: He's done some great stuff around team, in particular, the book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team and at the base layer of that pyramid that he uses, he talks about vulnerability, which is really a reflection of connection that without that you can't do all the fancy stuff or the important stuff higher up like accountability, robust discussions, radical candor - Kim Scott. So we start ‘nurture’ with ‘connection’ — that is super important to one-to-one. As an example, many of the same community will be familiar with the terminology of ‘a desire statement.’
JACK: For the uninitiated, what is a ‘desire statement?’
BEN: We're looking at different areas of a team member’s life, you can do this for yourself as a clinic owner, from finance to relationships, social life, their career, etc. And what we're helping them do is articulate what that looks like for them in the future, what is their desire, and if they can create some language, articulate it in a statement form in each of those areas as specific as possible. That way we can actually help them hold their hand, keep them accountable, connect them to our network, do whatever it takes to help them achieve their goals.
JACK: So in the book, we'll see step through how a clinic owner could lead a team member towards their desired statement, right?
BEN: Correct. Yep, we'll give the frameworks and the guides to come up with the desired statement, which is really meaningful growth for that individual. which if we're going to nurture anyone, I think it needs to be meaningful for them. So find out what is meaningful for them, and then be able to have a collaboration around constructing a pathway that also benefits the clients and the client community that you have and the clinic as well, because it's going to be sustainable for all parties, as Shane Davis would say, Win-Win-Win for all those parties.
JACK: So you mentioned ‘pathways.’ What on earth ‘pathways?’
BEN: That is correct, I did say there were three sections, one is connection. The second is rewards. And the third is pathways. Pathways are an opportunity for someone to progress in their career in a clinic beyond just seeing and serving clients throughout their day and their week. We're looking for new and better ways for them to be able to do it, more meaningful ways for them to be able to do it. Some examples — and the wonderful thing is — I'll share some examples and I'd love to know from your perspective, Jack. This is a great exercise to actually get team members to think about what pathways could they see themselves doing? There are variations and variations here that we won't cover, but is a worthwhile exercise in asking your team, ‘where would they like to see themselves?’ So a couple that we have, number one is Clinical Excellence. So looking at really owning the CPD or the study profile within your clinic. Number two is lifestyle balance, whether that's travel or family, and the flexibility that that brings. Number one is leadership management. If you were mentoring or operations, perhaps to take on a portfolio that is marketing or finance, something like that — so leadership that is inherent. Ownership, so either they buy-in or startup, something with you. And side hustle, something that's complimentary or supportive, that they do outside of their therapy world, a.k.a., they're into photography and we find a really great way, a meaningful way, for them to incorporate that skill set into our clinic as well or any other version of a side hustle they have that we could find a way to support them in a way that also is beneficial to us as a clinic. What have you found, JOB, as some of the pathways that you've used or seen use by clinics?
JACK: I see pathways are so key, right? Because they give us a vision of where we're going. There are essentially templates or scaffolds or pathways, funnily enough, that we can offer our team members and say, “Hey, at our practice at our clinic, there are three or four loose directions that you could head and of course, we can run through your filter,” the economism riverbanks or scaffolds that team members can go down it really opens their eyes to more than just being a skilled pair of thumbs or facilitator of therapy. But they're going on a career journey. Absolutely the ones you mentioned, probably if I was to add to echo distinction on one of those would be around a financial pathway. Money is a fascinating topic in general, but especially when it comes to health professionals. And so clinics that can offer a financial pathway for their practitioners are often really inspiring and exciting for those practitioners. Yes, there's career and salaried financial pathways, but how can we help them with personal budgeting? Often, it's not an income problem that needs to be solved. It's an expense problem that needs to be solved, especially for younger people as a rule. How can we help them with budgeting? Or perhaps thinking about maybe some more complex investment instruments, you know, property investing, maybe its shares and ETFs or crypto or how can we increase their earning capabilities around upskilling and in charging more or finding different funding vehicles? So the financial excellence pathway, I find, is a really interesting one. And it probably speaks to the final third component of nurturing our team around rewards. So when we mentioned ‘rewards,’ what are we specifically referring to?
BEN: I think Shane Davis really summarizes super well. Shane being a business partner and leader of many clinics, shoe stores, and all sorts, he's a wonderful mentor and, you know, Shane is often positioned it as, really, you got to be rewarded as a reflection of the value that you bring to yourself, to your clients, to your teammates, and to the clinic overall. And so I think that's wonderful positioning for people in that rewards need to be sustainable for all of those parties. And that really speaks to our holistic contributor, someone that can contribute to their clients and the team and the clinic in themselves in a meaningful and sustainable way. Essentially, we're looking at: by the value that you create for all of those parties, and in particular, the clients, then we have the opportunity to look at increasing the value that we extend to you through various commission reward bonus structures, however you want to turn that phrase and structure it. I think that's important, that those that are high performers also are higher earners.
JACK: Yeah, there's infinite permutations of how rewards can play out. But I think the key, at least how we see it for progressive clinic owners, is meaningful rewards that are sustainable for everyone involved, that does bring incredible value to the clients and that is also a win-win and sustainable for both the practitioner and the practice. You know, I was mentoring a clinic owner this morning in one of our coaching sessions, and we were talking around, you know, a low salary is a win for the clinic, because you're really profitable, but it's a loss for the practitioner. And on the other end of the spectrum, a really high salary or an unsustainable reward structure, or, you know, fewer percentage that's well over 50%, is wonderful for the practitioner but it means the clinic will eventually probably go broke. And so it's not a win-win. We need to find sustainable win-win-win reward structures, so that we can best nurture our team ongoing, sustainably. Is that fair?
BEN: Yep, I love it. And so many times we get asked what, you know, what is ‘the’ structure? And while we've got maybe principles behind various structures, I don't think there's one structure that rules them all. There are different principles behind them and that's where we often speak to meaningful pathways. First, get clear on what is meaningful to that human being on the team, then we can construct something that is sustainable as well.
JACK: Look, Ben, I don't like playing favorites but if I had to choose a favorite of the 7 Degrees, the team one who would be up there.
So listeners, you should be really excited and looking forward to the Grow Your Clinic book, where we will unpack the team degree and specifically how you can nurture your team. You can put your emphasis and focus on those high performance and those high value team members in your clinic. But Ben, we can't give it all away, the book is coming soon, but hopefully this whet the appetite of the listeners, hey?
BEN: I hope so.
JACK: Folks, thank you for joining us for this episode. We will land it there. You can head over to clinicmastery.com/podcast for all the usual suspects and that is specifically, the Assess Your Clinic Scorecard and you can get in touch. If you need help to Grow Your Clinic, we are here to help make that happen and help you and lead inspired teams. Get in touch over cliinicmastery.com.
Ben Lynch, thank you for joining us for another episode.
BEN: Thank you. It’s been a joy.
JACK: Thanks, folks. Can't wait to bring you another episode of the Grow Your Clinic Podcast again really soon. Bye for now.
Thanks for tuning in to the Grow Your Clinic podcast. To find out more about past episodes or how we can help you, head to www.clinicmastery.com/podcast and please remember to rate and review us on your podcast player of choice. See you on the next episode!
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