Leadership Focus on Relationships

How good are you with relating to the people you lead?

An odd question. But not really if you are a connected leader. And a good one should know right away how well they relate to the people they lead. In your day to day business, working with the people you lead should be an integral part of your daily work habit.

A recent article in a leading nursing magazine stated managing and retaining nursing talent is one of the top 5 issues nurse leader’s face today. Nurses don’t feel valued, don’t feel their organization appreciates them, and some of the other issues such as workload, pay, and promotion all play into them staying or leaving. Nurse leaders also have challenges of a demanding work schedules, balancing many demands for few resources, keeping the organization mission moving forward while caring for the workforce. Neither is a peach of a job sometimes.

The role of leader, if you’ve read several of my past posts, will know I will say leadership is action. And it is a tough job and not for wimps or the faint of heart. It means your work life is not about you as it is the people that work for you. Relating to your employees is critical to the engagement your workforce is desires in today’s environment.

For some of us more seasoned leaders, when we were new, our bosses did not engage with us. What was modeled was much more autocratic leadership. A typical transactional model where there is a rewards and punishment system. I do a good job as a worker or meet the expectations of my boss and I receive a reward. That could be just my paycheck. Sometimes it might be praise or an organizational award.

If I didn’t meet the requirements, then it was punishment. It could be a loss of wages, reprimands, or termination. Smart workers soon learn how to navigate the system quickly if they wish to remain, decrease their stress, or they learn how far they can push the limits and still survive.

I might or might not have been a part of the latter part of that sentence in my early days.

And I’ll say, I probably did learn how to test the limits for reasons I could not really articulate at that time. When I started working as a nurse, I really wanted to be a part of a team. I wanted to work in a professional environment, to be valued for what I gave to my unit, organization, and patients, and I wanted to feel like I was respected and that the organization had as much loyalty to me as I did to the organization.

Does that sound any different from the nurses entering our workforce today or your nurses currently working for you? Yes, there are obviously many different agendas, but the evidence in the literature shows that what nurses want in their leaders is for them to respect them, to provide them honest feedback, to be loyal and to provide resources so they can provide the highest level of care, and they want to know that their leaders care for them. When I started, I wasn’t aware enough of myself to say that I wanted my leaders to care for me.

And why should caring leaders be a foreign concept or perceived as a less than professional thought to ask your leaders care for you? You spend about one third of your life at work if you are working full time. With that much time, I believe now I know that having my leaders care about me was what I also wanted as a new nurse. I want to believe they had my best interest in their mind and that if at all possible, they would help me achieve my goals.

So how well do you relate to your workers?

Retaining a nurse is vital to an organization’s success. The cost of turnover is a wasted resource in a resource-constrained environment. And when you cannot retain nurses, you create a culture which is tough to overcome for an organization. Evidence in the literature also shows organizations with higher retention rates and more satisfied nurses have higher quality of care to their patients.

Your workers want to know you as well. It is not a secret people like to work with and for people they like. When you build a relationship with your workers, you start to build rapport and that enables them to trust you, adds credibility, and creates the reputation that when things get tough, you have their best interest in mind. It does not mean they always get what they want. But if you have built up the capital of trust and respect, it can survive the times when they do not get what they think they want or deserve.

Here are 4 easy actions to help those of us who have avoided building a relationship with our followers because we believed it would undermine our authority as the leader. Let me just say, if you feel that way, you already don’t have the authority to be there leader.

1. Start simple: Spend some time every day NOT talking about work. Start with small chit chat about their interests, hobbies, family, recent vacation, or future school plans. The goal is not to do it all at once or the same topic. Learn about them like you did in kindergarten. And then remember and follow back at some point about their interests. Sometimes for different personalities, this type of interaction can be uncomfortable. The good news is, the more you practice the easier it becomes.
2. It’s about the relationship, not the obligation: I had a boss who was HORRIBLE at spending time getting to know people. And he tried to do the “small talk, get to know you thing” and it was a painful to watch as it was to be in the conversation. One day I asked what he was doing because I have seen laboring mothers in less pain then it was to watch him. He said, I’m not very good at this, I don’t believe in it, but I know I should. So it’s and obligation I feel I have to have to be a better leader. Well he got some of that right, but not the most important part. If you start small and observe, you will see where your staff really start to relate and become more engaged with you. It is not an obligation, it is a vital part of leadership. It has to become real to you and important for you to see the results of your efforts. You need to want to do it for the right reasons if you are going to improve and are able to start the improve the relationships with your workers.
3. Remember professional boundaries: As a word of caution, still remain a professional. Be careful your conversations don’t stray into territories you don’t want to be. Remember the days as a “worker” and you’d talk about other nurses, other leaders, or organization issues? Well as the leader, you need to stay above the discussion. It is good to keep an open and transparent attitude with them and to keep your followers informed. But as a leader you are privy to information that may not be ready for dissemination or is pre-decisional. And to entertain the discussion like you “used to” would be nice and feel comfortable, but you can’t. When they go in those direction, it’s time to gracefully bow out of the conversation and move on.
4. Celebrate your wins: As you start to get to know your staff, celebrate yourself. And them. Show them how you much you appreciate them working to get to know you as you get to know them. And don’t forget celebrating means you can actually do something outside of work as the group. Those fun excursions, picnics, meals, or conferences create a whole new level of investing in a relationship you can’t get any other time. Priceless.

Building relationships with your followers is a vital component of learning how to relate to your workers. Invest in them. They in turn will invest in you, the unit and the organization. In the end, the winner is your team and your patients. The outcomes of a unit where there is unity is higher productivity, higher outcomes, and more effective actions. It’s time to start building those relationships leader!

Leading with you!

Dean

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