Recently I was traveling to one of my locations in the southeast. I was sitting with a manager who had been working there for about a year listening to him lament the atmosphere at the location. “This manager gets it, this one doesn’t.” This department has a really good vibe, this one has work to do …” And on and on.
Although he felt the overall culture at the location was good, he was perplexed at the inconsistency. As he tried to hit me with more examples, I simply stopped him by saying, “You realize, you are the culture …” He was failing to appreciate one of the basic rules of the game: Culture always is a reflection of leadership.
As a key leader in that organization, he was tolerating the one manager who ‘doesn’t quite get it’ and putting the blame on others vs. looking in the mirror.
There is an old saying, ‘100% of the credit for 100% of the blame’. As a leader if you want to try and get credit for all the good things going on around you, you’d better be prepared to take the blame for the things not going so well. This is a key in both the areas of patient care and staff engagement. You can’t cherry pick the results and then make excuses for certain individuals, departments or areas of the business where things are not up to par. You and the rest of the leadership team need to constantly be soul searching and start by saying, “if it’s bad, it’s on us.”
All too often, healthcare leaders accept poor culture or approaches and come up with excuses on why. It is more productive to constantly look at what’s good and what bad, take ownership and adjust.
Next time you are assessing, if it is great – smile and be proud. If something is not where it needs to be, start by looking in the mirror and make the appropriate adjustments.
