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Coaching: An effective way to motivate your staff

Healthcare Training Weekly, August 21, 2000

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Encouragement, recognition, and reward are three tools you can use when coaching your staff to motivate them to perform at higher levels.

According to Lou Ann Brubaker, the founder and president of Brubaker Professional Development Seminars, a Laurel, MD-based consulting company, "In exceptional coaching, everything you do should be designed to set your people up for success."

Brubaker has five beliefs about the philosophy of coaching:

"The way you communicate with people is to have an effect," Brubaker said. "There are only two reasons to give feedback-to praise or to correct. How do you provide people with that feedback? If you say to somebody, 'You're doing a good job,' what does that mean? If you say, 'When you pass a resident, always take a brief moment to smile, ask how they're doing today, wait for an appropriate answer, and act on it in a certain way,' that's when communication works for you.

"It's important managers understand that what they think may be appropriate communication with the staff may not be if it doesn't reinforce something I'd like them to do consistently or correct some behavior on their part," Brubaker continued. "People want to do a good job."

Brubaker said a good coach ensures that staff members know what is expected of them.

"When was the last time you reassessed your orientation of new employees?" Brubaker asked. "When was the last time you correlated job descriptions to what people are actually doing every day? Exceptional coaches don't feel the need to micromanage. Don't base your rules on a couple of bad apples. Take corrective action when necessary-your best employees will thank you."

It's often a communication breakdown that keeps staff members from doing a good job. "People don't know the job they're expected to do and they don't feel fairly recognized in their attempt to do the job, but no one's articulated the job they're supposed to be doing," Brubaker said. "If I tell someone to clean the floor, but don't show them how to mix the chemicals, I end up with a damaged floor and an employee who doesn't want to work for me. Whose fault is that?"

Brubaker said most employees typically have a better understanding of their job than their supervisor does.

"I believe the person who does the job knows it better than the people he's doing it for," she said. "What I'm fascinated by is in this industry, these are people seldom consulted. When was the last time the director of an ALF went to a frontline caregiver and asked, 'How do you think we should reduce costs?' The wakeup call will be when the industry starts being regulated. These are the people who will kill or maintain compliance. They better be consulted."

Mentoring, however, is not something favored by Brubaker. "If I'm a new employee and I don't bond with my mentor, what happens?" she said. "They're isolated. Instead, if I have 10 existing staff helping a new employee assimilate, I give my new employee 10 people to bond with. Instead of a person bonding with one employee, there's an opportunity to assimilate over a faster period of time."

"People should be aware of the fact a reward is in the mind of the recipient," Brubaker said. "People should be motivated by the rewards they receive. A reward to me might not be a reward to you."

Brubaker told the story of how she once tried to give an employee a raise. "He didn't want it," she said. "He told me he didn't need the money and that it didn't mean a lot to him because his children were grown and his mortgage was paid. I said to him, "What can I do for you?" He said, "I'd like [a coworker's] cubicle. It had a window." I gave it to him and the money. It was a wakeup call to me."

Administrators should become familiar with this question posed by Brubaker: "Do you know what is most important to the people who work for you? It might not be the things you think."

Brubaker cited a 1996 Gallup Poll of entry-level staff members from all types of businesses that found 81% of respondents said good health benefits were their chief motivating factor. Job security was important to 78% of respondents, regular hours were motivating to 58%, but money ranked 14^{th on the list.}

"People aren't leaving a job for 50 cents an hour more," Brubaker said. "They weren't the right person initially, but you hired them because you needed to fill a spot. You set them up for failure instead. It may make you feel better in an exit interview if they tell you they're getting $.50 an hour more at another job, but that's not why they're leaving. It's because the supervisor yelled at them in the hall in front of their peers or you didn't tell them how to do their job right. People want to feel successful."

Brubaker said administrators could most effectively coach and motivate their staff by being the example of excellence themselves.

"You have to be the employee you want," Brubaker said. "There are too many supervisors with chinks in the armor, who stress punctuality and then aren't punctual themselves. You tell employees they're supposed to get their work done in a timely manner and then you miss the one important deadline an employee has each year-a performance review."

"You've got to be the example and I see supervisors fall down on getting the review done in time," Brubaker continued. "You can't hold people accountable unless you hold yourself accountable."

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