When good intentions go wrong
A few weeks ago I was doing a talk with a group of healthcare leaders. I asked how many of them rounded on their employees. All hands went up.
Then I asked, “Who has rounded on employees in the last two days?” Nearly all hands went up again.
I thought, “Great. These leaders are doing an amazing job.”
Yet the skeptic in me couldn’t reconcile their poor engagement scores and high turnover with what I was hearing. In addition to that, I had done focus groups with numerous employees who claimed they never see their leaders.
So I dove deeper to learn more about how they did rounds, what questions they asked, and what results they were getting from the rounds.
When Rounding Isn’t Really Rounding
One nurse leader was very proud of her rounding approach and described it for us. “I don’t even take off my coat or drop off my bag,” she reported. “I walk right up to the nurses station and ask how it’s going.”
She went on to describe that what she heard every day was the same response. “Fine.”
And once she heard this magic four-letter word, she was free to go to her office.
Were things fine? Probably not given the turnover and quality ratings. In her mind, she was doing rounds. But actually she was doing a drive-by. Why? It was fast and people saw her so she felt that was enough.
Leveraging the Value of Real Rounding
Rounds are a powerful tool for connecting with people. It allows the leader to see operations, give kudos and help solve problems in real time. But rounds need to be more than a drive-by.
In our course, Be the Leader Nobody Wants to Leave – 8 Transformational Skill-Builders for Busy Leaders, we spend a full module on the art and science of visibility and presence with a focus on rounding.
Are you rounding or doing drive-bys? There’s still time to enroll in the July cohort of Be the Leader Nobody Wants to Leave. You’ll get personal coaching and can learn from your peers during the 8 week course. Learn more.
Tags: Employee Engagement, healthcare leaders, healthcare leadership, healthcare rounding, leader rounding, Rounding, rounding in healthcare
