Last week, we started understanding how purpose and meaning can empower and inspire your people and what that can look like for your practice as a business. But let’s get specific this week and bring this discussion on leadership style directly to our field.
In optometry, we have an easy purpose—sight. My oldest son, an electrical engineer who designs motherboards, once told me it was easy to be passionate about my career because we deal with a human sense that most of us deem one of the most important.
Over the years, I’ve heard stories from colleagues about what they’ve done to trust and inspire their teams. One optometrist closed his office to bring everyone to an optical lab to learn about the industry. A colleague wrote an article about lessons learned from a 5-star hotel stay. What if we brought our staff to a 5-star hotel to experience exceptional customer service firsthand? Several times, I’ve heard of colleagues closing their offices for retreat days and involving their team in “how to make us better” sessions. My practice has closed for several days at a time to take our entire team to national meetings. You could emulate the Ritz-Carlton and allow all employees the opportunity to “make it right” for a patient. And, at the very least, we could stop using the word “manager.” We manage things. We lead people.
Next week, we’ll wrap up the month’s discussion with some final tips. If you need a refresher in the meantime, you can see my previous articles in this series below:
Rethink Your Leadership Style: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
