Why Some Weeks Feel Easy and Others Don't

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Transcript

1:05

Hi folks. Welcome back. It's another episode of This Buyer for More with Aaron Podcast, free mentoring for you, the Aging Services Leader. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever had one of those weeks, one of those amazing, awesome motivating weeks where everything just clicks? Your team is just moving. I mean, like we're kicking butt and taking names. They're making decisions. You're not necessarily being asked how to do or why everything has to happen a certain way. You're not getting pulled into every little detail, every meeting, every conflict that may be going on in the community. And just for a second, you like think this is what leadership. Feels like this is what success looks and feels like. How did we get here? I want this all the time. Right? Have you ever had those weeks? Sometimes I feel like it's based on the moon, if you want my honest opinion, but we're gonna talk about real stuff, right? How did you get there? And then what happened the next week? Whenever we're back in the weeds and we have to solve everything and we're answering every question that's being thrown our way, and we're carrying that burden, that weight that we didn't have to carry the week before, and you start second guessing yourself that maybe that was just luck. Maybe there wasn't. Any skill involved in any of that at all? I wanna tell you something. It wasn't luck. Those good weeks aren't luck. Maybe it's moon magic sometimes, but it wasn't luck. It's something called flow. And we're gonna talk about flow today, not progressive insurance flow, although I think she's funny. We're gonna talk about real leadership flow when everything is clicking. Okay. Flow to me is what leadership feels like when the friction is gone. Let me repeat that again. Flow is what it feels like when the friction is gone. So are we overcomplicating the idea of flow? Let's dive into that, that rhythm. That flow, that, I mean, like we are just moving and grooving. It is not a personality type, like it's, it's not because you and one other person get along. Sure. That may have a role in it, but that's not necessarily why, flow has, is happening inside of your community. It's not just a high performing unicorn team, although those high performing unicorn teams know. They know and understand flow, and they find flow quicker, faster, and make it stronger, than most teams. And nor is it just something that's reserved for great culture. Okay? Flow is when the work moves without a lot of resistance, It's what that leadership again feels like when the friction is gone. So our goal is to remove the friction, remove the resistance, and that's what we're gonna focus on throughout this episode. There is a researcher that I cannot pronounce his name, I'm just gonna tell you, I'm gonna put it in the show notes for you to Google him or chat GPT him, His entire life's work was about flow, understanding flow, creating flow, and he has found something really important and explains that to us when we research. His work flow happens when challenge is high. The skill of our associates are high, the goals are clear and the feedback is immediate. Let me repeat that again. Flow happens when our challenge is high, that the skill level of our associates or our team or ourselves is high. That the goals of everybody are clear and that the feedback is immediate or as quick as possible. We don't allow it to go a year right for an annual review or longer. in episode 1 29, which is, for you to look that up, the title is the Leadership Shift That Builds Team Capacity. We were talking about the three different elements that really build the capacity of your team to find flow. Really, that episode is to set this episode up and we talk about three pillars role clarity. Impact and understanding and emotional safety. So when we understand and we make role clarity a priority for us as a leader, we're gonna avoid the hero trap where everybody tries to do all the things and then nobody gets what needs to be done, done, because everybody is trying to do the same thing. Goals are clear. The roles are clear. That's part of the what happens when we find flow, When people understand their impact and what they're required to do inside of the role, the goal is clear. The feedback can be immediate, and we can make the challenge higher over time. Okay. And then the emotional safety is important. Well, actually, let me go back. When people understand their impact, we avoid the silo trap. Because we understand how valuable we are within our department, but also how we help other departments. We get stuck in these silos, which is our departments don't want to work with each other. They fight against each other or they ignore each other, and we don't want that. We want them to work together because that's what flow is. Us working together, just the wheel. Just turning. Fast, no resistance, no friction, just movement. That's what we're working towards here. And so when people understand their impact, they understand how their role can impact others, and the vital importance that they play within their department and what their department plays in the greater aspect of the community. The goals are clear, the role is clear, and we can challenge their skill level to go higher and higher. And then we get to emotional safety, which is more about, it's not about creating a space where people feel comfortable for comfort sake. It's about finding safety in the standard. Like my supervisor is going to be consistent with the standard, and I feel comfortable going to that supervisor to discuss what's going on because I know that my feedback will make a difference. My supervisor is going to listen. Take what I say and think about it. Communicate it to others, address certain situations that need to be addressed, that avoids a social trap. To me, safety is found in a consistent standard more than it is found in the idea of comfort. Because if the idea of comfort is the goal for you inside of your community, the only people that are gonna. Struggle with that are the people who actually are doing a good job because the, the people who are average or below average really thrive in a comfortable setting, and the people who are doing a good job or an excellent job are gonna have to pick up that slack, and that is not a safe space for high achievers. Okay? flow happens when challenge is high. Skill is high. Goals are clear and feedback is immediate, so let's break it down a little bit more. If the challenge is low, you're gonna get boredom, which is gonna go into that comfort trap, that social trap. I'm bored. There is no innovation here. The challenge is low, but if the challenge is high. Support is low. So if the, if my pressure is high,'cause the challenge is high, but I don't have a lot of support, there's a lot of anxiety there. So you're not gonna find flow, okay? But if both the challenge and the support are high and clear, you're going to find flow. if the challenge is high and the support is high, guess what happens? The resistance and the friction goes away. So if you can't find flow and you feel like you're constantly fighting each other, right? Think about this. Flow is what happens when the friction is gone. So identify the friction and remove it. Identify the resistance and investigate it. Get really curious as to why it's there, because our goal is to find flow. Our goal is for movement together as a team and forward towards all the goals. We want to keep the challenge high. We want to keep, keep the support high. Everybody needs to know their role. Everybody needs to understand their impact, and people need to feel safe and supported because the challenge is high. If there is ever a challenge, it is high. It is those of us who work inside senior living because we know. All key six stakeholders, residents, families, associates, corporate office, the surveyors, the Department of Public Health, whoever is your surveyor body. and then the vendors who are coming in, they all play a huge role in our success. Sometimes we feel like we have six bosses, right? So we know that the challenge is high. So how can we elevate that support? So we can find the flow inside of our communities, find the flow in growth, find the flow and support, find the flow in success as sales and occupancy and operation success we remove the resistance, and everything can move forward seamlessly and smoothly. So when your team feels stuck, overwhelmed, or disconnected. That is not random. There's a reason. There's a reason for that. And so if you can look for the reason, you can find the flow. Flow isn't something that we just hope for. It's not always moon magic. Sometimes there's moon magic. Okay? But flow is something that you intentionally killed. By challenging high and supporting high, be curious about the resistance and removing it and understanding that friction has to be removed if we want the flow to take over. Okay, so flow happens when you focus on these four things. Let's, let's. Let's really think about these four areas to create flow for you. Okay? Safety. To me, they, they try, they seek your advice, they tell you what they learn from it, and they move forward If you fail. You learn quicker than what you could have researched before you tried, then that is a win. That's a win because sometimes we have to spend all this time trying to make the right decision. All this research just to try to feel good about making a decision where sometimes just taking action is how you're actually going to learn very quickly. But if we don't feel safe enough to try and fail and learn. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna say stuck. Zero innovation, zero growth. Always in fear of what could happen instead of actually learning from what did happen, which is important to me and my coaching other leaders and learning from them and learning what's holding them back and the different definitions of safety to them. I believe safety is in standards. The standards that you can uphold, the standards that you communicate, the standards that you can be consistent with, it's really important for you to understand. We take this safety as something that is a soft, soft skill, and we don't pay a lot of attention to it. And I want to say to you, safety is a vital. Resource for us for growth and growing and building teams and retention in our communities, but it's a safety in the standards. I know what my boss is gonna look for, and I know that when somebody else doesn't do what they're supposed to do, they're gonna be consistent in their reactions. I know that they're going to see me. I know that they're gonna appreciate me. I know that they're gonna call out the good. I know that they're gonna do these monthly assessments. If that's a requirement for you, I know that we're gonna have these fire drills. This is safety and the standards. They know what to expect. You feel more confident in the place that you work when you understand what's gonna come next. That is safety. I think sometimes we overcomplicate safety. So what can you be consistent with as a leader? What are you consistent with and what do you need to start teaching and telling and communicating to others what you are consistent with so they can start seeing it. That is safety, allowing people to come to you and to just listen without retaliating, without the fear of retaliation, without. You making a comment to them. That's safety. This is what people are looking for. All right. Number two, clarity. We talked about that a little bit just a few minutes ago, about role clarity. They know their role, what they're responsible for, how they can help the other teams. They understand that sales is a team sport. Sales is not tennis. To me, sales is basketball, it's football. It's, it's a team sport. And when people understand that this is how this community is run, or sales is a team sport, they know the role, they know the goal. They know what matters. What friction or resistance do you see inside of your community? That people may not understand fully. If we can look at resistance and friction as a communication problem instead of a person problem, I think that we could change the burnout rate, the retention rate inside of our communities. What do they need to know? How can I help them? Clearly they don't understand something and I need to do a better job. A step taking that accountability and responsibility. if we are working on building flow, we've talked about safety, we've talked about clarity. Now let's talk about the challenge. We want to stretch our leaders, our people inside of the community. We don't wanna keep them stuck. We don't wanna keep them stagnant. If we're not growing, we're dying. Like I felt that way inside of a community for a long time. I felt like the only option that I had in my career was to be an executive director, and I didn't challenge myself. I wasn't necessarily being challenged in a way that didn't feel threatening for me, which some of that was my own problem. I just stayed. I did not grow. I did not understand that growth wasn't up the ladder. It was something within me to identify what I needed to grow. My mindset, my thoughts, the stories that I told myself, the assumptions of certain things, and the industry as a whole. There was so much more I could have learned if I really understood that the challenge really should have come from me and not necessarily from somebody else. We want to challenge people a little at a time. We want them to feel the possibilities. We want them to see what they're capable of and building their capacity, because it's only gonna get harder inside of our communities. We have a different generation coming and to live with us. We have a different generation coming in to work with us, and so the better we can get in our communication skills, knowing what to talk about, understanding what people want, all of that is a challenge for us to create environments that people will succeed in. That's the challenge that we need as leaders because everything is changing, everything is shifting, and we have to be able to stay. Involved, plugged in, locked in, leaning in to learn what we need to know to serve people in a very safe and sustainable way. Safe for them, safe for you, but sustainable for you too. the fourth way. For us to create flow is to give people autonomy. Teach them, guide them, do it beside them, and then let them do it on their own. They don't need you for every decision. Remember, if everything runs through you, nothing scales, You don't get your peace. You don't get your time away. They don't get their challenge. They don't get the ability to be safe and try and learn and fail, learn, do it again. They don't get that opportunity. Okay? Autonomy is something that people want. They want to be able to make the decision to make the call to. Read the policies and procedures and the regs and filter it through their own perspective and for you to listen. Maybe they have an interesting take on how to make this work inside of our community. Maybe they, see something that we can perfect or do better. This autonomy is very, very important. This is where empowerment. Comes in, I think I told this story once, but I will tell it again. We had a really traumatic incident happen inside of our community that was all over social media and all over the local news. And one of the most empowering I don't even know how to say this. Autonomy, experiences that I had was when the vice president of operations. was able to allow me to create a statement. I got to speak for my community and what a moment, what an honor. She trusted me. She gave me that opportunity and. That was a moment that I'll never forget because, I never expected that. I didn't ask for it. I didn't expect it, but she challenged me. she gave me clarity on what I could and could not say, and she made me feel safe because somebody would proofread it and correct it if need be. But she gave me the opportunity to speak. For the community, and that was very impactful for me. Where I see most people getting it wrong is that we overfocus on two different areas, safety or challenge. Safety in the sense of I'm gonna solve all the problems. You don't have to worry about it. We don't allow them to feel discomfort. We don't allow them to stay in that messy middle struggle period, or we apply so much pressure and let them know All the different negative outcomes that will happen if we don't get it right, if we don't get this, if we mess up that we paralyze people, so we have to find the balance of safety and challenge, and I believe that it comes with support, It's the leader understanding I'm here if needed. my job here is to guide and support and allow. People to learn on their own. Safety without challenge does not create flow. Safety without challenge creates boredom, stagnation. We're stuck. That's not what we want, because senior living aging services is constantly evolving. We cannot be stuck. I was stuck. I was scared of of all the changes that was coming my way, I was scared. I wasn't capable of keeping up with the changes. I was scared that I wasn't going to be able to be this perfect executive director, and I didn't have the support that I felt like I needed. Now, maybe I did, but I didn't feel like I did, and so I have the challenge. I didn't have the support, I didn't have the safety, but I had the pressure. And that kept my capacity very small. That fueled the fire, the fear and the uncertainty and the future that I created for myself. It wrapped in that fear, That doesn't allow for flow. It doesn't allow for growth. It only allows us to stay stuck. When your team, or you and your regional director, or you and your vice president of operations, I'm not quite sure what the title is, you and your owner, when you find flow, you and your team, your community team, you and your department team, when you guys find flow, you can feel it. I didn't feel flow. There was a lot of friction and possibly because I created a lot of it, although there were reasons for that and, I will take responsibility and accountability for mine, but there was a lot of flow inside of my community because there was a lot of trust. My team knew my expectations and they knew I would challenge them, but they knew I had their back. They knew I would let them roll with it. They knew that I would support them, that I would help solve their problems, and sometimes we had very short conversations'cause they knew how to talk to me and I knew how to answer their questions. Sometimes we had long conversations because we had more time. That's what flow gives us. We can have more direct conversations because in the moment we understand direct, short and sweet is not disrespectful. It's less explaining and more very direct explaining and doing, here's what I'm gonna do, here's what I'm hoping for. And I'm like, okay, go for it. Or what did you think about this? Have you thought about this, this, and this? don't forget about this, and this. Go for it. I've got your back. Flow can look like problems getting solved without you. Remember, if everything runs through you, nothing scales. Okay? So problems getting solved without you is a good thing. That's a good thing. People bringing solutions along with the issues. Bring me the problems, but bring me the solutions too. Okay. I want to be informed of what you would do and less emotional drag in the room, right? Your standups, your manager meetings, your monthly in-service meetings, they're not so emotionally heavy that they're weighing you down because there's a challenge. There's comfort, there's safety, there's support, there's autonomy. They understand their value, their role. That they have freedom to talk because they're valued. This is how you build, find, live, get back to flow. Okay? Flow is the reward of a very disciplined leader that focuses on safety, challenge, clarity, and autonomy. Because when you do that, you get your life back. cause they're not coming to you all the time, They may be informing you. They may be asking you, they may be giving you feedback, but they're not depending on you. That's the power of flow. So that negative energy, instead of being heavy, it feels like momentum, right? It feels like forward progress. this feels like your team doesn't need you to function. And that may take some time for you to get used to, but it switches to they're better because you're there. Not that they need you to be there, it's just that they're better because you're there. That's power. Oh, that's power. so what happens if we build all of that up? How does it break? Why does flow break? If we've done such a good job at building it and maintaining it, how does it break even? The best teams can break flow, right? Like e even I, I've had some great teams, and even we have been off sync at times and it takes time to get back. I mean, even your own marriage can get out of sync for whatever reason, right? so when you feel out of sync, out of flow, you feel that friction and that resistance again. What, what happens? Like how do we get it back? or, or how did we lose it? let's go back and we look at those four ways that we built it. obviously some type of clarity faded. We've got new processes, we've got new systems, we've got new people. And some clarity has faded. Like we have a lot of questions and we didn't take the time to answer them or ask them. if we have new people coming in, it takes time to get to know people and maybe we haven't made, um, an effort to build that relationship the way that we should have. So we start guessing and we don't realize that we're guessing. We just assume. Instead of stopping and asking, this is where we feel like we don't have enough time, but really if we don't have enough time, we're never gonna have any time. And so we really gotta just stop assuming and start asking questions to gain the clarity that we seem to have lost, or the challenge drops. We've gotten a little bit too comfortable. We need to start doing some things that challenge us. Again, this is why challenge is so important. If we get too comfortable, we just start going on autopilot, and then maybe other people are challenged, but we are not, and so all of a sudden that friction is happening again. Or something happened and the leader is stepping in more. Maybe we had a bad outcome or we had a resident who was very, very upset and now all of a sudden the leader has been triggered to be a little bit more involved, again, a little more controlling. And so now all of a sudden people are questioning, their impact, their role. That autonomy has been taken away, and now the leader's back to being involved in answering all the questions, solving all the problems, and carrying the weight of multiple departments when they should not have, or the leader has to step in and do two or three roles because there's turnover in key departments. Now all of a sudden, there's a lot of friction, a lot of resistance, because time is just. An issue and we're not managing it or we're not prioritizing it effectively. And that is something that we are going to have to look at to be aware, to look at it, right, to challenge us enough to look at it. Because again, I know that I've said this several times in previous episodes, but over-functioning leaders create under-functioning teams. And so as a leader, are you. Pausing the friction and resistance because you're over-functioning. Sometimes your team isn't in the flow that it once was in because you stepped back in and are doing too much. Ah. I know that's hard and I know I've done it several times and have to get back out. But if there's enough safety in your team, if there's enough respect and trust in your team. My director of nursing or my culinary director or my sales director could look at me and say, Hey, I've got this. And then I can realize, oh, yes you do, because I can be triggered to get back in and start over functioning and very quickly, and then they can remind me because feedback is important, right? And they feel safe enough to do it. Hey Aaron, I've got this. I've got this go. I'll let you know how it goes. That autonomy is important, and being able to listen to them and trust them again if something bad happens is important as well. So we're gonna have to rebuild it once we realize all this stuff's happened. how we rebuild clarity is simple. I think sometimes we make things too complicated. Yes, Erin, I have made things too complicated in my life. Sometimes just simple questions can get us back on track. So if I'm gonna rebuild clarity, I'm gonna ask a couple questions. What is the goal this week? What is the goal for you and each department this week? Here is what the goals are for me, and here are the goals that I would like for us to focus on and make sure that they match. Okay. Clarity to me is preventive leadership, not reactive leadership. Okay, here's the goals. We need six move-ins this month. We've got four people in the hospital. We wanna make sure the hospital knows that we want them back. These are, we have 10 hots. The tours are coming. All of these, this is a priority and we have an in-service this month. You know all the things. These are the goals. Whatever the daily goals are to reach the weekly goals, to get the monthly goals, this is what we have to focus on. To me, stand up is the best way to do this, or a manager meeting, right? The one-on-one meetings. Simple questions can get us back on track, okay? We wanna increase the challenge on purpose. So we stop solving and we start asking questions like, what do you think you we should do if I wasn't here? How would you solve this problem? Be aware that you're stepping in and be aware that you're stepping back and you're asking questions because good leaders ask great questions, and I have to focus on challenging people that I know are ready for the next challenge, that want to grow their capacity because. The capacity could be where the friction is. So we wanna make sure if we look at the resistance in the friction, is it safety? Is it challenge? Is it autonomy? Is it clarity? So figure that out and start asking questions to see if people are ready for that next challenge. Don't solve the problem. Ask them what they would do. And then look, listen to their response and see if that's real. See if that's actually something that can happen. And if it is, let'em try it. As long as it doesn't harm anybody, and if it isn't, educate them on why that wouldn't work. Okay. Create faster feedback loops. Don't wait for meetings, ask questions. We have standup every day. To me, that is a great way to give feedback, right? The speed of feedback determines the speed of your growth, the speed of the, of your flow, getting back the speed of everyone working together as a team. And again. If your team needs you for everything, that's not a team problem. That is a systems problem. You are not a system. You are a person. You are the dot connector. You are not the solver of every problem. and modeling safety is important for you. They need to see your vulnerability. If you make a mistake, talk about it. Okay? Say the hard things out loud so they can feel like. It's safe here to acknowledge hard things because to me, acknowledging hard things is part of leadership. It's actually part of my lead acronym. Acknowledge the hard things. Own your Mistakes. Take the accountability. Go first, We're gonna do hard things, scared because we believe in the possibility of what growth is going to give us. Safety lowers the cost of growth. We understand we're gonna learn from whatever happens. Our worth is not tied into the outcomes. The cost of growing is not high. Cost of growing is just losing out on what could be. It's not a physical pain that we're actually gonna feel, although sometimes I felt that way, which is so crazy. We have to grow. We have to get better. We have to, and that's truly what I try to do with all of my coaching programs, with with the people that I get to serve, the people that I get to present to, is to say, literally the water is an inch deep. It just look so deep, so scary. But when we grow. We realize there's nothing to be afraid of. Absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Okay. As we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Go back to the beginning that week, that moon magic week that you felt like everything was clicking, that the team was just working. Like everything you did turn to gold. You had the Midas touch. That probably wasn't random. You had just done a great job with clarity, with your communication, the balancing challenge and safety, and building trust, you did something right. You just have to acknowledge it because everybody was working together and the goal is not to chase that feeling. The goal is to build that feeling intentionally, consistently, until it becomes how your team operates inside of your community. The flow that you're looking for, the flow that you create, it is not always moon magic. Sometimes it's okay. it is your reward. Disciplined leadership, done right? So again, flow is the reducing of friction and resistance inside of your community. Where's that stuff coming from? That's your job to find out. I would love to help you figure that out, right? Your own resistance, your own friction from actually going out and doing what you know you should do to become successful inside of your community. open enrollment for our 100% leader group program. I'm always available to work with teams, individuals, one-on-one coaching through my aspire for more with Erin, and I love to speak to conferences and leadership retreats at companies. It's one of my favorite things to do. So if you are in the market of wanting a mentor or a speaker for an event, or want to join a group coaching class that actually accelerates your growth in a very safe way, find out more information. I'll have links in the show notes. I would love to hear your feedback. Let me know how this episode affected you, and if you know anybody who needs to listen to this. Share it with them, like, and subscribe is the best way to support, small business like Aspire. For more with Erin, thank you for your time and as always, Aspire for more. For you knowing you are already enough.