What makes someone a growth leader?
When working with private duty, home health, and hospice organizations around the country, I have found that business leaders that work in the post-acute care space have several traits in common.
First, they put growth at the top of every agenda.
From board room meetings, to clinical care meetings and performance reviews, growth is the number one priority.
Growth leaders demonstrate this kind of commitment by constantly scouring for funds to invest in more growth. They have a clear vision on what they will do, say, or buy that will help their organizations continually grow year after year. They also keep raising the bar. No matter how ambitious growth targets are, growth leaders do this by setting targets that seem almost impossible to reach – forcing teams to strive for greater impact. These leaders see stagnation as death of the company.
Second, they unite the business around a culture of growth.
Growth leaders make growth the principal emphasis of everyone in the business by creating a common belief and language.
For example, they co-create growth goals and metrics with their leadership teams and then help translate them into metrics for every individual at every level. For example, sharing that the company has a friend and family referral bonus plan.
Establishing this kind of shared and co-created language binds employees together to think about how they can contribute to top-line growth. This can be done with just a weekly call with all department heads and sales representatives to ensure that everyone knows what the goals are, how close they are to hitting them, and identify if there are any barriers that are restricting growth.
Third, they take customer service very seriously.
By making it personal, they own customer satisfaction…and it always shows.
Many of the best companies have strong customer-insights organizations. Customer insights and analytics are crucial to supporting growth. However, growth leaders go the extra mile by embracing complaints, building committees to work on performance improvement, and taking the time to focus on building empathy with the customer.
As an owner of a home health, hospice, and a private duty, I have had the opportunity to experience the flow of receiving care from my agency with my own family members. I experienced the level of customer service touch points that I want my family to receive and identified areas for improvement as well. I have been blessed to see incredible care from my team that surprised my family (in a good way).
Spend time at your intake desk with the mindset that every referral that arrives is your own mother. If you like your mom, it will give you so much insight into what your patients need, what are your patients fears, and what we could do as a company.”
Follow the leader
Creating a growth culture begins with your leader. You need to have a growth-minded leader and the rest will fall into place. Remember, we have a mastermind group that will help you grow as a leader.
If your interested check out this brief video:
You can also learn more and complete the application at www.homecaresalesmastermind.com
The Solutionist, Cheryl Peltekis, RN.
