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We spend a lot of time in senior living talking about occupancy, retention, turnover, agency, surveys, referrals and reputation.
We should. Those numbers matter.
But after years of working with leaders and teams, I’ve become convinced that sometimes we spend so much time trying to move the numbers that we miss what is underneath them.
Relationships.
How people communicate. How they handle conflict. Whether expectations are clear. Whether people trust one another. Whether someone can make a mistake without being humiliated. Whether a leader knows how to repair a relationship when something goes wrong.
We tend to call these “soft skills.”
There is nothing soft about them.
They are showing up in your business every single day.
Culture is easy to talk about at the organizational level. But culture is really happening between two people on a Tuesday afternoon.
A nurse calls her leader with a concern and gets an irritated response.
A department head leaves a meeting unclear about what was decided but is afraid to ask again.
Two leaders have unresolved conflict, so everyone around them learns how to work around the tension.
An employee makes a mistake and spends more energy protecting herself than solving the problem.
None of those moments will show up on a financial statement.
At least not immediately.
Eventually, they do.
People disengage. Communication slows down. Problems stay hidden longer. Good employees leave. Families lose confidence. Leaders burn out.
And pretty soon we are spending time and money trying to solve problems that started as relationship problems.
We promote people because they are clinically strong, operationally capable, dependable or technically excellent.
Then we put them in charge of people.
Those are two very different skill sets.
Being really good at the work does not automatically make someone good at leading people through conflict, disappointment, accountability, change or uncertainty.
Those skills have to be learned too.
Self-awareness. Emotional regulation. Clear communication. Curiosity. Boundaries. Accountability.
And one I think we seriously underestimate: repair.
Leaders are going to get it wrong. So are employees. So are all of us.
Healthy cultures aren’t cultures where conflict never happens. They are cultures where people know how to find their way back when it does.
We talk a lot about wanting high-trust cultures.
But trust is built in hundreds of ordinary interactions.
Was my leader clear with me?
Did she do what she said she would do?
Can I bring him bad news?
What happens when we disagree?
If she hurts someone, can she own it?
People are paying attention to these things, whether we realize it or not.
This is why I keep coming back to three things in my work with leaders:
Clarity. Consistency. Repair.
Clarity matters. People need to know what is expected of them.
Consistency matters. People need to know which version of their leader is going to show up.
And repair matters. We are human. We are going to get things wrong. What we do next matters.
That’s how trust gets built.
And trust changes how people work together.
For a long time, we have treated relationship skills as something separate from operations.
They aren’t.
Relationships affect whether employees speak up. They affect how quickly problems get addressed. They affect how we handle conflict, whether good people stay, how families experience us and how much time our leaders spend managing issues that never needed to get that big in the first place.
Ultimately, all of this reaches the people we are here to serve: our residents.
How people experience their leaders affects how they experience their work.
And how employees experience their work absolutely affects the way residents and families experience our organizations.
We cannot separate the two.
So if you really want to learn something about the culture you are creating, start with one person.
Someone you lead. Someone you work beside. Maybe even someone with whom the relationship has been difficult.
Ask:
Then listen.
Get curious.
Don’t defend.
You may learn something about your leadership that you needed to know.
Leadership is experienced, not intended.
And how people experience us is shaping our relationships, our cultures and ultimately, our results.
#LoveBetterLeadBetter
Author: Angie Gray
