Sara Vaughn, MD

Empower your team by: - making problems about us vs. the problem. - give each direct report enough attention that they feel heard and validated. - If you say no to your team make sure they understand the why behind the no. Everyone should have the chance to disagree respectfully with your decisions even if you proceed with them in the end. - be realistic about employee turnover. Invest in them anyways at all stakes. Leave everyone better off. The team that remains cares deeply about the people who leave. And if you respect all people this will positively influence your personal leadership credibility, which is especially important during times of inevitable company turmoil.

I have found the best communication to stem from active listening. You will help your team solve problems if you help everyone get to the core of the underlying issue- which is so often a systems issue.

You must first know your colleagues well. You cannot use influence tactics to influence people you don't know. Plus if you don't understand each of them- what motivates them, what they are passionate about, what their bigger picture goals are- then you are likely to push them in the wrong direction and they will resent you for it at some point. Finding strategies that work for each person and align with their values allow you to avoid power struggles and to optimize productivity in a positive environment.

I think the key here is to focus on what you do to influence people in a positive way that is easy for you. Lean into your strengths. From this position of ease you can start to slowly work on your weaknesses. I find that asking the staff to give me lots of feedback helped me identify and work on my weaknesses, especially after I had built positive relationships where I knew the people giving me feedback were invested in my personal growth, not just venting their upset at me. Once they know I would take their feedback and do my best to change my behavior we both developed deeper relationships build on trust.

In my experience I've found that the reasons my team disengaged were small and easy to fix. For example they felt super unheard and not prioritized because management wasn't paying attention to their complaints about the snacks. Worse management was advertising how great our snacks were when there were objectively terrible (yoghurt, hard boiled eggs, coffee and water with NO flexibility). I went straight to the VP of ops after my practice manager asked for an independent snack budget and told her the impact of the snack budget on the team. It was immediately approved and the staff loved getting to choose their snacks each month. This was small, but little things that you do to show people you care about them go a long way.