Looking back – looking forward

We are rapidly approaching the end of yet another year. Some of us hung on by our fingernails; some of us have managed growing teams and busy, bustling companies.

Whichever your experience this past year, I hope you have taken the time to keep an ear to the ground. I hope you’ve noticed things like the growth in Facebook and other phenomena that tell us a lot about ourselves – and our team.

These changes tell us that we are striving, as an overwhelmed and over-worked population, to find a way to connect with people in our lives that works for us today.

We’re looking for a little relaxation and fun (Farmville, anyone?), while still connecting with friends.

We’re interested in learning and growing, too – at least where WE want to grow.

If we’re listening, we have heard messages that should give us pause and a moment, as we near year’s end, to reflect.

Are our training approaches building bonds, while putting the amazing wealth of resources of the web in the hands of our team?

Are we making learning fun and interesting – and social, at the same time?

Are we – personally – using email, chat and Facebook to build stronger connections, a stronger team, and a stronger company?

If you’re like me, this time of year is both wonderful and exhausting. My work calendar is already flipped to January, making the balance of the month seem much more insignificant than it really is, both in terms of time and of meaning.

And so, I invite you to join me in stopping for just a minute in the remaining days of this year – whenever you can grab it – and reflect on where you’ve been, where you’re going and, what you’ve learned. Because, ready or not, we’re heading into a brand new year.

Understanding the Family Member’s Experience

Last week I was privileged to attend a conference for family caregivers. The speaker of one particular session was incredible. She told stories about her experience with her own parents, both of whom suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and how she coped – and laughed – at nearly every turn of events.

The audience howled as she talked about traveling across the globe on a “last trip” her parents requested of her. She shared how her mother would go into the airplane’s miniature toilet, only to be unable to let herself back out – time after time. By the end of the flight, the entire section of the plane cheered along with the speaker each time her mother successfully released the lock and got out of the bathroom.

Then she shared how her mother, long after losing her ability to speak, had a lucid moment right before she died. She clearly said, “I love you too,” in response to the speaker’s proclamation of affection.

As she shared this story, the woman sitting next to me burst into racking sobs. As I passed on the tissues another woman dug out for her, I couldn’t help but wonder what her brought on this woman’s tears.

I wondered if she, too, had been trying “all the wrong approaches” to dealing with a loved one with memory loss.

Perhaps she had been saying, “I love you” to someone in her life – and was still waiting for the responsive, “I love you too.”

It made me realize, though, that what seems like common knowledge to us when we care for our clients may be completely different for family members.

We know, for example, that our memory impaired clients are trying as hard as they can. We don’t urge them to “try harder” or say, “Don’t you remember me telling you this?”

Families struggling with a mom, dad or spouse who was once a source of strength, and perhaps now no longer recognizes them, experience daily life in an entirely different way.

Wouldn’t it be enlightening for us to invite our clients’ family members in to share their stories? Wouldn’t it help our caregivers gain more empathy and understanding, in the process?

As trainers, we need to train for care of the entire client unit, including family members.

We’ll be better prepared to provide genuine person-centered care – for families as well as for clients.

Gossip and Marketing Opportunities

If you’re one of the thousands who actually ready my e-newsletters, you may be one of the handful who have wondered where they’d gone in the past several weeks.

Well, let me tell you – we’ve been busy! Here’s just a little of our internal gossip – followed by an exciting and one-of-a-kind marketing opportunity for you.

• We moved! We had outgrown our old office some time ago, but continued to work two to an office. Not very comfortably, mind you, but sometimes you just do what you have to do. When we found an opportunity to move to a big, new space for just a little more rent (to the other end of the block, across the street), we jumped on it! Since we moved last month, we’ve added three more team members, increasing courses and our client services programs significantly. It’s a testament to the importance of what we’re doing together in training new caregivers that we’re growing, even during an economy that’s got so many businesses in basic survival mode. If you’re ever in the historic downtown Oregon City (the oldest city in the state of Oregon), please stop in!

• We got federal training grants! aQuire was selected to partner with community colleges in Oregon for a 3 year federal demonstration grant, developing a e-learning plus clinical training model for direct-care worker training that will set a “gold standard” for the nation. We’re very excited to be a part of this program, and look forward to sharing our results along the way.

• We’ve just launched a major new outreach campaign. In the process, we’re adding new online courses and programs, including several Leadership and Family courses that we believe will significantly help our clients achieve their goals. We also created a User Advisory Group and heard awesome feedback, including, “Subscribing to aQuire is a no-brainer - the outcomes are so great!” My favorite bit of feedback came from a large corporate home care client whose offices have the option to train with aQuire or train in house. She told me, “100% of our most successful offices are using aQuire to help them build strong teams and strong referral networks.” Now that’s success!

• We’ve just signed on to help create and launch an exciting national family caregiver support website. I have been consulting on this project, based out of NYC, for the past year, watching it grow and become something that will be truly original, innovative and exciting. We’re now in the final stages of development and plan to have an early 2011 launch – watch for it!

This presents a unique marketing opportunity for you – a chance to reach 10 million family caregivers. Perhaps you’d like to become an “expert” on the site, answering caregiver’s questions or offering ideas or suggestions to make their life easier.

Perhaps your company could offer a discount or special price to introduce your services to caregivers.

The more creative you are, the better your message will get heard.

If you want to have some fun, let me know – I’ll help you get set up! Shoot me an email  (Sharon@aquiretraining.com) and get involved!

I Know Your Name

My oldest daughter’s transition from a small private elementary school to our large public high school was a little challenging the first few weeks. She wanted desperately to make friends with some of the kids that she observed across the room – but didn’t know how to begin.

I remember telling her to use their names whenever she said “hi.” Just adding their name (“Hi, Laura”) would be much more affective than a simple “hi.”

Using a person’s name is very powerful. It says, “I know who you are – you have value to me as a unique person.”

As managers of people, knowing and using their names in conversation is one powerful way we can communicate the value and worth of that person within the organization. This basic truth shows through in this story, which landed in my inbox this morning. I don’t know the origin of the actual quote, but it was sent to me by a company called Peaceful Daily, (whose motto is “Think good. Eat whole. Walk far.” Nice). Here’s the quote:

"During my second year of nursing school our professor gave us a quiz. I breezed through the questions until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was a joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our grade. "Absolutely," the professor said. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello." I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy." - Joann C. Jones.

Good reminder to those of us who proclaim that we value our people most of all.

Thoughts on Motivation

Summer seems to be a time for a bit of the hot-weather-doldrums. You know what I mean: your team is working short a lot to accommodate vacations and your own head may be really wishing your body was at the beach instead of in the office!

Now that we’re on the downhill side of summer, I’m thinking about September. It’s a great time to start new things. And just between us, we need to start some new things to get the energy back in this office. We need to refocus and re-energize.

So I was excited to get the link to a great little video on the topic of motivation in my email from a client (Jason Hess, Elite Care – check out this company if you want to see motivation and innovation in action! They title their website “The Future of Elder Care” – check it out.). It’s interesting – and worth the 10 minutes it will take you to view it. Here’s to a busy, productive, exciting fall!

Emergency Preparedness with e-learning

As an owner and operator of multiple assisted living communities, one of my all-time greatest fears was an emergency situation. A fire, flood, extended power outage – any of these things could threaten the health and safety of my building full of vulnerable residents.

In 1996, the year of the worst recent Portland flooding, we were given evacuation orders by the local fire department for our Memory Care building located in SE Portland. It was 11:00 at night, and we had three little children asleep in their beds. I knew we needed to personally make sure everything went well, but it was one very harrowing night. A neighbor came to stay with the kids, and my husband and I took off – slowly (all roads were flooded) for our care community. Before we left, though, I had located an empty wing of a nearby hospital that would take our residents and had given the staff specific instructions to begin notifying families.

By the time we arrived at the community everything was ready to go. Every resident was up and dressed. The night staff – a short but very busy crew – had packaged a change of clothes for each person, complete with a couple of extra depends if needed, marked them with the person’s name, and prepared the medications for transport. They had begun calling every family member and had written a sign for the door notifying any visitor where we could be found.

Our experience isn’t unique. Many facilities evacuated after Hurricane Katrina; others during floods, tornados and hurricanes. These are incredibly difficult situations, and loss of life can result if you’re not carefully prepared – and lucky, too.

Fire is a hazard that happens even when the weather is perfect. USA Today ran a story a few years ago that reported an average of one fatal fire each month in assisted living.

What if that fire was in your building? Would your team know – quickly, confidently – what to do?

Following our own experience we wanted to help others prepare for their own emergency and make sure every member of the team was prepared. We knew that the only way to really know what to do in an emergency, when the adrenalin is pumping and the pressure is on, is for that information to be simply automatic.

And that takes repetition.

We can help! We’ve prepared a template to help you build a custom course just for your team, building by building. Just give us the answers to some very basic questions and we’ll build the course for you. Assign the course to everyone, have them complete the quiz and earn a certificate, and you’ll not only being going the extra mile to prepare your staff, you’ll also have evidence of your extra effort in the event that something should go horribly wrong.

Each custom Emergency Preparedness course costs only $50 to build. Invest today – sleep tonight!

Watch this to learn more: 
 

If you’re wondering how my own flood evacuation story turned out, here’s the ending:

We made a choice to stay in the building literally until the water was lapping at the driveway. Since we were on evacuation warning rather than an order, we chose to stay put. Just as we were at the “now-or-never” decision point the water began receding and the evacuation warning was lifted. We were very lucky that day, but this close call taught us never to take good preparation for granted again!

Leading with Laughter

One of our foundational concepts here at aQuire Training is that our work should be FUN. We've painted some key words on the wall in our conference room - and FUN is among them. Yes, we've got our serious words there: Passion, Integrity, Purpose and Profit.

But several years ago I realized that for all the hours we spend at work - and around our co-workers - if we aren't having FUN, we're missing something real that adds value to our lives. Along the way, I realized that when I'm having fun at work, I'm working harder, being more creative and making other people's lives more enjoyable, too.

I'm not watching the clock, thinking about lunch, or counting the days until my next paycheck.

I'm being much more engaged in my work, and, as a consequence, I'm much more productive, too.

People around me respond in a different way, too. Others stop being territorial about their projects or ideas. Collaboration comes more naturally, as we laugh together and then - seriously - come up with imaginative solutions to challenging problems.

For a project at my church several years ago I researched the effect that laughing together has on building community. The results were amazing to me. When we laugh together, we connect on a level that instantly creates bonds. We lean in toward each other; sometimes we touch each other companionably on the arm, back or shoulder.

When I walked through my assisted living communities and saw caregivers laughing with residents, I saw an extraordinary amount of eye contact, hugging and playfulness occurring. I learned that this was one of my strongest indicators of a team that felt engaged, safe and confident.

They were not working out of fear of their supervisor catching them doing something wrong.

They were not watching the clock; waiting for their next break; their lunch hour; quitting time.

They were acting out the reason they worked in this challenging memory care environment: because they loved their residents.

I could tell they felt empowered and supported by management; safe to express the love and the joy they felt in their hearts.

Clate Mask, CEO of a company called Infusionsoft says this about fun in the workplace:

"After all, adding humor, laughter, and fun into your work environment...

• Helps relieve stress (and happy people tend to be more productive)
• Creates a stronger bond amongst you and your employees
• Has a positive impact on your customers (and attracts more of them)
• Improves the physical health of you and your employees
• Encourages more open and honest communication
• And so much more!"

Jody Urquhart of weLead Online Magazine (www.leadingtoday.org) describes some of the specific benefits of fun in the workplace:

"Laughter releases endorphins (a chemical 10 times more powerful than the pain-relieving drug morphine) into the body with the same exhilarating effect as doing strenuous exercise. Laughing increases oxygen intake, thereby replenishing and invigorating cells. It also increases the pain threshold, boosts immunity, and relieves stress.

"Humor also levels the playing field to create an atmosphere that encourages honest dialogue, open communication, and increased risk taking. Creating more equality in power or control shows people respect and builds pride in their work."

Most useful to me, however, are Ms. Urquhart's "13 Steps to Creating a Fun Workplace, " which we've illustrated with this brief presentation: Is your Staff Suffering from Terminal Seriousness?

She suggests that, as managers, we create an environment where our employees have fun. We don't need to come to work dressed as a clown, but we do need to set the tone that it's OK to laugh and have fun at work. Most of all, though, we need to let our employees be creative - we need to get out of the way so they can bring more fun into the workplace.

As a manager, pay close attention to how you say things to your team, especially those ugly "disciplinary" things. If you hear yourself frequently making threats ("anyone with more than one tardy in the next pay period will be terminated") stop for a minute and think of a way to say that with humor, and in a positive tone. Try something like this: "if you've got someplace more important to be than at work when you're scheduled, we're gonna let you be there all the time! We don't want to get in the way of what you're rather be doing!

Or here's another one: "If you love this place so much you don't want us to pay you, please don't bother to fill out your timecard."

You get the idea.

Now go have some fun today!

Genuine leadership

Strong leadership is a proven factor in a successful operation of any kind. Leaders like Lee Iococca revived Chrysler from a sure death, just as leaders like Adolf Hitler changed the face of the globe.

In your organization, strong leadership is vital to success, too. But a strong leader knows to listen to his team and let their requests, ideas and suggestions guide his decisions, too.

When I left home to attend college in another state I needed a job. I knew that I could work with seniors (my parents owned senior care communities and everyone in our family helped out from time to time). So I applied at a nearby nursing home, and was hired on the spot.

I remember very little about that job, other than the lack of training and the physical intensity and intimacy of care that I was expected to give. I was 17 years old, and it was incredibly overwhelming.

I also remember the nurse who hired me. I remember telling her that I would work any and all evenings of the week if I could just have Friday nights off as often as possible. Being a college freshman, I wanted to join in the social life at school and feel a part of that environment, too.

I’ve never forgotten her response. Not the words she said, but the actions she took. Not once during the semester I worked there was I scheduled off on Friday night. Not one single time.

By the end of the five or six months, I was done.

My memory of those months has shaped my own management style in a fundamental way.

I remember what it was like to be thrown into something I wasn’t ready for, either in life maturity or in skills.

I remember what it was like to have the one thing I requested totally disregarded by management.

And so today I run a training company that helps prepare nursing assistants and caregivers to give incredibly challenging, intimate care.

I listen to my employees and give them as much flexibility in scheduling as possible.

I know that I would have stayed in that job, perhaps for my full four years at college if I had been adequately trained and respected. Instead, I left people whom I had genuinely learned to love in the care of others – and found a job where my needs were respected, too.

We’ve had crises in turnover in senior care, industry-wide. We’ve had PR disasters and plenty of census challenges, too.

At the end of the day, I believe that the strong leaders – those people who have led their organization to success – will be ones who know the value of their team, and who listen to them, train them and respect them.

Genuine leaders. Real success.

Employee Engagement – applying the concepts

If you’ve been patiently following the last series of 2 Minute Trainer, you know that I’ve focused on the Gallup organization’s “12 Keys for Employee Engagement” study.

I love this particular study mostly because the Gallup organization not only studied what employee engagement looks like, but they also studied the results of a highly engaged workforce compared to the typical, marginally engaged.

As a business owner trying my hardest to run a profitable business, those are the numbers that really get my attention. According to the Gallup studies, I can increase my bottom line by 100 – 300% just by fully engaging my workforce. THAT I can get excited about!

We’re starting a new series of 2 Minute Trainers this year with concrete ideas for implementing some of the Gallup’s engagement concepts. We hope you find them interesting – but most importantly we hope you find that they give you ideas for creating your own concrete approaches to engaging your team. 

Question #1: Do you know what is expected of you at work? (Engaged employees, only 28% of the typical workforce, answered this question – YES)

Idea #1: Job descriptions. How many of us have job descriptions we simply create for job categories rather than for each individual? A housekeeper is a housekeeper, right? A caregiver is a caregiver…and so on.

In reality, one housekeeper is an awesome organizer, and may find herself gradually taking over the organization of the linen storage closet.

One housekeeper may have special skills at soothing and bathing challenging clients.

Ideally, each individual employee should have an individual job description. Perhaps you take your job category description and add, during a personally meeting, tasks that the person is especially skilled at doing. You can recognize their special talents, interests and gifts, while reinforcing the overall job expectations.

Another idea is to create job description training modules that spell out exactly what your expectations are for each job category. For example, you might follow a caregiver around for a day with a video camera and show each aspect of her job expectation in video mode.

Be sure to include the kinds of duties that all staff need to do: customer service expectations, for example.

We’ve created a very quick sample that you’re welcome to duplicate for your own team. You can even send it to us and we’ll add it to your on-line training and create a certificate as well.

EXAMPLE

Idea #2: Job meetings. We’ve started a tradition in our office of monthly job meetings. I schedule them for Friday afternoons – a good time to wrap up the week’s work a little early and sit down with each employee for a few minutes – usually 10 – 15 minutes – and review their work.

It took us a month or two to hammer out written job expectations for each person, including what goals they had in their jobs, and how we would measure their success to know when they were doing their jobs well.

Now, each person has a quick report that fits exactly with their goals, and we discuss any areas of change, improvement, challenge or achievement. We often laugh together, and get excited about actually measuring accomplishments, instead of just rushing from task to task. 

Idea #3: Mentoring. As often as possible I pair up a new employee with a seasoned employee who can answer their questions and make sure they’re on track in their work. Often, I ask two employees to work on a task together and come up with a plan, without my input. I’ve discovered that – surprise – I don’t actually need to make decisions in a lot of areas, especially if the employees have a track record of good, solid work.

Hope this gives you some concrete ideas to implement part one of our engagement process.

We’ll tackle part 2 next month.

Make Staff Training Fun!

This year, 2 Minute Trainer is taking a different approach. The aQuire team will be sharing concrete ideas to help you put into practice some of the concepts and theories we’ve been talking about over the past year.

This month, we’re kicking off the new series with some ideas to help you build FUN into your classroom-based training.

Even though you are using aQuire’s online training program for basic staff training, I hope you’re at least holding periodic team building meetings – celebrating birthdays, updating staff on policy or staffing changes, and reinforcing the idea that TEAM is what gets the work done.

So here are a couple of ideas to help you make those team meetings – or classroom trainings – FUN!

Staff Training is one of those “catch-22” type things: we have to do it, but it often isn’t very much fun. Consider the primary goals of staff training: to impart additional knowledge and to affect outcome or behavior based on that increased knowledge.

You can, on a good day, achieve those goals by lecturing to staff – maybe. But think how much more interesting it would be to develop a format that allowed staff to laugh together, to share their own thoughts, ideas and perspectives, and to form a more cohesive team bond with co-workers – all while learning new information.

If staff find learning fun, chances are you’ll see a greater change in outcome or behavior based on the learning, and that’s the ultimate goal of staff training.

Create Your Own Learning Game

Check out some well-known resources for developing team-building and learning games, such as John Newstrom and Edward Scannell’s book, The Big Book of Team Building Games (McGram-Hill, 1998). Then, follow some simple rules, and you’ll soon see staff having fun and learning at the same time:

• Develop questions that elicit learning information – on whatever topic you’re teaching
• Design questions to have no right or wrong answers – just “your” answer
• Allow for personal or team competition – or do it just for fun
• Create inter-shift teams to help build bridges between shifts
• Take time between questions to give additional training information
• Develop games for department heads or team leaders that give them opportunity to stretch their skills, and learn from each other

If you’d like to check out your staff’s reaction to a learning game, try this simple starting game. Use the questions at the end, or make up your own questions, and take a few minutes to watch what happens to your team. Here are two different approaches to try – pick the one you feel most comfortable with, and go for it!


Learning Game #1:

1.  Using a variety of brightly colored pieces of construction paper, lay out a “game board” on the floor. Make a semi-circle, or curve around in an “S” shape – be creative! Use about 20 squares of paper (more squares will make the game last longer, but you’ll also need more questions).
2. Use one large die from an activity set of dice, or put the numbers 1-6 on slips of paper and place in a basket for drawing.
3. Divide your group into two teams. You can count off (1-2-1-2) and send all the “1s” to one side of the room and the “2’s” to the other side, or divide in any way you choose. Consider mixing the teams up a bit from the way they might naturally divide.
4. Have each team choose a person to be its “marker.” That person stands next to square # 1, and moves each turn the number of squares rolled on the dice. If the “marker” lands on a square that the other team’s “marker” is already standing on, the “marker” already in place is bumped to the first square, and starts over. The first team reaching the last square “wins” the game.
5. Each team selects an individual to answer the first question; the second question goes to another team member, and so on until the game is complete. Try making some questions “team” questions, to be answered after a team conference rather than by one individual.
6. While winning has its own reward, a small Hershey’s kiss or other token prize will liven up the finish of the game.

Remember, the game has no right or wrong answers. Sharing, learning from each other, and growing in team relationship, knowledge and skills is the point.


Learning Game #2

This structure is easier to plan, but won’t facilitate the same competitive spirit as Game #1. Use this approach if you have a small group that’s already quite cohesive, or if you run out of preparation time, but still want to use a game format for learning.

1. Get a small foam ball, beach ball, or even a tightly wadded piece of paper.
2. Start by tossing the ball to one individual in the group. That person is now selected to answer the question, or pass. He or she then tosses the ball to another person, who must answer the next question, or pass and toss the ball on.
3. The game ends when all the questions have been asked and answered. Individuals who answer questions can be cheered, and then rewarded with the token “prize,” or recognized as a group at the end.

Sample Questions for Team Building Games

• Go to another person in the room and tell him or her something he/she does exceptionally well at work
• Give someone you don’t know well a sincere compliment
• Share one thing that could be done to make our staff a better “team”
• Name one thing that could help your team have more enthusiasm
• Name one thing that could help your team have more fun together
• Share one thing about yourself no one in the room knows.
• Finish this sentence: If someone on the team has a problem with me, I’d like them to: