You half-overheard a conversation and believe that your staff are conspiring against you. You freeze in disbelief and don’t know what to do or if you even heard it right. So you walk away and do nothing. Now you feel awkward and a bit nervous around your staff.
Someone mentioned that one of your staff might be leaving you soonish. “What? This can’t be,” you say to yourself. You don’t know what to do about it and you hope it’s not true, and you don’t do anything about it at all. And then they leave you. Surprise, surprise!
You heard that one of your patients complained about you to someone. But you just let it slide and ignored it. Then they posted a nasty Google Review and gave you a bad rating on RateMDs.
Perhaps you noticed that your practice stats are dipping down and down, and you didn’t know what to do, and so you “hoped” that they would turn around. And then they didn’t, and now your LOC is all used up by having to pay the bills with it.
The Wrong Thing to Do
Paralyzed by fear or sitting back and worrying are the things you should never do. You could safely say that the wrong thing to do about any situation is “to do nothing.” The consequences are often much hard to confront that the original situation. Bad things have a way of escalating and getting worse to the degree that you don’t take them up right away. Overthinking can lead to the dreaded paralysis by analysis.
So how do you change it … what’s the answer?
CONFRONT!
Confront is not a bad word … it means to face up to and deal with, handle, manage, take care of, come to grips with. The opposite of confront is avoid. And you definitely don’t want to do that, right? The consequences are not usually pretty. It is almost always better to do something than nothing. Any action is better than inaction.
Be Pro-Active
That half-overheard conversation? Quietly take one of the staff involved aside a little later and explain what you overhead and ask if it is true. If it was, ask for their help in handling the situation. If it is another one of the staff that are behind it, you need to talk to that person privately and work out the problem.
A patient complained about you? Call them and have a chat to find out what they are upset about and ask how you can make it right for them? And then make it right.
Rumour about a staff member leaving? Ask to meet with them privately after work or go out to lunch together and say what you heard. Take up what comes up. Communication handles nearly any situation.
Stats going down? Get some outside help. Call your mentor if they are good. Call an expert management consultant for advice (LOL … I had to throw that one in of course because it only makes sense – just choose a good company that actually knows what they are doing and gets good results).
Moral of the Story
All of the above is not to say that there aren’t times when you need to collect information in order to figure out the right action to take. However, doing nothing at all is a choice, and choosing not to act at all may be the easy route for a while, but it will usually come back and bite you in the butt.
So choose ACTION over INACTION!
