Feeling like you are working too hard has many underlying reasons. Bottom line, it’s no fun going home at the end of the day exhausted and sometimes too tired to even make dinner or play with your kids or work on your pet hobby. Definitely no way to live your life!
A few of the possible reasons for that “working too hard” feeling:
- You have just come out of Covid-19 lockdown a few weeks ago and everything is a bit stressful and harder than normal because of the new rules for healthy practices.
- You are stressed because the practice is not able to see the number of patients daily that you used to and so the income has dropped and you have bills and staff to pay and you are the last on the list to be paid – if at all.
- You started a lot of actions today that you did not get a chance to finish and they are weighing on your mind not to forget them.
- You are experiencing staff issues and problems with them returning to work so you and the remaining team are working harder than usual.
- Your staff are letting too many problems and decisions floating up to you to solve as the boss.
- Your staff are not assuming responsibility for actions that they could do if they thought about it.
As a result of the above reasons, you may even find yourself wondering why you are keeping your practice at all. Certainly your goals are not being met and that can be very stressful.
Source of most stress: Staff Issues
Numbers 4, 5 and 6 in the above list can create ongoing frustrations and stress for you and are issues that actually can be solved 95% of the time.
In fact, one of our consultants was talking on the phone to one of clients about her feeling of working too hard and he told her that she wasn’t lazy enough. Her problem was in Numbers 5 and 6. She was working at double speed (or trying to) to handle her own work as the practitioner and then doing actions that her staff could have done for her. She was feeling cranky and irritable and overworked.
How to break the cycle:
She said that she has no time to teach to teach her staff so she was just taking on more and more onto her own plate. We’ve heard that a lot.
This problem can be handled by:
- Observing or catching yourself doing some action that could have been delegated to a staff member if they had the training. That really is the first step.
- Knowing what to teach them. Do you have precise job descriptions for each position in the practice and the protocols written up? Staff rely on these to know what their exact functions are and what you expect of them.
(For more info on Cross Training your staff CLICK HERE ). - How to teach them to think for themselves within the scope of the whole practice. Not everything can be thought of and put in job descriptions. Encourage them to observe and act on their own.
- Learning how to supervise them and ensure they are doing the actions required of them.
- Being sure to correct them when errors are made and things end up on your plate. This takes a bit of patience to find out what went wrong and get the staff member to understand that and what should be done in the future.
- Give bonuses and rewards for stellar production.
Stress Free Zone
If you do all the above steps you will gradually take more and more off your plate and you will be a much happier camper.
One of our clients did the above steps with his staff and he now has what he calls his “Stress Free Zone” in which to do his work as the practitioner. He goes home happy and relaxed.
HINT: We offer very short and powerful courses called Effective Leadership and Executive Basics. These help you take full control of the growth of your practice through excellent leadership skills. Learning how to train and correct your staff properly and effectively will improve the income of the practice and your sanity so you can enjoy your practice more!
