Have you noticed that a lack of motivation can crush you and take away your interest in practising? There are probably a hundred ways to wipe out your motivation, and you probably have experienced a number of them in your life, right?
Here are some ways to help you regain your interest and energy … thus increasing the success of your practice. Keep in mind that if you ventured out into your own practice once upon a time (whether you started from scratch or bought an existing one), you are a motivational powerhouse and you can scale your energy level back up!
With Covid-19 and the lockdowns as well as the extra work required to keep your practice open these days, it can be very wearing for you as the practice owner as well as for your staff. Motivation levels have often dropped down to apathy and we definitely don’t want this to become part of your “New Normal.”
Staff issues, financial flaps, marketing difficulties, distancing and PPE protocols … these and many more may be affecting you and your practice. Here are some tips to help beat a lack of motivation.
Purpose and Passion
The solution starts with reaffirming the purpose of your practice and regaining your passion for it. If you don’t know what you want EXACTLY, it is almost impossible to achieve that. In other words, you can’t “get there” if you don’t know where “there” is. Ask yourself some questions: “Why did I choose to be a healthcare professional in the first place?” “What do I love most about my practice?” “Why was I so excited to start or buy my own practice, and what did I want to accomplish with it?”
Work out a concise (or long) statement of it. Here are some examples: “My purpose is to create an extraordinary practice with a motivated team delivering top notch service to our wonderful patients.” Or, “We want to become known as the top practice in the whole area.” And so on … work out your own wording. Don’t forget you can ask for your staff’s input on this because they are a part of the picture and need to catch the passion too. No lacklustre goals allowed!
Aim High
Be sure to aim higher than your practice has done before, not just “back to the way it was.” A reason for lack of motivation can be that you are not aiming high enough. It’s the degree of desire we have to accomplish those goals that ends up becoming the crucial element to achieving them. Don’t limit your scope of what you are willing to do because that limits the scope of your motivation. If you aim high enough, you’ll demand more from yourself and your team and have greater success and feeling of accomplishment.
Make a Plan
Once you have the above worked out, now you need to make a list of what you need to do or change in order to accomplish your purpose. Be sure to aim higher than you have ever done before. Then prioritize the items on the list and take the top one and get going. The best follower-upper in the practice could be made the “accountability” person who makes sure that the targets on your list are being met in a timely fashion, thus keeping everyone motivated.
Rewards and Positivity
Rewards and games can increase your intrinsic motivation or desire to do an activity, so be sure to work out exciting or fun ones for accomplishing the above steps on your Plan. It could be ordering in a lunch for the team or even going out for lunch. For a major accomplishment, there could be a half-day closure of the practice to go and play pinball, skating, archery, or something fun or educational. You could have team sweatshirts made for everyone. Have a photographer come in and take pro pix of each team member and frame them on the wall of the practice and/or put them on your website. You surely can come up with some ideas along these lines.
Keep focused on a better future!
Call us at 416-466-6217 for a FREE Practice Assessment!
