Taking your good employees to the next level requires training, motivation, policies, procedures, and strategies. However, physician leaders also must give all of their employees the proper perspective about their own development, as well as their importance and place in the organization. Doing so will help them become better learners and will ultimately make them more motivated, better-informed employees. It also will make them more receptive to your efforts to help them improve.
The best tools for establishing that perspective in your good employees are your organization’s mission, vision, and values statements. Ideally, these statements should be much more than a sign on your wall or some words printed in your employee handbook. They should be living, breathing documents that guide your organization’s culture and provide your employees with direction and purpose.
Mission statement. Your mission statement articulates your identity. As the Indeed editorial team explains, “Mission statements help employees see the meaning and purpose of their work by giving them clear reasons their job benefits a larger goal.”(1)
Vision statement. Your organization’s vision statement defines where you are going. It reveals what your organization most hopes to be and to achieve in the long term and the kind of world it hopes to create. For this reason, Sean Peek explains, a vision statement has a relatively lofty purpose and is an “aspiration.”(2)
Values statement. Your values statement articulates the core principles that guide and direct your organization and its culture by creating a moral compass for your employees. According to SHRM, “[A values statement] guides decision-making and establishes a standard against which actions can be assessed.”(3)
Together, your mission, vision, and values statements can provide a firm foundation on which to create a shared culture of excellence for your good employees. These statements can help your employees make good decisions and keep their heads when their patience is tested.
In addition, a core values statement is another tool that will help good employees become excellent ones. David Darmann suggests that examples of values described in a values statement are loyalty, honesty, trust, accountability, respect, curiosity, inclusion, courage, and innovation.(4)
A core beliefs statement, on the other hand, defines much more specifically for employees how to apply those values to the work they do every day. Anna Katharina Schaffner says, “Core beliefs are our most deeply held assumptions about ourselves, the world, and others. They are firmly embedded in our thinking and significantly shape our reality and behaviors.”(5)
In fact, nothing matters more than our core beliefs, Schaffner says. They are the root causes of many of our problems, including our automatic negative thoughts. However, our core beliefs, both personal and professional, are also at the root of our successes. Unfortunately, they are often overlooked in most workplaces.
CORE BELIEFS STATEMENTS
Every employee in your healthcare organization holds core beliefs, sometimes very deeply. These beliefs may be based on childhood experiences or formative experiences in their careers. Sometimes they are accurate, sometimes not. They also can be self-perpetuating. Schaffner explains, “Like magnets, [core beliefs] attract evidence that makes them stronger, and they repel anything that might challenge them. But it is possible to change them.”
Of course, you cannot hope to know or change the core beliefs of every employee in your organization. However, a carefully crafted core beliefs statement for your organization can help you realign any negative values your employees have and illustrate for them how to apply your values every day.
Below is a statement of core beliefs that you can use with your employees. Each of these 25 beliefs is crucial to the success of any healthcare organization. I encourage you to reference it as a starting point for creating your own core beliefs statement. Review it with your employees and ask them to help you revise it, adding beliefs that are specific to your organization, community, or specialty. Finalize your core beliefs statement and include it in your employee handbook. Then require all of your employees to read and sign it.
More importantly, return to your core beliefs statement again and again when you assess employee performance, and offer suggestions for improvement. For example, ask your employees to read aloud the belief in your core belief statement that applies to the situation at hand and explain to you how the behavior you observed fell short of that belief. That will take the sting out of your criticism, help your employees see what they have done that could have been better, and help them aspire to higher and higher levels of performance.
Finally, use your core beliefs statement as a teaching tool. For example, you can make each of the 25 beliefs below the topic of a staff training program. Your good employees will enjoy connecting the belief to their job tasks and discussing the challenges they face applying it every day. Engage them in guided conversation and role plays. Or highlight one of the beliefs and ask your employees how they can live that belief through their behaviors every day. Encourage them to envision fulfilling that belief even better than they do now. Help them to anticipate challenges that can derail them from behaving in concert with that belief. Give them hypothetical challenges and ask them to apply one of your beliefs to the situation.
Through this kind of work, your core beliefs statement can begin to change the way your employees think. Eventually, they may be able to incorporate your organization’s core beliefs into their own beliefs system. Ultimately, you can use your core beliefs statement to help bring new employees into the fold and to guide your good employees to becoming stellar ones.
CORE BELIEFS STATEMENT: 25 TRUTHS WE BELIEVE
Each of us is an important and valuable part of our team. No one person on our staff can single-handedly be responsible for our healthcare organization’s success. One of our most important responsibilities at work is to get along with our coworkers and to welcome new staff members to our team.
We highly value our donors, volunteers, board of directors, practitioners, and every employee who works here. However, the most important person in our healthcare organization is the patient.
Every patient in this healthcare organization deserves to be treated with the utmost respect and as a welcomed guest. We must be courteous to our patients — always — and do our best to make every patient as comfortable as possible.
We provide the best possible professional care for our patients. We do not cut corners or skimp. We insist on doing a first-rate job in everything we do.
We are a professional organization and, as such, each of us must look professional and act professionally at all times. There is no room for carelessness in our appearance, conduct, manner, speech, workstation, work, or habits.
Each of us represents our profession and our healthcare organization to the public. This is true when we are both inside and outside of our organization.
Our patients’ questions are important. We have an obligation to regard all questions and concerns as serious and valid. We do not belittle or ignore a patient’s questions or feelings, no matter how obvious, trivial, or irritating they may seem.
Our patients’ fears and pain are real to them. If a patient is apprehensive about treatment or complains of experiencing pain or fear, those feelings deserve our respect. We do not minimize or deny the way a patient feels.
Everything that we see and hear that is confidential does not leave our organization and should be discussed appropriately and only when necessary. We are mindful of what we say and who is around us whenever we speak.
Our healthcare organization needs our complete loyalty. We do not talk negatively about a coworker, patient, or other stakeholder in our organization inside or outside of work. If we do not like something that’s happened here, we tell our managers, HR representatives, or other appropriate persons in our organization so they can do something about it.
The way we say things matters and can make a tremendous difference in the way others will react to us. We must be especially careful when we talk to patients. Our language can either calm or aggravate their fears and concerns. When we speak with them, we use the most positive, professional, constructive, and sensitive language we possibly can.
Our professional development never stops. We seek worthwhile educational opportunities such as courses, seminars, conferences, lectures, training programs, and meetings of our professional associations. We read publications and books and consume other media that will help us grow professionally. We learn new skills and are curious about and open to new ideas and technologies.
Staff meetings are important to us. We participate in them to keep ourselves informed of opportunities, problems, new policies, and plans that are vital to continuing and expanding the success of our healthcare organization. We prepare for meetings as needed and arrive to them on time.
We are individually responsible for the tasks assigned to us. This is true even if we delegate part of a job to someone else.
Our healthcare organization needs our positivity, confidence, and enthusiasm. If we are positive and confident, our patients and coworkers will pick up on that attitude. If we are negative, complain, and carry a frown on our faces, our negative attitude will be reflected here as well.
We will make mistakes. That is understandable. However, we have two goals. First, we do our best to anticipate and prevent mistakes whenever we can. We seek the help of others when we need it. Second, when we do make a mistake, we admit it, take steps to correct it, and learn from it so we won’t repeat it. We apologize when that is warranted. Then, we share what we’ve learned so others don’t make the same mistake.
Healthcare may seem costly to us and to the patient. Nonetheless, we put a lot of thought into our fees and they are fair and reasonable. Our fees are based on much more than the cost of the materials and the equipment alone. If we are ever in doubt about the reasonableness or fairness of a particular fee, we ask the appropriate person in our organization for an explanation. We must feel confident about our fees so we can discuss them confidently with patients and feel good about the cost of their care.
A highly productive day in our healthcare organization doesn’t happen by accident or luck. It depends on careful planning and tight control of the appointment schedule. In addition, our productivity relies on our staying focused and on schedule.
We avoid negative assumptions about our patients. For example, we do not assume that a patient has financial difficulties, is not intelligent, is irresponsible, or is a troublemaker based on appearance or first impression. We give our patients the benefit of the doubt until they prove to us otherwise.
Each practitioner’s time is one of the most valuable resources of our healthcare organization. Support staff is here in large part to free our practitioners so they can spend as much time as possible providing their services to our patients. Therefore, we must do everything in our power to prevent unnecessary interruptions of our practitioners’ work.
We control the tasks we undertake, not the other way around. For example, we control the appointment schedule, conversations with patients, financial arrangements, our time, and our own career development. These will not control us unless we let them.
We present information to our patients so they will give us the response we want. Generally, that means that we give our patients choices. For example, we ask them, “Would you like to hold for a few minutes or would you prefer me to call you back?” rather than, “Can you hold?”
We compliment our patients whenever we can do so honestly to communicate that we care about them. We thank our patients for their patience and understanding. We apologize if we have kept them waiting.
We appropriately share anything a patient tells us that conveys negative thoughts about their experience. For example, patients may complain about having to wait, difficulty finding a parking space or getting through on the telephone, a painful procedure, not understanding their treatment, the temperature in the office, or even the office location. We tell the appropriate person in our organization, even when we see no apparent remedy for the complaint or if it seems to us that the complaint is unjustified.
We believe that patients’ complaints are right to them, even if they are wrong to us, and that they deserve our response. Therefore, we share how we respond to patient complaints in case more is needed to be done for them. We also believe that sharing complaints can uncover or highlight problems that exist in our organization and that knowing that they exist will be the only way we can ever solve them.What we do has an impact on our patients, coworkers, organization, and on the quality of care our patients receive. We put forth our best effort every day, even when it seems that no one is watching us or will notice the difference. We believe that someone inevitably will and that we will take pride in ourselves when we give our work our best effort.
Excerpted from Next-Level Healthcare Employees: Improving the Performance of a Good Team by Laura Hills, DA.
References
Indeed Editorial Team. Why Is a Company’s Mission Statement Important? Indeed blog, February 23, 2023. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/why-mission -statement-is-important.
Peek S. What Is a Vision Statement? Business News Daily, February 21, 2023. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3882-vision-statement.html .
SHRM. What Is the Difference Between Mission, Vision, and Values Statements? SHRM HR Q & As. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/isthereadifferencebetweenacompany%E2%80%99smission,visionandvaluestatements.aspx . Accessed October 4, 2022.
Darmann D. 70+ Examples of Core Company Values & How They Shape Your Culture. Hotjar blog, October 31, 2022. https://www.hotjar.com/blog/company-values/ .
Schaffner AK. Core Beliefs: 12 Worksheets to Challenge Negative Beliefs. Positive Psychology blog, June 26, 2020. https://positivepsychology.com/core-beliefs-worksheets/