What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today I come to you from Land’s End in Homer, Alaska. This place is both beautiful and also unforgiving. It made me think a little bit about how that’s kind of a metaphor for life. Life can be beautiful but life can also be a bit unforgiving. When dealing with life’s challenges, how do we also not let go of what’s beautiful around us? that’s what I have been thinking about this week.
Unforgiving beauty
I’ll give you guys an update on Hana. Thank God she had clean margins around the excision of her tumor. Last week, however; we did find out that she has the most aggressive form of cancer and therefore she is now getting chemotherapy.
How do I make sure that this unforgiving circumstance that came into our lives doesn’t adversely affect my ability to see beauty? I’m not talking about just the beauty here but I’m talking about all the beauty around me in my life the people that I work with, my friends, my family, my loved ones, and my other puppy deputy. Just remembering that I’ve got a lot of beauty around me.
How do I not just stick these feelings into a tiny little box? These feelings of despair, hopelessness, frustration, and curiosity, why is this even happening? Stick it in a tiny little box and just move on. However, my goal, and what I want to share with you guys today is I’m going to work hard on exploring these feelings.
I’m going to meditate, pray, journal, and all the combinations of the above to make sure that I figure out exactly how I’m feeling about this situation so that I can manage these emotions effectively and productively so that I can work and take action to support Hana’s recovery and just stay positive.
Going there with my feelings and appreciating the other elements of beauty around me in my life when unforgiving moments happen is this week’s Two Minute Drill message.
I hope you guys have a great week and I’ll talk to you all next week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today, I’m coming to you from beautiful La Jolla, California at this amazing resort called Estancia. I’m here for the Cal Chiro conference. An amazing event with a fantastic crowd. I had a lot of fun speaking this weekend. Today’s topic of conversation is talent management.
Performance Review & Recruiting Strategy
I have had several conversations this weekend with owners of practices who have said, you know what, I’m having some staff issues and I don’t know what to do. In this one particular conversation that I had, this chiropractor had an office manager, a long-time office manager whose performance was starting to slip.
I said, First and foremost, you should sit down and have a meaningful, honest conversation with this employee, and talk to them about what you’re observing and how it’s impacting the business. Help me understand why this is going on. What can I do to support you better? What can I do to support your continued improvement here? If the decision comes to, this is no longer working for one of us, or both of us, then let’s decide to move on and support each other in that transition. You can support your person leaving and they can support you while you find the next best person for this role.
We should be having regular performance conversations with our direct reports, regular one-on-ones all the time. However, if that’s not happening and you’re having a performance issue, you’ve got to sit down and talk to that person.
That ties to the next point, that I shared with her, which is having a recruiting strategy. We have a part-time on-demand recruiter. I found her on LinkedIn, she is amazing. When we have open roles in our companies, we say, hey, Chrisy, find us this person and she does. We’ve got an amazing team thanks to her. She does a great job, but also, we have every single role in our companies posted on Hireology and Indeed all the time.
Now, you might think, Well, that’s crazy. What do your employees think? Well, guess what? The great performers don’t care. They’re happy about it because they want other great performers to join the company, and the only ones that are worried are going to be the ones that are not performing well. Luckily, we don’t have those folks. We have great performers.
I highly encourage you to post all of your positions for your company and have them open all the time so you have a constant pipeline of people that you can pull from in case someone just decides to jet unexpectedly.
Make sure you’re having regular performance conversations and make sure that you have recruiting strategies so that you can grow your team and your practice to the best of your ability and have a lot less stress doing it.
Happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill, and I’ll talk to you next week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today’s topic of conversation is engagement with empathy. For so many years early and even kind of midway through my leadership journey, I would deal with really challenging and troubling times, and a dictator-like approach. And when things didn’t go well, I would even react with discipline, a disciplinary tone.
Don’t Be a Dictator
You probably know that approach does not work, so I will share it with you. Not only does it kill relationships with your team members, but it also kills the entire culture of the organization.
What I have learned through many failures, trials, tribulations, lots of reading, lots of learning, and lots of mentoring from some great coaches like Jeff Lecher, is that the most important thing I can do is engage with my team with empathy.
When you hire the right people, in the right seats, doing the right work in the right way, at the right time. When there are challenging times that are occurring, they are suffering just like you are. It is our role as leaders to engage with them with empathy.
How does that help? Well, first and foremost, it helps them understand where they are coming from, and what they are dealing with at that moment. Two, what that does, is build a stronger connection with you as a leader and help them feel safe. Three, all of that helps to provide a culture of problem-solving, the ability to not worry as much, and focus on solving the problems at hand.
Again, I highly recommend that when you are dealing with challenging times in your business or your practice, engage with your team with empathy, understand where they are coming from, connect with them, and then make sure that you focus on the solutions at hand and have as much fun as you can. That will also lighten the mood and help you engage your team in the most meaningful way possible.
That is this week’s Two Minute Drill. Have a great week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Hannah, you may have seen her in a couple of other Two Minute Drills here at the vet in Arlington Virginia. About 10 days ago we found a soft tumor on her paw, a little bit fixed about the size of a candied-covered Almond. That brings today’s topic of conversation palpating your pets.
Check Your Pets Regularly
We took Hannah the next day to get her needle biopsy done and it came back positive for mast cell cancer. I did not even know that dogs could get skin cancer, but apparently, they can. Mast cell cancer is one of the most common types of skin cancer that dogs can get. When found early it is typically curable, but when found late it becomes much more challenging as with any other cancer.
One of the things that we have done with our dogs ever since they were puppies is constantly palpating them, feeling them, squeezing them, checking under the skin, the subcutaneous tissues, and their paws just regularly. Because of that, it made it much easier to find this tumor and have it addressed. Today, Hannah will have the two middle toes of her rear left paw removed. Hopefully, there will be clean margins and therefore it’s expected to be mostly curative if not completely curative. If there are no clean margins around the excision site, then more aggressive treatment is needed, either radiation or possibly leg amputation. This is pretty serious business.
Again, I am going to encourage all of you pet owners. I don’t care if you have got a dog, a cat, a turtle, or whatever you have, make sure that you are palpating them and checking them regularly because early detection can truly save their lives. I know you can send lots of love and wishes to this beautiful baby girl. I will keep you guys posted on her progress.
That is this week’s Two Minute Drill. Have a great week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today’s topic of conversation is connection. I am here at Georgetown University to teach master’s students about complementary and alternative medicine. It is always a great time, these young minds are just ready to take on the world.
Strengthen Your Connection
Being on campus makes me think a lot about the connections that I built while I was in college, many years ago. In fact, I was really lucky because this past weekend I got to spend almost 48 hours with some of my closest friends from college, and the connection and being together was phenomenal. For me, the connection that I felt with these guys might have been as strong as I’ve ever experienced. I believe part of the reason is that I have a stronger connection to myself. I have a stronger understanding of what makes me tick and the areas where I want to learn how to improve and grow as a human being.
As I told you in one of my Two Minute Drills way back in October when my parents were diagnosed with COVID and I was going through a lot of stress, I was going to start exploring some mental health options and get some counseling, and I’ve done that. I’ve been doing it now for the past 10 months. It’s made a huge difference for me, understanding how my upbringing and my experiences growing up has shaped my thoughts and shaped my behaviors, and because of that, I’ve gained a greater understanding and connection to myself, I’m able to have a much greater connection to the people that are in my life. That has and is going to continue to make a big difference for me.
So I encourage you to strengthen your connection with yourself through counseling or otherwise so that you can continue to strengthen your connection with others because isn’t that what life is about?
that’s this week’s Two Minute Drill. Have a great week and see you all on Thursday for this month’s webinar around metrics.
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today’s topic of conversation is being aware of and considering our mortality. I’m here in Washington, DC, right in front of the congressional cemetery. Lots of famous folks are buried here, like John Philip Sousa the composer, Cokie Roberts the journalist, as well as J.Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI for many years, also buried here, vice president Supreme court justice and other members of Congress who are laid to rest.
Am I making the most of my time here on earth?
The reason why I’m here today, and the reason why we’re talking about being aware of and considering our mortality is because last weekend at FCA national, I taught a few courses. As part of those courses, I was teaching how to develop a stoic mindset. A stoic mindset can help us get through life in a way that’s much more productive and positive than if we don’t develop some of these skills.
One way to develop a stoic mindset is to consider and be aware of our mortality. This is really relevant because last week, one of my very best friends, Larry, who was also a guest on a TMD not too long ago, lost one of his friends who were 51 years old and died of a stroke. One day he’s alive. The next day he has a stroke and the next day the family decides to take him off of life support. Life is fragile!
I want you to ask yourself a really important question. Am I making the most of my time here on earth? We all know what’s limited. We all know the clock is ticking and we don’t know exactly when that clock stops to run. I want you to ask yourself, am I making the most of my time here? And if you’re not making the most of your time here, what must be true in order to change that starting today? I know it sounds cliche, and I know you’ve heard it before, but I really want you to think about this question, answer it, and take the steps to make the most of your life.
Do what you can to be safe, do what you can to be healthy, and make the most of your time with yourself, your friends and your family.
That’s this week’s Two Minute Drill. Love you all. Have a great week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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