Rounding: Staying in Tune with Your Team Members

How can we become the trusted and valued partner for life with all our team members?  By staying in tune and connecting with them.  Just as an instrument needs regular tuning to sound out the right pitch, so too, we need to stay in tune with our team members.  Regularly letting them know we value them (appreciation and celebration), we’re committed to helping them grow (feedback and coaching), and ultimately, we want them to be successful (removing obstacles).

As an enterprise, we are focusing on building trust with our consumers, patients, customers, and our team members. As a leader, it is important to focus on how you can build an authentic connection with your team members, and one great way to do that is to regularly communicate with them. It sounds like common sense, but when you really think about it, how often are you sitting down one-on-one with each team member to see how they are doing, asking for their ideas, discussing obstacles, and celebrating their accomplishments?

We can get so busy and caught up with all the tasks we need to complete that we fail to pause, tune in, and connect.  When this happens, we usually miss signs that someone needs help or needs to be challenged in their work.  We’re too busy to hear that things are out of pitch.

At a recent facility LDI, one leader shared that he took time for a 60-day rounding connection with a new team member and learned that she was unhappy in her new job.  She was excited about the work she had been hired to do, but once she started and her leader saw her talents, he assigned different work to her simply because she already had the skill set.  While she was skilled, the work left her feeling dissatisfied and unchallenged.  Because they were able to openly discuss this, he was able to reassign her responsibilities and retain her, giving her a greater sense of satisfaction in her work.  

Team members stay engaged when they have a sense of satisfaction and when they feel they are contributing to something great!  Every interaction you have with your team members can help reinforce this.  It’s essential to stay in tune with each team member individually.

As discussed in recent enterprise and facility LDIs, we have created a rounding log and suggested rounding guidelines to help keep you organized when you connect with your team members.

-Amy and Kelly

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