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Jessie Arnoldson:
Welcome to the MedMan podcast, a podcast focused on helping you level up your practice. I'm Jesse Arnoldson.

Jay Holmes:
And I'm Jay Holmes. Through interviews with some of the most successful leaders in the industry, we helped uncover resources, tools, and ideas to help you level up.

Jessie Arnoldson:
Thanks for tuning in and we hope you enjoy today's program.

Jay Holmes:
Hey everyone Jay here with the MedMan podcast. In part one of this interview, we talked about starting up a mobile medicine clinic. Now we're going to jump into part two where Scott dives into how to earn trust from your new team. Scott, thanks for joining us again.

Scott Tucker:
Glad to be back.

Jay Holmes:
To start off, we kind of give a soft question here, just about you in the industry and things like that. But we know that healthcare can be extremely demanding. And what do you do to keep your fire lit, to keep moving?

Scott Tucker:
Right now that's a tough one. Giving everything going on in this pandemic that I think it's pushing all of us to our limits as far as how much we need to embrace what's going on and work on our own coping mechanisms for stress and whatnot. But right now, more than ever, our role as administrators is to help keep practices open and operational so we can take care of patients. And as we're seeing right now, that is more prevalent and more important than before. So, I spent a lot of time with my dogs, and working with them is my way of decompressing and keeping things going internally.

Jay Holmes:
Gotcha...And just because I know you a bit certainly the challenge and the complexity of what you do is the ultimate driver, right?

Scott Tucker:
Right.

Jay Holmes:
Then finding those other release points that you can balance the stress that comes from it.

Scott Tucker:
Absolutely.

Jay Holmes:
And that's what I find most administrators, you are all problem solvers. And fortunately and unfortunately, every single day, there's many of those. And the fortunate part is that you can never get bored in the role, but at times it certainly is draining. And fortunate... Those dogs are fortunate for you, too. I must say, we need more people that care about those puppies. So we talked in the first episode about a success. Now we're going to jump into a not success which sometimes we can call failures. Talk to us about something in your career that you've learned a lot from that you didn't do so well.

Scott Tucker:
So as I've progressed in my career, my different paths, most of the progression has been out of need for the organization. One of the pieces that I usually get involved in is if there's problems and significant problems. To come back, to come in and evaluate and take a different approach to try and make things better, whether it's a culture issue, whether it's a political issue, whether it's a financial issue, just to try and come in and identify where the problems are, and make things better. What I learned early on was the passion to do that, led me to fail, in coming in with an objective of, hey, we have a problem, we need it fixed. I'm a fixer. So my mentality is, all right, let's get in. Let's get going. And what I figured out early on was that coming in and hitting the ground running creates instability. And it took many, many, many trial and errors, in trying to learn how to do a better job with that. And what it comes down to is coming in, and even if they're are people you've been around and know you very well, you're in a new role. So there a new team to you, and especially if you've never met them before. So coming in and taking a step back, letting people get to know you a little bit and ultimately building, building trust with them. And early on, I learned that trust is key to everything. I took that for granted a lot in my earlier days. And then the other part of that is recognizing the trust doesn't mean that people are going to like you and it's not about being liked. And so really trying to find that nice balance of having people that may not like you, but at least they don't not trust you. I think that sounds weird, but it's truly about building that trust first and then working on fixing whatever the problems are as you go.

Jay Holmes:
Yeah, absolutely. Right. problems don't get fixed by one person. And so if you don't have alignment, then you're certainly working on an uphill battle. Can you share any particular story, through stories, It's oftentimes easier to see and get a point. Can you look back and think of a story that might highlig this?

Scott Tucker:
Yeah, I had, brand new into the position I was in. I walked into a meeting with this high hope of, all right, I will just let people talk about their concerns and then we'll fix them. We'll identify, we'll talk about them, and fix them. And so I went into this meeting, I had the meeting set up at a different venue than our normal meetings. So it would be just kind of a different pace. And we had no agenda other than I was just going to be a kind of an open discussion, kind of like a town hall, a little bit like a town hall. And I had this idea that we were all going to get in there. There was about 50 little over 50 of us. And it was going to be an open discussion about frustrations and concerns and then it would turn into a progressive. It'll progress into a Problem-Solving session, we could all talk together and what I learned in the first 10 minutes was it was a great session that then turned into people complaining about each other, and then pointing fingers at each other and blaming each other. And it was the worst experience there was. And I could not take control of it until I finally said, OK, let's just be done. And what I took from that, I did a lot of reading and reflecting after that was, A: There was no context to what we were trying to accomplish. And it showed me how pent-up everybody's level of frustration was that it really was just a venting session. Which was fine, except for venting sessions I needed to have a little better control over, as well as, limit that down so you don't have 50 people venting off each other because I'm just getting the mob mentality.

Jay Holmes:
Great story. So let's just kind of keep going that as your career progressed, what then was the next iteration of problem-solving, at least how you went about it?

Scott Tucker:
So I after that experience specifically, I took a step back and I talked to some of my mentors from across the country and got turned on to a few different resources and people. And so I did. I had one of my mentors. He is a big fan of a big proponent of Covey's Speed of Trust. So I actually went through and did the leading and working at the Speed of Trust course. It was a week-long. And then I took more specific to the discipline I was in, took some other courses. And one of the things that one of my other mentors took me to was this kind of roundtable and it was what I was trying to accomplish. But I didn't do it right. And it was putting some boundaries but letting people just speak. And so when I went to this seminar, we sat around, there was actually 70 of us. We sat around and they had this kind of microphone-like thing. And when you had the microphone, it was your turn. And they would ask a very specific question and then let everybody respond to it and then ask another very specific question and let everybody respond to it. And after about an hour, what we saw were people were in kind of the same mindset. The barriers were down and so people were more open, but it wasn't about attacking. And so it ended up being six hours of back and forth conversation where we really got to get to the bottom of issues and concerns people had but in a non-threatening way. And so I've taken a lot from that and tried to incorporate that into how I do things now.

Jay Holmes:
Interesting. So it was really structure-dependent.

Scott Tucker:
Yes.

Jay Holmes:
And through that structure, allowed for certainly better results.

Scott Tucker:
Absolutely. And it showed me that a group of people, so we did this on the very first night of this, this course I went to and that were there are 70 of us. We came from all across the country. I knew three people in there. But within that night, there was a level of trust that was built amongst each other. Because of that structure, there was no attacks on anybody. It wasn't about blaming anybody. And so we were able to kind of have this feeling that even though you didn't know these people, it was a safe place to be and a safe, safe place to be open where you weren't going to be attacked and you were going to attack other people. It was very powerful.

Jay Holmes:
Sounds that, put it in a clinical setting or practice administrator setting. How have you incorporated that into your meetings or how you interact with staff or providers?

Scott Tucker:
Yeah, it's come down to setting guidelines at first and boundaries. And letting, you know, setting the tone for this is what we're going to do and this is the goal. And then also having the ability to stop somebody in the midst of it, if they're kind of getting out of line and not sitting within the objective and following kind of the tone and what we want. Is in a positive way, bringing them back to focus. And it is always a work in progress and it's about learning people and having a good understanding of what's going on to facilitate that and incorporate the tools of that even in everyday life. I have at this practice I'm in. As you know, I am me and about 60 female providers and staff members. So I've taken a different approach in trying to be very approachable and not, quote-unquote boss-like when it comes to people needed to talk about problems. And so I try to have a quote-unquote open door policy where people can come in and talk about anything they want and they feel OK about it.

Scott Tucker:
And what I've seen since starting here is that, more and more we're able to talk about even non-work related things and get even just the ability for them to feel comfortable venting about something going on in their personal life. Or coming in talking about something that's going on in their professional life and just wanting to have a sounding board that they feel comfortable with, but then also if there's a problem, being able to work through it together. And give some suggestions, give some ideas, and then if there's been problems with the interpersonal side within colleagues and whatnot, is trying to facilitate that same discussion but at a very small scale of let's not attack each other. Let's communicate and figure out where are we off, where are things not going well and how do we fix it? And sometimes it's a matter of just getting them to recognize that sometimes personalities are personalities. And if your personalities don't match and they don't mesh, then probably we should just learn how to work together and keep personalities away because they don't match.

Jay Holmes:
Yeah, it seems too often that we bypass intention and look at the process or the vehicle in which one takes to get somewhere, which really is the wrong way of doing it, because most of the time everyone wants to work and get along and have a good place to work. And sometimes we forget that because my path looks different than your path. And certainly, that helps set the stage for a very good conversation or a good path to trying to solve problems.

Scott Tucker:
And recognizing that there's a hundred different ways to skin a cat, not that I want to skin a cat, but there's a hundred different ways to skin a cat. And it's OK and really and I think not only in healthcare but just as a society right now, we all could take a step back and recognize that there are going to be people that don't agree with you. And that's fine. They're not wrong and you're not wrong. It's just a difference in opinion. And that's OK. We don't all have to agree. If we all agreed and we're all the same. It'd be pretty boring.

Jay Holmes:
Totally. So before we wrap this section up, I want to ask a question here. And sometimes it's hard to know you're in the middle of, in a path, on a path that isn't going to serve you well. There are any things that you can pull out as signs that maybe someone's jumping in and rushing things a little too fast in the sense of trust-building or getting everyone aligned. Can you think back and say, hey, if you see this or that, you're probably going a little too fast, slow down, think about trust first, then solving all the problems?

Scott Tucker:
For me, it's all about feeling. And I know that that sounds weird, but I go ask what the pulse is. And sometimes it's having little conversations with people that you can and not direct conversations to try and get a pulse on what's going on. And for me, I've been fortunate because I have a clinical background and I have the other background. I can work in the clinic or work in the field or whatever and get a pulse by just working with people on what it is. And I think that's the biggest thing is being open to having a pulse on what's going on and really being open to recognizing that it may be you causing some tension and not thinking. And I learned the lesson, too. If I'm the boss, this is how it's supposed to go. There's a difference between a boss and being a leader, and I certainly have made those mistakes. But it's really opening up your eyes to what's going on and what is the temperature of your team and recognizing again, lesson learned hard way for me. That there are just always going to be some people that you're not going to make happy. And one of the lessons I learned, early on, was I used to use that as my barometer for how I was doing and how the ... Was doing, how I was performing. I was trying to make that group, that small subset of people that are just never going to be happy to try and make them happy. It was like my personal mission. And what I found was it then led to creating issues and impacting the ninety-nine percent of the rest of the group or the ninety-five percent of the rest of the group, and it actually made things worse. And so putting your attention and putting your focus into the 90% goes a long way. It helps you build that 90 percent trust.

Jay Holmes:
Excellent. And you speak about pulse. What I ultimately think about is just getting outside of the four walls of your office, and you can do that in different ways. You can do that by getting up and walking around. You can do that by jumping into a seat and performing. Or you can talk to people and try to view the clinic through their eyes. And certainly, it's important because too many times there's decisions made in an office or a boardroom that don't have the perspective and understanding of what's going on the ground level.

Scott Tucker:
And even having your office... Jay, we've been on calls where people are walking in my office all the time. That to me demonstrates also part of that as well, which is there's, I mean there's a fear because, you know, it's just inherent nature if you're going to the boss's office. But the amount of people that come in to talk. The need to question that, that whatever, that also can lead to some of the temperature of the group really OK, not just sitting in here and I have to go physically find people. There are a lot of people that come in, to just even just talk and check-in.

Jay Holmes:
Absolutely. And with that, the higher frequency than all of a sudden you've got more data to know if, something just seems a little bit off and it might not be them actually saying, hey, I'm coming in here to tell you about a problem. You can just say, you're acting a little different than normal, what's going on?

Scott Tucker:
Absolutely.

Jay Holmes:
It's easier to see that when there's consistency around your interactions rather than, once a month I'm going to go and wave to everybody. Certainly is different than having that connection and really noticing.

Scott Tucker:
Yeah, I think now more than ever, given everything going on with the pandemic and everything people are missing that personal connection. And there's a fundamental part of us that need that. No matter if it's a work person or a personal friend, we need that personal connection. And I think now more than ever, it's important to have that obviously staying within acceptable boundaries of a professional relationship and having some sort of personal connection on a professional level is key. It's huge.

Jay Holmes:
Yeah, I tell you what, the first couple of months I was pretty excited just staring at a computer screen all day long and not having outside meetings. Person to person. I was getting so much stuff done. But now it's certainly past the honeymoon stage of me just getting stuff done. And it's wearing down. I think it's wearing everyone down and important to focus on real people, real-life as much we can.

Scott Tucker:
Right

Jay Holmes:
Well, Scott, I want to say thank you for hanging out with all of us. It was our pleasure and everything you shared. I know that our listeners are going to get a lot of value, so thank you.

Scott Tucker:
All right.

Jay Holmes:
Thank you all for tuning in today. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Scott. For the show notes, transcripts, material from the show and everything else MedMan does, head over to our website at MedMan.com. Remember, we'll be here twice a week sharing insights, ideas and tools to help you level up your practice. Thanks again for joining us today.

Jessie Arnoldson:
Thanks for tuning in to the MedMan podcast, we hope you enjoyed today's featured guest for the show notes, transcripts, resources and everything else MedMan does to help you level up. Be sure to visit us at MedMan.com.

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