Business | Leadership & Personal Growth

Encinitas, Calif. — Communication with staff is the key to a hospital's success, Dr. Michele Drake says.

Give your team the freedom to make the practice shine.

After the storm

As the captain of your practice, it's your job to set the course and take advantage of the wind, urging the ship toward your destination. But you can't maneuver this behemoth alone. You need a crew. When they're truly onboard, your team members will have one eye on the horizon and another peeled for potential problems, and they'll help keep the practice on course.

You can enhance your professional career every time you step up to the lectern—provided you've mastered the all-important basics of public speaking.

Prescribing the medicine is easier than taking it, but if you want to uphold your standard of care, you need to ditch your excuses.

Take a look at the issues team members say bother them most. Then think about what you could do to make their professional lives easier. They'll pay you back-promise! (Attention associates: Boss driving your crazy? We've got ideas for you, too.)

Step one: Weigh the benefits and decide whether you're interested in ownership. Step two: Start developing critical leadership skills.

Almost 90 percent of you are are at work. Maybe it's time to buck the trend.

Data shows team members are in search of stronger leadership. So prevent kinks in teamwork and breaks in communication by taking these six critical steps—and set a positive tone for the practice.

Enjoy a happy veterinary career by leaving your angst at the door.

Even small businesses create hundreds of transactions during a month. And when you add your personal banking to the mix, it's easy to become overwhelmed, especially if you don't like bookkeeping.

Think you're working too much? Odds are you're not delegating enough to team members-who are hungry to help.

When you remove barriers, you're free to realize your true potential.

During the first few years of practice, it's not unusual to dig through textbooks, go online, or read up on cases during spare time. But somewhere around the third year of practice, most of us gain a level of comfort with medicine that stems late-night reading. We go on autopilot.

Commit to these 10 culture changes to build a terrific practice.

Studies show morale and turnover improve when team members feel appreciated.

I've played hockey for many years, often once or twice a week. One day it dawned on me I wasn't improving. Instead I was doing the same wrong things over and over--I was playing but not practicing. Finally, I took a skills class and was amazed at how much I didn't know.

In prior articles, I gave advice on creating and writing a strong, compelling vision for your life and work. But crafting the vision is just the first step. Next you must figure out how to make your vision a reality.

Work better with goal planning.

Different people find different situations stressful, but some stressors transcend personal differences and affect a majority. Many such key job stresses are associated with these six categories:

Use these strategies to make sure tension never becomes toxic for you or your team.

Last month, we discussed the power of crafting a compelling practice vision. The next step: putting your vision in writing. As you're writing, see your vision as an already-accomplished reality, not merely as something you hope will happen. Write in the first person and present tense, creating a vivid mental image with as much detail as possible to bring your vision to life. Use all your senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste—to develop your description.

You're enjoying practice, and your clients and team members are happy. But don't let complacency take hold. These common pitfalls can bump you off track.

Every year, practice owners review their employees, telling them what they did well and how they could improve. But have you ever taken time to give yourself a year-end review? Whether you're the boss, an associate, or a support staff member, you can benefit from evaluating your year, says Jinny Ditzler, author of Your Best Year Yet! A Proven Method for Making the Next Twelve Months the Most Successful Ever (Warner Books, 2000).

The leader's role changes at each stage of team development. Are you doing the right things to help your team grow and go?

Growing up in the South, I quickly learned that there were certain subjects one simply should not talk about in mixed company--religion, politics, and money. There are similar touchy topics in business, such as pay raises and compensation plans, staff disagreements, a desire to make important changes in the practice, and disagreement about management styles. Although we'd like to avoid these topics, they need to be discussed.

Set a date for your associate's buy-in, then use this timetable for a smooth transition.

When you know what goals you really want to accomplish, the path to your dreams becomes clear. Here's how to harness the power of goal setting for your practice.