114: Performance Management Advice for Nurses and Nurse Managers - We can do better.
Performance Management Advice for Nurses and Nurse Managers - We can do better.
Discover actionable advice for nurses and nurse managers on navigating performance management in the healthcare industry. In a thought-provoking episode, I shared personal experiences and highlighted the importance of support, training, and a fair approach for better outcomes.
Learn about the pitfalls of inadequate training, the significance of rapport and a safe environment, and the need to avoid personal attacks.
In this episode, I also questioned the severity of consequences for mistakes and advocated for a more supportive and reasonable approach. Whether you're a new graduate or an experienced nurse, find guidance on handling performance management with clarity, seeking external support, and actively engaging in the process.
Emphasizing the value of support and investment in team members, I encourage healthcare professionals to create an environment conducive to growth and development. Let's strive for improved performance management in nursing by implementing these valuable insights.
Key takeaways:
02:07 - Liam’s personal experiences and disappointment with how people are being treated.
21:02 - Common mistakes and issues in healthcare
21:54 - Advice to the person that’s being performance managed
22:54 - Acknowledge that you are a human who nurses
25:17 - Gather all the information, get help
26:50 - Get support, and collect evidence of what you think is true
28:31 - Clarifying the performance management plan
30:46 - Taking notes and engaging in the process
Thanks for listening!
Loved the episode? Leave us a review!
5 Ways we can support you in your nursing career ✅
Join our Nurse Career Academy and work with us to help guarantee your next nursing role!
Book a free Career Clarity Call with Liam to discuss your career situation!
Join our private FB community to surround yourself with like minded nurses!
Check out our Youtube Channel for more nurse career support!
Looking for awesome comfy Scrubs? ❤️
We are so grateful to BizCare for sponsoring the High Performance Nursing Podcast!
Click here to snag some scrubs!
PS: this is NOT an affiliate link, meaning I do not make money if you use this link and the upside? You get AWESOME scrubs!
-
**This transcript was automatically generated using Descript.**
HPN- 114 Performance Management Advice for Nurses and Nurse Managers - We can do better.
Liam Caswell: Hello and welcome back to the High Performance I Podcast. I'm so excited that you are here today. Happy frigging Tuesday. I hope you've had a beautiful weekend and that you haven't worked too hard Today. We are talking all things performance management. This might not apply to all of you, but everybody should probably have a little listen just in case you ever find yourself or a peer.
In a performance management process. Now I'm gonna keep this short, and this is just really a little teaser or like a little, not a teaser, that's the wrong word. little introduction to how I would explore performance management if I was being performance managed. Now, the reason this comes up is that I've had lots of people call me and I love connecting with nurses and I've had lots of people calling me recently asking about how to navigate the performance management process, and in short, I have been pretty disgusted in the way that people are being treated. Now I'm getting one side of the story and I'm not here to judge, but as an external student manager who has performance managed people who has fired people, I'm very, very disappointed in what I'm hearing from the industry, it doesn't surprise me because at the end of the day, as I always say, nurses at any level are just humans and we're imperfect. But there, there's a fine line between being an imperfect human and then being just a really disorganized shorty general, you know, Doherty Dan, no student manager.
And that's the kinda vibe that I'm getting. I'm getting like dodgy processes. Per being performance managed by not being performance managed, lack of clarity, definitely no adherence to policy and procedure and it's messing with people. And I feel really passionately about talking about this because I think with it, we need to shine a light on the fact that the reason why this happens is because myself included as a nurse unit manager, got absolutely zero performance management training.
And actually, maybe I can tell you this story. Before I dive in whilst protecting everybody's confidentiality, but as in one of my num roles I was very new in this role and within probably a month or so I was told I wasn't asked. I was told that I was taking a staff member who had been performance managed for a couple of years on another ward, and I was like, a bit taken aback.
I was really scared and really nervous. I thought to myself, I don't know how to manage somebody like this. Like, I don't know if they'd been managed for years, I would, could not even fathom to think what had been going on and why they were being managed. So my brain went wild. If you're a numb, you'll understand this.
Or if you've managed somebody. I went wild in my brain thinking about all these things. I'm like, oh my God, it's gonna be painful. I, I went to the place and it did not serve me, and I didn't have the coaching tools at the time, so I was like, really in my head, Anyway, cut. Long story short,, this individual then came and worked on my area and I started doing some research around performance management.
Now, I'm not perfect, and I definitely was not perfect. So I'm not saying I'm great and you're not great. But I was struggling, so I had a gap, so I had to fill the gap. So I looked up the policies, looked up the procedures, met this human. Lovely. Had no issues and I kind of consciously had spoken to my partner about it and I was like, I need to get into the place where my headspace, like there's no bias.
I didn't even read their file from the previous. Employee out. I just got a download. I got a really crappy handover from them cuz they were very happy to just like pass them on, you know, as if it was like a huge problem they were unburdening themselves with and that I was then taken on and I was kinda like rolling my eyes internally like, here's Liam the work course, here's Liam that we'll get shit done and thanks very much, this is my reward.
I know some of you'll resonate with that for sure. So anyway, I did not look at the file and I thought to myself, hey, Let's just create your own opinion of this individual. And we started working with them. We started working on the floor with them. We started supporting them, and we started seeing some clinical gaps in knowledge and skill, but arguably these gaps in knowledge like.
Most people have them, right? Like most people tend to have them. But as we progressed through this relationship and this like performance management process, of course we started to formalize it. There was performance improvement plans in place. There was very awkward, difficult conversations that needed to be have.
Be hard. There was meetings with the director of nursing, the Aon, myself, the individual, the union. All of this stuff goes on behind the scenes, right? In a performance management process, there is a hell of a lot of documentation. There is a lot of dotting your eyes, crossing your ts. There's a lot of like watching what you see.
Mincing your, like, you know, making sure that you're not saying the wrong things in written form and verbally, there's a lot of pussyfooting around things. And there's, it's just evident that everybody is winging it in the process, including hr who, when you call, they say things to you like you need to refer to the policy.
And I'm like, I have 50 times and it doesn't state anything about this. They did not like me. Cut a long story short, as we progress through this process, I get to know this person. I personally felt compelled because if I'm gonna manage somebody and say that they're not clinically signed to work, I'm gonna have to work with them to identify that as my own judgment.
Cuz I don't trust nobody, nobody. And neither should you. So as I move through that process, I built rapport with this individual. And we had this ongoing process for a couple of weeks, a couple of months. And as we moved forward, it became pretty evident that there were some ongoing recurring clinical gaps and things that we had kind of gone over multiple times that weren't changing, weren't improving.
And we then have those really difficult conversations. Now, I could be wrong. Maybe I did the wrong thing, but I. Felt as a human to human that it was really important for me to build human rapport with this person. I kept it very clear. I always had other people in the room, but I made it very clear that I was the manager and that
this is a process and this is the, the pathway. But I also let them know. That I'm a human and that they can always come to me and that my door was open and I actually ended up creating this really safe environment with all of the people that I performance manage. They might tell a different story, but I created this really safe environment where they could come to me, we could have conversations and we could explore it.
And that's where my love and passion for coaching began. Cause I started to get so curious about what really was stopping these people from. You know, picking up the game and like really stepping into the clinician that I knew they could be. Cuz it wasn't like I was writing them off. It wasn't like they were done and that they couldn't learn and grow, but, you know, after a period of time and double staffing and increased costs on the organization, these decisions go above and beyond the manager and the nu So this is what had happened here.
And remember specifically having a conversation with this individual that I was performance managing. And we had gone through the process and it was all kind of like formal, very, very formal. And I knew that we were about to hand over this, you know, this call to. Be fired ultimately, and I'm just kind of dreading it internally thinking, oh my God, I can't, I don't know that I can do this.
This is just horrible. As somebody's livelihood, there is so many things. Trust me, if you are going through a performance process and you've got a rapport and connection with your na, just know. That hopefully it's never, ever, ever personal, right? It should not be personal and I'm gonna get to that. But this was not personal.
This was purely clinical. I actually adored this person. They were a beautiful human, but we just couldn't get them there. We tried all these different things, years of support. Arguably, I don't think they ever got support in the previous role based on what I was told. And it was very personal, and they just took a disliking to this individual.
So we didn't do that. We supported and we made sure that we were there. And they actually mentioned that so many times they felt so supported and they felt so, you know, safe and comfortable to ask into questioning challenge. But they themselves started to see that they couldn't navigate it and they just maybe didn't want to navigate it and they didn't want the stress and the pressure.
And then other people started talking as well, which is a horrible part of the performance management process when people have to work with you. Other people are gonna see. So then there's this whole cognitive aspect of, oh my God, I'm embarrassed. People are looking, people are watching. So cut. Long story short, we get to the end and we're about to kind of deliver, you know, hand over the, the result and say, Hey, we've gone through this whole process and we were kinda like amping ourselves up front.
And I had a, a conversation with this individual the day before and I very strategically. Suggested checked in and assessed the situation, assessed their knowledge and understanding of the situation, and strategically and subtly suggested that it may be in their best long-term career interests to leave.
And that was a tough conversation to have. And of course I said it in much nicer terms than that. But in a nutshell, I kind of gave them the nudge and said, look, tomorrow you're gonna get an email. And I think that it's very important that you make a decision this evening and that you act on that decision before tomorrow.
You know what to do. You know what your best interests are. Here are all your options. Here are all of the things that we've gone through. What do you want to do moving forward? And they were upset. They were really upset, but they also knew and understood because we had tried. And they had tried, and it kind of was like almost like a mutual decision.
They made the decision. Well, they didn't, they, they were forced to make the decision. But selfishly, I felt better about it because I felt like I gave them a heads up and I felt like I gave them back the little control that they had in this experience. And I don't need a pat on the back for that or anything.
I'm not looking for that. It's just, I'm just talking , off the cuff like what my experience was. And then the other side of it was that they. It also allowed me selfishly to then not have to go through that horrible, like, next day experience, right? I still had to go through it, but I had to have the hard conversation.
But I just had it where I gave them a little more power and I felt like that was the right thing to do. And interestingly, I actually met up with this person afterwards in a non-clinical context. And they thanked me. They thanked me for being respectful, kind, compassionate, straight to the point. No bullshit.
But supportive. You know, encouraging and I had an amazing team that worked with me as well, and they all supported this individual. And , the thanks was for all of us, right? But this is not what I'm seeing in the people that are coming to chat to me. I'm not seeing this experience of true, genuine support.
I almost came from a place of like curiosity, like really like three years and you still haven't been able to improve, like, what's going on here? Let's go and explore. Let me go in with a clean set of eyes. That ultimately was the reason why they were moved to my area. Also because the other people. Could not be bothered to do it properly or even invest in this human being, which is just abysmal.
So I've had lots of conversations recently where I've been hearing that it's very personal, that people are, you know, making claims against people's code of conduct adherence and that a p r a adherence and that they You know, they're making these mistakes that are unforgivable and unforgettable, and as I dive deeper and explore these mis quote unquote mistakes and these things that happen, I'm unlike, those things happen every day.
They shouldn't happen, but those things happen every day across the world. The globe in the four or five countries that I've worked in, they happen every day. And I'm talking about little things like patient being left in a wet pad. Now you know how I feel about this stuff. We gotta make sure that we deliver the best care.
But we could all, probably everybody listen, put their hand on their heart and say, you know what? I've definitely left a patient in a wet pan for sure and forgot about it like human made a mistake. Sure. But these things are being risk manned. These things are being reported as neglect for new graduates.
Now, new graduates, I don't want you to stress or worry, this happens across the spectrum. I've worked with people at the other end that have been doing the job for 20 years, and I've been. Micromanaged and bullied and inappropriately managed in all ways, shapes and forms. Now I'm all for management if, you need to be managed.
But really typically it just highlights to me a lack of support and a lack of investment in that team member. And as I divulge and explore these situations and I give my opinion and explore what's actually going on, I'm like, yeah, leaving somebody in a wet pad is not a reason to lose your.
Registration or to be reported to Appra or to be put on a performance plan? In my personal opinion, unless you've done it 500 times, right. If you do it like more than three times, it's like almost becomes intent if it's like becomes an intentional practice. But again, how do we prove that to be true? I don't know.
You know, the next one, like, yeah, if you are somebody that may be disconnect an IV line. To feed it through a gown. Like, oh my goodness, that's terrible. Mm. Yeah. Infection control doesn't like that. But have we all done it? I'm just hearing the crowds of people scream. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We've done it for sure.
I've done it. It's like common practice when I started, so like, sure, we've gotta grow with the times again. Do we repeat it? Do we keep doing it? Maybe then we need to have a conversation. So maybe we miss an antibiotic, maybe we miss a medication. Maybe we delay something because we don't have the support.
All of these things are things that happen every day in isolation. They are not reason to performance manage something in collection of unsafe practices and evidence to prove that somebody's consistently being unsafe. Arguably. Then maybe they need to be performance managed, or maybe they just need to be supported.
Maybe they just need to be invested in. Maybe they need to be guided. Maybe somebody just needs to sit down and have a conversation with them. And what I'm seeing is that we're just avoiding this like the plague, and instead we're just shitting on people. Literally, I've not got a better word. We're shitting on people and we talk about how the nursing industry should be so much better and kinder and respectful, and we should lift each other up.
But whilst we engage in this behavior and a little snickering and like the gossiping and the, oh my God, they're being performance managed and the nurse unit manager buying three people coffees when there's eight people on shift and this sister alliance and the brotherhood and the frigging they them alliance, it drives me absolutely crazy.
It is like kindergarten. It's a play school. We are far beyond that, my friend, and if you are a nurse unit manager, you're an educator and you support people through a performance management, I really, really hope that you take something from this, especially if you are partaking in this behavior. It is hard for us to performance manage somebody, but that doesn't mean we have to compound the hardness and compound the issues for the person being performance managed.
They are already. Suffering cognitively, they're in doubt, they're in fear. They're in overwhelmed, they're in stress, they're in worry. They think they're gonna lose their livelihood. The least thing that we could do is be a human and see the truth for what it is, that this is a really, really tough experience, and that managing somebody through this process incorrectly or how positively.
Is just a non-negotiable that is not okay. We have to make sure that we support them. We have to make sure that we have tangible evidence, that we have a documented, that we have clear impact to patient safety and patient wellbeing, or staff safety. Staff wellbeing to the person's wellbeing. Let's not forget the person.
Nurse, we have to have a clear process that we're following. We need to communicate that process so clearly and articulately. We need to make sure that we document every conversation that we have. We need to make sure that we offer them e a p. We need to need to make sure that we offer them some kind of external support.
We need to let them know what the rights are. They can have a union member come in with them. To every meeting. You need to let them know that you're gonna be flexible in these meetings so that the union member can come and support them, or that they can have somebody else support them. You need to remind them that this is a confidential process and that only the people that need to know will know.
Now people talk, but people should not talk, that people that talk are just indulging in somebody else's drama, and it's the lowest form of gossip. It's the lowest form. Of like just nastiness, in my opinion. Somebody that has been bullied immensely throughout my whole life and somebody that has suffered at the idea and perception of other people.
Or believed that that's what was happening. It's horrible. It's a horrible, horrible experience to have to have somebody watch a clinical practice and then for people to start making up their own stories and tell gossiping about the fact that you're so unsafe. Because here's what happens when you're working in an environment that's like that, people start there in collecting evidence on behalf of the nurse unit manager and the educator.
They start looking for problems in your work. Cuz remember what we focus on. We create, like what we focus on, we see more of. There's not a coincidence that when somebody's being performance managed, that more issues come out of the woodwork cuz everybody then turns a focus on this person because whilst we're looking at him, we're not looking at me.
What if we could just hold space for that person? What if we could like go over and say, Hey Liam, I like, I know this is tough. I'm here to support you. What do you need from me? Imagine how much that would mean to somebody that's being performance managed. For the right reasons, right? Not for just because somebody's being horrible.
So I really want you to think if you're numb, like are you doing all of those things? Are you sending the person an email after you've done the performance chance? Are you giving them all the opportunities? Are you following the process to a T? Are you watching how you communicate? Are you watching who you tell?
Are you sharing confidential in information inappropriately? Trust me when I say this, the future generations of nursing are gonna be all over this. Gone are the days where we just sit there and we just accept, oh, sure, Liam says, I've gotta be performance managed. No, the future of nursing is gonna want the deeds.
They're gonna want all of the things. They're not gonna just settle for some vague, ambiguous, broad statement that everybody else contributes to on the wards. That wet pad risk, ma'am? Yeah. Well, I could have done five of those today because it was five of them, right? So if you're numb and that's what you're doing and you're not following the process, please, please, please book a call with me.
Just let's have a chat. Okay? Let's have a chat. Or if you know somebody, go and chat to them. Get yourself some training. Tap into your organization. There must be some kind of training now. Who I really care about is the person that's being performance managed. Right? But I want to say as a wrap up, what The numb or the educator or the Aon or the Dawn?
All of you. Cuz I've seen it terrible at all levels. I've also seen it good by the way. But at the all levels. I want you to acknowledge that going into these processes as a nurse unit manager, you must manage the heck out of your mind. You need to be so aware of your thoughts. And make sure that they are factual and true.
You need to make sure that your mind is managed so that when you go into these situations, you are not operating from a mismanaged mind that's too preoccupied about whether or not you're gonna say the wrong thing, whether or not you're gonna trip up, whether or not you know they're gonna think that you're bad or you're gonna clear all that up.
Cause when you go into these meetings, you are there to hold space, not judgment. You're there to hold space for this individual to be hurt, to find opportunities, to support them better, to not need to go down the path to collect evidence, to prove why maybe they are progressing. I think we just think that we have to run down this path of like, well, performance management, take, that's it.
Red card, and you're at, we're gonna get you out of this door. It's such hard work to sack somebody. Oh my goodness. Do not do it to yourself if it's unnecessary. If you are doing it from a shitty place because you are to insecure yourself and you are not somebody that feels your emotions and you are like what's the word?
You are like pushing this onto somebody else and you're like pushing all your shit over there onto some sad, depressed, anxious, new graduate nurse that like, no, no. We can't do that to people and it's happening. I wish I could say that it's not happening. I wish I could say I was making this up, but it's not it.
It's totally happening. So, I'll get off my soapbox, but numbs, we need to do better. We can do better. There's always opportunity for growth. Acknowledge what you're doing really well and poke holes in that. Poke holes. We poke holes in evidence-based practice to make it better. Poke calls in your leadership.
Poke holes in your management. Poke calls in your performance management. Make it better. Make people not scared to have conversations with you. Make people not scared to come into your office and have the door closed. Think about what your staff, if your staff think that coming into the office and if they tell you, cuz they'll tell you if they think that that's scary.
Or if you're a staff member and you think it's scary to go into your nurse unit manager's office, they have not created enough safety in that ward for you. That's a real, real red flag for culture, for your growth, for your development. Something to think about now for the person that's being performance managed.
Beautiful human. This is tough. This is extremely tough, but you are also extremely tough and you're gonna get through it. And what I want to offer to you are some steps that I think you need to know that if you're not being performance managed well, you should be aware of. Take me as your virtual nurse unit manager so that you can navigate the process safely for yourself and getting the most out of it.
Okay? So first things first. Acknowledge that you're a human who? Nurses. You are somebody who is gonna experience all the thoughts and all the feelings. It's normal to immediately doubt yourself when you get that letter or somebody pulls you into the office or somebody says, Hey, you've stuffed up here.
Your performance isn't, isn't on par. Whatever way in which they deliver their feedback, which by the way, again, no one's ever trained to do this, so it's usually pretty bad. Understand that they probably have very little training and they're doing the best with what they have. And understand that your brain is gonna offer you lots of thoughts about what they have to say, and you're gonna want to defend yourself, and you're gonna want to prove to them that they're wrong and that's normal.
But in this moment, I want you to just see that you don't have to do that. You do not have to defend yourself. Just take it all in, absorb it. Try as much as possible to get to a place where it's neutral and you're just receptive, almost like in little information, sponge, right? And then when you're outside of that space, you can then map out on a bit of paper.
So simply all of the thoughts that you have about it map out. Just gather all the information. Think about it like a handover. Right. You can argue it. I'm not saying don't argue it, but you know, argue from a place of neutrality and like curiosity, cuz your body's gonna want to like go into this place. Oh my God, I I did not do that.
That's not true and that's not gonna serve you. Okay? You want to create space for yourself, hold space for yourself cuz they're not gonna hold a few hold space. And that just means just be present, neutral, all the information, you're gonna feel it in your body, you're gonna want to react, and then you're just gonna say to yourself, no, I got this.
I'm gathering information. Take your notepad in, write everything down, that they sink, poke calls in what they say. Get curious. Oh, can you tell me more about that day that that happened? What is your main concern here? And maybe I need to do a free on this, like a download. I'll have a think about it.
But I'd love to get feedback from you guys, but really poke holes now, just as much as they should poke holes in their leadership and their management of you, you've gotta poke calls in what they have. Think about it, like if you are in court, I know it's scary, but like whenever you watch a good court drama, they're always poking holes in the story and they're like, what?
Is this true? Or is this factual? Or, there's 15 different versions of this event. Poke holes in it. Get curious, operate from a place of curiosity. Once you've had that first initial meeting, right, like there's probably gonna be two people in that room. You probably don't have time to get somebody. You probably get kind of like pulled in and you don't know that you're being pulled in.
So that's the first thing. Nurse, unit managers, educators, you should email people ahead of time and say, Hey, we're gonna have a discussion on Thursday when you come to work and it's about X, Y, and Z. You should pre-warn them. Do not ever just bring it on. Somebody don't do that. It's, it's horrible. Unless it's the only way, but there's, there's other ways to do it.
And then the next step that I want you, people that are being performance managed to think about is making sure that you, one, have collected your notes and then two, when you go away, I want you to write it all out. Type it all out, gather all the information, okay? I want you to then contact your union if you're not a union member.
Get help. There are lots of different avenues. I think nursing midwifery advocacy solutions. Vicky Stewart, I'll link down below. She's a great resource. You can call me and I'll give you a, a breakdown and a review of your situation for free. You can call the nursing midwifery support help line.
That's also in the show notes. You can call e a p, right? You can call any of the platforms that deal with anything, kind of mental health, all of those things. You'll get support somewhere. Reach out to your network, whoever you trust, okay? Don't talk about it to anybody at work, even your bestie, okay? Once you've got that support, get the, get the neutral support from somebody external to the situation, and then I want you to map everything out.
Write it all down. And start poking holes in outside of that heated environment. Okay? For yourself, I want you to make sure that there's nothing else that they can go and poke holes into. So like your mandatory training, I know it's the last thing you wanna be doing right now, but if you've got gaps there and you haven't done your mandatory training, Go and get it done, please prioritize that, get it done.
Mind numbingly, click through it, get it done so that you're, you're, there's nothing they can pull calls out, right? We don't wanna give them more excuses, especially if it's a vindictive, you know, malicious, unplanned performance management plan. Now, the next step that you want to think about when you're in the performance management process is the support that you have.
For managing the thoughts that are gonna come up because now that you are focusing on the facts that other people think you're not good enough, you're also gonna find other people that think the same thing. You're just gonna see it. They might not even think it, but you're gonna start collecting the evidence.
Cuz what does our brain do? It collects evidence of what we think. It's true. What we think is true is so important here. So again, we've gotta be factual with ourselves. We've gotta acknowledge that we've got a human brain that's gonna run wild cuz this is a a period of instability and our brain loves comfort and safety.
So in this moment, your brain's gonna go wild. You're not gonna be able to sleep. You know all the things. So it's so important. You clear out your mind and you start managing it properly and you remind yourself that's not true. Jane just looked at me like that because that's how Jane looks. Right. We've gotta collect all of that evidence to disprove that everybody's gossiping and talking.
Cuz even if they are, even if the 30 people on your ward of the 31 staff are talking about you, you still get to decide what you make that mean. Your brain's gonna want to make you think, this is terrible and I'm so embarrassed. But you get to decide. If 30 people are talking about me, then what else could you choose to believe is true?
They have nothing else to do with their life really, like they believe it to be true. That's their problem. There are so many other options, and I can give you heaps of them if we have a call together. Now, the next thing that I want you to think about, these are not in sequential order by the way. I'm just giving you some tips and tricks anytime that you go for a meeting in one of these performance management plans.
Number one, if they haven't actually given you a performance management plan, like a tangible document that says performance management, and here's the. Key problem, and here's the APRI code of conduct and the standards for practice and the organizational, yada, yada, yada, that you've breached. You're not on a performance management plan.
I would question that if they say you're on one, but you don't have a document, you're not on one, in my opinion. So, Help clarify that conversation. And if they're going down that process, ask curiously. Now, some of you are gonna say, I don't wanna ask, I don't wanna ask like, oh, can I have a plan? She don't want one.
Right? But like, I would just get curious about the plan and be like, okay, do we have documented evidence of this? What are the key things that you need from me moving forward to be able to prove to you that I am competent in these areas? Notice the neutrality, right? Like, I'm not being sassy. I could be sassy, but I'm not being sassy.
I'm just being totally neutral and curious. Like, okay, so I've got a problem in comprehensive care delivery according to you. So what is the actual tangible steps here? What do you need me to be doing? What are the key challenges, specifically, not broadly. Specifically, what are the key a r nursing standards for practice issues that you see?
And what are you looking for from me in my clinical practice day-to-day that I can work towards moving forward? If you don't have that, you're not on a performance management plan and somebody's mismanaging you, okay, and you want to maybe. One, leave or two, learn to manage your mind. Deal with this individual.
Really start poking holes in it so that they shit themselves and then move on. Or they escalate it and they become horrible and then you need to leave, right? There's not a few, there's not many options when it comes to this kind of. Scenario environment. If you don't have a plan, you don't have a plan. If you have a plan, poke holes in it.
Get curious and make sure it is crystal clear. No ambiguous information, no ambiguous language. Okay. And then from there, You're gonna put it to work. If you're choosing to stay, you're gonna put it to work and you're gonna do the work, and you're gonna contribute, and you're gonna just run the process. You can argue it with your union member.
I'm not here to give you advice on that. I'm just telling you the things that I see people miss. From there, every meeting that you go into, you're gonna take notes. Not like I'm taking notes and prepared. You can do that for sure, but I don't want this to consume your life. It's already gonna consume your mind.
In your life is, don't take it wild, but go in with a pen and paper and take notes as they speak. And then what you're gonna do when you leave, which is, by the way, what the manager should do, but they don't do this. And if you do this, you might just give them a little scare. Because you're taking it seriously and they're not, you're gonna say, hi, John.
Thank you so much for your time today. We met today on the 17th of May 7:30 PM and we discussed the following. Jane said, according to standard one, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This was the action. Jane said that I did not do this. Now this is gonna take your time and you're gonna want to do it. But if you want to keep your registration and you want to beat the process, you have to collect all the information.
Remember, if it isn't documented, didn't happen, the same rule applies here. So you document it then based on whatever your union member says you can run it past your union member if they provide that service. Or maybe Vicky or, I don't know. I'm not gonna say that they do cause I don't know that they do.
But run it past somebody to make sure that it's not emotional. It's very neutral. It's very factual. We deal with the facts in performance management, not the feelings. So if your manager says, I feel like you're not doing good. That's a feeling. That's not a fact. All right? That's the one thing I want you to take away from this.
It's a feeling, not a fact. So as you move through that process, you're going to document it, and then you can potentially, once it's been reviewed for emotionality, it's not a words but emotionality, you can then send that to them and say, thank you so much, John, for your time today, and here's that.
And if you do that after every meeting, they collect the evidence. You collect the evidence. You ask them to reply and seek confirmation that this is exactly what happened, and you'll go back and forth. And nine times outta 10, they'll crap themselves. Okay? They don't have time, and if they're not really like wanting to performance manager you, and you want to stay in that area and you love your job, it's worth fighting fun.
If you are over it and you already can see the writing on the wall, don't put yourself through the process. Just leave. I normally would say, manage your mind, do the things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now if you are like out checked out and you're like, this is not the place for me. I deserve better. I can do better.
I'm doing an incredible job. And you truly, truly believe, there is no cause for your performance management and you can honestly say that to yourself, and there's no scope for growth of learning leave. Okay, so I said this was gonna be a short episode l It's a long episode, but I think that this will really help somebody, it will help people on the management side better manage and like, this is just my experience, my my perspective.
That's why I have the podcast to share what I've done, to share the lessons that I've learned, to share the pickups, and to share the things that I wished I knew. As a num, as an, I wasn't an Aon, but as a num, as a senior clinician. And I also want to empower people that are in this situation because here's the truth, there's, even though there's support out there, you're, you're kind of almost hanging out to dry.
We've all heard that analogy or that saying, right, that you know, you're just a number. Like ultimately we are just a number. So let's remember that. Let's protect that pin that you worked really, really hard for and to navigate this process with neutrality. Internally, you're gonna have a, a, like, your brain's gonna be blown up, but neutrality in managing this situation.
Delivering what they ask for. If you feel like it's warrantied and you don't need to escalate, and you think, fair enough, that's I can improve my practice there. Finding the growth in the learning and the experience, knowing that throughout the whole thing, your brain's gonna be going wild and you're gonna be feeling all the feelings.
That's why I think it's important to have a coach, a counselor, a psychologist, e a p, nursing, midwifery, sport helpline, somebody you can go to to rationalize your brain. Because you're not gonna be rational. Your brain's gonna start believing if it hears something enough, it's gonna stop believing it to be true.
So you need that disconnect where we can just go, hold on a second, Liam. How true is that? How true is it that you are a dangerous clinician? You know, let's say this, say you're a dangerous clinician. How true is that? Do you believe that to be true? Sometimes that's all we need in coaching. That's one of my favorite things to do, is to challenge with curiosity.
The bullshit that our brain throws out to us, that we've collected from somewhere else in this experience, people that are being performance managed. You don't need extra bullshit. You've got enough. Okay? You have enough. I say that with love and kindness, you have enough. So let's not compound the experience with all of that.
All righty. We talked about a lot today, and I know my brain was probably a little all over the place, but I hope that that was of value. I would love to hear your feedback. I hope that none of you ever have to go through this experience. I hope that somebody on both ends of the spectrum today listens to this podcast or in the future and sees possibility.
In their growth, in the experience, in the lessons that a performance management process can offer you. I also hope that as we move forward, maybe high performance nursing needs to lead the way, but maybe moving forward, maybe we need to give our NAMS and our educators, and our aons and our Dons better training, training where they can actually deliver news effectively in a kind and respectful way, in a way that is non-inflammatory.
And deal with these situations without the gossip, the sniggering, the bickering, the behind the scenes drama, cuz it's all completely unnecessary. And it says so much about the people running these situations. And I just want to save and protect all the people from bad managers. We had Tim Ferriss on the podcast and I loved his slogan.
He saves humans from bad management and like literally, that's how I feel when I hear these stories. So if you are going through this process, you are not alone. Please, please, please book a call, come and have a chat to me. They are completely free. There is no agenda. Come and have a call. You can get the support from me.
I can give you a bit of a plan of what I would do. We can personalize that. Look at your unique situation and see if it's warrantied. And I can also help you navigate some of the things that are coming up in your brain. Okay. You have options. It is not the end of the world, okay? Unless, unless you don't go in strategically and deal with this properly, it could be okay if we let them run wild.
I'm talking about the managers, the shitty managers. Protect yourself. Get the support that you need. Action it straightaway and navigate this strategically. Alrighty, I will see you on the next episode. It has been a pleasure to be here. Happy Tuesday. We will see you in the next episode. Stay safe, stay curious, and stay away from she managers.
