Prepare the Worker The Four Step Process

       The topic for this essay is The Four Step Process and can be found beginning on page 187 – 190 Supervisor's Survival Kit (11th Edition).  I think the baseball diamond example on page 187 caught my attention at first, but after reading through this section I felt that these four points are very important as a supervisor. These four steps can be used at any level (business or personal) when trying to teach or explain a process.

        Number one or first base on the baseball diamond is “Prepare the Worker”.  This is a good time for “small talk” (about what you are trying to teach) to put the learner at ease. Give them an overview of what you will be going over, motivate them if they feel overwhelmed ( use encouraging words) and make sure they are comfortable physically (and emotionally as much as possible). 

      Second base (step 2) is to present the operation or process. Describe, illustrate and demonstrate each important step of the job, procedure or process speaking clearly and slowly and follow up with an illustration whenever possible. 

     Third base (step 3) is to supervise a trial performance. To me, this step will be a self evaluation to see how well or how clearly I have explained the steps to the employee, any confusion that I see in the employee may mean that I may need to explain this area a little more clearly next time and also to correct any errors, or questions, the employee may have. This is also a good time to explain the key points of the job and to make sure the worker understands the task. 

      Home Base (step 4) is the follow up phase. This is where we can instruct the worker where to go for help or let them know that they can contact you if help is needed. You may want to check on them frequently at first to make sure thing are going well (but not too often). Make sure to give the employee space to lean on their own and to get comfortable with the system, job or process, over supervising can destroy initiative. 

      There are a couple more things that I think are important; 1. If the employee doesn’t catch on quickly, fails to perform key steps in the process, or has difficulty this may be a Strike Out. First, evaluate your-self, did YOU fail to devote enough time to learning? Did YOU fail to follow the system step by step? Did YOU fail to show enough patience with a slow learner? And 2. YOUR attitude is everything. Make sure your personal attitude is positive and can adjust to the level that you are trying to teach. What I mean by that is… don’t get frustrated and turn to negative even slightly the trainee will quickly put up on this and the training process will become even more complicated. Be professional and set aside enough time to be a patient and caring instructor. 

Motivating Employees To Achieve Greater Productivity

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           Positive private communication can be encouraging to employees, especially new employees to let them know how they are doing and what they can improve on but then ending with high positive encouragement.

        I feel that new employees, or employees that have been around for a while, would like to get feedback on how they’re performing so they know how they’re doing and what they need to do to perform their job to the expectation of the company. I think new employees in particular would like to know because the job or position may be new to them and are trying to fit into the performance level expected of them.  I have come to look forward to performance evaluations once or even twice a year. In fact, I’ve done my own performance evaluations many times over the years. I would fill out how I thought I was doing, meet with medical director privately, and discuss together what we thought might work out better for both of us.

         Over the past week I had the opportunity to sit with an employee, privately, and discuss his performance. This was not because he was in violation, loss of motivation, lack of productivity, this was on a positive note and he deserved the recognition and encouragement. Although, I did use The Right Purpose, The Right Time, The Right Place, The Right Approach and The Right Technique (as described in the book) these steps worked very effectively, in fact, by the time we were finished the employee said “the hairs on my arms are standing on end”.  I know this was from the encouraging report back form one of our patients but I know that adding these steps to the equation added impact to the end result.

This last week one of my patients came to me to thank me after the loss of a family member. She went on to say how thankful she and her family was that we were able to diagnose and by doing so, they had more time to spend with their loved one before he was gone. I was very honored by this but I also knew that I had to give the encouraging praise to my team members. As I used the techniques described in #3 and delivered the news to my team member, the encouraging new was amplified and made a huge impact on the employee.