Culture Focused Practice

Hey, this is Dr. Tara Vossenkemper with the Culture Focused Practice podcast. And today we are going to talk about hiring mistakes you're making and how to stop them. So it's normal to make mistakes. Ideally we are learning from them. I think that's a big duh, obviously, but also in an even more ideal world, we're learning in advance from other people who have made them like me.

And I have learned some of these from a friend. Other people before me who have made them. So we're going to get into, there's about four mistakes we'll get into. Um, I'm going to assume that you have hired a person or two as in your tenure as a group practice owner, or maybe leadership, you've been involved in some of the hiring processes and slash or if you're prepping to get ready for your first hire.

Who knows, regardless. I mean, I have a couple, I have a couple of horror stories about hiring. Um, I'm, I'm trying to consider how much, how detailed I should be talking about this. Um, Let's just say there's some more stories. I think I'll just leave it at that. People who may be even once we had pretty clean systems in place related to hiring some people who snuck their way through.

That's pretty rare at this point, but it did happen. And then also somebody who, you know, folks who've been with the practice for longer than they probably should have before we really started to focus on, um, accountability and metrics and, and all that, then they, they saw their way out. So hiring poorly.

Is that how you would say that? Bad hires? I hate saying bad hires. That might not be bad people. It could just be people that, you know, maybe they don't want the job the way that you are explaining it and expect what you're, gosh, maybe they don't want the job based on what you are expecting and how you are explaining it.

So they might not want the role the way that it is, or maybe they're not a good culture fit. And so you can attempt to get at both of these things for hiring processes, but that's sort of beside the point. But so when I say bad hire, I mean, somebody who's not a culture fit or somebody who doesn't actually want the job as it's defined and, you know, based on what's expected from it.

So we'll just call them bat hires. All of that to say, I'm going to use the term or the phrase bat hires. I don't love that, but that's what they are. Um, they're just a suck. They're a drain on resources. Um, Not just financially, they're a drain, obviously, because you have spent money on a person, a hire, and there's, it's, you probably, depending on how soon that, that hire left, you probably haven't even broken even yet.

I know in some cases, I've just lost money with the hire. That's really the worst. And in other cases, maybe you've broken even, but it just, it ends up being a drain on culture and morale. And so it's either a financial drain, almost always, it's a financial drain. Also, it can be just a big drain on culture.

It can really erode at whatever culture you've attempted to build and whatever you're trying to maintain or create and cultivate. And also quite frankly, it's a fucking time suck. I really value my time. I don't like to waste it. And so having a bad hire is. It's a time suck. I mean, it just is a time suck period because when they initially come on, of course, the, the whole like hiring experiences from, you know, phone screen to offer letter, of course, that can be a time suck.

It can be time intensive. And when you're bringing people on, you're willingly taking on the, sort of the cost of that time. Once a person is there. And then you start to suspect like maybe this isn't such a good fit. It becomes a time sound because then that person is now part of the conversation on a consistent basis.

So they're taking up emotional and maybe emotional but for sure mental bandwidth or taking up conversational bandwidth they're literally taking up the space. Between you and maybe your clinical director or in a neuron that if you are the clinical director, that is space and time spending doing something that is directly providing value to the practice.

And instead, it's time spent troubleshooting something. You're trying to figure out what went wrong. What did I do? Is there something wrong? Is it just me? It's this person. What are they doing? What are they not doing? All of that is a time suck. That's my long and short story. Time suck. Fun sucker, like from a, what is that movie?

Freaky Friday when it doesn't matter. Time suck. So four mistakes, four mistakes and how to avoid them. Number one, man, I've done this hiring too fast or like out of desperation. So there has absolutely been cases where I have felt pressured, frantic, a sense of urgency about hiring for a specific service that we offer.

Maybe I let some people sneak through because they said that they provided that service and it did not work, did not work out almost any time. I have felt sort of rushed to make a higher or like a sense of pressure. You know, it's very rare that it works well. So when you are rushing a hiring process and you really need a thing done, like you really need a seat, a person in that seat, or you really need the service offered, it's really common that you start to, you know, like loosen up your expectations, sort of like, well, maybe, maybe they could fit.

Maybe they could do this. Maybe it won't be so bad. It will be. So bad. They won't fit. They can't do it. Just don't even don't even go down that route. If you need to just talk to a colleague who's been through the same thing. And ideally, they're going to tell you to just stop like keep looking, it's not going to work out so hiring too fast or like, again, out of desperation if you're feeling really desperate or frantic or urgent.

That can result in some poor decisions with regard to who you are bringing on. So that's one thing. Second hiring mistake. Oh, alternative solution. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, how to stop that. So I would say one is, um, if you ever are feeling desperate, just ensure that you ideally you'd know when you're feeling desperate.

I mean, I'm sort of playing hypothetically or theoretically, you know, whenever you have a sense of desperation about hiring, I would say that sucks and respect your hiring process. Don't cut corners, don't cut corners. Again, that's one thing, don't cut corners. Second thing is. Talk to a colleague, talk to somebody to help check yourself, sort of reality test, a reality checker, someone who's going to push back against like, no, don't make that decision.

Uh, third thing you can do is get other people involved in the process. So I, I know from, well, I should say in my own experience, um, it's rare that, hmm, how do I say this? I don't think anybody feels the strain of hiring to the same extent that I do being the owner of the practice. So I think. My, my leadership team around me understands that there's a need to hire but they don't feel the intensity of it in the same way as I do.

And so, sometimes that's hard and frustrating on all for all of us and then other times. It's helpful because if I'm trying to push for something, they might push back. They know they can push back against me. That's what I expect out of them, but also they might push back. So if you have people around you that you can also trust who are part of the team that might slow your role, slow you down a little bit, I would say lean against.

Lean against them, I guess, really, because you're trying to like push, you know, you won't push back or lean on them, you know, uh, defer to them, excuse me, to help shed some light onto what might be happening. So mistake number two, that's mistake. Number one is not going too fast. Mistake. Number two is ignoring red flags.

I would say this kind of ties in with Mason mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake, number one, mistake. Number one, I swear to you, my husband and I talk about this, I think since having kids. I just can't talk. Like I mess up words so often. It's like a joke between the two of us where I said, I'll say something and it just is nonsensical.

I don't even like Dr. Suits. It's nonsense. I'm spewing nonsense. Okay. Mistake again, fucking again. Mistake. Mistake number two. Sometimes also I think my brain just works faster than my mouth does. So, you know, there's that mistake. Number two, ignoring red flags. Um, don't just don't like Bob Newhart and that skit that SNL old SNL skit, stop, stop, like yelling at his clients, stop it.

That's 150. Don't make, or I'm sorry, don't make mistakes. Don't ignore red flags easier said than done, of course. So ultimately, we can again especially I think if there's some sense of like pressure to hire maybe a little bit of desperation. We can, we can tend to let some things go that we might not normally.

So a couple things you can do to help combat this one is, um, sometimes I'll just bake something into a process that already is in existence because I know that if it's part of something I'm currently doing, I'm more inclined to remember to do it. So, what I would recommend is whatever your hiring processes and I love hiring processes so I'm assuming that you have one in place but let's say whatever your hiring processes.

After that interview, your final interview, your first interview, whatever interview, just mark down, maybe there's a series of questions you ask yourself about this person, about this process. Number one question might be, do what, to what extent do I feel desperate to hire right now? And that could be just, just informational, you know, just data for you to sort of reflect on like, okay, am I feeling pressured or not?

Number two question might be what red flags am I seeking to justify with regard to this candidate. Ideally your answer is none. Or you might soften the language a little bit and say what concerns, even subtle Do I have about this candidate. So then you're at least like getting on to pay for something with regard to not only your sense of desperation which ties into hiring too fast or feeling rushed, but also if you're like ignoring anything that your, you know, little spidey senses might be telling you.

Something else you can do. So one is just embed questions, especially if it's just you at this point in this process and just embed some questions and whatever it is that you normally do make yourself reflect on some of these things, things to try to, you know, curtail this from happening or to minimize hopefully just get rid of entirely.

That hires from happening. Um, another thing you can do is having other people as a part, like embedded or part of the process. So if you have a leadership team, or if you have employees that you really trust, like you hold them in high regard, there's a strong relationship between the two of you. They're good at certain things.

I have an employee that is just stellar at picking up on certain traits in people that I'm not really good at seeing. She's very good at it. I'm not so good at it. So I've enlisted her in the hiring process. So she, if she has red flags that she's picking up on, she's going to voice them. And so between the two of us, there's more people involved in my own, you know, in my own practice, there's more people involved.

Let's say it's just the two of us. If it was just between the two of us, we would be catching different things, but we also have respect to be able to talk and share openly about these things with each other. So that's the. Second mistake people make is ignoring red flags, and you can combat that by combat that excuse me by, again, reflecting on specific questions at the end of your interview, you know, personally reflecting and maybe writing things out or number two and listening to other people in the process so they can also you have like a checks and balances.

So, um, another piece is. Hmm. I think that, no, I'm going to keep going. Mistake number three. Now I want to keep saying the snake, the snake number three mistake. Number three is one of my least favorite things ever. Whenever people prioritize quote skill, I'm going to say quote skill, but no, when they prioritize a resume over a culture fit, this is just grounds for termination in and of itself.

Just don't do it. Don't do it. Do not ever let culture be a non factor in a hiring process. Culture should be front and center. It should absolutely be foundational. It sucks sometimes, but if a person has a fantastic skill set and you're like, man, they're great. And then you realize. They don't buy that all they don't fit any of the values.

They're really not interested in what it is that you're building what the vision is or the direction they just want to, let's say you have a really engaged team or really like connected team really focused on building out, you know, trauma focused therapy. This person wants to do. Um, I don't, I don't even know what to do.

Um, just, just social anxiety therapy. They want to work with OCD, let's say, and I don't want to get into the relationship between OCD and trauma. You know, that's not what this is about, but let's say they just want to do OCD based therapy. They want to use ERP or they want to use, you know, something that's cool.

You know, that's great. And also they like the way they work, the style. So less about what they do. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have used that as an example. That's about what they do, but more about like. I want to go to work. I don't want to have friends. I don't want to make I don't care about any of the people around here.

I just want to be left alone to do my job. I might get my notes in late, but I always get them done and they're very well written and mostly, like, I'll listen, but I'm not really going to respond to emails. I just want to be left alone. I really doubt someone would say those things, but hypothetically, somebody comes to interview, they're saying those things.

And your business is set up in such a way that you have a very engaged and connected team. Your response rate to emails is. Hi, everyone is always sort of like chiming in and responding. There's a lot of touch points. There's a lot of um, you know, maybe you require group supervision or some sort of peer led consultation.

Maybe you sort of force this like, no, we reflect on faces together. Like no one is just left alone to do, to do their work. Like it's about community. We're sort of all representing this larger entity. So we want to be. Uniform, at least in values, not necessarily in a, you know, theoretical approach or something that is not going to work.

And this goes back to the top, you know, which is that we, a culture, a non culture fits, even with high skills is still going to erode the practice. It's going to erode the culture. And then other people are going to start to feel kind of shitty and slash, or it's also going to be some sort of like time suck because at some point we're going to have conversations.

Um, I'm going to be thinking about this in leadership or maybe internally, I'm going to be thinking about, man, something is just off. I don't know what it is. Now my mental faculties are being pushed in one direction when I should be thinking and doing other things like that's, we must not let go of culture in the process so do not prioritize mistake number three is prioritizing quote experience or a resume or a certain skill set over culture.

You can't have one without the other. Um, okay, so. And then the last mistake, I'm going to keep going. Uh, the last mistake is, I actually love this one. Um, I don't love making this mistake. I'm just saying, I love being able to talk about this. People think that once a person is hired, it's done. Like, sweet. We have a new employee, like done.

All right. Go do your work. That's like the starting line. It's like, it's like after folks get married, they think like, done, I'm cured. We're going to be together and happy forever. Like, Oh gosh. Yeah. No, like that's not how it works. I mean, I hope so, you know, but realistically we know what, you know, the research says about couples and we know what it takes for relationships.

Work and it takes work for them to work. So, but I'm getting distracted by myself and by the Gotman's because I love Gotman's methodology. So mistake number four is going to be just weak onboarding. People are not done when they're hired. That's their starting point. And so. When you bring somebody on, I would say the first 90 days, we do a 90 day onboarding process, not overwhelming, not like we're talking to them every single day.

Like, how are you? Do you need anything? It's like, not anything like that. What it is is, um, we want to make sure that people feel supported and transitioning into a new system. That's ultimately what they're doing. Somebody is joining. A developed and cohesive system. They have to learn all about it. They have to meet all these new people, even if it's just two other people, you still like you have to build relationships with new people.

You don't, you might not know any of the, the like tech systems or the actual, like, you know, if you're using, uh, any HR, for example, or, uh, an HR system, they might not know those systems. And then also things like learning the processes of your practice. This is something that takes time. So I do not believe in throwing folks to the wolves.

Like once they're hired, it's just done when someone is hired. There is ongoing. There should be. And again, this is a mistake I think people make, which is why I'm saying what I would recommend be done. I would recommend there should, I don't like saying there should be, you should do this, you know, wagging my finger at you.

I don't, I don't mean to come across that way, but I do absolutely think that people need to be supportive in that first 90 days in particular, whether that's through a mentor, whether that's through some like, um, training, training system you have set up, whatever that looks like is sort of, you know, it's up to you.

It's your discretion. That's your decision. That's your, you know, Your vision, how you want this to live out at your practice, or if you're in leadership, how you want to have it, you know, how you want it to be seen how you want to see living out at the practice that you are also kind of high level responsible for, um.

Yeah. So we need to have, there needs to be an ongoing, ongoing onboarding process. That's actually a whole episode in and of itself talking about onboarding processes. I'm, I'm just realizing as I'm talking out loud about how much I like talking about this. And again, hiring in general, when it's done well, it's just so incredible to see, you can just build out the system and a framework and things can be delegated to the right people.

And so. You see it in action where you are weeding out for fits from the start, keeping in solid fit candidates, and then ultimately you know they make a decision about staying or not. It is, it can be more work I mean what ends up happening is that when you get clear on a hiring process and you start to avoid these mistakes.

What you also will see happen is that. You go through the process with less people. So I remember a while ago, I guess it's been a couple of years. I was working with somebody on their hiring process and we short it up. I mean, they were, um, basically interviewing. I, I can't say this yet. Just take this with a grain of salt, but pretty much interviewing any person they could, like anybody who came through, they would just interview.

And like, that was it. There was not really a phone screen. That was not really, you know, there was nothing else in place to sort of weed people out. That's a huge, so, okay, that aside, that that's also a huge time suck is what I was going to say, but when they're doing that, and then they're making offers to people also, they're making mistakes for ignoring by ignoring some red flags and by not prioritizing culture.

They were not even like considering culture in terms of what I make an offer this person, I want them to have a certain skill set sure but also I need them to match to fit our culture. And beyond know what it is, and also be like, enthusiastic and like, interested in joining us. And so they were bringing on people and then having to get rid of them, or there's all these issues that start to pop up because they have people who aren't really engaged in their practice or vision and the way that they need in order to continue moving forward.

And so, whenever we went through, and we started doing this sort of, um. I'm going to say hiring overhaul, but really just like shoring up their hiring process. I remember them saying something to me after the fact, like it's hard because there's less people that come through, but we're so like excited about the offers we're making.

Like we are getting the right people. That's what I'm talking about. That's what we want to happen. When you get the right people in place, it does so much more for your practice. That's a whole conversation for a different day. So. Closing thoughts. Here are my closing thoughts. Again, four mistakes you can make when hiring that I would encourage you to avoid at all costs as much as possible.

One, hiring too fast or out of desperation. We already talked about that. Two, ignoring red flags and there's ways to combat that as well. Three, Prioritizing someone's resume or their alleged skill set or their quote experience and quote over culture, never, never, never, never do that. And lastly, just shitty onboarding.

Like you bring somebody on and you're like, well, I taught him how to use our EHR system in the first week and I haven't talked to them for a month. Ugh. Yikes. Just yikes. Don't do that. Yeah, we can talk more about that, but don't do that. Just do something. Don't do that. Do something else. So those are the four mistakes.

Um, if you've made these welcome to business ownership, welcome to running a practice and learning as you go sort of trial by fire. They don't have to keep happening though. Whatever mistakes you've made, which I have also made plenty of hiring related mistakes. They don't have to keep happening. You can create mistakes.

Things, systems, roles, you can delegate, you can do all of these things to seek to ensure that they happen the least amount of times, the lowest percentage possible. Very, very minimal. That's what we're after. We're not after perfection, we're after learning how we avoid making the same mistake over and over again.

So if you do have one of these mistakes, if you're like, ah, yeah, that just happened to me. Cool, man. Just look at it and figure out how you can seek to solve that so that it doesn't keep happening. That's the only ask you don't have to do. You don't have to redo your whole hiring process. You don't have to never make a mistake again, pick one mistake, figure out what you need to do to avoid that happening again.

That's it. That's the only ask. I lied. The to this podcast. Or channel if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe and basically stay in tune as we talk about all things, culture, leadership, retention, employees, organizational structure, EOS, everything related to group practice, ownership, and leadership, all the things that I love that I hope that you love also.

And if you are wanting more direct support, join the culture focused practice membership. Get on TaraBostonKimber. com I think it's TaraBostonKimber. com slash culture dash focused dash membership it just click on there and you'll see it just join the membership. It's a steal of a price and you get two monthly lives with me basically one training one q& a, the trainings are by request so if you wanted something specific I would just do that something specific.

Additionally, there's a private Facebook group there's a portal with a bunch of. resources and recorded videos and all the things I'm talking about here. We talk about there. So I really hope this is helpful. I could talk all day about the sort of things, so I'm going to stop myself right now before I start back up and keep going.

You have a great day. I will see you next time. Thanks for being here. See ya.