Stop giving your new graduates “Freedom”

Chris, just a quick one today. This is geared more towards clinic owners. Those of you who are employing associates or have self employed associates, particularly new graduates. But if you're a new graduate, stay to the end because I've got some advice for you as well. And I've been doing a lot of work the last few years. This is a particular area of interest of mine is new graduates and giving them the best start. It's why I do all the communication webinars for the whole PLT scheme now. So if you're a new graduate on the plts, we're going to meet at some point. It's something I've always felt really deeply about trying to give new chiropractors the best start possible. And I'm having a lot of conversations with new grads and a theme over the last couple of years has been emerging. And that theme, clinic owners, is that a lot of new graduates don't feel they're being given enough guidance or enough structure on how to do things that the owners, their bosses, we're being too hands off. Now, I speak from experience. I've made this mistake myself. I used to be very hands off because like most of you, I didn't want the new grad to feel like they were being bossed and forced to do it a certain way and pushed into a mold that they weren't comfortable with. I wanted them to feel like you can be yourself in this practice, you can put your own stamp on things. I'm not looking to just make a clone of me. And while that's true, most new grads, especially the last couple of years where their clinical experience at uni has been hampered by Covid, they're coming out wanting more structure, they want more hands on guidance. They want us to tell us how to do things. Now that doesn't mean we give them scripts. If you know anything about me, you know I am anti scripts, that's not okay. But going the other way and just saying, hey, you're okay, you can do it your way, come to me if you have any questions. A lot of them feel unsupported and they feel like they can't ask for help because sometimes the message that we don't mean to give but the message that is heard is that, look, I'm really busy, only come to me if it's an emergency. And then they go off and they don't ask for help. They make all their own mistakes. And lo and behold, later on, when you're looking at the numbers and you're looking at the figures, you start wondering, why aren't they building as quickly as I thought? And often that's because we haven't given enough guidance. So if you're an owner, don't be afraid of getting a bit more hands on. I found the more guidance I've given, the more hands on I've been. With our new graduates, not only the better have they gotten, but the happier they've been, they've actually been glad to have that. It doesn't mean you're forcing them to do it a certain way, but being too hands off can be a problem as well. So if you're an owner, I'd urge you to do that. Just have that conversation with your employees, have that conversation with your associates. Say, look, would you like me to be a bit more hands on? If, like a lot of us, you're struggling for time and you maybe don't have a lot of time to give them, that's why you've employed them, get in touch, because that's something I can maybe do as well. We can have a chat about how I can help to train them. But first of all, I would have that conversation with them yourself so they at the very least feel that you want to give them that time. Because I can tell you, I've trained associates where it seems like the boss doesn't want to give them that time and they do feel quite upset and they don't tend to stick around. We all know it's quite tricky to find good employees right now. You don't want them leaving because they thought you didn't care, just because you thought that you were being quite free and giving them that freedom to practice the way they want. And if you're a new graduate yourself, start this conversation with your boss. If you feel like you're being given a lot of freedom but not enough support, go to them and tell them that. Because as bosses, we often operate under. I'll assume everything's fine unless you tell me otherwise. You know, if I'm not hearing from you, I assume everything's going well. That's because we're quite pushed for time and we have a lot of things to do running a business, so we will often assume that. Which means if you don't tell us that you'd like more support, we don't know we can't provide that. So give that a try as well. If you're. If you're employed by an owner, go and have this conversation with them. Owners, have this conversation with your associates as well. If you'd like any more help with any more structure. Reach out. Shoot me a message. We can have a chat about how we can do that, but give that a try, because it turns out most new graduates want more support and less freedom, which is not what a lot of us are assuming as owners. So I hope that's been helpful. Any questions on this, just get in touch.