I was speaking to a chiropractor yesterday who was grumbling about his CA dropping the ball, not getting things done and generally not taking care of business. He has single doctor practice and she is the sole CA.
He was constantly wasting time checking up on her every action and he wasn’t happy, in fact he was VERY unhappy with the situation and it was reflecting on his practice. He quickly told me though that she was really nice with the practice members, they loved her and she is a really delightful person.
As he went through all of her shortcomings it was obvious that she is not the best fit for the practice and the traits that she is lacking are beyond his ability, responsibility or role to change.
I felt myself getting irritated just with the conversation. I was feeling resentful that she was taking up my time and his money that he was investing in the call with me.
After he had run with it for a few more minutes I just said – “let her go”. The look of shock and compassion on his face spoke volumes. “Why are you so reluctant to let her go?” I said. “She is so nice and has so many great qualities and she hasn’t done anything wrong and besides that she is doing it tough at home as a single mother”, he said. Wrong!!!, I thought. She has created dysfunction and lack of trust which has had a ripple effect of affecting your present time consciousness and focus which has negatively affected your care and service and will have had a negative effect on your business.
In the course of coaching huge numbers of chiropractors over the years I know that this such a common problem. I also know that trying to sort it out at this stage of the proceedings is way too late. I knew by now that this chiropractor had not chosen well in the first place so I asked him. “How did you hire her?” “She was my cleaner, he replied”. He went on to describe how she was in the “right place at the right time” when the former amazing CA left to relocate to another city and it just “seemed so right”. “Hmmm. I see” was about all I could add to this conversation.
I can’t tell you how many times poor hiring procedures lead to a very expensive ‘lesson’ which many chiropractors suffer with for, in many cases, years during which they get more burdened with minutia, their passion is eroded and most of all their practice members fail to get the best attention and care from their stressed chiropractor.
Your hiring process must be effective at all stages. The first stage is finding out what ‘gaps’ you have in your practice as it currently stands. What is missing or is not represented in what you and your practice team bring to the table?
Regardless of whether or not you are looking for a Super CA right now, it is a valuable exercise to do such an audit of your team. We are happy to share with you a free guide to easily assess what the ‘gaps’ are and what the strengths are with your team’s skills. It is short and simple process that will give you great insight into what to further develop in your business.
Get FREE access to the Ultimate CA Hiring Toolkit to assess the missing skills in your practice team now.
