Who do you know that you would consider the most effective leader in Home Care?
What would you say are the most important competencies of that leader?
Which of those competencies would you like to develop in the members of your home care leadership team?
This week I was going through my library in the office looking for some information for a research project I’m working on. I came across a manual that I wrote a number of years ago for The Academy for Home Care Leadership. This manual described a research project we had done, and then listed The Top Ten Competencies of Highly Effective Home Care Leaders.
The research began by doing a survey of Home Care CEOs and asking them the three questions above. We followed that with a series of individual information interviews to get a clearer understanding of the characteristics listed by our respondents. Then we conducted several Focus Groups to get more qualitative data on each of the competencies.
The Top Ten Competencies of Home Care Leaders.
Here, in order of importance to our survey respondents are the most significant abilities of high performance home care leaders:
1. Seeing the Bigger Picture – Understanding the forces and trends shaping the future of home care. Being familiar with the economic, demographic, technological, and political forces affecting this segment of health care.
2. Clearly Communicating Directions and Expectations – Clearly defining the direction of the company, and their expectations for performance and behavior. Then they need to clearly communicate the direction and expectations through written and oral methods.
3. Making Decisions – This competency is about making choices between a variety of options. Strategic Decisions are about your vision for the future, how you will compete in the marketplace, and where you will focus your time, talent, and treasure. Decisions need to be consistent, and in alignment with your company’s vision, values, and strategic direction.
4. Coaching and Counseling – Develop the ability to provide one-on-one guidance, direction, and teaching to their team members. Be cheerleaders and observers, and they need to be able to counsel employees who are having performance or behavior problems.
5. Setting Priorities and Managing Time – Having a clear sense of what is important for the company, for the job, and where to devote time and resources. Priorities and time management need to be aligned with company strategies and goals.
6. Planning – Setting goals and objectives, developing action steps, assigning responsibility, determining target dates, and identifying metrics to measure results. Leaders in home care need to communicate their plans, take action, and hold people accountable for results.
7. Recruiting and Selecting Good People – Home Care is a people business, and top tier leaders are able to attract and retain the best people. Companies that can create “Strategic Recruiting Advantage” will have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Leaders need to develop skills in recruiting and selecting good people.
8. Measure Team Performance – We have a saying. “What gets measured gets managed. What gets rewarded gets repeated.” An important skill for home care leaders is to establish critical measures of team success, gather data, measure performance, and communicate the results to team members.
9. Inspiring Others – This competence is about developing a style of communication that will inspire others to follow you. There are no leaders without followers, and the best leaders have willing, enthusiastic followers who are inspired to take action in alignment with the company’s goals.
10. Solving Problems – Home Care leaders need to have the skills and confidence to address problems that come up. Leaders need to gather information, find the cause of the problem, develop solutions, make decisions, and take action. Research in customer service shows that it is not the number of problems that come up but also how quickly and effectively you solve them.
Thinking About Home Care Today
How would you rate these top ten competencies? Are they still relevant in today’s highly dynamic home care world?
If you agree that they are still relevant, here’s an interesting leadership development activity for you. Make a list of your top leaders. Rate each one of them on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of these competencies. From that evaluation of your top team’s leadership competencies, develop a program to help your leaders improve in each of these skills.
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