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PT Clinic Owners: How to Fix Your Hiring Problem With SIMPLE Questions (FOREVER) · Build Your PT Clinic with Bryan Wright, DPT

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a pattern that I see in clinics that gets stuck and they can't seem to grow bigger than they are.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that pattern is when they have a position that gets opened up, they adequately hire somebody who can do the job for the moment.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then that person begins to drift and things start to fall apart after a period of time.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly they're found in the same position they were as they got started.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this may happen in different waves and different cycles, but this pattern is always what keeps people stuck.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: The drift that you have with somebody that you hire for the position that's currently available is the problem.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what usually happens with people is then they blame the labor market.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I love the word blame because it stands for be lame.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Blaming the labor market is not helpful in this case.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so what really is helpful is understanding what decision was made before the job posting ever went up.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want to show you and unfold some of these ideas of what you can do instead to actually help you take that decision that's actually hurting you and make it into a decision that helps you.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Quick context: I have over 170 employees in my company now.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I've done this many times over the years.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've done it to where it cost me in a good way, and I've done it to where it cost me in a bad way.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I can show you both.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the decision that we're talking about is this you hired for somebody that needed to be filled in an urgent time in your business.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Either somebody left the practice or perhaps maybe the schedule got too full and you just had to have some help.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that happened to me.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I first started right physical therapy, I had somebody come into the clinic that wanted a job and I had well over enough patients.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I had about three full-time jobs just on my schedule alone.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And because he was a nice guy and because I needed help and he wanted a job, it was a match made in heaven, right?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Wrong.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I hired this person who was not aligned fully with the way that I wanted to run the practice and the way that I saw the business working.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he did step in and help for about three months.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that was super, super helpful to me to have that position filled.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: However, over time, it actually cost me far more than three months because of the resistance, because of patients that he would send away that he didn't think were necessarily worthy of the practice, and on and on it went.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I use this term for hiring that can sound harsh, but it's actually something that is really useful for moving your business forward, moving your practice forward.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's called professional versus amateur.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it is not referring to whether a person is professional or amateur based on their license.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: We hire doctors of physical therapy all the time that have both professional attributes as well as amateur attributes.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking just about the skill set to treat patients.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm referring to is what a professional embodies in terms of the will and skill of your practice.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do I mean by will and skill?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if a person is aligned with where you want the practice to go, then that's the will that is aligned inside of your practice.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: It means that they care about the purpose.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: They have the same values that the practice has.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: They have the same goal to make it successful.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So everything and every one is pulling in the same direction.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's the will.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The skill has to do with can they actually accomplish what the practice considers their valuable final product?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is it patients are scheduling consistently, they have their plans of care finished, they've paid for their full plan of care and they've recovered to the degree that they can through physical therapy.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: What are those valuable final products that you want to see happen?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the skill.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So a doctor of physical therapy can come in and have their professional license and still not be professional if they don't align with the will and the skill of what you need within the practice.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to break that down just a little bit.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had mentioned in a previous video this concept of Wayne Gretzky.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: What made Wayne Gretzky great is that he didn't skate toward where the puck was.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: He actually skated toward where the puck was going.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that really is part of the essence of hiring professionally versus amateur, is you're actually hiring for where the puck is going.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And again, we broke this down in a previous video, but just to reiterate it, when you're hiring for professional versus amateur, you want to hire for will first.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Will is very uncoachable.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it in professional athletic organizations, you can see it in larger scale businesses, you'll especially see it in your own practice.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: When the will is not aligned, it will cause more problems for you and your team than you ever imagine because you'll have someone or someone's pulling against your organization in this uh sort of peeling the thread away from a piece of fabric to where it unravels slowly.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that can cost you so much more than if you hire somebody who has really good will and alignment, but that very poor skill.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I've said this before to people that I coach that I would rather have somebody who has will aligned and not as much skill than somebody who has really good skill sets that can accomplish getting the valuable final products of your company, but they're not aligned in will.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the ideal here is to have a high level of both.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're really thinking, what does that mean to hire a professional?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Think this is somebody who's aligned with the purpose, the vision, the goals of the company, and the values.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they also can accomplish getting the valuable products that the company values in terms of what it's trying to accomplish.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Will and skill, just to simplify it.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are many other things that can be coached in with how you hire a professional versus amateur.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: But for the purposes of this video, we just want to touch on this main point that if you're feeling stuck in your business, it's probably because you don't have a high alignment in will and skill.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how do you find that in an interview?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would start by dropping the hypothetical questions like how would you handle a difficult patient?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because this only tells how well somebody is talking and not necessarily who they are.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I would do is I would ask for things they've already done, like specific ones with dates and names if you can, and what actually happened.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then ask what happened next, and then ask that again because it helps to dig into the story.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Amateurs will run out of detail fast because the story is a story, but professionals can keep going because they lived it and they want to express it.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So here are a few questions that you can ask, and they do a lot of the work that you need here.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Write these down.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about something you fixed that nobody asked you to fix.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: This one gives a lot of detail.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, tell me about a standard you held when it would have been easier if you let the standard go.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Third one that I really like is tell me about the last patient who didn't get better and what you did about it.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And a fourth question that I like to ask is what's the last thing you got better at on purpose?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So those aren't clever questions and they don't really give an opportunity for clever answers.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the whole point of it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of them is asking the same thing at a different angle.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do when it's up to you?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like how do you actually behave?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when you ask these four questions, ask them what happened next after each answer.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll know within about 20 minutes what kind of person is actually sitting from you.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I would use these same four on the next hire and keep doing that process because that process allows you to then replicate when you're not the one sitting in front of them.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Before you meet a single candidate, write down what that person needs to look like two years from now.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when the clinics get bigger and you might even be expanding to new clinics.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: That document's gonna be your filter.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And without it, you'll fall in love with whoever interviews best and fills the most dire need.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's not going to be the best thing for you.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't want somebody who's really great at practicing interviewing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: You want somebody who actually is being the person that you want to see in front of you.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you're getting something out of this, hit subscribe.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a new one every week for clinic owners.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now I really want to dive into the harder half of this because you have one, and most clinics do have a harder half of this.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Someone can be genuinely likable inside of your clinic and it can still be not good for your company.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the will versus skill.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: What happens with will when the will is missing is typically you'll find people who are smiling on the outside.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps they're even diplomatic and they may even feel a bit like silver tongue politician.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like they can say all the right things, it's polished, but it doesn't feel like everything is aligned.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to just think for a moment about what that costs you inside of your organization.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when will is low or lacking compared to skill set, you might be getting results, but underneath it just feels like things are starting to unravel.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: On the skill part, if it's lacking, what'll often happen is you can have somebody who genuinely makes everybody laugh and feel good and feel like everything is going well, but they're not accomplishing what is needed for the organization to move forward.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes a financial burden, an economic burden to the company, and they get subsidized when their skill set's not up to par.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: These people can be called buddies, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody's buddies with them.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody likes to laugh with them, and that can be a problem because they're not accomplishing the actual needs within the organization.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you need to confront something, oftentimes that can cause people to feel a little bit upset because they just want to keep on laughing with this person.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's going so well.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: See, that's not only the cost of a bad hire, but it's also the cost of keeping something hidden within your organization that needs to be addressed.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the big parts of this video, too, is it's not just about who you hire, it's also how you handle things as you go into your team building.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that's very important is understanding how to actually do reviews and how to actually approach things when they're off review cadence.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the terms that I use for approaching things that are needing to be addressed is that we like to confront things in a prompt, uniform, and impartial way.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's very important.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Prompt means that you're getting to it quickly, not so quickly that you didn't think through it, but quickly enough that it actually meets the needs of the organization.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uniform just means that you're doing it consistently across the board.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And impartial means that you're not trying to play favoritism for one person or another.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: When you adopt the principle of prompt, uniform and impartial, you're already moving in a direction where your organization is going to be much more successful and grow faster than if you didn't.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what matters is we don't give performance reviews or confront things just when people are needing to be confronted negatively.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: We also do it in positive ways as well.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when people are performing well, it's good to acknowledge and hold it accountable, as well as when people are not.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're just trying to play the police, that doesn't work either.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: The whole point of this is to set up a system to where you can catch those things in a prompt uniform and impartial way, help discuss it in ways that are helpful to both you and the team member.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then make sure that if you're not moving them up the organization, you're helping to move them out.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most important things that gets overlooked and why most practices stay stuck.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: A true professional who is worth their salt in your organization is going to want to know what the pathway is to success.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the reasons I also encourage having inside of your organization a maturity model or a maturing model for your team members.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: That team member maturity model will allow you to show people this is what happens as you grow through the organization and how you can eventually get higher and higher in the organization.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because people who really, really want to achieve big things in their life, that's what's necessary.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They've got to see the pathway in order to get there.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So your reviews are really important to have and they need to be based on performance and not tenure.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Performance is how well are we doing with the will alignment in the organization?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: How well are we doing with the skill alignment?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Are we actually accomplishing our valuable final product?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And is it represented through our key performance indicators, our KPIs?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: The tenure part of it is, hey, you've been with us for three, four years.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, most people are like, isn't that worth something?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had one person who I had hired that they were not accomplishing the actual skill side of this equation.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: They were not getting their KPIs consistently.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it was noticeable.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were losing money in his particular department.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I still remember doing a performance review with him.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, I've been here for three years.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: That should be worth something.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my raise?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter to him that we weren't economically able to give him a raise because we were losing money based on his performance.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that was something that was a difficult conversation to have, but it was a necessary conversation and a lesson learned for me because I held on to this employee for well over three years because of desperation.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it cost me every single year.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: We lost money every single year.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, because we were successful in other departments, the rest of these departments needed to subsidize this individual.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, this individual didn't understand why we weren't going to give them a raise just based on tenure.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let that be your organization.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let that happen to you where you're sliding here for this person, holding the line for that person, sliding here for this person.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: It will actually create a massive amount of confusion for you.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, it's actually going to keep you stuck.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So prompt, uniform, impartial.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to confront things when they're necessary, not just when they're negative, but also positive.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to make sure that you're having reviews based on performance and not tenure.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So for your next tire, do these things when you're looking at will and skill.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to interview for the will and also for the skill.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: The will is the biggest part you're interviewing for, but you can train for skill.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's important to understand that while you're interviewing, yes, you're looking for the skill set, but do not let it ever overshadow the will.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most important part that you're interviewing for.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you go and help these people develop, that skill set can develop as you go.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: However, when you're hiring, you want to make sure that their skill set is at least as good as two years down the road in the job.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna pause for a minute and let you think about that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're you're interviewing and hiring for will primarily, but also the skill set needs to be at least as good as where you'll be two years down the road.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're hiring somebody that you need to train consistently up to where you need them to be, you've already hired an amateur.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've already hired an amateur.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna hire intentionally and then on to the next part, you're gonna fire definitively.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you can go and look at your team and look at the will and skill and determine that somebody is or is not appropriate for that job, and I want you to do the kindest thing that you can for yourself, for your team, and for that individual.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: If it's necessary to confront the fact that the will and skill is not where it needs to be, that you actually have somebody who might be functioning as an amateur on your team, the very kindest thing you can do is to let them go.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we always say hire them for that next job, and then you're gonna actually help them get trained to the next position or help them get trained out of the organization.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's either train them up or train them out.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the position that I hold that's helped me to actually build my practice to well over 170 team members and people that get along very well together and are functioning cohesively to actually accomplish what we're trying to do, which is really excellent patient care at every level.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been this amazing journey to watch it unfold.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I've made the mistakes of hiring for urgency instead of hiring for alignment with will and skill.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: If that was useful, subscribe so you don't miss the next one.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then watch this next because hiring for where the business is going only works if you know where it's going.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And practice this plateau all the same, like few places for the same few reasons.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to break that down and there's a link to watch that one next.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can't build a bigger practice out of people you'll outgrow in a year.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Go hire for the clinic you're building, and I'll see you in the next one.