MGMA Member Spotlight: Mastering Employee Engagement in Modern Healthcare with Jason Raidbard
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We are back with another MGMA member spotlight podcast, and we have a return guest. He was so much fun to talk to the last time we had him on here. We're bringing him back.
Daniel Williams:So it's Jason Radbard. He's an executive administrator for the University of Chicago's ophthalmology and visual science department. Jason, let's just welcome you back in here first to to say hello, and then I'm gonna read a little more stuff about you.
Jason Raidbard:Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate you bringing me back. I guess I did something right the first time.
Daniel Williams:That's true. Now you were telling me something really interesting offline. You just went on a pretty cool vacation. What tell tell our audience about that. Just to get out of Chicago in the winter, what'd you go do?
Jason Raidbard:Surprisingly, it's 55 degrees today in Chicago.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Okay.
Jason Raidbard:My family and I, my wife and daughter, we went to Turks and Caicos. It was actually, was it the thirteenth through the eighteenth.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jason Raidbard:And it is if you have never been there, I would encourage everyone to go there. The people that live there, work there are wonderful, very friendly, very warm. It is different than the rest of The Caribbean. It's a drier climate. It's 80 degrees and sunny every day in the the fall winter months.
Jason Raidbard:I think it gets closer to 90 in the summer months, but I've never been there. I've only been there in the winter. Grace Bay is the main attraction, at least why we go, many people go. It's considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I've traveled some.
Jason Raidbard:I have other folks that I know in work and and personal life that traveled more than me, but I I've been to a few places, Patagonia, Tahiti, and and in Europe. By far, this is the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. Wow. And it's just turquoise blue water. Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:And depending on the angle of the sun, of course, it looks a little more turquoise, a little more aqua, but, I mean, it doesn't matter. It's cloudy. You're happy.
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jason Raidbard:It's a wonderful island. Again, we loved it there. I came back to Chicago on the eighteenth to, one degree weather.
Daniel Williams:Good. Good. Well, it it's so yeah. I'm I'm just happy you came back. I mean, you might have just stayed there in that 80 degree weather forever.
Daniel Williams:You know?
Jason Raidbard:You know, they've come a long way with their their Wi Fi services there. It still has some work to be done, but it's nice to kinda semi disconnect. But, yeah, maybe I'll see if I can I can work remote from there?
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Just do a hybrid thing. You know? Well, it's so good to have you back here and back on the podcast. So you and I connected because you have been a part of our MGMA member community live programs.
Daniel Williams:You reached out to me, let me know about something you'd been involved in. Just share a little bit how you got involved with m MGMA CommunityLive and what your role was there.
Jason Raidbard:Sure. Well, Dylan Kelly, who I think is one of the individuals at MGMA that's kinda spearheading these community of lives, I I think it's a a good product offering from MGMA for its members. So just to give your your listeners kind of background, it's relatively new. I believe it started last fall.
Daniel Williams:That's right.
Jason Raidbard:There's been a few of them over I think there was an AI segment I got a chance to listen to a couple weeks ago. There was one on eClinicalWorks a month or so ago. Mine was on culture and engagement. When I get a chance to whether it's at I I actually sit on the board of the Illinois chapter of, the, Medical Group Management Association. So whether I'm going to their conferences and speaking, Becker's hospital review, Scott Becker will have me speak at his conferences.
Jason Raidbard:Sometimes I'll do webinars and participate, like in this format with MGMA. And there's ASHA and other organizations. I like to talk about culture and engagement, improving not just productivity in the workplace, but, you know, ever since COVID, everything's been just very, different Yeah. I would say in society. Right?
Jason Raidbard:And then a lot of things have returned back to pre COVID norm, but not everything. Right? Far still far more people are are working with motor hybrid than they were before COVID. Right. It's changing for certain parts of sectors in The United States, but but it's still prevailing compared to, say, 2015, if I will go back ten years.
Jason Raidbard:These member community lives are nice because we had a fairly robust group, close to a hundred members.
Daniel Williams:Wow. That's incredible.
Jason Raidbard:And I serve as a content expert and moderator.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jason Raidbard:And believe it or not and you can ask Dylan. You can listen to it. I'm sure it's safe somewhere. It went smooth. So folks will sign up because they wanna hear about the subject.
Jason Raidbard:In this case, it was culture and engagement, you know, workforce development, team development, things of that nature. Whatever it is the subject that MGMA is, sponsoring for that given week or month, that gives members a chance to not only listen to their colleagues throughout The United States, and some maybe in other parts, even the world, about said topic, but then they also have an opportunity to share their stories and their content expertise. So the idea is not that in this case, Jason Raybard is the only content expert in culture engagement. I can work with this group of a hundred people that I don't know, that I've never met, and foster just a large virtual roundtable discussion. So the idea that we call it member community is a very, perfect way to describe it.
Jason Raidbard:It's a community of members getting together to talk about something, that is important to them. And, you know, Dylan does an excellent job of managing these, and there's a lot of work that goes into it beforehand. There's a list of questions that he and I in this instance worked on, and I think we maybe got through half the list. We had about dozen questions because the conversation evolved into other members sharing, and it was not just me. So if you do have a chance to join them, they're good.
Jason Raidbard:I love listening to them. You can listen in the background. You can participate. You can do both. Whatever it is, it's very easygoing, very casual.
Jason Raidbard:And I think a lot of members, at least some of the feedback he got was positive. People enjoyed the conversation. They enjoyed the topic. I think it's a topic that is, for me, always top of mind because it sets the tone for any organization, any team. And I mean, you can even translate it into one's personal life with your own family.
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jason Raidbard:So it's an important topic. And I was glad I had the opportunity to speak and and happy to do it in the future. So I think Dylan and I are working on some things for either the spring and or the fall. One might be a two point o of it. The other idea is just focusing a little bit more on leadership.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jason Raidbard:But that's to come.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. And I'll just add on a little bit. It it really is this community live engagement is part of MGMA's broader efforts to really put the MGMA members at the center of the content that we create. I think a lot of y'all know that I I host or moderate most of the webinars we do, about 40 to 50 of those a year, And that's the communication's a little bit different because there's a presenter, and people can type in some comments, but it's not really community led. It's led by outside experts or other people that we get to speak.
Daniel Williams:This, as Jason was describing, is just a great way to really put all of you at the center of the conversation where you can share your friction points, your challenges in the practice, whether it be related to culture or anything else. So before we move on, anything else you wanna share about that? Do you think we've got it covered, Jason?
Jason Raidbard:I I think we we have it covered. I would say, you know, the nice part about two is depending on your particular practice or organization's budget, you may or may not be able to attend conferences in person or be able to attend some of the more regional conferences. This gives you an opportunity to still network and learn, but not having to leave your office or your home office, wherever you're working from. Yeah. So for me, you know, some folks can't get to national MGMA leadership conference, which is coming up at the September, if I'm not mistaken, in Orlando.
Jason Raidbard:That's right. Shameless plug. But I I think it gives you an opport it also gives you an opportunity of what are the folks that you're gonna meet at these conferences and what are some anticipated topics that you're we're gonna get a little bit more involved in when we are at these conferences. And the nice part about the member community is I had people reach out to me through email and LinkedIn direct, wanting me to speak at a chapter, whether it's ACH or MGMA, they were a chapter member wanting me to speak on that subject or a similar subject, or say, Hey, I have this problem. Do you know other people, in addition to yourself, that could help?
Jason Raidbard:So it fosters really a community of resources. Now, MGMA has a fantastic assortment of resources when it comes to the data dive, when it comes to a lot of the volunteer work, mentoring programs. I think Amanda runs and things like that. And other work, I think Nikki does, I'm working on a committee with her, a joint task force with, improving and enhancing the, ACPME testing and certification, right?
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jason Raidbard:But this is, like, just another extension. It's very personable.
Daniel Williams:Mhmm.
Jason Raidbard:So I think that's something that when I would go to MGMA conferences, people wanted, and MGMA listened, and here we are.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Yeah. So we've been talking a lot already about engagement. We've been talking about how to engage the MGMA members, but we also wanna talk about employee engagement. So talking to your peers out there, Jason, the ones who are practice administrators, may have teams out there.
Daniel Williams:As you've alluded to, if we go back just ten years, the workforce, it looks a lot different in a lot of places because there is remote work. There is hybrid work. There are different ways of doing things. So when we talk in terms of employee engagement, where where are you finding success at your practice where you can really engage your team and the rest of the employees there, and help them feel like they are part of a team even though they might not be showing up Monday through Friday in the office? What's going on there?
Jason Raidbard:Yeah. You know, every place I've ever worked, and I've been in health care now, what, twenty two years. I think after a while, I've lost a little little bit of track. You know, one thing I I learned eventually, and took me a while, is that you may have a playbook of things that you think are going to work. But what I learned once I hit my mid to late thirties and I had some experience under my belt and had really tried to really understand my craft as far as interactions and really trying to understand the concepts of servant leadership, which we'll get to in a second.
Jason Raidbard:You really have to understand that every place you go is a different culture. Every place you go has a different set of norms, values. The mission, vision, value statement is gonna be different everywhere. There might be some similarities. But how people actually practice it and preach it and what they do and how they interact with each other, whether there's a robust respect level systematically from the top down or from bottom up, or it doesn't exist at all, kind of dictates the culture.
Jason Raidbard:Certainly, there can be little departments can have their own subculture, right? But you want to be part of an organization that organizationally agrees. I am very fortunate that I work at the University of Chicago, and I will have been here three years this April. And I'm not just saying this because I work here. This is a robust think tank.
Jason Raidbard:People get along. They help each other. They share. We have a I have a wonderful chair in senior Harry Persaud, who's been chair now for a couple of years, full chair. He was interim before.
Jason Raidbard:And then Dean Anderson, came in a couple years ago and and revamped the mission, vision, values. It was a great place when I walked in, and then he came in six months later and revamped, you know, the enterprise. But there's just so many good people that work here. That makes a leader's job very easy. But within your team and I have a hybrid team.
Jason Raidbard:So I have people that are remote. I have people that come in all the time. I personally prefer to come in as much as I can. Mhmm. I just work better in that environment.
Jason Raidbard:I like to have the routine. Call me old fashioned. However, one thing that and I can say this with pride because collectively, as a group, we worked hard at this. I recently got my engagement scores, and I was told and and I'm not trying to, pat my own back. But I'm doing this because I'm gonna explain to you what I did with my team and how it works.
Daniel Williams:Sure.
Jason Raidbard:And I think this is fairly universal. I ended up with a score of 4.79 out of five, the highest in the enterprise. Okay. And the year before, it was pretty much the same. And there's other organizations I've worked when I was at Cook County Health two years.
Jason Raidbard:I two years, they measured me there. They didn't measure me all five. And that was a very, very different culture, completely union, five point o to five point o. My scores weren't always that way in my career. But what I learned over time is that you have to adjust to what makes people sing, what's important to them.
Jason Raidbard:Yes. The organization is going to have certain goals, certain cultures. Right? But you also have to make sure that your people's needs are being tended to. They have to be heard.
Jason Raidbard:You have to listen to them. Rounding seems so simplistic. Okay. But how do I round if no one's here and I'm the only one in the office? Let's just say.
Jason Raidbard:Right? And that happened to me yesterday. The couple people that were remote, one was on vacate or was supposed to be a person, and and one fell ill. Okay. How does that alright.
Jason Raidbard:Well, we have technology. We have teams. Yep. We have text. We have email.
Jason Raidbard:Right? We have Zoom. We have a phone. I still love to talk to people on the phone. But what I learned with my team is they loved using Teams.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jason Raidbard:The messaging system, but also the impromptu, can I call you?
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:Can I see your face? Yeah. Right? Or maybe they don't wanna see my face or they don't want you to see their face. Whatever.
Jason Raidbard:I leave it to them to be adults and be professionals.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jason Raidbard:You wanna have hybrid work as long as I can get ahold of you during reasonable office hours. I'm not gonna call you at 09:00 at night.
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jason Raidbard:The hybrid will work fine. The remote will work fine because we're all getting everything we need to get done. We're all communicating with each other. The only difference is we're not in the same setting.
Daniel Williams:K.
Jason Raidbard:Now do I like it when we have team billing? I I do call people in. We do, like, quarterly things where where I take them out to lunch, or we have coffee in the conference room, and we all get together. I think there is some merit to that. But do I need to have that five days a week for my team to be effective based on, you know, our at least our department metrics, quality financial, otherwise, no.
Jason Raidbard:We don't. And I can prove it just because I've lived and breathed it the last three years. I get a lot of people who say, I just don't think we're very productive as we were before COVID. Okay. Well, show me the money, so to speak.
Jason Raidbard:Right? Show me the numbers. Let's let's see.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:And and I think it's the most important thing with listening and and and trying to be a good leader is is is that that principle of servant leadership that I learned from, a mentor of mine, Rick Beyer, who's, CEO of Barrington Orthopedics currently. And this was over a decade ago when I worked for the Advent Health System, which turned into AMITA. And I learned from him what it meant. And we could talk for an hour or two about it itself, but you have to put your people and their needs in front of yours. Mhmm.
Jason Raidbard:You can't go to people and say, I need, I need, I need, I need. There's nothing worse than going to a meeting, and your your next up gives you 10 things that they need, and you came in with one problem you needed help with.
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jason Raidbard:It's demoralizing. Right? So if you understand those cues of what is important to people you know, some people like hybrid work because they're able to pick up their kid on Tuesdays and Thursdays and not have to pay for aftercare. Okay. That goes a long way.
Jason Raidbard:Aftercare is not cheap, by the way. I have a child. Okay.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:So you have to kinda put those things in perspective of what's important to people, and you can still get everyone to agree on what's important for your department, for your medical group, for your healthcare organization, whatever the case may be. You can still meet your goals. You can still exceed your goals. But it has to be a two way street. And I think often younger managers, like myself when I was younger twenty years ago, missed that opportunity of thinking that, okay, we have these goals and we have to hit them and it's scorched earth to get there.
Jason Raidbard:And that's not how life works. If you want sustained results and you want a healthy workforce, a workforce that is not burnt out, a workforce that likes coming to work, I think we've all at one point worked somewhere we loathed. Right? David Trainer (zero fifty seven:thirty seven):
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:Anthony Vaughn (zero fifty seven:thirty eight): Think about how awful that experience was and what either the organization culture and or your boss or bosses, if it was a matrixed environment, did to you
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:And how that played out. Everyone's had a bad experience. Maybe it was when you served ice cream at the local pool when you were 16, but all the same, the principles are the same.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. How do you then encourage open communication and feedback? So you're describing a situation where it could be in office, remote, or hybrid, so you've got a mixture of people there. And as you were just describing, you know, yesterday or the day before, there was, it was just you, so you were gonna have some more face to face communication. But what do you do?
Daniel Williams:How do you go about really opening up that line of communication? Because we've all been there where, the boss is the boss. Even though you might be a servant leader, sometimes it can be difficult to get people to speak up. And even when they're going through tough stuff, you know, they're really challenged by something they might not wanna, you know, quote, look stupid, and so they don't speak up, and then you're left trying to motivate them. So how do you go about this?
Daniel Williams:Somebody who's got that twenty plus years of experience, how do you bring that team around where you can have it's one thing, as you might know, to say I have an open door policy, but then nobody's walking through the door, and you're going, come on, team. Let's, get it going here. What does Jason right here do?
Jason Raidbard:Well, you know, anytime you enter a new organization, it's an opportunity to start a clean slate. Right? Yeah. But even in a current organization, you could still do the same thing. And it's I keep it very simple.
Jason Raidbard:Be genuine.
Daniel Williams:Be
Jason Raidbard:a genuine person. Right? If you let's say, Daniel, you were, in this instance, you work for me, and maybe you're a coder that I work with, or maybe you're a business analyst or finance analyst, whatever the case may be. If I ask you how your weekend was, or where you went on vacation, people love it when other people ask them questions about themselves and inquire, right? People don't like people who just talk about themselves, Right?
Jason Raidbard:Yeah. And you want to do business with people you either, one or both, trust and like. Yeah. Well, you have to build the trust first. Maybe you may like them, but you don't know them.
Jason Raidbard:Mhmm. How do you get to know it? Well, you've gotta find some kind of common ground, some common interests. Start by just getting to know someone first. When you're sitting at your desk and you say you have an open door policy, as an example, someone says, do you have a minute?
Jason Raidbard:Can I come in? Well, don't keep typing emails and responding to text messages, because that's just not genuine.
Daniel Williams:Oh.
Jason Raidbard:And yes, technology has pushed us as a human race to a point, particularly in this country, but in other modernized countries where we can multitask great with technology. But I don't think human beings were necessarily designed originally for that. We've sort of evolved with the technology, and we're still so many people are still adjusting to it. Right? It can be overstimulating and overwhelming for people between the buzzes and the, you know, some people get triggered by hearing certain buzzes from certain different platforms that we use every day.
Jason Raidbard:Right? And you gotta ask yourself, why is it triggering? It's gotta be associated with some kind of bad moment or bad memory, right, or series of them. So how do you undo that or try to as a leader? Well, be present.
Jason Raidbard:Listen to your people. Ask them for feedback. Another great way to just get to know and get to trusting people is if you have a problem as a leader and you need a solution, you can look to your team for help. They sometimes have the best ideas to fix issues and sometimes relatively quickly and in a cost efficient manner. And if you give them an opportunity to participate and you see that whatever was broken is now fixed, and you recognize them publicly and in private, it goes a long way to boost morale.
Jason Raidbard:And as long as you're genuine about it, and you're helpful about it, people will remember them. I still have people from a half dozen decade, decade and a half ago that will follow-up with me and say, I remember when I was going through something really rough, and you sat and listened to me for twenty minutes and then got me to a social worker, whoever it was. And this was an individual that was in a really bad spot with some stuff going on at home. And it can be that kind of conversation, or it could be like, I'm having an issue with my computer today, and IT says they need you to get involved because it's beyond me, and it's a bigger Whatever it is, you have to be present and be there. When you work with physicians in particular, their job is incredibly tough.
Jason Raidbard:It doesn't matter what specialty it is. I work with optometrists and ophthalmologists, but whether it's working with radiologists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, primary care physicians, pediatricians, doesn't matter. You can be visible. When they're looking for help or answers, help them. Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:Be proactive. Right? That's how you build trust. If that phone has been broken for five years I say this all the time. That phone over there on their desk has been broken for five years, and all of a sudden you hear it's broken, and you offer to help, and you actually help, and it gets fixed, they'll remember that.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Yeah. A lot of that.
Jason Raidbard:It's little things. It's not and I can't tell you, Daniel, that, like, it's some brand there's a lot of people that brand a lot of things, and, oh, there's a hack to do this and a hack to do that. To me, there's no hack. It's being just a genuine, good person.
Daniel Williams:Mhmm. Mhmm. We've been talking about how to make that connection no matter where you meet someone in the workspace now, whether it's in person, through Teams, through Zoom, through some other platform, But there can be a downside to, you know, working remotely or working in that hybrid environment, and this is one related to burnout where it can be a situation where there's not an off switch, Right? Where, okay. I get out of bed.
Daniel Williams:I walk 10 steps. I'm in front of the computer, and now I'm going. I am working. And I have fallen prey to that at times when I've got a major project going on, and I really have to set timers or something, a notification to remind me to get up and go get some fresh air for ten minutes just to get away from it. How do you encourage your team to really build a work life imbalance, you know, if not imbalance, but a work life balance there?
Jason Raidbard:Yeah. No. That's that's a great question. I mean, I think talking about it Mhmm. Normalizing it Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:Is very important. Because as a leader, whether you're a leader of a department, leader of a a large health system that's over multiple states, wherever, maybe you're you're a leader of a privately owned medical group in, you know, wherever in The United States. It doesn't matter. Normalizing the conversation. It's okay that I have to step away from my desk because I have to pick up my kid at school the day that I'm working remote because I will cover that fifteen minutes that was lost and then some.
Jason Raidbard:Right? Now to your question or to your comment, how do you address the off button? Because there can be a lot of guilt associated with I hear that all the time. I I need to leave a half hour early to go to the doctor. They only had a 04:30 appointment.
Jason Raidbard:Okay? Your salary. Okay? You get your work done. Okay?
Jason Raidbard:You need to take care of your health. I normalize the conversation about people making sure that they take care of their health. You're no good to yourself, you're no good to your family, and you're no good at the work place if you're coughing and you're stressed, you have hypertension and all that. There are leaders that don't care. They'll squeeze every bit of whatever they can get out of you and then toss you aside.
Jason Raidbard:I don't operate in that space. There are other folks no different than me that don't operate. That's the shift. When you ask me, like, how things have shifted, that's the shift I've seen over the last ten years. And I I'll be honest with you.
Jason Raidbard:I think it's in part, in some respects, generational shift of of how we approach work and and and what we value. And that's not to say that I love where I work. I prioritize it. Right? But I've got a kid.
Jason Raidbard:I've got to take care of her, right? I've got to what? Gotta take care of him. I can work late. I have worked late.
Jason Raidbard:I've been there on a Sunday all day trying to get a budget presentation done for the next day because there were glitches in the system. We've all been in a situation like that. I always say we wanna limit those to those instances of when we need to push that energy. You as a human, over a year, two, five, ten, twenty years, you cannot sustain that. Certainly not without the aid of some other drug, which may be illegal to keep you going.
Jason Raidbard:Right?
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jason Raidbard:Because there's no coffee in the world that's gonna keep you going. You have to look at it this way. What seems right and normal to you that everyday humans would talk about? Talk about their family lives, talk about things that are going on, being honest, being transparent. But as a leader, sometimes your people will mask and they'll hide that sometimes by just working more.
Jason Raidbard:Because maybe they do have a bad home life, right? And they just work more to cover it up. You have to, as best as you can, and I think this is very different than leadership probably from fifteen, twenty years ago, you have to recognize things that leaders from twenty years ago may have not not recognized, but it just wasn't talked about from from a mental health perspective. And if you notice someone is normally happy and seeming down, and you notice someone is just lagging, there's something going on. And if you've built up that trust, you'd be like, hey.
Jason Raidbard:Is there anything I can help you with? You don't have to say, hey. Something must be wrong at home. You know, you don't wanna do that. Right?
Jason Raidbard:But just inquire. And you may find out that people maybe are stressed, feeling guilty about working from home. I've had that happen before where they feel that they need to work more. Whether you're working from home or or not, you have to come up with a balance that still gets your work done. Generally, my people are always putting in, you know, seven, eight, nine hours a day.
Jason Raidbard:Sometimes they do ten. I don't tell them to do 10. I tell them, you have a set of work that needs to get done, and there's certain things that need to get done, and you need to contact me or your coworkers if we can help you. Because I don't want that to be fifteen hours.
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jason Raidbard:That's just it's too much. And I think if you can just have honest, robust conversations and just be real honest and real real, as they say, it's gonna more collegial environment. And when you talk about, like, people staying on the goals and the missions of the organization department, that's how it works. When people feel that they can value they're valued and that they can trust you, that's how, if you ask for help, they'll help you because you've helped them.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. In the remaining moments here, is there a final thought, like your your elevator pitch, your one minute little outro you'd wanna share with, other leaders out there that maybe maybe they have a team they're having trouble getting connected to? I mean, what's something you would wanna leave them with in this last moment or so?
Jason Raidbard:I would say, I think one of the things, there's a couple things. When you're having trouble with a team, or you're having an instance where things are just not going well and not working, the first thing you wanna look at is yourself. You want to look in the mirror and you want to ask yourself, are you being true to yourself? Are you being the leader that you want to be? You can even ask yourself this, is this the right fit?
Jason Raidbard:Am Am I in the right place? Because you may be a fantastic leader, you're just in the wrong place. And no matter what you do, it's not working. And I think that's really important too, because I've seen a lot of leaders burn out, leave healthcare because of it. And it really wasn't a function of them.
Jason Raidbard:It was a function of just the culture they were in. There was no, they were one combating a thousand. There was no way that they were going to change it. And I've been there before too. And you just have to ask yourself, Okay, am I doing everything that I need to do?
Jason Raidbard:Are there things that I can improve upon? I got better when I questioned myself and said, I can be better. That's when I got better. When I really looked deep inside and said, You know what? I don't actively listen.
Jason Raidbard:I assume. I don't pay attention when people come in my office. I'm sitting there texting on my phone. Start there. Because it's so easy in today's society to just point and blame.
Jason Raidbard:This is why this is wrong. It's because of he or she or it or that. And that just leads to toxic relationships and toxicity. And that's not a value add to anybody. I think if you get past that point, then it's, all right, what is it within my team that I need to work on and improve and try and help with?
Jason Raidbard:And hopefully, you have, during this time, built trust to the point that people will tell you. You may have indications of what's going on, but it's best when your people actually tell you. And when you get to that point, even when things are bad, and I've been there before. I had a group of managers. I remember my score was, like, 2.4 out of five.
Jason Raidbard:And we just had a heart they liked me, but I wasn't I was a hard charging leader at the time. And I said, I'm like, okay, just be honest with me. And they were very honest. And they are the primary reason why I turned into, in many ways, the leader I turned in today because they shared with me. They're like, hey, we need you to do this and this and that, be here for this.
Jason Raidbard:And so I think if you could just be honest with yourself of where you need to improve, people will see that. They'll see that you're trying. They'll see the genuineness. And if something's working well, you can always ask, like, what are some things that are is going well that we wanna continue doing?
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:Because you wanna celebrate the wins. You don't wanna always look at it through a half glass full. You wanna look at it like, this is three quarters full. This is a full glass of water. Yeah.
Jason Raidbard:And I think if you can celebrate the wins, focus on the good things and build off of them, things will just they may not always be easy, but they'll be easier than if you don't do those things.
Daniel Williams:Right. Alright. Well, Jason Raybard, thanks for joining us yet again on the MGMA podcast.
Jason Raidbard:No. Thank you for having me.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Well, everyone, do wanna just remind y'all, MGMA member community live, it is a great way to go peer to peer to hear your have your voice heard out there and to hear the voices of your MGMA peers out there. It's a great way to do that in addition to the webinars and podcasts like this one. So until then, I'm gonna put all this information out in the episode show notes. We're also gonna develop an article for it on mgma.com.
Daniel Williams:But until then, want just wanna thank all of you for being MGMA podcast listeners.
