Team Building

I manage a dialysis clinic. This is a huge part of my life! We all have to work so let's make it as great as we can!

Having a strong team and a team that feels valued is crucial. This is not only for my work life, but for my personal life too! We can say they are separate all we want, but when one is in disarray the other suffers.

Being in leadership, it is my responsibility to ensure those working with me have an awesome place to work. It's takes hard work and maybe some tears! I have worked hard to build this team and I'd love to share the things that have helped me along the way.

Hopefully you can find inspiration and encouragement here.

This idea is not mine but was very impactful!

It's called: You've been mugged!

Drop for details!

The premise is very simple, you get a coffee mug and fill it with goodies. Here I did this awesome pen a friend of mine makes, essential oils and tea bags. You will next grab a card or type up a word document. You can write anything you like as far as a thank you message.

This is what I put in my card:::

(Persons name) You've been mugged!

Someone here wants to say thank you for all that you do!

All that they ask is that you mug someone you appreciate too!

Copy this letter and get to muggin!

Signed: Your biggest fan

That's it! Grab a cup fill it up write a note and let the fun begin! I have seen this done many ways on Pinterest. This ended up costing about $4.00 and 10 minutes to do. Not every thank you has to be a grand event! I have found that its the constant appreciation that matters, not the once a year gifts.

I think I probably had more fun doing this than they did getting these! It was hilarious watching everyone ask around who had done this! It started a very serious investigation on the unit about where it came from!

Coffee cup link here https://amzn.to/3dZNjFx

Cute Pens link here https://amzn.to/3fyCqej

This is the link to the essential oils I used. I bought a 16 packs and gave them out in other small gifts. https://amzn.to/3dXpUEK

I picked the tea up at Food Lion

So go make a teammate smile and get to Muggin!

Bulletin Board/ Staff Encouragement and Engagement

Drop for Details!

I have always felt, that sometimes, we only engage with our coworkers and staff to gain favor.

What if we engaged only to encourage! We have

nothing to gain, but to work with, a staff that feels encouraged!

After COVID my team was broken. We were tired and

honestly felt that we were used and abused to a certain degree. Dialysis

is a life sustaining treatment for patients. When you provide a service

such as dialysis there is no isolating for 2 weeks or working from home. The

team was there every day! Our families were scared and so were we. We were the first in our area to work with

COVID patients in an outpatient setting. At this time if you had COVID you were advised to go nowhere, not even the doctor’s office, everything was new and unknown.

This was a hard for us and I struggled to keep an upbeat attitude. I could see my attitude rubbing off on my team. I see now it was Okay that I didn’t have the best outlook, it’s a normal response to a stressful situation! Be that as it may I knew that I was quickly reaching the point of being someone I did not want to be. A change had to be made not only for myself and team, but for my family too!

I began nightly reading positive affirmations and quotes on Pinterest. We all see them all over, "You’re a Boss B*tch", "Don't let someone with no self-control, Control your attitude" and so on. I'm reading these quotes and high fiving myself every night! At one point I know I pinned 100 of them in a week, yikes! To say the struggle was real,,, is an understatement! The thing is, I found by feeding myself with these affirmations I started to change the way I thought about my current situation.

So one day at work I was thinking, some of you need to get on Pinterest and start reading some affirmations, that junk works! Obviously saying to your team yall need to get some encouragement was probably not going to be the best approach. I had put up a bulleting board at work to cover some holes I made in the walls! It was sitting there empty and begging to be covered with something😊

So I got to work! I bought a table cloth for the background, some fans for décor and colored paper. I typed up all of the affirmations that I felt were the most helpful and encouraging to me. I used Microsoft Word for this but you can use whatever you like. After everything was typed I got to printing!

The total project including hanging the board took me about 1 hour to complete. There was no major fanfare just some typing printing and hanging. Taking a moment to selflessly encourage someone selfishly makes us feel better too! So there is nothing to gain but we all know there is always a gain, this one is just not measured by graphs and spreadsheets. Just good old fashioned happy endorphins!

If you and your team are struggling, maybe you all need some encouragement. Trust me, take the time to encourage yourself and your team!

Some items I used from amazon were as

follows:

Fans https://amzn.to/3USFfXz https://amzn.to/3E8qbiS https://amzn.to/3E7Mt3Z

Colored Printer Paper: https://amzn.to/3LYedtL

Table cloth for background: https://amzn.to/3rouezX

Click those links help me make some passive cash LOL!

That’s my disclosure by the way!