Taking on management responsibilities can be an exciting new chapter in any professional’s career path. It can also be intimidating, especially when you're managing people. Whether you have worked hard to get promoted into this role or you’ve been hired into a new optometric practice to take on the management responsibilities, you have to develop and strengthen new skills to manage effectively.
Below are five things new office managers must master to succeed in an optometric practice.
Master These Management Skills For Optometric Practice Success
Manage Your Time
An optometric practice can have a hectic schedule. For the first time office manager, having to balance tasks like supervising day-to-day operations and ensuring patient needs are being addressed can get in the way of accomplishing other required office duties.
While you may be tempted to multitask, studies show that multitasking slows down productivity and leads to more mistakes.
As a first time manager, you should test out different time management strategies to identify one that works best for your practice, staff needs, and schedule. Learn to prioritize tasks, use time blocks, and take breaks to improve productive in your role. You can even use agile project management techniques.
Learn to Delegate
Some people think that the only way to get a job done right is by doing it themselves. Unfortunately, there is only so much time in the day. Working on trivial tasks instead of using your time to tackle more critical issues could damage productivity and lead to burn-out.
Delegating tasks to other staff members will allow you to focus on critical thinking to address issues promptly. It'll also strengthen your staff's skills so they can grow.
Communicate Effectively
Whether you’re conducting a team meeting or training a new hire, you have to communicate effectively to get your point across and address potential issues in the practice. To communicate effectively, you have to actively listen, stop multi-tasking, and use simple and clear language. Also, utilize any training videos that your software or optometry groups might provide. Using digital resources frees up your time and allows staff members to refer back to them when they're unsure.
Create SMART Goals
Having an established pattern to guide you towards creating the goals will improve the odds of them being accomplished. Using the SMART goal setting method, you can create clear, attainable goals that can help facilitate growth across the optometric practice.
A SMART goal is a goal that is:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Celebrate Accomplishments
Rewarding staff can boost morale, reduce turnover, increase engagement, and improve communication. Recognizing when a staff member has done a great job with a task, went out of their way to assist a patient, or identified an error which could have had negative consequences on the practice doesn’t have to come from spending cash.
A handwritten thank you card, a shout out during the next team meeting, or letting the employee go home early are just some examples of how you can celebrate a staff members accomplishment without spending a dime.
Here are other ways to manage an expert team. Read the ebook below.
Originally published in March 2018