The Great Divide: From vision to alignment - a new model of thinking to bridge the gap between clinic owners and the new generation of health professionals
I’ve written before how burnout has become normalised, almost a rite of passage. A passage that is incorrectly assumed unavoidable if you are giving all you have to your career in Allied Healthcare. It starts with and continues from the commencement of our academic journey; we must give our all always! We get swept up in the demands of our industry and become enmeshed in our career and before we know it, we have lost control! We are powering on, unsure why with the perceived end point potentially terrifying!
It doesn’t have to be this way. Since embarking on a new purposeful direction within our industry, I guide and coach others to a life of harmony and freedom. Freedom refers to a state where fear and lack of control are no longer limiting, where a life vision and pathway is clear and joyful, challenges are reminders of possibilities, life is harmonious. Throughout this, I have communicated my message and service through the lens of burnout, a state of being that is tangible to many. Burnout has high awareness, it can be a place of familiarity, a niggling realisation or a terrifying prospect not yet encountered. Burnout is an incredibly uncomfortable end state. Life feels out of balance and one or more areas of your life iare completely consuming your energy, time, and focus. In the Allied Health Profession, the nature of who we are and what we are charged to do leads to this imbalance usually falling in our career/profession and/or business. I know this, it happened to me and many I work with in my coaching role today.
I have also written about the personal impacts of burnout and how finding passion, purpose through a meaningful life vision can really work to getting life buckets back in balance. Much of this work is based on individuals, however I’m interested how systemically we can approach a new way of industry thinking to catch most professionals at varying stages of their career to avoid this uncomfortable end state. I’m hearing young graduates are afraid and reluctant to lean into a career that has seen many of their practice mentors leave exhausted and dissatisfied. They have seen the commercial reality of honing their practice and the pressure this can bring, they can see what it takes to continually achieve clinical excellence and how the journey of knowledge never ends. They are hesitant, reluctant, and perhaps scared to launch into this profession. Many of us understand why.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have clinic owners who have the responsibility of being a lead clinician, perhaps managing a business while creating a productive environment for those graduates to grow and develop. The hesitancy in young professionals is understood and acknowledged. Things have changed, the drive, motivations and outlook of our younger generation is about more balance, varied interests and wanting to be the best they can be but not at all costs. Recruitment, retention, and satisfaction of young professionals is becoming a new frontier for our industry and practice owners. My observation is that as practice owners we are not out of touch with the evolving and varied needs of the emerging professional, it’s more how do we bridge the gap between, what we did, what we know, what is necessary and what our new professionals need?
I’m here to say it’s resolvable, it’s not simple but like everything a great solution is long lasting and generally worth working for. Here are my thoughts on bridging this gap, a collection of my observations over 22 years in the industry.
The Allied Health graduate has been trained vocationally with a high level of specialisation. This narrow focus can produce graduates that think their career and life must be one long linear trajectory that can’t be dynamic or flexible. This begins with how they are trained through the education system and ushered into a vocational line of study based on perceived academic ability and personal interests, not a broad life vision. The requirements to get through the course usually creates an early imbalance and this consumption creates neglect in other areas of life. Career can very easily become a major driving force in a young professional, which is manageable until young lives grow and expand in complexity and priority. Also, mainstream messaging creates an obligation on our next generation to pursue happiness, purpose, and passion and that our work should demonstrate the pinnacle of our achievement. Not surprisingly we are creating an anxious mix of emotion when we have young people who have invested enormously in their work finding that it’s just too much. This whole mix of professional and personal achievement can result in hesitancy, reluctance, and disempowerment.
Looking back, I now know, to be fulfilled in our career, what matters is not so much the what of a career, but more the who and the why. Career satisfaction comes from people, values, and a sense of accomplishment. Having balance in your life against a clear life vision and what drives this will help you understand how your professional career sits with the rest of your life. This will allow you to more easily determine your career trajectory to ensure you can take control over your journey and determine your own level of tolerance for what is acceptable in your work life.
The key word here is alignment. When you are intrinsically aligned to a clear life vision and courageously moving towards that across all areas of your life the who and why of your career will effortlessly become a priority. Your gifts and passions will come forth and you will find yourself living intentionally on purpose. Living on purpose with alignment is where the energy should be directed. Forget “Find Your Purpose”. We have found this can create purpose anxiety. That’s right a real thing people get when trying to find their purpose. Trust and patience have shown me on many occasions that your purpose or your ‘why’ will begin to emerge when you live with intention and the opportunities, financial rewards and fulfillment begin to emerge.
I feel too it’s worth reframing resilience. Resilience and gratitude are terms that are bestowed with obligation on our rising generation. I have heard statements like ‘this entitled generation don’t know how to do it tough like we did!’ I felt the gravity of these term in the later part of my career. We need a re- think, resilience is about how connected you are to your vision, how connected you are to having the courage to understand that having a shit day, conflict, emotional challenges are a reminder to revisit what you want. Do you have a life vision? Are you deviating? is it time to reassess? Are you on track with your vision? If it’s feeling uncomfortable, embrace this as an intuitive reminder things are off balance. Resilience is the ability to recognise this, reassess, and act. I believe resilience is misrepresented as a call to tolerate the situations in life you shouldn’t because you’re a lot better off than someone in a faraway land that doesn’t haven’t enough food or access to education. This sentiment gets lost on our emerging generation. A call-to-action to know when it’s time to turn discomfort to possibility. That’s resilience not tolerance and it creates gratitude.
My experience has shown me that people most satisfied in their professional lives are those who find a fundamental match between their employer’s values and vision and their own. If your purpose and vision align with that of your employer, the chances of organisational alignment and fulfilment are no doubt likely to improve. We call this extrinsic alignment. Solid intrinsic and extrinsic alignment will see you avoiding languish and compassion fatigue, Burnout is not inevitable, it’s a result of a misaligned, visionless life and career.
So what does this mean for the practice owner? It means we too need to have a vision that is a vision for ourselves firstly and then our business. Once we know this, we begin to understand who we are serving and who we need to get there. Unfortunately, much of our recruitment and retention strategies focus on the what. The technical skills or tangible parts of an employee experience that see them able to deliver the job but can quickly require on going management if they are not aligned to the business vision. I’m sure you may have experienced that one professional that is so aligned to you and your practice it’s literally liquid gold! Morale is high, productivity high and things just come together – it’s contagious! To make this more of a reoccurring event understanding your vision and purpose as a business owner is crucial for finding others that align to your vision.
Once we align to a broader life vision we see balance, sense of purpose and clarity return to our life and business. This allows us to serve better, be better and offer greater longevity to our significant others, patients, teams, families, and those that rely on us as care providers. We become highly attractive to future recruits.
My days are now spent coaching people, clinicians, and practice owners to do just this. Devise the person you want to be and the life you want to lead and how to apply this in business. Think more of the work you will do to serve others, Then, consider what it will take for you to get there, and the happiness you will gain from the joyful journey of creating value and contributing to an aligned vision. Broadly listed below is our formula. It’s simple yet powerful and does require time, action and deep thinking:
The formula is simple and something I have written about before:
Stop
Know yourself
Build a vision - a broad life vision that is balanced not just a business/work/career vision
Build a plan - what actions will bring your vision to life?
The you must
Act - Action leads to clarity, just get going, don’t wait for the perfection.
Review, measure, be intuitive and adapt
Get the right help to support you - it’s hard to go it alone
Once we get the vision set and we recruit others on our journey both practice owners and graduates are well served recognising these 3 success factors:
Earned success (the what) or a sense of accomplishment and professional efficacy. The feeling you are great at what you do, this pushes up commitment to career and this is supported by clear guidance and feedback, rewards, and encouragement. Young graduates and employees need to be shown how sharing their gifts helps align to their life vision and how they are upholding yours. They need to know they are doing a great job and their contribution is worthwhile and valuable.
Service to others (the who) the sense that your professional contribution is making a difference to others not just fuelling your personal ambition. A key component of retention is you feel you are genuinely contributing to the greater good, your sense of belonging improves along with your self-esteem. You feel worthy and optimistic and generally while you are deep in service to others your purpose tends to emerge.
Continued alignment (the why) This is where your vision and the vision of a graduate should be collaborated often. It helps to have processes embedded in the business where graduates get the chance to contemplate, evaluate and live their vision, and practice owners get to help reframe the effort and changes required in personal capability and capacity, to serve both the personal and practice vision. Remember the journey is as important as the outcomes and achievements. Although one will always serve the other for the greater good if the vision is aligned.
I recognise that these ideas are simpler to write than to implement in the modern busy life. It requires, time, space, clear thinking, and a commitment to action but it’s worth it! I see the return on investment often in my clients that have dedicated time to working towards clarity. It all starts with the individual, then flows out to the vision for all areas of your life including career/business. Working to a clear life vision allows you to access your passions more often, serve others productively and understand why you are doing what you do.
When you align your personal vision to that of an organisation it’s where the magic happens. We are well served as individuals and business owners to formulate our own vision and then request that of our future or present employees or managers. If you are already in place with a team or employment, it’s not too late to create a vision for yourself/business and measure yours and others alignment. You may surprise yourself or it may be time for change? Either way a life vision will give you a sense of empowerment over your future and direction you probably haven’t experienced before.
The solution is to see major goals not as the only way to achieve fulfilment but as points of navigation that set a direction for your lifelong journey. If you are achieving things and it feels great? – you are on the right path! That way, when challenges arise and new opportunities present themselves, you can easily reassess your vision and intentionally decide a way forward. You are in control.
Ultimately, it’s a more productive and fulfilling life experience setting yourself up to navigate away from burnout than it is to push through it. If only I’d known earlier and challenged my limiting beliefs, working on my whole life vision not just work vision.…. It’s not easy to seek change, implement it and take control of your life but it’s worth it!