Start with Kudos

Morale is important to your physical therapy practice.

By Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA

Whether you have two employees or 200, morale is an often overlooked key to many things that link to your bottom line. Productivity, turnover, idea generation, and more, can all benefit from small upticks in the morale of your team.

The good news is that while the costs associated with poor morale can be devastating, investments in morale do not have to cost much at all. Once such investment can—and should—become a part of your regular meeting routine: starting each meeting with kudos.

While regular meeting schedules vary (weekly, monthly, and quarterly), the ability to carve out a few minutes to publicly acknowledge one another can fit into any meeting format you may use. By doing so, this small investment of time (usually no more than 5 minutes) achieves two very important things.

First, it makes people feel good. Being recognized is an important contributor to happiness in the workplace, and doing so in a public format heightens the benefit. Making people feel good by starting your meeting with kudos is cheap, easy, and works.

Second, it provides a model for positive team culture. By habitually recognizing one another in this public format, the ability for this priority to take root in other facets of your business can become quite natural. Kudos begin to show up in the gym, at the water cooler, in email threads, and more.

Our team kudos work something like this:

“Okay everyone, as we kick off today’s meeting we’re going to start off with some kudos. Certainly there have been some achievements over the past [month/week] and we would like to recognize a few folks who have done an especially good job of helping move us forward.

“I would like to start by recognizing Mary for her dedication over the past month. I have seen her working really hard to meet her monthly budget numbers, and I really appreciate her for this. She has put in a lot of hard work this month and I would like to make sure everyone knows it.”

These comments make Mary feel great.

“Who’s next?”

The fun begins. With just a bit of role modeling, starting a meeting off with kudos is enlightening, positive, and one of the most enjoyable aspects of our meeting time.

If you have not woven this simple habit into your current meeting structure, give it a try. As always, I will be eager to hear how it goes.

Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA, lives at the intersection of physical therapy and entrepreneurship, spending his time helping physical therapists build and operate successful practices through his company, Vantage Clinical Solutions. He specializes in marketing, finance, and business planning, and authors and speaks regularly for the APTA and PPS. He can be reached at tannus@vantageclinicalsolutions.com.