Most mental health organizations offer limited training for developing managers. Furthermore, when we compare job descriptions from one organization to the next, we see a wide variety of tasks, as if no two situations are alike. So how do we develop our managers and help them grow into this job?
Table of contents
1. Developing managerial leadership
Most managers are natural leaders, though sometimes the relentless spotlight is exhausting. Therefore, we discuss the role, the mandatory adjustments, and the emotional toll of leading.
- Why effective leadership is lonely and exhausting
- Walking our staff through a crisis
- Leading during crises: Passing the Coronavirus test
- Matching one’s leadership style to the environment
- How to create an organization with excited committed employees
2. Developing people and process skills
One of my favorite quotes about managing people is this:
“Most people are deeply—and rightly—resistant to being managed. In fact, the real insight about managing people is that, ultimately, you don’t. The best performers are people who know enough and care enough to manage themselves. . . . Management [has the] responsibility to provide a context of values within which individuals can manage themselves and . . . take responsibility for their own performance.”
Joan Magretta with Nan Stone. (2002; Reissued edition 2012). What Management Is: How it works and why it’s everyone’s business. New York: Free Press. pg 195.
Here we give you a crash course on developing managers for mental health practices.
- 7 management principles that excellent, but untrained, managers know
- How to think about the basics of managing leaders
- Reducing In-the-trench Psychotherapy To Focus On Practice Management
- How to improve workplace culture: Love our people
- Five key attributes of excellent managers
- Successful Practice Management that leaves you sane
3. Developing good managerial habits
Additionally, we look at some of the skills and habits that developing managers need to find managerial success.
- Learning to manage myself: Solving my self-imposed roller coaster
- A different language: What tracking numbers can tell us
- Using staff complaints to make your organization great
- How to gain momentum by capitalizing on business tipping points
4. Growing through employee issues
Furthermore, every developing manager finds that personnel issues are the most challenging part of the job. Here we look work at developing helpful ways for handling difficult employees and the emotions we find problematic.
- How to overcome employee betrayal: 5 steps to love resiliently
- How to make sense of soured workplace relationships: Attachment injuries
- Addition by subtraction: Types of difficult, disastrous employees
- When we need to fire an employee
- When an employee leaves: Saying goodbye well
5. How to overcoming hardships
As the years go on, all practice managers run into challenges and setbacks, and we need a process to work them through and come out on the other side.
Here are several articles about a wide variety of setbacks that plague many owners and managers:
- Starting a new business? The start-up blues
- How to overcome crises–When several clinicians leave
- Psychotherapy practice finances in a crisis
- How psychotherapy will overcome massive unemployment
- How mental health businesses weathered the health care storms
6. Redefining our roles
The one constant is change. Developing managers means helping them adjust to the ever-changing business environment, and old methods must evolve to accommodate new demands.
- Overcoming false beliefs about money, business, and selling
- How to run a practice: 40 yrs of years of emerging roles
- How to redesign your leadership structure as you grow
The ultimate guide to manager development
In conclusion, we are reminded that no other dimension of practice development is more critical than developing managers within an organization. And it can be one of the more satisfying aspects of growth, the opportunity to walk together as the managers all learn together.
