Spend a few minutes talking about leadership and employee development with Karen Sturchio, CEO of Kansas Christian Home, and you get inspired to take your leadership to the next level. Her passion is to help others succeed through leadership training and helping them find success personally and professionally. Sturchio has been in her position for only a few years and is in the process of implementing a mentor program that is already showing a reduction in turnover.
The program’s goal is to develop mentors at all levels of her team to help onboard and coach new employees so they have a good experience in the organization. The basic program is taken from a CNA Leadership Training from the New York Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation Dementia Grant that she learned about several years ago through the Rhode Island Quality Improvement Organization. From that program and experience implementing it during her career, it has grown into a whole organization mentor program.
The first step of the process is to create a solid foundation within the existing team that fosters a culture of leadership and mentoring. 10 months is spent focusing on the leadership, first year directors and charge nurses. During that time, they work to decrease drama and triangulation.
Sturchio utilizes information from the book Hardwiring Excellence from Quint Studer that includes goal review, cascading goals, and a coaching model called GROW.
Goal – how does leadership support employees
Reality – what is the reality of what is going on
Options/Opportunity – Since this is reality, what can you do to change that and be the successful
Will – can I count on you to get this accomplished
These tools go hand-in-hand to teach leadership that the goal isn’t to terminate/punish people. It’s to help them grow. There is a time for termination, however it shouldn’t be the first reaction unless the situation warrants it.
Once the leaders have been trained, the focus shifts to the hands-on caregivers. Significant time is spent helping caregivers learn how to empower themselves at work and at home. For this group, the training focus is on communication and helping the caregivers learn their value as a human being as well as their relationship to leadership.
Training on compassion fatigue is important for this group. Caregivers go through so much grief in their work that they can become hardened to the job. Many realize early on that they suffer if they bring down their wall.
The focus for any provider must not end with the question of how to care for residents and families, but how do they care for the caregivers. These individuals go through significant, real losses and sometimes they “cannot bear one more day of seeing their loved one suffer and die”. Providers have to be concerned with how to help caregivers process and get through. Resources for training could include an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Prairie View in Newton, local social workers and others.
Sturchio began the process working at Kansas Christian Home in the spring of 2016 when turnover was 73.5%. She began the mentor program in March of 2017, and Kansas Christian Home now has 21.36% turnover. She has implemented versions of this training in other positions and has experienced similar or better results.
The program is replicable in other organizations and is evidence-based. She cautions that administrators/CEOs must put in the time to implement the leadership training as it never works when handed off to the education nurse. It only works if your top leader is fully behind it.
When asked what she would say to administrators who work in small, rural homes that wear a number of hats and are stretched too thin who don’t feel they have enough time to implement a mentor program, Sturchio had this to say:
“You can’t afford not to do this. You must get off the hamster wheel. You will spend a lot of time in the beginning because you are frontloading the effort, but it will pay dividends if you stick with it. Your goal is to be the first stable organization in the area. Once you have achieved stabilization, and your people aren’t leaving to go someplace else, you can dig deeper into enriching their education and training.
If you don’t have a sense of urgency, this should be your urgency. Stop worrying about recruitment and start worrying about retaining. If a member puts half of the effort into retaining as they do recruiting, they would have huge results.”
Sturchio invites individuals from other LeadingAge Kansas member organizations to be part of her training. She does this to be a good neighbor and to expose her team to other work environments.
If you are interested in learning more about this program, contact Karen Sturchio.
Here is the link to the original training which includes a facilitator training guide and participant handouts.
Other Books and Resources
- Here is the link to the original training which includes a facilitator training guide and participant handouts.
- The Florence Prescription by Joe Tye
- Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey
- The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
- Leading Change by John Kotter
- Never Offer Your Comb to a Bald Man by Alexander Berardi
- The Baptist Health Care Journey to Excellence: Creating a Culture that WOWs! By Al Subblefield
For more information about this program, contact Karen Sturchio, CEO.
