We are NOT Family: Leadership Resets for Therapists

Too many practice owners fall into the trap of treating their staff like family.

It feels caring, but it blurs boundaries and leads to therapist burnout and business chaos. We’ve been there, and we’re sharing how to reset your team relations.

As three entrepreneurial therapists, we know the tension between compassion and leadership. In this episode, we explore what happens when empathy goes too far, why clarity matters more than kindness, and how to lead with confidence. These are conversations about team relations and hiring and firing that every entrepreneurial therapist needs to hear.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why confusing team relations with family loyalty backfires

• How over-identifying with staff fuels therapist burnout

• Real talk about hiring and firing without guilt or people-pleasing

• Ways therapist training complicates leadership and how we’ve learned to adapt

• The leadership reset that protects both your practice and your people
  

If you’re an entrepreneurial therapist ready to lead with clarity, hold boundaries, and create a sustainable business, you’re not alone; we’re figuring it out right alongside you.

👉 Follow Off the Chair, leave us a review, and share this episode with a colleague who needs a reset.

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Connect with us!

Website: www.offthechair.com

Instagram: @offthechairpodcast

YouTube: @offthechairpodcast

 Colleen Long, Psy.D.

Website: www.claritypsychologicaltesting.com

LinkedIn: Dr. Colleen Lon

Jennifer Politis, PhD, LPC

Website: www.wellnesscounselingBC.com

Instagram: @wellnesscounselingnj

TikTok: @wellnesscounseling

LinkedIn: Jennifer Politis

Erika Bugaj, MA, MSW, LICSW

Website: www.dandelioncounselingcare.com

Instagram: @dandelioncounselingcare

LinkedIn: Erika Bugaj

• Episode Transcript:

  [00:00:10] Colleen: Welcome to Off the Chair. We love our teams, but your practice has been a family. That myth sets you up for chaos, especially when it comes to hiring and firing. Today, we're cutting through the guilt, the people pleasing, and the therapist training that makes being a leader in this business so damn hard.

  [00:00:30] Erika: I once hired someone, or maybe more than one team member, because I saw the potential they had. You know how we've talked about falling in love with potential with our clients. Well, I think we can also do the same for clinicians. We can see what they may be capable of and hire them based on that.

  [00:00:52] Erika: And I think I hired someone based more on potential than on the human sitting in front of [00:01:00] me.

  [00:01:00] Jen: Yeah, I've definitely done that as well. I've also waited way too long to fire someone. I know we had an admin for two years that I waited on to fire, and for me, that was probably one of my biggest mistakes and one of my biggest regrets.

  [00:01:17] Colleen: When you waited too long, what was that about? Was it like, I just like her? I know she's going through a lot with her family. I can't do this to her right now.

  [00:01:26] Jen: You know what? It was so multilayered. I think it I was over-empathizing with her and her situation. I think I felt bad for her. I think I thought I was part of the problem, or maybe my leadership team was part of the problem, that we didn't train her properly. I also knew how hard it was to find and replace her, so I think I was holding onto her way too long for that reason as well.

  [00:01:50] Colleen: Yeah. I recently had someone who has been with me for a long, long time, and so it does start to feel like family after a while, [00:02:00] especially with their loyalty. And we've had a lot of changes and iterations as a practice as you do when you're around for a while. So we have had a lot of iterations, and just this last week I. Had to run payroll for the first time because we were in between practice managers. And that, of course, that's when you're like, what are we doing now? We're paying for Labor Day at the clinical rate. Hmm.

  [00:02:27] Colleen: That's not sustainable. So obviously, said clinicians did not enjoy that. We are not gonna pay Labor Day at the clinical rate. We're not gonna pay holidays at the clinical rate, nor are we gonna really like it. We're not gonna pay in that structure anymore. In a business where you are made sustainable by your revenue-generating activities, you can't incentivize your people to make more off of the time that they're off versus the time that they're with patients. It's very simple. So [00:03:00] I explained this is not sustainable. I understand this is the way it's probably been for a while. We're gonna have to change some things. And I know that you're probably not gonna be happy with it, but I will make it better. I'll make it better than it was before. And long story short, I reconfigured it.

  [00:03:22] Colleen: So there are no, there's no like paid holidays. You can get a bunch of sick days and PTO or whatever, you know, you get a bunch of PTO and you can take it, you can use it however you want, but there's an admin rate and then there's a clinical rate. And you are gonna get a little bit of an incentive.

  [00:03:39] Colleen: The more patients you see, the higher that rate goes up. And I'll give you a little phantom equity in the company so that you've got some skin in the game, and you wanna start to see us do well and understand why the way that we were doing things before was not sustainable, and this particular person was not having it.

  [00:03:59] Colleen: In [00:04:00] fact, they're still at a place where they're like, well, I might take my ball and go home. And they may have to do that. They may have to do that. But ultimately, I know I can't be there. I can't be, Mom can't be like, well, you know, like, yeah, like that's our practice. But you know, she's been with us for a while.

  [00:04:20] Colleen: She's family. Like, just give her what she's had a hard year and she has, she's had a hard year. But I can't do that as a business. That's how I go upside down. So that's where, as a business owner, as a practice owner, even if you're not owning a group practice, anytime you employ someone and you're not looking at the sustainability of the policies, you're not incentivizing the people that you work for to do the thing that's revenue-generating.

  [00:04:48] Colleen: It's not gonna be sustainable. So I think that's kind of where this is coming from today. And both Jen and I had a little bit of a, huh, this weekend. Like, who is our avatar, who is our listener? Because sometimes we talk about off the chair, like getting off the chair altogether, meaning not clinical, and you're gonna do.

  [00:05:11] Colleen: Etsy Empire, right? You're gonna build a bunch of tools for other clinicians who are doing therapy, maybe, and you're out of that traditional mode, or you're leveraging your expertise on a YouTube channel. So that's part of what Off the Chair is meant for, is those people who wanna think creatively, but this other part is built along that.

  [00:05:33] Colleen: Book Built to Sell, which is even if you are not actively selling your practice right now, you always have to be thinking about building it to sell, and the way that people. Those who actually have business training are thinking about our businesses when that day comes, and one of the major factors that they use to evaluate whether or not your business is [00:06:00] viable or desirable is how much are you in that chair?

  [00:06:05] Colleen: How much do you have to be there day after day? For it to be profitable. Are you the only thoroughbred or high producer that's driving that revenue? And the moment that you get sick or wanna take a break, that profit plummets. And so off the chair you're also helping you figure out how you get yourself off of that a little bit, and your employees into building something that can last beyond you.

  [00:06:36] Jen: Yeah, that's something I didn't realize until I met with someone to sell the business. I didn't even realize or think at that time that I needed to. Not be as involved in the day-to-day. I thought at the time I wasn't seeing clients, so I thought to myself, naively, Oh, but I'm not in the chair. I'm not seeing clients.

  [00:06:56] Jen: But I was also doing payroll and more [00:07:00] administrative and billing and behind-the-scenes tasks and managing that, they were like, yeah, that's great. You have great profit, but yeah, you're still fully a part of the business, so that's, we're just not into it. Yeah. But I never had that revelation until I met with them.

  [00:07:14] Jen: And I would imagine most people think the same.

  [00:07:17] Colleen: Right. And when you're at the point that you are like, Alright, I'm selling this thing, usually you don't have the fuel left in the tank to then build those systems. So that's why they say, you know, always be selling, always be thinking about how you're structuring your practice to sell, even if it's 5, 10, 20 years from now.

  [00:07:37] Colleen: How do you get yourself from not just being the only high producer? So let's talk a little bit about therapist creep in terms of our unique training. Why I think it lends even more to this family type dynamic that can be so toxic in the [00:08:00] workplace when we're working with others, whether it be another clinician or an executive assistant, or a practice manager. What types of things do you guys see come up from our training as therapists?

  [00:08:14] Colleen: That can get you into trouble where you're like, I'm crossing over into leadership. I'm not. I'm now a leader is this planet over here, and I'm now in some sort of weird therapy zone, therapizing my employees' needs and desires, and we're nowhere near what I needed to have this conversation for.

  [00:08:33] Jen: Yeah, I think we're just trained to over-empathize and we sit with suffering and we're so used to giving people second and third chances, and I think that completely spills over into our staff and employees because we're like, Hey, we'll work on this. Hey, we'll come up with a treatment plan. Hey, let's, we'll do this pip and you'll be, you know, in a better place.

  [00:08:52] Jen: But that's totally not leadership. And I know Kim Scott calls this ruinous empathy when you care so much about someone, but you don't challenge them directly, and the business really bleeds. You know, because of that. But I do think therapists in general, as practice owners, do this way more than we'd like to admit.

  [00:09:13] Colleen: so it's like Kim does a good job of sort of breaking it down into these four quadrants, and obviously the radical candor quadrant is the one that we're going for as leaders, and that's just. You're caring personally about the person. You're like, this is the human in front of me. I want them to do well, and I'm gonna give them an opportunity to do well.

  [00:09:33] Colleen: Let's see what they can do. But we're also challenging them directly, which I think some of that also mimics how you're supposed to be in the therapist role. You're not just supposed to put a warm blanket and a hot cup of tea around your patients and be like, That's not fair that they did that to you.

  [00:09:48] Colleen: Why is all this bad stuff happening to you? All right, I'll see you next week. You get outta here. You know, like you can't, that's not a good therapist either. Is constantly, you know, and maybe that's that ruinous empathy that she's talking about, is you're just enabling the person to keep doing the same things they've always done, versus, I'm not gonna let you get away with that because you also said that last week about this person.

  [00:10:11] Colleen: And do you hear a common denominator? So that's where I think we can pull in our therapist training to collaboratively confront

  [00:10:20] Colleen: Our people.

  [00:10:22] Erika: I also think it comes from the other side, too. Like we are therapists by trade, leading therapists, and there can be a lot of projections and or expectations on us because folks think that our, you know, well of empathy is unending, and or that we're going to use our therapist skills with them when they're employees in our business.

  [00:10:49] Erika: And I think that also leads to confusion over roles, expectations, and boundaries.

  [00:10:56] Colleen: So the four pieces there are the radical candor, which is the healthy one, the ruinous empathy, which is the one I just kind of did before, where we're just always empathetic, and we're not really challenging the person. You can have obnoxious aggression, which is just you're challenging the person directly.

  [00:11:13] Colleen: No, you're not caring

  [00:11:14] Jen: Yeah, with low care. Yeah.

  [00:11:17] Erika: Yeah, and you're just, maybe you're even publicly criticizing them. You don't have a regard for their feelings. You might get results short term. But it will damage trust and morale, and team collaboration. And then the last one was manipulative insincerity. So this is sort of like you're not really caring personally, but you're not really challenging.

  [00:11:38] Colleen: You're pretending to agree with someone, but then undermining them later, it creates this toxicity, it erodes trust, and it leads to dysfunctional teams.

  [00:11:47] Colleen: So

  [00:11:48] Colleen: When you guys think about your, either those, that quadrant from that model or your therapist training, can you think of examples of times where you've had to [00:12:00] pull yourself out of that with a team member?

  [00:12:03] Jen: I had a situation with notes. This was many years ago. Of course, I don't know, maybe it was six, seven years ago, or eight years ago. But, um. You know, someone was always late with their notes, and I just kind of let it go, let it go. I would say something, though, it wasn't like I was ignoring it, but just got to the point where I realized that I'm not setting a clear expectation, and I'm not being direct enough.

  [00:12:25] Jen: Um, as soon as I did those things, all of a sudden, the notes were never an issue again.

  [00:12:29] Colleen: Rogers, Carl Rogers, the unconditional positive regard, and as I got older, I loved Rogers. I was just like, man, he's spot on. He nailed it. Like really? Sometimes, at the end of the day, if you really like your clients when they're coming in, and you're like, what's going on? I was thinking about you over the weekend.

  [00:12:53] Colleen: How's everything with your mom? That can be so therapeutic for someone who feels completely isolated [00:13:00] in the world to hear that their therapist, who knows all their deepest, darkest secrets, was still thinking about them and still feels good about them and brings them into humanity, as he said. Right? So I loved, Rogers, so I do find.

  [00:13:17] Colleen: That instead of pretending to like sort of simulate this nice culture and nicey nicey, and I'm a good leader and I'm a kind leader, which I did for many years, meanwhile, like kind of stuffing and repressing the things that I was resentful over, it was more healthy. To try to develop that unconditional positive regard for my people at least first, so that when it came time to challenge them and be like, I know, but you can't do that.

  [00:13:49] Colleen: That does not make sense for a business to pay you $65 an hour for Labor Day for eight days. You don't even see a patient a week, girl. Right? So now I've built that investment because I've deposited with unconditional positive regard, and so I can challenge that person at the same time. I think before I figured out the finesse of those two things, though, the goal was just to always have UPR with every employee. And if it wasn't happening. It was a failure of leadership, or I haven't spent enough time with this person. Maybe we need to go wine tasting. We need to go bowling more. You know, like there's some, there's a disconnect here when in reality, maybe that therapist was trying to create a healthy boundary.

  [00:14:41] Jen: That's a good point because I think you are, I know we're talking about how it's really about our team not being a family, but our family dynamics and relationship dynamics definitely play out in the workplace.

  [00:14:53] Colleen: Yeah. And I would see this [00:15:00] sort of people-pleasing thing that would happen for me for so long. And I think it happens with women, especially. We're socialized to be nice and to smile and to be kind and not to raise our voices. And when that gets confused with. Pleasing all of your employees, number one, it's exhausting.

  [00:15:22] Colleen: It's exhausting because sometimes you just don't feel like being polite and kind. Um, really stressed out because you don't know how you're gonna make payroll. And instead, this idea that clarity is kindness. Giving them boundaries and expectations of what they need to do to do a good job here.

  [00:15:46] Colleen: Can kindness be the same way it is for our kids, right? So some of this stuff does work in our family relationship. It just doesn't always carry over in business. But onboarding an employee and spending an [00:16:00] hour learning about their family, sure, that's great, that's an investment in them. But giving them clear expectations from the beginning about how you do a good job here.

  [00:16:10] Colleen: How do we update changes across the board and that sort of thing? I think that's what I've heard thematically over and over with people when they recount their best employment experiences was clarity from the start about how to do a good job.

  [00:16:27] Jen: What are your secrets to hiring well?

  [00:16:30] Erika: Well, I was just going to say that, you know, the employee manual is a good source for having very clear boundaries and expectations within the practice, and what you expect of folks, you know, also policies and procedures. If you need to, you can add to those you go, you know, to sort of provide more guidance.

  [00:16:52] Erika: If it, clear that the staff is lacking guidance in certain areas, then I will add more policy and procedure just to give more concrete firm boundaries for what my expectations are. because what I think people know is way different than what they actually know. So that's how I handle it, with regard to hiring you, you know, there is some aspect of.

  [00:17:20] Erika: Intuition and how it feels to sit with a person. But also, I think I've shared this before, like multiple touch points of contact before you make that offer. So, you know, a phone screen, a survey, an in-person interview, a reference check, making sure that you're doing your due diligence.

  [00:17:44] Colleen: You know what hit me in the book? No Rules, rules. Reed Hastings at Netflix, he flat-out said, We're not a family. We're a team of stunning colleagues who use the word stunning, and the phrase, their actual [00:18:00] phrase, if you look at their website in terms of their company culture. And they realize that when you call work a family, you confuse loyalty with performance.

  [00:18:11] Colleen: Teams change as the game changes, and that kept. Clarity. It kept Netflix innovative, and I thought, how many of us in private practice are still pretending, excuse me, our clinicians, our little families, don't fire people, you know? Families don't, they don't bench their weak players. I don't say to my son, uh, it's not looking great, bud. You may need to sit out the next couple of plays,

  [00:18:41] Colleen: In organizations, you have to, or otherwise, the whole team pays the price. If you're not holding someone accountable, your A-players will leave because they like being held accountable, because they know what they're doing. So then you're left with a bunch of B and C players.

  [00:18:58] Erika: I think there is a lot of danger in [00:19:00] referring to a workplace as a family, and it's something that I've tried not to do in my practice. think it, like you, one of you mentioned earlier on, it's just. If there's too much likelihood of calling up early, earlier family of origin dynamics for folks, and, as leaders and managers, we're already dealing with a lot of projections that people make when they have a leader or a manager, perhaps even past traumas with leaders or managers.

  [00:19:33] Erika: And, you know, I've grown to be able to see when someone's interacting with me based on perhaps a, you know, prototype from the past, a past leader or manager, and they just don't even recognize it for themselves. So, now, we can't really help with that except to encourage our people to get their own therapy, which, you know, I think most therapists should be doing anyway [00:20:00] if they're practicing in a healthy way.

  [00:20:02] Erika: But we certainly change experiences, but only aspire to give them new experiences, which may be different than the ones they've had in the past. But I know I personally get a bit frustrated when I feel, you know, the manager is dictating how someone's interacting with me.

  [00:20:25] Colleen: Years ago, I hired someone to be our clinical director. It was not because she ever showed me she could be a natural leader, but I just really liked her. She was warm, she was kind, she was great with clients,

  [00:20:38] Erika: and

  [00:20:38] Colleen: And she was young. She was, she had that fuel in her that I felt like. We need to career path for her, or she's gonna get burnt out just seeing clients.

  [00:20:50] Colleen: We need to give her some variety in her day-to-day, what she's doing. So let's call her the clinical director. And I used to throw titles at people all the time, like [00:21:00] candy.

  [00:21:00] Colleen: And so I'd carve out time to meet with her because I noticed that while we were paying her the clinical director's salary, there wasn't a lot of like directing going on, and I was still getting these.

  [00:21:11] Colleen: Messages that people were lost and there was really nobody sort of at the helm, like leading these clinicians. So they weren't quite sure what to do. And so I realized, okay, well, I've gotta spend some time with her and do some mentorship. I just kept on thinking if I could support her enough, she'll step up. If I could just help her break through, like some of the stuff that she's going through. Maybe she's shy, maybe she doesn't feel empowered enough to be a leader at this point. And our meetings started to turn into like supervisory sessions, really.

  [00:21:47] Colleen: It was that old training where I was like, well, what do you think it is that makes it hard for you to confront our clinicians if they're not doing a good job? Or if they have a high churn rate and they're not retaining their [00:22:00] clinicians? What do you think that is? And I was like, What are you doing?

  [00:22:03] Colleen: You're not her therapist. And then I would say, Do you have therapists? Could we outsource some of this to her? So some of it was. Also, figuring out what that looks like? Then, as a leader, if you're not a therapist, if you're not processing these issues in that way, if you're not a supervisor doing clinical supervision, what does that look like?

  [00:22:26] Colleen: And we have about zero minutes of leadership training when we get into clinical practice.

  [00:22:33] Jen: Okay.

  [00:22:33] Colleen: Our training as therapists can be an albatross in business. Think about it. We're doing unconditional positive regard. It's a gift in the therapy room, but if you bring that into your org chart, suddenly you've got unconditional employment. You know, you've got people that are like, I've been with you for five years, so why shouldn't I be with you for five more years?

  [00:22:54] Colleen: And maybe that doesn't work anymore. That's not sustainable. And so [00:23:00] setting upfront

  [00:23:03] Colleen: things for

  [00:23:04] Colleen: Our employees who say, Hey, listen, we're gonna have a culture here. It doesn't mean we're not gonna be fam, you know, just because we're not family doesn't mean we're not gonna have a culture, and here are our missions and values, but we can't

  [00:23:18] Colleen: treat this ike family.

  [00:23:20] Colleen: It's not fair to the practice, and it's not fair to you.

  [00:23:24] Jen: I think something that ethically happens in clinical supervision is that we're taught about gatekeeping. And I think what happens is,

  [00:23:33] Jen: You know, when

  [00:23:33] Jen: We're clinically

  [00:23:34] Jen: supervising someone, we're really the gatekeepers of being like, Hey, they're clinically ready at this point. And I think something tricky that happens when you're a practice owner is that someone is your staff member.

  [00:23:47] Jen: I think you can get into rescuing them a little bit, and if they, you know, fail, you think you failed them. And I think that's not the case. I think sometimes letting [00:24:00] go is the most ethical thing we can do as business owners.

  [00:24:03] Colleen: When we think about when we're with clients and we need to terminate with them for whatever reason, let's say they've gotten better and we don't really see it being valuable for them to need to come in once a week anymore, or just maybe we're not the best fit for them.

  [00:24:20] Colleen: Like maybe we have just used up our bag of tricks, and we know another therapist that does EMDR that we think is gonna be the next best thing for them, and we have to terminate. It's not a one-session thing. Usually, it happens over the course of sessions, and we've been taught to be extremely careful and compliant when we're doing that because while this person is a client to us, to them.

  [00:24:45] Colleen: We hold all of their stuff, and if we just say, Sorry, it's not working out the way that you would fire an employee, that could be really detrimental. And so we do get [00:25:00] crossed sometimes what that looks like to fire an employee, to terminate an employee. And I definitely was a victim of that, or guilty of that myself, when I started was almost like, so are you gonna be okay?

  [00:25:16] Colleen: 'cause I'm gonna hop off here, but like, we're not gonna work together anymore. Okay. Okay. Is that okay? And that's not, I don't even know if that's healthy. And that's where I don't know how you prevent that therapist bleed from coming in as a leader with your team members, other than to say that as long as you have.

  [00:25:38] Colleen: KPIs, you've got these key performance indicators. You have clear documentation that they're not meeting those standards, that you've tried to even intervene, and they're not meeting those standards still. Then it's pretty black and white to me at this point that this isn't a fit here. And I even said to the employee that was really upset about the benefits [00:26:00] being restructured, that perhaps you would be better off in a more corporate type structure, like a life stance or a better help or headway, where they can support clinicians that aren't necessarily wanting to see a ton of clients, but they want those benefits.

  [00:26:21] Colleen: They want those sick days, those paid holidays, they want that 401k. You're gonna be better supported in a large corporate structure that can absorb that. Versus a private practice like mine that relies on those revenue-generating activities.

  [00:26:34] Colleen: One mentor, we asked him how he fires people, and I think at this point he's probably not even firing anyone anymore, but when he did, he said that he would wait until Friday afternoon, and he would stop calling meetings with them face-to-face. Because what happens in the meetings is that the person is sometimes caught off guard.

  [00:26:57] Colleen: They were upset. It was a [00:27:00] lot of arguing back and forth when the decision had already been made. It wasn't a really effective use of time. And so instead he would send them an email and say, You know, these are the things that we have tried to work on. This is no longer a fit with our team. We wish you the best.

  [00:27:16] Colleen: This is what this transition's gonna look like. And please speak with HR to, you know, figure out how to transition out the best. And the person would then have the weekend to sort of sit on that and chew on that, and they would be upset or sad or fearful. And yet, Monday morning comes rolling around, and I think all of us, after we've had the benefit of time, that 48 hours, just have a clearer head about what it is that we need now.

  [00:27:49] Colleen: You know, do we just want greater understanding for like what we could have done differently? Or is it that we just need to move [00:28:00] on? That's not something that. No matter what I tell this person at this point, it's not gonna change the fact of the matter that they don't feel I'm a good fit here.

  [00:28:08] Colleen: And so my next steps need to be thinking about where I'm gonna go next. So I love that, and that's something that I use quite a bit when someone's not meeting performance standards and I've gotta let them go, is doing that on a Friday, not even reading my emails on a weekend, waiting until Monday. And usually there is no conversation.

  [00:28:27] Colleen: The person is like, ready, you know, they understand that we gotta move on.

  [00:28:31] Erika: I, you know, I have had experiences where staff members resign, and at that point, the message I feel they're sending is, Hey, you know, for whatever reason, this particular position or role is no longer for me, and I'm choosing to walk away from this business or organization.

  [00:28:53] Erika: And I, I truly treat that with respect. I accept, you know, [00:29:00] their resignation, but I also find it curious when they hang on and continue to behave as though they're an integral part of the organization. It's kind of a boundary issue, I think, like they have decided to move on. So. We are also moving on; I have other objectives to face and to contend with at that point.

  [00:29:26] Erika: So it doesn't always, you know, serve the team to continue to have folks in team meetings if they are not continuing with the organization or to drag it out for weeks or months on end. Of course, we have to take into consideration the impact on clients, but to me, that's like the primary concern or reason that I need to think about, you know, how will this impact the clients?

  [00:29:55] Erika: And if we communicate clearly with clients [00:30:00] and create a plan for transition, then that to me is my priority. 'cause that's why I started this business and this practice is to serve clients. So I have found that sometimes employees have difficulty. With those types of boundaries, like understanding that, hey, they're choosing to move on, so now the business has to operate and make decisions that are best for the business.

  [00:30:27] Erika: Or rather, I do, I have to make those decisions, and that feels very strong and very boundaried to me, but I am protecting what I built.

  [00:30:37] Colleen: Okay, so as we wrap this into some takeaways for our listeners, I think some of the things that we share today that are just sort of our red flags for people that are listening is making sure we aren't hiring for niceness over competence, confusing friendship with fit, not setting clear [00:31:00] expectations from the outset.

  [00:31:01] Colleen: Oh, you'll figure it out as you go. You know, like, I'll just jump in there. Let me know if you have questions, and I think loyalty is a skill. And conversely, the takeaways for best practices. I think if you haven't already have a scorecard for each of your roles. So what defines a good employee?

  [00:31:22] Colleen: A good clinician, a good admin. You write the role before you post the job, and then you ask the questions that test ownership. Accountability and resilience. Tell me about a time that your employer called you out and said, You are not doing what I hired you to do. How did you respond? And a lot can be learned from that question. Oh, well, they were having a bad week. They tended to take things out on me. Okay. So this person's got an external locus of control. They are not able to take accountability. It sounds like they're able to come up with a lot of rationalizations for why someone might be asking. This is from them, but they're not able to take control versus someone saying, yeah, they were right.

  [00:32:08] Colleen: They called me out. They were very clear with what they needed me to do, and there was one piece that I was not doing. I said I was gonna do community outreach. It is not my skill set. I don't like marketing. It feels sleazy to me as a clinician, but I know it's a necessary evil, and this was my plan, and we got back on track within two months.

  [00:32:28] Colleen: That's a green flag for me. Someone who tells me about that. Tell me about a time you made a mistake, how you fixed it, and what metrics held you accountable in your last job? I think all of those things. The fact that even a clinician wouldn't understand what a metric is, right? Because most of our practices, I know I certainly wasn't running a practice with metrics when I started.

  [00:32:50] Colleen: I was just like, are they making money or are they not making money, and hiring slow with multiple touch points. So when [00:33:00] early clinicians start off, it's typically looked at as a bus. There are group practices like, all right, you wanna get on the bus, get on the bus. You wanna get on the bus, get on the bus, right?

  [00:33:09] Colleen: And everybody gets on the bus. And you're not like, well, this is my mission. You're just like, you're a warm body, you gotta pulse, get on the bus. And then you got a bunch of people on the bus that you don't really know are gonna fit with your clients or even how you wanna work or be accountable. And so having these multiple touchpoints with people, and even having a template for yourself of how you do these touchpoints. And maybe in your calendar every Thursday you're like, my, these are my touch points, these are my meetings. And your EA then puts it in on Thursdays. You're still onboarding with Sylvia, who is in week six.

  [00:33:47] Colleen: This will be her last touchpoint with you, and we're just making sure she's good to go. And so we know every week what kind of touchpoint we're gonna have, and making sure that they're like, yeah, I got it. Take the training wheels off. I know exactly what I need to do here. We're moving [00:34:00] language like family from ads, handbooks, replacing it with professional and team, having clear roles. An org chart is really helpful. High feedback, shared standards, and being transparent about metrics. Like, guys, this is what we have to do. If you want this practice to be here next year to employ you, these are the things that we have to do, and these are things that we can't do. Am I forgetting anything else that's coming up for you guys that you guys maybe do and find works really well?

  [00:34:30] Jen: Something else that I do in terms of hiring is similar to what you're mentioning. I love that. To find out, you know. For them to be authentic and honest, you give them scenarios of where they have failed. I think that's so important that they show, they can show their internal locus of control. But in addition, I like to get as much information up front about them as possible.

  [00:34:53] Jen: So this might be, I know I've mentioned it before, we have them send a video in. We even discuss pay and salary [00:35:00] before they come in for the interview, which everyone thought I was crazy when I mentioned this, but I wanted to weed people out. Hey, we can't pay X amount or what you're looking for, so let's not waste your time.

  [00:35:12] Jen: Let's not waste my time. Um, think for me, and we also send out an email about our values before they come in for an interview, 'cause I just wanna make sure, like, you know, if those things all align, we'd love to have you in for an interview. So for me, it's just trying to gather as much about them before they even come in, but also share as much about us.

  [00:35:33] Jen: So they can make the decision too if they're, if it would be a good fit.

  [00:35:37] Colleen: Mm-hmm.

  [00:35:38] Jen: Now, what do you guys do in terms of, let's say, what are some of your red flags? Anything that sticks out to you?

  [00:35:45] Erika: I definitely observe how, uh, applicants act throughout the interview process. You know, are they timely? Do they do what they say they're going to do? Do they show up? Do they let you know if they're running late? I think those are all possible signs of how they're going to behave in the workplace and or with clients.

  [00:36:08] Erika: So, I look for all of those small behaviors to see how they show up in those early stages. I think it could be a sign of how they will, you know, show up as an employee in your practice.

  [00:36:21]

  [00:36:21] Colleen: Yeah

  [00:36:23] Colleen: I think red flags for me are the minute someone opens up with a bunch of excuses, Everything that keeps going wrong with that person. In the first couple of weeks, there's like this excuse, as psychologists, we're trained to see data in sets, and if I keep seeing this data set, then this is a person who is routinely failing to do the clear expectations that we've outlined for them.

  [00:36:54] Colleen: And instead of them saying, This is my plan moving forward [00:37:00] to not let this happen again. There's excuse after excuse after excuse. It's not a good sign. I'm already rifling back through the applicant pool because this person is a maverick at pulling out rationalizations and justifications for B player-type behavior.

  [00:37:20] Colleen: My daughter is great at this. She'll spend more effort getting out of the original effort than it would've just taken to do the effort. I'm like, girl, you could have gone up there and thrown that load of laundry in, in five minutes. You have taken 27 minutes to tell me why you can't do laundry because it's this and it's a Tuesday, and some of the things are giving you skin allergies.

  [00:37:45] Colleen: Do you realize how much effort you've expended in not doing the thing? So I don't know where that comes from. Maybe it does come from families where it's like a defense mechanism or something, but it's dangerous when [00:38:00] employees are still in that childlike phase of using excuses to get out of the original effort.

  [00:38:06] Jen: And it's a huge pet peeve if someone is not accountable. I always. Like, like you know, you have to be accountable for your actions, not make excuses, own up to what you've done wrong. So I hear you on that one.

  [00:38:20] Colleen: Therapists struggle with fire because they see it as rejecting a person instead of ending a role for fit, they worry about harm or shame or retraumatization from this person. Like, oh my gosh, they, their parents abandon them, and now I'm abandoning them. They feel like they failed their family. The goal in the firing, well, I think, is to document, don't debate.

  [00:38:47] Colleen: Clarity is kindness. Avoid the tickle, slap, tickle therapist sandwich that we always hear in grad school. Right? Like, you're doing really well, I think. You would be best served with a different [00:39:00] company, and I would enjoy hearing how you've thrived. You can't do that, you know? 'cause they do, they understand that the therapist sandwich and they don't enjoy.

  [00:39:11] Colleen: I think that's more of a, more manipulative than anything. It's not genuine. And then firing one toxic person or an underperforming person protects your whole team. People notice that stuff, and they're like, yeah, they weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing, and they were held accountable. I like working at places like this.

  [00:39:30] Colleen: Good A players, strong. People who enjoy being part of a team that have played sports before are familiar with being held accountable and like being held accountable because they're good at what they do. I.

  [00:39:42] Erika: Yeah, and I think that occasionally can come up, like, you know, if you treat someone differently or hold them to different standards, the rest of the team is watching and they will sort of wonder and sometimes ask why one person has received special treatment. In some cases, I've had employees just make their own decisions about that, you know, I don't necessarily approve or agree with.

  [00:40:11] Erika: I do follow up with those choices and decisions, but you can't always explain to the entire team what happened there. So I think it's best to just convey very universal standards for what your expectations are and hold everyone to a similar standard.

  [00:40:32] Colleen: So listeners, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Send us a DM on Instagram at Off the Chair podcast or comment with your biggest takeaway from today's episode. If you've had a similar experience, share your story with us. We might feature it in a future episode. And if you've enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to follow our show and leave us a review.

  [00:40:57] Colleen: It really helps others find us. And maybe, you know, a friend or colleague who could really use this today. So be sure to share it with them. Therapists think that if they fail, it means I failed them. In reality, keeping someone in the wrong seat is often more harmful.

  [00:41:12] Jen: Every bad hire is a 10,000 to 30 K mistake in training, lost productivity, turnover.

  [00:41:19] Erika: If you're drained by managing the wrong team, your patients and your businesses will suffer.

  [00:41:24] Colleen: One wrong hire, tolerate it too long. Poison culture faster than strategy can fix it.

  [00:41:30] Jen: You are not ending their career. You're freeing them and yourself to find a better fit.