How to set standards for excellence and back them with total integrity.

A Commitment to Excellence
Leaders have specific responsibilities and must fulfill certain requirements. One requirement of leadership is the ability to choose  what area of excellence, and hire people who are excellent where the leader is weak.  Just as a good general chooses the terrain on which to do battle, an excellent leader chooses the area in which he and others are going to do an outstanding job. The commitment to excellence is one of the most powerful of all motivators. All leaders who change people and organizations are enthusiastic about achieving excellence in a particular area.  Yours might be in building teams, communicating, or adjusting patients.  Know what you are great at and know what you are not is the key to excellence.

Be the Best!
The most motivational vision you can have for yourself and others is to “Be the best!” Many people don’t yet realize that excellent performance in serving other people is an absolute, basic essential for survival in the economy of the future. Many individuals  still adhere to the idea that as long as they are no worse than anyone else, they can remain in business. That is just plain silly! It is prehistoric thinking. We are now in the age of excellence. Clients assume that they will get excellent quality, and if they don’t, they will go to your competitors so fast, people’s heads will spin.  I know there is “no competition” in chiropractic, but what I am saying is this client will find someone who will deliver excellent service and adjustments each and every time.

Have A Vision of High Standards
As a leader, your job is to be excellent at what you do, to be the best in chiropractic. Your job is to have a vision of high standards in serving people. You not only exemplify excellence in your own behavior, but you also translate it to others so that they, too, become committed to this vision.

This is the key to servant leadership. It is the commitment to doing work of the highest quality in the service of other people, both inside and outside the office. Leadership today requires an equal focus on the people who must do the job, on the one hand, and the people who are expected to benefit from the job, on the other.

The Most Respected Quality
The second quality, which is perhaps the single most respected quality of leaders, is integrity. Integrity is complete, unflinching honesty with regard to everything that you say and do. Integrity underlies all the other qualities. Your measure of integrity is determined by how honest you are in the critical areas of your life.

Integrity means this: When someone asks you at the end of the day, “Did you do your very best?” you can look him in the eye and say, “Yes!” Integrity means this: When someone asks you if you could have done it better, you can honestly say, “No, I did everything I possibly could.” Integrity means this: When someone examines your life, you are living what you are telling them to live!

Integrity means that you, as a leader, admit your shortcomings. It means that you work to develop your strengths and hire strong people for your weaknesses. Integrity means that you tell the truth, and that you live the truth in everything that you do and in all your relationships. Integrity means that you deal straightforwardly with people and situations and that you do not compromise what you believe to be true.  Integrity means that the client gets a treatment plan that THEY need, not what the insurance company will pay for.  

Action Exercises 
Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, identify the area of chiropractic where excellent performance can contribute the very most to productivity and profits. Focus all your efforts in this area.  Most of the time this is adjusting and communicating. 

Second, do your very best in what you do, and train the staff to do their best. Imagine that everyone is watching (because they are) even when no one is watching. Imagine that everyone in your office was going to do their work exactly the way you do yours.

Never compromise your standards, go save some lives today!

Love and livin,

Doc W

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