From Katie Ball, who works at Encore Senior Living. Encore Senior Living manages Assisted and Independent Living communities and specialized Alzheimer’s communities in Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, and Utah.
We hold monthly team-building conference calls with our Executive Directors based on a “dream it” challenge; it has been very successful and motivational for all involved. We also have conference calls with our other community department heads (e.g. marketing, activities), and Program Directors (our equivalent to a Director of Nursing position) and wanted to include a team-building portion in those calls as well.
My direct supervisor, who is the VP of Programs, read your book, which had been recommended to her by an ED at one of our Florida properties over a year ago and wanted to use it in some way for motivational team building. As we discussed what we would do for our Program Directors, we decided to use The Go-Giver.
We sent copies of the book to each of our ED’s with instructions to only read chapters as assigned. We asked that they keep a journal to document how they meet the challenge presented by each Law. We meet on a monthly conference call and discuss the Law assigned for that call and how they have practiced the law in their own lives — both personally and professionally.
We also started a newsletter in which one of us writes an article related to the particular law for that meeting and we spotlight two of our PD’s and their Go-Giver spirit.
We’ve also decided that upon completion of the book, we’ll have the PD’s take turns leading the calls by sharing Go-Giver moments they’ve experienced, either as the “giver” or the “receiver.” We’re still working out the details of how we’re going to do it, but we know we want to carry on with the Go-Giver theme.
Peter Muhlbach, the CEO of our company, recently read your book, and at the opening of a meeting briefly shared the concept he had read about and then proceeded to give an example of an unexpected reward he had received when given an opportunity to “place other people’s interests first.”
It is a great book and we are looking for other ways we can use it to motivate and change our team attitude.