Building your Dream Team, Part 2

Adapted from Fred Lee's book, "If Disney Ran Your Hospital:  9 1/2 Things You Would Do Differently."

One of the lessons we can learn from Disney in building the dream team of caregiving staff is simply this: Have a dream.

Before he was president, America would flock to listen to Barack Obama speak, because he so eloquently articulates a dream for this country. Whether you are a supporter or not, it’s hard not to feel the passion of his dream (check out this You Tube video titled “Yes We Can” if you haven’t experienced it yet).

In days past, Martin Luther King shared his “I have a Dream” speech – a speech that lifted our national discussion about race and relationships to an entirely new level.

Goals, objectives and mission statements don’t really motivate people to stretch outside their usual behaviors. Dreams do.

Some days, your dreams may simply include having every shift filled and never having to pull a night shift yourself again.

But to truly motivate your own team to work at their highest level, share the dreams you had when you first began in this field. Did you dream of creating a caring environment that felt like a home? A team that loved every single person in your care? A place where people came together to accomplish more than they could do on their own – and had fun, laughed and hugged freely?

In our office, we’ve written the dream on the wall – literally. Through an inexpensive website source we ordered vinyl lettering and carefully applied our dream (borrowing from the words of John Quincy Adams) on the wall: “If your words inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

It is our dream to become leaders by inspiring others to do all of those things.

What are your dreams? How do you share them with your team?

Next week, we’ll look at some additional, concrete steps you can use to help share your dream, and build your team.