Less Than Excellent

By Liz Dunlap, Chief HR Officer, Indiana University Health.

Can you believe we’re halfway through February? Where did the new year go? I still find myself channeling the positive momentum that carried us through 2019, while playing a bit of catch up at the same time as we settle into 2020. It is a balancing act that may sound familiar to some of you.

If you missed the excellent news, late last year Indiana University Health raised its starting base pay rate from $11 to $13 an hour. Our CEO, Dennis Murphy's announcement of this system-wide initiative was met with immediate and far-reaching support across the state throughout our organization. I and many of my IU Health colleagues were moved by his personal commitment to support our lowest paid team members, whom we count on every day to deliver our promise of The Best Care, Designed for You. Excellent news indeed!

I often reflect on this particular moment and the enthusiasm it generated, which makes me think – how do you define “excellence”? Can you recognize excellence when you see it in action? How about when something or someone is less than excellent?

Understanding why less-than-excellent behaviors and actions happen can be complex. One reason for this is because they manifest themselves at different levels of impact. Many times, this manifestation appears in the form of a miss; often, a missed opportunity for communication. Someone inadvertently – not intentionally – left off an important group email; relevant, time-sensitive information not shared in a timely enough matter. Even a minor miss can have a substantial impact.

Another all-too-common manifestation is the simple mistake. You check and re-check your PowerPoint slides a dozen times, only to cringe when you spot a glaring error … in the middle of your presentation. You spend hours on formulas in an Excel sheet – not creating them, but instead hunting for the lone typo that threw off all your results. We’ve all been there before.

Speaking of, raise your hand if you’ve never failed at something. If I could peek through the computer screen right now I imagine I wouldn’t see any arms in the air. Same goes for my mirror. I’ve failed more times than I care to admit, but thankfully, other than my freshman anthropology class, in which I received my first-ever grade of a “D+” (okay, it wasn’t an “F,” but it sure felt like one), failures are rare. Fast forward to today, and I find myself reflecting on my inability at times to find common ground with someone while working towards a mutually beneficial outcome; or my inability to read someone and thus anticipate the correct reaction or response to a specific situation. These traits alone may not be abject failures, but they aren’t exactly excellent characteristics, either.

In order to improve our behaviors and actions, our processes and outcomes, we must acknowledge that less-than-excellent instances happen. Equally, if not more importantly though, is what we do about it afterwards. Address it. Apologize for it. Own it. Learn from it. Smile, and move on from it. Don’t beat yourself up over it. No matter your professional role or responsibilities; whether you work for a small employer or a large organization like IU Health – you can be a mentor, a coach, a guide, and a friend to others around you. Don’t set your team members up for failure by putting them in situations they are unprepared for, or where success is unobtainable. You might not need to give them a standing ovation (it never hurts though!) every time they succeed, but always have your team members’ backs and remind them of this as often as possible.

Remember, support is an excellent gift to give and receive.

Liz