Listen in as Dianne Baker interviews Julie Bartkus on ...€¦ · leadership retreats as well as full-day staff retreats. I also offer coaching services. So we could setup a coaching

Listen in as Dianne Baker interviews Julie Bartkus on Staff Motivation!

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Dianne Baker: Hi, this is Dianne Baker. I am so glad to be here today with Julie Bartkus. I have worked in the child care industry for I can’t even count how many years, in all aspects, as a teacher, as a director, as an owner, and onto working with larger corporations as a certified trainer and a curriculum developer and operations consultant. I’m glad to be here today because we are going to talk about staff motivation. It remains one of the top challenges in the child care industry. From my personal experience in the field, I’ve found that anything you can do to motivate your staff is a plus for your organization.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to Julie Bartkus. Julie is an internationally-known speaker and coach who is dedicated to helping leaders create positive and productive workplaces that they desire and deserve. She’s best known for helping leaders transform their workplaces through eliminating the destructive communication patterns, which is workplace gossip and mindsets that keep their teams stuck.

Her articles have been circulated throughout the world through publications such as The School Administrator, Child Care Business, Television and Entertainment Guide, the Illinois news publication AEYC. You can also look for future articles in Childcare Information Exchange and Professional Connection.

Julie offers customized keynote presentations, full-day retreats, on-site and through associations, group coaching and one-on-one personal coaching. I’d like to welcome her today to share some of her experiences about staff motivation. Julie, how long have you been doing what you do and how did you get to be a productivity and performance expert?

Julie: Hi, Dianne. It’s great to be here with you today. Thank you for having me. I have been doing what I do for over a decade now. I’ve been working primarily in the child care industry. When you ask how did I get to do what I do, I guess there’s a couple of different stories that I could tell.

One is that I began speaking in 1996. I just felt a calling to get out there and speak and to inspire people with positive, motivating messages, things about leadership and workplace gossip. There would always be a child care professional in my audience who would say, “We really need this information. Can you come and talk to our school about this?” Ever since that point, I’ve been on a mission to create customized programs for the child care industry.

Dianne: Who are your clients exactly? What type of groups do you work with?

Julie: For the past decade, I’ve been working primarily with child care directors and owners. I’ve worked with large child care programs as well as smaller ones as well as Head Start programs. We’ve also had other industries sneak in there and grab a program or so from me. That’s really where I’ve spent most of my time. I’d like to back up and tell you a little bit more about the productivity and performance expert part of it. People always want to know, “How did you get to be an expert? How do you know so much information about all of this stuff?”



I do have a child care background. I started working in child care through college and then in my adult career. Then I transitioned into the corporate world, I spent about years there. In eight years, I had over eight different supervisors. I saw the ways that they managed their teams and what they did that was effective and not so effective. I also saw how their efforts to increase productivity through reducing costs and other crazy techniques were never that effective. I also felt that they never really had an insight of how to boost productivity and morale from their staff’s perspective. There are a lot of things that went on inside the corporate world that I saw and I put those life lessons that I learned into the staff motivation techniques that I share with leaders today.

Dianne: That kind of information is invaluable, especially for the child care industry. Once you’re in your center and you’re working day to day to maintain a quality center, you are not able to get out there and do your own research on what types of activities you should be doing in the center to motivate your staff.

Julie: Right. That’s really important. When we look at staff motivation, too, we have to understand that it’s a process. The leaders who come to my leadership retreats, their eyes are often opened because you cannot sit back through your day to day operations and look at how the processes unfold. So what things are in place that work? What things are in place that don’t work? What things are causing really devastating results? You can’t really just pull out the lounge chair, so to speak, and just watch things play out around you. You’re actively in there. In our child care programs, our leaders are not only leaders in the visionary sense, they’re also hands-on managers. That’s a very tough role to be in.

Dianne: That is so true, Julie. They are there every day and everything that they do during the course of the day affects how their staff is going to perform and how productive they’re going to be. Julie, with all of the work that goes into managing a child care program, on the part of the owner and the director, there are so many different facets involved. Why should staff motivation be held as a priority against all the other things that they’re worried about daily?

Julie: There are really some concrete reasons as to why directors and owners of child care programs should be really concerned about staff motivation. What we have to understand is that staff motivation is a process. It’s a process that includes systems in your organization.

Systems can include things like communication, all different kinds of things. We’ll address those a little bit later on through this call. It’s really important to look at those systems because if you don’t have them in place, it causes a lot of craziness and chaos and miscommunication.

Leaders, when they come and consult with me or come to one of my leadership programs, they’ll always say, “I don’t even have time to breathe, let alone put a plan of action in place to motivate my staff.” When you don’t take a step back and put that plan of action into place, then your program is not going to run smoothly.



There are other things to look at. A lot of times, when we don’t have a motivated staff or there’s one member who’s not motivated and they’re dragging the rest of the team down, we have people who will quit. We’ve had people who just leave the child care industry altogether because of staff motivation.

Something that I share during my programs when I speak live to audiences is that during one week, there will be three child care professionals who just quit their jobs without giving any notice. During one day, there will be five child care professionals who quit. These are true stories. The thing we have to look at is, what causes that turnover? What causes that attrition?

As an owner or director, understand that when somebody does quit, the amount of money that you are paying is about 30 to 40 percent of that person’s annual salary, depending upon how long they’ve been with your organization. So there’s a huge chunk of money that’s going to come from you having to replace just one person.

Dianne: There are so many services that you offer on your site that will help leaders to decrease the amount of turnover in their particular center, because that is such a huge problem in the industry. That dissatisfaction amongst the staff is one that does cause that turnover. What type of services do you offer that would help the leaders to decrease that in their child care center?

Julie: We offer many services. If you go to my website, you can get there easily by going to www.lcforcc.com. We have speaking services. So basically I could come on-site and facilitate full-day leadership retreats as well as full-day staff retreats. I also offer coaching services. So we could setup a coaching package that would meet your needs so we could make some huge, fast progress with your motivational systems.

We also have an inner circle. This is one of the best ways to get involved with me and my company and what we’re doing. Right now, we have a very special plan that anybody can afford. It’s something like four dollars per month to get involved with our monthly audio program, as well as being able to call me on special call-in days. So there’s a lot of things on the website for you that can be tailored to meet your specific needs.

Dianne, I just wanted to address a couple more things about why directors and owners should really care about staff motivation. This just popped into my mind. One thing I was thinking about is, when I consult with leaders, I ask the question, “How much of your time do you currently spend on staff motivation issues?” This could be training and retraining, hiring and rehiring. The most common responses that I hear, percentage-wise, are in the upper 80 to 90 percent.

So the ranges go from 45 percent to 95 percent of a director’s time is spent on troubleshooting issues due to staff motivation problems. That’s a big number. When you think of loss of productivity, think



about if you’re an owner of a center and your director is spending 90 percent of her time troubleshooting things that you could have systems in place to overcome, what opportunities are you missing out on by not letting her utilize her talents, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s different programs you want to set up?

So many leaders tell me that they can’t get to do the things they would really love to do in their child care programs because of this 45 to 95 percent of their time that’s spent just troubleshooting issues.

Dianne: That’s so sad, Julie. There are so many pressures on them to do so many other jobs in the child care center. Just looking at marketing, and public service, just to get their name out there, yet they’re spending 90 percent of their time just trying to take care of having a staff that is trained and motivated.

Julie: What’s even sadder to me is when it just gets brushed under the rug, “Oh, we’ve got gossip. We’ll get to that when we can. We’ve got absenteeism. We’ll get to that when we can.” Or just the acceptance of it, “This is child care. We don’t pay a lot. Of course people are going to be late. I’ve got to bend over backwards for everybody.” There’s really a whole different approach that you can take to building a dynamic and motivated team, and it doesn’t include any of those different things.

When you brought up word of mouth, we have to understand how powerful that is. Most leaders will tell me that they live in what they consider fishbowl communities. When there’s an issue going on in their program, they’re surprised that the lady at the grocery store knows all the issues and things that are happening at their child care program.

So when that word of mouth is out there, let’s say your staff is unhappy about an issue, you have to think that negative word of mouth, as we know from restaurants that we’ve been to when we’ve gotten bad service, how many people do we tell? The same thing happens when we have staff members who are unhappy with what’s going on at work.

Part of our system is communication, so we’re getting direct communication from our staff. If we’re not getting that, who are they telling? I guarantee you, they’re telling somebody. That’s part of your marketing strategy. That’s how marketing and motivation can really go hand in hand. What kind of messages are your staff members putting out to the community about you and your child care program? Not only do we have to just worry about it in terms of what’s verbally being spoken, but also what’s online.

I recently had some child care programs call me where I do a search for them. There’s all kinds of negative comments written online about them. Not only does the word of mouth spread far and fast in our own community, but once it’s out there on the internet, how do you counteract that? Is that really a challenge you ever want to have to deal with?



The systems that I’m talking about help you proactively deal with these things so that you’ve got positive word of mouth out there, so your directors are not spending 95 percent of their time troubleshooting issues. The bottom line is, think about why you’re in the child care industry? If you’re listening in from another industry, why are you in the industry you’re in?

If we look at the child care industry, one of the most important things we want is quality care for the children. If we don’t have good staff motivation systems in place, we often have poor quality care for the children. There’s lots of different examples that I could share with you about how quality is decreased, but the main thing to understand is that when your staff is not motivated, what kind of attention are they going to be giving the children? What kind of words are they going to be feeding the children?

You could do one simple look at your playground while the kids are out there playing. Are staff huddled together gossiping or are they actively participating with the children and what they’re doing?

Dianne: That is a lot to think about. The link between communication and staff motivation is one I didn’t really think so seriously about before, but it’s all beginning to make sense with how they’re talking about what’s going on in their work life and workplace and classrooms, out on the playground. They’re communicating when they’re inside the facility and they’re communicating out in public. That communication can really have a negative or positive impact on the success of a facility, in a community.

Julie: And just think, even in the social media world, on Facebook or Twitter, if they’re tweeting or posting on their wall about “work sucked today” and it was at such and such child care program, which has happened, you don’t realize that those items that they post become individual web pages. When things are searched online, people can easily find those things when they search for your child care program if your child care program is being mentioned online.

Dianne: That creates a whole cycle there, Julie. I can see that you are so full of information that will help others in the child care industry. How do you feel you differ from other coaches and trainers out there?

Julie: What I like to do is take a holistic approach at what’s going on in an organization. One of the main differences about me is that I will do leadership programs as well as staff programs. So I can look holistically at what’s going on in your program and then present a program to the directors and owners and then a separate one for staff to get everybody on the same page quickly and effectively.

Another thing that comes with me is, for the past ten years, I’ve personally interviewed thousands and thousands of child care directors and their staff. I have found out what the de-motivators are in the workplace and what the motivators are in the workplace. I’ve compiled those things into my 10-Step Staff Motivation and Retention System, as well as the leadership retreats that I present. I’ve got the inside secrets into what will motivate your team and what de-motivates them.



Sometimes the de-motivating factor is the biggest place to look at. We could have staff members who are excited about starting a new position. You could follow up with them a few months later and they say, “It was great, but I quit because of how low morale was at the workplace. That wasn’t a place where I wanted to work.” I hear hundreds of stories like that about people walking into the workplace and the environment not being what they would expect, especially when they’re so excited about just starting on their first job in the child care industry and the environment becomes a disappoint for them.

Dianne: I know, Julie, there is so much you have to offer, both in-person through your retreats and coaching, and your website has a wealth of information. I read some testimonials on your site and would like to share a couple with our listeners.

Nancy M Calvin, the Executive Director at ECYC, Inc., she had some really neat things to say about you. She says, “I’m writing to let you know that the two-day seminar on supervision which you conducted for us more than met my expectations. My team of program coordinators gained a great deal of information that will be helpful to them in the supervision of their team. I feel that the enthusiasm they witnessed with you renewed an enthusiasm for them as leaders in our organization.

“I was most impressed with the packet of materials we used throughout the two-day seminar. I know these notes will not go into a drawer as often happens with conference notes. There are tools we will use daily as we reflect back on the techniques and strategies we learned. I personally have a renewed enthusiasm for my position as director and feel positive and confident with the vision I have for the future of our center. Thank you again for a very successful event. I look forward to having you come back to ECYC to conduct workshops for other members of our staff.”

That is a lot of positive feedback on the experience that they had at your presentation and your retreat. I’m so excited. Their enthusiasm really shows through in their comments.

Another professional said, “We were very impressed with what Julie had to share. She gave us practical, concrete ideas to go back and implement with our employees that would help build staff morale and improve communication. She included hands-on activities that helped to model how to implement the strategies she was sharing. We left the workshop feeling very motivated. I would highly recommend Julie’s services. She is quick to respond to questions and to give feedback or suggestions. She is very solution-focused and really works hard to bring about change.” That was Heidi Unger Carney from Next Generation.

Those are comments that really get to the core of what you offer, Julie. You have to make sure that you are giving them the tools that they need to take back what they’re learning and put it in place in the center. I understand you’re in the process of developing an entire ten-step staff motivation and retention system. Can you share with us the steps involved with that system?



Julie: Sure. The ten-step system is wonderful. If anybody out there is listening and you would like coaching, the system is one thing that I’ll start walking you through. It’s something that we use as a foundation for the coaching services that I offer. What I’d like to do on this audio is share with you five of the steps, five strategies that I incorporate into my leadership retreats. I often write about these. Just a lot of good stuff comes from people who really implement these strategies.

What I want to start off by sharing with you is that this step-by-step process is a step-by-step process. It’s not jump ahead to step number five, implement that and then come back to number one. Basically, these steps are cumulative. You need to do them in order to get the maximum results. One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make when implementing a system like this one is that they’ll jump right ahead to strategy number four in my five-step plan of action for managing, motivating and retaining great staff, which is staff appreciation.

Oftentimes, there are issues going on and it’s like, “Let’s buy everybody donuts on Friday. That’ll make them feel better” or “What gifts can we buy everybody?” So there’s a lot of what we’ll call “bright, shiny objects” that distract directors from really getting at the heart of what’s going to motivate their team on a long-term basis. So that’s why I take leaders through the step-by-step process. We are developing it into a ten-step system, but there are five steps that I’ll start off with.

The first step is you must possess a strong belief in your team. I left out a word there. Can you guess what it is? You must possess a strong, positive belief in your team. The thing that you have to understand, as a leader, is that a positive belief will make the difference between a positive, productive and high-functioning team and one that merely exists.

There are a lot of leaders out there who are struggling. This came up at my last leadership program where a leader asked me, “How do I get my staff to do more than just sleepwalking through the day?” What it comes down to is how much of a positive belief do you have in your team? We could talk all day just about all the essential components of this step.

The main thing is to really transform your negative thoughts, attitudes and actions into positive ones. The first thing is to become aware of what your negative thoughts are. Transform those into positive thoughts. Follow up with some positive emotion and then get some positive results.

In organizations I’ve worked with, directors tell me that they have to flip a coin sometimes when it comes to who’s going to deal with a certain staff person. At another child care program, when a staff member comes up to the director, they just basically want to book and run the other way. If we’re doing these kinds of things as a leader, we’re not truly possessing a strong, positive belief in our team.

Dianne: I think getting everybody on a positive wavelength in a facility is key. That just bounces off the walls when it comes to an environment. Everybody is feeling good. They’re feeling like they’re making a



contribution. Julie, is there a key to just the consistency? How would you motivate the person in charge to just work on her verbal interactions in a positive way? Are there any reminders that you might suggest that she do?

Julie: It becomes an internal process. That is actually a really great question that comes up often during programs. One of the things that we have to do as leaders -- and this is a big question as a leader, “How do I stay motivated?” I walk in and I’m in a good mood. Then I meet up with a staff person and all of a sudden my mood shifts. What we have to do as leaders is build our positive reserves.

What’s interesting to know is really how your thoughts work. According to most leading psychologists, we have 60,000 thoughts every single day. Of those 60,000 thoughts, on average, 87 percent are negative. That’s interesting enough in itself. The more interesting part becomes the amount of repetitive thoughts we have every single day.

When you think about your workday, think about you opening up those doors to get into work on Monday morning. You put one foot into that door and you have a certain thought. Is it positive or negative? Think about your day. You come in contact with a staff person and you have a certain thought. Is it positive or negative? You come in contact with a certain parent and you have a certain thought. Is it positive or negative? You can continue that process to say, “Where are my thoughts?”

The interesting thing to understand is that 95 percent of your thoughts are repetitive, meaning thoughts that you think Monday morning when you open up that door to get to work will be the exact same thoughts that you think Tuesday morning when you open up that door to get to work. So it becomes a very repetitive process. The challenge here for our leaders is to become aware of those negative thoughts and then break out of that pattern so that the thoughts that you think and the thoughts you hang onto, the thoughts that you dwell on, become different for you every single day. You need to build your positive reserves.

When I was going through this process, and I’m a negative thinker, I’ll admit it, part of it is you have to feed your mind with positive reading materials. You have to listen to songs that uplift you. A lot of the negativity, that 87 percent, comes to us from messages that society feeds us. It also comes to us from the type of communication we have once we get into the workplace. Are we exchanging positive messages with one another or are they negative?

If you’re thinking right now, “This is great but it applies to my staff,” you have to think about this from a leadership perspective. What kind of positive, motivating messages do you exchange with your colleagues in the workplace? Do you get into the venting and gossip and becoming more like a stressed out staff person? It’s really important to build your positive reserves.



One of my favorite books is Og Mandino who talks about how you’re not a tree condemned to a small plot while the wind and world abuses you. You can stretch and run and dance and play and work. If, as a leader, you fill your mind up with those types of things on a daily basis, later on down the road when you have a crisis situation that comes up, you’re going to be more well-equipped to handle that. Your mind is just going to go, “Okay, I’ve got lots of reserve to pull from” and you’re going to be able to stay positive. So you’re going to pull out from that bank when you need it. Does that make sense?

Dianne: That sure does, Julie. Awareness is so key. Just from being aware of my thoughts right now, listening to you speak on the subject of our thoughts being positive and how that can change our environment just gets me excited about step two.

Julie: Step Two is really great. Step Two in our five-step plan of action is really where a lot of child care programs struggle, but it’s really not effective until you have mastered Step One. The other thing I want to mention before we mention onto Step Two is, with Step One, the thoughts you think about, the thoughts that you dwell on and the emotion that you have behind those thoughts will determine the actions that you do or don’t take throughout the day. So if you’re sitting in a negative place and staying there, what kind of action, as a leader, are you going to take?

What we have to understand is that our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions are all highly contagious. As a leader, you are modeling something very powerful for your staff. If your mindset is negative, guess where their mindset is going got be? If you have negative feelings about a parent and you share those feelings with your staff, because you just need to vent or get it out of your system, a week down the road, that parent comes back in and there’s another interaction. You feel fine about it this time but your staff is still dwelling on the negative.

You have to ask yourself, Why is that? That’s because our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions are all highly contagious and it’s something that we need to model, to the extreme, in our organizations to really have positive, high-functioning and dynamic team as opposed to one that is sleepwalking through their day or one that merely exists.

Dianne: It really takes a lot of effort on everybody’s part to create that type of environment that is positive, and just being aware of everything that’s going on around us, to make sure we’re good role models for the families that we work with and the teachers. The teachers will take that to the next level with their own students and create a positive environment right there in the classroom. That makes for a very happy place to be.

Julie: Right, or to make for a very negative one if we’re not implementing Step One. I’ve been called in to consult with organizations. A leader will say, “Julie, I don’t know what it is, but I walk through the hallways and all I hear is my staff members yelling ‘Stop, stop,’ or yelling it to each other. They’re yelling it to the children.” The children are being sent these messages of stop doing this, stop doing that.



When I got there and consulted, one of the things that I found out is the leaders will repeatedly say to her staff, “Stop, stop, stop.” Although it’s not to the extreme that she’s hearing it from her staff to the children, it was still there present in her dialogue. Staff will model our negative behaviors 150 to 200 percent. They’ll model our good behaviors 50 percent. So what that tells us is we have to do twice as many positives so that our staff members will see that and model that.

Dianne: That is so true. I struggle with that myself right here in the family environment, making sure that the positives are more outlandish than the negatives to make up for that.

Julie: Exactly. That’s why it’s also an important part of our ten-step system for coaching, to talk about your role. When you’re a leader, you’re also a coach. One of the things that you have to do as a coach is to remove yourself personally from situations. A lot of times in the workplace, a lot of leaders I consult with -- and this is a very personal industry. It’s really hard to take yourself out of that and just say, “It’s not personal.”

Your role as a coach of your team is different than who you are. Part of who you are is filtered into that coaching role, but it should be a separate role, a separate hat that you put on and that you are. When you’re taking things personally, chances are you’re going to get defensive. You’re going to react. You’re not going to be able to focus on facts, benefits and solutions, which is a huge, huge motivator in the workplace, a leader’s ability to focus on facts, benefits and solutions.

Dianne: Julie, that’s a lot to think about. Let’s move on now to Step Two in our five-step plan of action.

Julie: Step Two is really the heart of the systems that we’re going to have in place. Granted, you could put systems in place with Step One, which is possessing that strong, positive belief in your team. Step Two is to create an environment where direct and open communication is a priority.

In most organizations I work with, communication is a huge, huge issue. There are often destructive communication patterns that are very much present, things such as workplace gossip, lack of teamwork, even people refusing to do their jobs, all kinds of communication gaps, people not getting the information that they need. It’s just a big step. During our retreats, we can spend almost a full day, if not longer, just on this step.

I’ve broken it down into three different components, three things we need to focus on in our child care programs. That is that we need to get it, we need to give it and we need to facilitate it. There’s a “why” that goes along with each one of these components.

When we think about getting open and direct communication, we have to understand why this is so important. Here’s the why. We need to get direct and open communication so we can troubleshoot issues before they become huge, time-consuming, costly problems.



Issues that we need to get communication on are things even such as child abuse. One center had an abusive situation going on, but the staff didn’t feel comfortable going to the owner or the director. The director found out when allegations were made by the parent and the program was closed down.

There are lots of other situations that evolve out of us not getting it. In one program I was working with, through an anonymous communication activity, it came up that a bookcase was unsteady. The teachers either got too busy or they didn’t feel comfortable going to the director about this to let her know that the bookcase was kind of wobbly. One day, a little child climbed up on that bookcase and it fell over onto the child. Luckily, the child wasn’t hurt and it all worked out okay, but the director didn’t find out about that wobbly bookcase until an accident report was filed. So that’s why it’s so important to get it.

Dianne: Communication, that is key. Getting it, I never thought of it like that before, but unless our staff is comfortable communicating those issues to us and we’re comfortable making sure that they’re aware of potential hazards, that communication has to be there to make sure that that happens. It’s important for everybody just to get it.

Julie: That’s one part of the why of it. Another one is that we need to get feedback from our teams on center operation and employee satisfaction levels. Earlier, we were talking about word of mouth. If we’re not getting that kind of communication from our staff, where they’re saying, “I’m not happy about this. I’m not happy about that,” and granted, there are going to be complaints and general stuff that always happens in any organization. If they can’t give it to you, they can’t come to you as a resource for them, they’re going to go out there and share it with a parent.

A lot of times in our organizations, there’s that boundary that’s being crossed where a staff member is gossiping with a parent. Perhaps it was a new policy you announced they’re not happy about. They’ll go and complain to a parent, “I don’t understand why we have to do this and this and this,” instead of bringing it up in an adult fashion or in a good way. That’s another part of why it’s so important to get it. If we’re not getting that communication, somebody most likely is. We would rather have it come to us so we can make proactive change happen in our organizations.

Dianne: That’s so true, Julie. What was the second part of that formula after get it?

Julie: We have to get it and then we have to give it. The why of this is we need to provide our teams with the information that they need to do their jobs effectively and to function as a dynamic team. We really want to be able to pride them with information so that they can grow and they can reach new heights, and so that we can keep our team strong and healthy.

Dianne: That is important. They do need to feel good about what they’re sharing with those that are around them to make sure that they have been given the information that they need to have a positive impact themselves. It gives them ownership into the environment.



Julie: The problem here is, leaders will often say, “Well, I’m just too busy to give it” or they don’t need to know that information. Those things in itself can lead to workplace gossip. There are better systems that we can put into place where staff members feel that they’re getting the information that they need to know in order to do their jobs effectively. There are systems that we can put into place to make that happen easily.

The third component of this is to facilitate it. So we’ve got get it, give it, and now we want to facilitate it. Facilitating it is so critical. We need to help ensure that direct and open communication is happening, so team members are happy, and most importantly, conflicts are being resolved.

When we facilitate it, we have to think, “What’s going on at team meetings?” Are they getting together and brainstorming for solutions or are they merely sitting there gossiping and venting? That’s one component of it. When there’s a conflict that comes up in our organization, as a leader, I tell them, “You have that conflict with so and so. Go to that person and work it out directly.” I have to have confidence as a leader that that’s what’s going to happen.

In a lot of organizations, it doesn’t happen. Conflicts are not being resolved. They are left to linger and they are left to be vented about for months and months and months. This is a huge drain on morale and productivity.

Dianne: You’re so right, Julie. I look back to my days as a director and I can see how those issues cropped up when I didn’t handle them when they came into play. I waited and it seemed like the matter only got worse. It did hurt the employee morale when it’s not taken care of at that point. If you don’t have all of these steps in place and you can’t communicate about the concerns, then it’s going to lead to bigger problems.

Julie: Absolutely. Often it comes up, “If these things are so critically important, why is it that leaders don’t get it, give it and facilitate it?” What we illustrate in our coaching program, as well as my full-day leadership retreats -- we actually just launched an online boot camp that you can participate in via the telephone. If you’re interested in that, please make sure you get over to the website at www.lcforcc.com.

What happens, why we don’t get it, give it and facilitate it, is because there are things that I call “communication barriers.” These are communication things, or lack of communication, and mindsets that get modeled from the top down, that impact your team dramatically. Many leaders are not aware of these communication barriers, so it’s impossible to put a plan of action into place to eliminate them.

One thing that we can work on together is really identifying what communication barriers are present in your workplace and then put systems in place to overcome them. Throughout my ten years, I’ve identified about 25 barriers that are present in most organizations.



Dianne: A lot of obstacles in the way when you’re trying to jump through those hoops. Can you share a little bit more about those obstacles?

Julie: It’s true that there’s a lot of them, but the good news is, and what people who work with me find out is that once they put a plan of action in place to knock down one barrier, one thing that’s preventing them from getting it, giving it, and facilitating it, five others can be knocked down in the process. That’s really the eye-opening experience.

I’ll share with you a couple of these. This, like I said, is where we can spend about eight hours, 16 hours, 20. The last group I was doing said they need three days to go through all this information. Communication barriers, things that are most common, I’ll give you just a couple of them.

One thing that comes up is general announcements, when a leader makes general announcements. I’ve got dozens and dozens of case scenarios that we could talk about with general announcements. Let’s say a leader has a team member who’s really using her cell phone in the workplace even though there’s a no cell phone policy.

That leader decides to address the problem, she’s going to send out a general memo to everyone as a reminder of a policy that’s in place about the cell phones. Many leaders see this as an effective communication technique, however, when we talk about this and really explore it, we find that this is not effective. Imagine somebody when they get this memo from you saying don’t use your cell phone. They’re like, “I never use my cell phone.” It leads to a lot of blame. It leads to resentment. It leads to that big “G” word that many of us want to avoid or figure out how to stop, and that is gossip.

That’s the cool thing, when you start working through these communication barriers, you will easily see how most of them lead to workplace gossip, and how that gossip can be eliminated. Not only does it lead to gossip, it also leads to turnover in your staff and in your parents. We draw out big pictures of these so leaders can really see the impact of these communication barriers.

The great thing is, the systems that you can put in place are simple. They take consistent effort, but they are there once you have that awareness of what you need to do differently. That’s the big thing. So general announcements would be one big communication barrier.

Another one, another barrier, and this is a top mistake that many leaders wish they didn’t make, that is hanging on to wrong staff for too long. The impact on your team when you do this, it sends out a message to your staff, “What does it matter anyway?”

You may have your top performers who’ve now become poor performers because they don’t think it matters because you’re hanging onto poor performers who are not valued members of your staff. If this



is happening in your organization, you really need to put a system in place to help you have just a wealth of staff at your door ready, waiting to work when you need them.

Dianne: That is so true. You never know how you’re going to impact the entire group when you don’t have a system in place and you’re not looking at the big picture. It really can have a trickle-down effect.

Julie: Another big barrier is lack of new staff integration or orientation. It’s huge. I won’t take time out of this call to talk to you about the whole chain reaction of events, but you can just imagine. In your mind, imagine somebody brand new starting with your organization and they are excited, on fire, ready to get in and dig in. They get into that workplace and they’re met with people who don’t know if they’re a new staff person or a parent. They’re met with people in the workplace who are judging them. They’re met with people in the workplace who are just brushing them off to the side because they don’t have time to deal with them.

I’ve had story after story after story about new staff members leaving in tears after the first week on the job because of how they were treated once they got into the workplace. It’s not like people were intentionally mean, but people were behaving as they normally would when they see somebody new in the workplace. It has a detrimental effect.

This is how that new staff person who was so motivated and so excited, once they get submerged into that gossipy environment, they either quit or leave within a week or two weeks. Sometimes we have people who come in for working interviews. Because of how they were treated during that, the director says they never hear back from them.

There’s a lot of things to really take into consideration when you’re looking at your new staff orientation or integration systems. All these systems that I’m talking about really equate to your staff motivation process, which lead to increased performance and increased retention, increased productivity.

Dianne: Julie, you could not be any truer with that last little part of your statement that says we need to make sure we keep the staff oriented. When they come in, that first impression that they get of our program, of our teamwork and the facility, that makes such a difference.

Looking back to my first day in the child care industry, I did not make it until noon. I didn’t understand at that point how an environment could be setup in such a way that would cause me to not want to be there, to walk out after just a few hours. Looking back, it was the whole environment and how I was treated those first couple hours.

Julie: I even have leaders who say, “I know my team is gossipy, but I hired this staff person and they swear they didn’t gossip. They were going to be the bright, shiny star in the bunch and pull everybody up to a new



level.” If you have a destructive workplace and a gossipy team, it is hard to come in as a new person and really change it and really set yourself apart.

First of all, you’re being judged for being new. Your desire, especially as women, is to fit in. When we come into the workplace, we want to fit in. Sometimes when people share gossip with us, we feel like we’re part of the “in” crowd when really that’s a destructive way to go about it.

There are things you can do that are so simple and so easy to really change this whole paradigm in your organization so that there’s a better protocol in place when new staff members come on board. Are you ready for Step Three?

Dianne: I am. I can’t wait. I’m very excited. Just from hearing Step One and Step Two, I can’t wait to see what Step Three is all about.

Julie: Step Three is critically important. Remember that it does build on Step One as well as Step Two. This plan of action is cumulative. This plan of action that I’m sharing with you is one that we go through in our retreats, our full-day retreats, extensively, and it’s going to be part of my ten-step coaching system for leaders in the child care industry.

Step Three is to challenge our teams. We really want to help them understand the big picture. Too often, our staff members come in through the day and they’re just trying to manage their stress. So the big picture to them becomes just trying to get through another stressful day at work. There needs to be a bigger picture. There needs to be a bigger vision. There needs to be an understanding of what our individual staff members’ visions are and how that ties into our vision and the organization’s vision. Also, there’s kind of a climate, a culture that we want to build and create, and challenge our team to really become part of that culture.

Many leaders who I consult with, and we’re going to do a whole workshop on this someday, is just about building a culture, predefining it up front, deciding what kind of culture you want to cultivate within your working environment. That’s what Step Three is really all about. It’s about helping your staff understand why you’re making decisions that you’re making and how they can make effective decisions in the process. We want to help them understand their role in the big picture and give them ways to contribute to that big picture.

Dianne: That is so important. When they don’t have a view of themselves as part of that vision that has been created for the organization, they don’t take full ownership of creating solutions to some of the problems that they deal with amongst one another and in their classroom with the children.

Julie: You brought up a great word that came up a lot in the last program that I did, ownership. How do we get them to take ownership? Sometimes it just boils down to ownership of their basic job



responsibilities if they’re not even taking ownership of that. The leader has to stay on top of them for every little thing. Then you’re just that person’s fulltime performance manager, let alone trying to manage your child care program. It’s a vicious circle.

The good news is, that circle can be broken and strategies can be implemented so that people do feel challenged in the workplace. It’s an easy thing to do. It takes a little bit of time, this step, just like Step Two, but it’s definitely worth it.

Dianne: Right. Putting everything in place does take time, but the effort you originally put into any change is going to pay off for years and years to come, or as long as you’re in the facility keeping that momentum going with everybody involved.

Julie: The dynamics of this step, this is where your staff will get involved with setting new and exciting goals every 30 days or every 60 days. You’ll see their success levels increasing and increasing and increasing. There are things that you can do to make that happen.

Many times, our child care leaders will share with me, “My team is just stagnant. They feel like it’s a nine-to-five, goodbye-type job.” They really want their staff members to take ownership, not only of their responsibilities, but of reaching new levels of success.

There are specific things that you can do to make it happen. This is where it gets exciting. Once you have your communication systems in place, once your mindset is in the right place, there are awesome things you can do with challenging your team and building the type of culture that you really want. That’s where I get excited about creating that positive and productive workplace that you desire, and most importantly deserve.

Dianne: I’m so excited. I’m ready to sign up right now so I can learn more and have your enthusiasm to put these steps in place. It would have such a positive impact on everyone around me.

Julie: When you coach with me, that’s a benefit that you get. We have one-on-one time on the telephone where we can develop your very specific, very tailored plan of action. We’ll look at everything that’s going on in your workplace and I’ll only provide you with solutions that will work for you.

If you come to one of our leadership retreats, it’s a great starting point, as well as our full-day boot camp that we’re doing now via the telephone. Don’t forget about our Inner Circle. That’s wonderful, and we’ll talk about that more before we wrap up the call today I’m hoping, so we can give them a little bit more information.

Dianne: Let’s review the steps so far that you have mentioned in this system.



Julie: The first step is to possess a strong, positive belief in your team. Remember, without that positive belief, you will have a team that merely exists as opposed to one that is dynamic, high-functioning and helping you accomplish the goals that you want to achieve in your child care program.

Step Two is to create an environment where direct and open communication is a priority. This step consists of many systems to help you get it, give it and facilitate it, as well as to break down the communication barriers and mindset barriers that are being modeled from the top down, and to help you build a climate where there is trust, respect and amazing communication happening.

Step Three is to challenge your team. This is where you help team members create their own visions, understand how those visions tie in with your vision as well as your program’s vision. It’s also where you get them involved and they’re excited to get involved. There’s a whole process for doing this. We can’t just get in there and say, “everybody set a goal.” It’s much different than that.

It does come to the place where everybody is setting and achieving new goals. Imagine if everybody set and achieved a new goal for the next six months, where would your program be in that six-month timeframe? Or give it a year. Where would your program be 12 months from now? All of these steps are very powerful.

That brings us to Step Four. This is a step that most child care professionals really excel at. However, the main pitfall here is that most people will try to implement this step before any of the first three. Do you know what this one is, Dianne?

Dianne: I don’t, Julie. Surprise me. What is this step?

Julie: I bet you do know this one. It’s staff appreciation.

Dianne: My favorite. Never enough appreciation is given to the people at that level for what they do every day in the classroom.

Julie: It is important, however, there are pitfalls that we need to avoid. We can look at these and how they pertain to your organization when it comes to staff appreciation. The biggest thing I want to caution you here is that Step Four is staff appreciation and it’s number four for a reason. It has to come behind one, two and three, or at least work very well in conjunction with those steps.

Staff appreciation, when used effectively, is when we’re using it to motivate our team members when they exhibit the behaviors that you would like them to more often. A lot of times, we’re appreciating staff out of guilt because we’re saying, “It’s only the child care industry.” We put on some kind of staff appreciation because of that.



You have to think about when you appreciate your staff, in order for it to be effective, what is your intention behind that appreciation? I agree wholeheartedly, Dianne, we should never let our staff suffer from recognition deprivation, but a lot of that recognition comes from Steps One, Two and Three.

When our staff appreciation is going wrong, it becomes more of a Band-Aid solution, something we’re just trying to throw a Band-Aid on as opposed to really digging down deep and understanding why staff are feeling the way they’re feeling and what we can do to produce long-term results with it.

So we’ve got some staff appreciation pitfalls that we can be aware of. Those are things such as routine appreciation, general appreciation, undeserved appreciation and appreciating people out of guilt or feelings of lack of. The best way to work with appreciation is to really setup a list and think about the behaviors that you would like your team members to display or exhibit more often. Then decide on a way that you can appreciate them when you witness them performing at that level or displaying those behaviors.

Dianne: I never realized how complicated it could be to show that appreciation, but it makes sense. You don’t want that appreciation to be taken for granted by the staff member. You want it to be something that is connected to the behavior so you can give them feedback and appreciate them in a way that is going to make that type of positive behavior be a reoccurring part of their behavior.

Julie: Exactly. A lot of times, like I said, we’re just throwing a Band-Aid on it by throwing another donut here, another gift here. Leaders go out of their way to do spectacular things for their staff, especially in the child care industry. Then when they give that person a gift, they’re complaining it’s the wrong color or the wrong kind of cake. People aren’t appreciative of these amazing things that the leaders are trying to do.

That is a symptom. Don’t take that personally. That is a symptom of other things that are going on within your staff. That’s where Steps One, Two and Three really need to be looked at extensively to say, “How do we put an effective staff appreciation plan of action into place?” That will only happen when the barriers are broken down and when staff appreciation is reflective of the behaviors we want to see more often.

Dianne: Without that communication, without that positive attitude, the staff really can’t connect to everything without those things in place first. They will connect the appreciation to what they have done by putting in place the earlier steps, if that makes any sense to the audience.

Julie: I share a story with groups when I speak. It’s about my father coming over from Lithuania. He was a young boy at the time. He was in fourth grade. There were soldiers who came over. They were just there and talking with my grandparents. One of the soldiers got his gun out and he was showing my



father his gun. My grandmother was like, “No, no, put guns away.” The soldier is like, “Don’t worry. It’s not loaded. It’s perfectly fine.”

All of a sudden, the gun went off and shot my father right in his leg. There was limited medical care at that time that was available. His leg got a little infected. He told me it was really, really painful for him. There was all this stuff coming out from the inside of his leg and he was in a lot of pain. He said the soldiers would come over and try to give him candy and toys because they felt bad about the pain he was experiencing. He remembers, as a little boy, saying to them, “I don’t want your toys. I don’t want your candy. I just want this pain to stop.”

When I think about staff appreciation, I think the same thing. Many of our staff, and I guarantee you most of your staff if there’s this kind of pain going on, the communication and all that, they don’t care about the chocolate or this or that. You might get a little smile for a minute, but what they really want and what will really excite them and motivate them is your putting a plan of action into place to make that internal pain go away.

Dianne: Right, Julie. It’s their pain. It’s everyone’s pain. We want to make sure that as a leader in the child care industry, we are trying to take that pain away. I agree, chocolate doesn’t always take the pain away. Putting the systems in place will take the pain away long term.

Julie: And it will heal it and make it better.

Dianne: It will. The chocolate doesn’t hurt. I’ll take the chocolate anytime in any form, but we have to look at the core of the problem. It’s looking at the pain they’re suffering and trying to take it away by being consistent and having these systems in place. I’m just excited because I know that you have worked so hard to put these steps of this plan in place. Can you tell us about the next step?

Julie: The last step I’ll share with you on this call is to make it fun. This is the icing on top of the cake. This is the child care industry, for most of our listeners. If you’re in another industry listening to this, the same thing applies to you. Step Five is making it fun. It’s on top of one, two, three and four.

We’re in the child care industry. So often I think we get so overly concerned with being professional or appearing professional or our staff not having good professional boundaries in place, which is part of Step Two.

Once you have those things, once the boundaries are good and once you’re not so concerned about looking professional because you know you’re a professional team, you have the culture down you want to cultivate, you’ve got to find ways to really breathe a feeling of fun into the work that you’re doing every single day. When I think about this step, I think about the book that was written called Fish. Have you heard about that?



Dianne: Yes, I have. That’s an awesome book on service and how you can really have an impact with simple things, like making it fun.

Julie: Exactly. The interesting thing about the story behind this book is it talks about men who had to deal with these stinky, smelly fish every single day. They had to go home smelling like fish. One of the things that they decided to do in their culture was create a climate that was fun. There’s all kinds of videos online about this so you can search this if you’re interested in learning more. They have videos of these guys at work and how they incorporated fun.

Some of the things that they do is they’ll throw the fish around and say “Incoming from Alaska” and throw over a fish. They try to make it professional, but it’s fun. What they’ve done is they’ve created a workplace where they will literally have people at lunchtime come and view these guys who are having so much fun at work.

In our child care programs, I know we’re like, “We’ve got parents and they’re in and out so fast. How do we get them to stay?” If you cultivate the climate of fun and get them involved in some kind of fun in some way, chances are they’re going to bond with you a little deeper and they’re going to want to be part of your environment, part of your culture. The challenge for you is to think about how you make it more fun.

In our Inner Circle membership, and you can find out more about this at www.lcforcc.com. We’ve actually got at least two audio programs on making your child care environment fun.

Dianne: Those are great audios. I’ve listened to those in the past just to lift my own spirits and to use them to lift the spirits of my staff. Getting back to the fun in a fishy environment, I still have memories of being in that environment when I went out and visited that organization to see how they went about creating a workplace that was fun. It still has an impact on me today.

Julie: What I really want to help everybody do is to take a step back and make sure that their actions are getting maximum results in the workplace, and to identify the things that are really keeping them stuck.

One of the reasons that I created our Inner Circle membership, which is also known as The Leadership Connection, is because one day after a retreat, I was approached by a director. Her name was Laura. She approached me with tears in her eyes saying how she benefitted so much from the information I was sharing with her. She says, “I need ongoing support. How do I get that? We don’t have any budget.” That’s when I went home and thought about her pain and tears and said, “What can I do in this industry to get them the support that they need?”

That’s when we created The Leadership Connection. Now it’s referred to as Julie’s Inner Circle. It is a place where you can come to get support. What my commitment is to our members, if there’s a



challenge you’re going through, we are going to provide you with pretty much instant solutions to the challenges you’re facing.

On our website, www.lcforcc.com, there are over 70 audio programs right online that you can listen to. One is from our own Dianne Baker. Actually, we’ve got two on organization in your child care program. There is a wealth of information right on that website. We also have a members-only discussion forum where you can come and post your questions. If there’s something that you need researched, you can post it there and my team will go to work to get you answers to the things you’re looking for. We also have a forms resource library as well as transcripts of our audio programs.

There are different levels of membership that you can get involved with. It is designed to be a support system for you. When you go to our website, www.lcforcc.com, click on “Join Today” and it will walk you through all the benefits that are right there at your fingertips. No more do you have to struggle through your challenges alone. No more do you have to take things home with you thinking, “My gosh, how am I going to deal with that?” Now you have a place; now you have a resource; now you have someone who is going to help you through those issues.

If we don’t have an audio program or an article or a video already created for that specific thing that you’re going through, my commitment to our members is that we will create that for you. If you tell me what your challenge is, we’re going to put together an article, a video or an audio program to help you through it. You can get involved with this program for as little as $4.95 a month. Solutions are at your fingertips. You do not have to struggle with your challenges alone.

Dianne: I know I have appreciated you through the years every time I had a problem when I was out in the field or whether I was working with a particular group, I knew that I could just pick up the phone and give you a call and you would point me to the right audio to listen to to find solutions to my problems. Now with the forum, it’s great to have a resource where you can type in your question and get an answer immediately, or almost immediately.

There are so many parts of your website that have actually been put there to serve the child care industry in a way that will help us out there in the field and help the industry grow to new heights. I know that everyone listening to this call will benefit from going to your site and fishing around through what you have available. There is a wealth of information there, Julie. I appreciate everything you’ve done to put it all together in one place.

Julie: Thank you so much. I do get excited about it. When we go to retreats and I’m doing live events, we always get a slew of new people joining on because they’re so excited about having solutions at their fingertips. We want to take the guesswork out of your leadership role, out of your managing, motivating and retaining great staff. There is support there that is for you. That’s why everything that I’ve done has been created just to help you be successful in your role, answers at your fingertips.



When you go to the website, you’ll also see lots of testimonials from your colleagues about The Leadership Connection. We’ve got lots of audio clips posted there that you can listen to to really help you determine if the program would be worth trying out, to see if you can get some solutions that will help you.

Dianne: Julie, you are a one-stop source. We are thankful for that. It has just been such a pleasure talking with you today about your plan, your plan of staff motivation and retention. It is awesome. I know that so many people will benefit just from the information that they heard from you today. I know that that will motivate them to get online and look at all the other resources that are available on your site. It’s just been great talking to you today.

Julie: Just in closing, I also want to say, if staff motivation is an issue for you, remember, you’re going to be paying for it in one way or another. You’re either going to invest in systems that will help you have a motivated team on a consistent basis or you’re going to be investing in turnover and gossip and low morale and productivity. Which way do you want to choose? Which way will help you accomplish the vision that you want in your child care program?

I hope you will see that we are an affordable resource for you, even just to get involved in the Inner Circle, to help you start putting your plan of action into place. Get involved with our Inner Circle as a starting point. It will really benefit you and your child care program for years to come.

Dianne: Again, this has been a pleasure talking with Julie Bartkus from www.lcforcc.com, the website with all the answers for those professionals in the child care industry that want to bring their program to the next level. Thank you so much, Julie, for spending time with us today.

Julie: Thank you, Dianne, for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

[End of Audio]

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Listen in as Dianne Baker interviews Julie Bartkus on ...€¦ · leadership retreats as well as full-day staff retreats. I also offer coaching services. So we could setup a coaching