When leaders cast a vision and create momentum for teams, there is power in turning underperforming communities to high performing. Leadership coach, trainer, and BTG Ambassador, Erin Thompson, discusses how to lead a community to 100% occupancy with culture.

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Listen to Erin’s podcast Aspire for More.

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Welcome to season six of Bridge The Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors Accushield, Aline, NIC MAP Vision, ProCare HR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing. 

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Lucas 00:47 

Welcome to Bridge The Gap podcast, the senior Living podcast with Josh and Lucas. We got a great episode on today that is sure to encourage you in your leadership journey. We want to welcome Erin Thompson, she's a leadership coach and a trainer. She's also a Bridge The Gap ambassador and the podcast host for Aspire for More. Welcome to the show. 

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Erin 1:08

Thank you. It is an honor to be here. I appreciate it. 

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Lucas 1:12 

It's an honor to have you on the program today. We've enjoyed getting to know you over the past months as a Bridge Gap ambassador, also tuning into your podcast, and looking at your content on LinkedIn. Really appreciate just your attitude around the industry. You talk very real things that I think are very impactful for the people that are on the ground in the community. Where in your own words you say is where senior living happens, right? It's at the community. Today we're going to go over a couple of main points, talk about momentum, leadership, and culture. Erin, your background, you started in this industry and you've worked in this industry and I think that you're leveraging those skills that you've learned over the years to help train and help leaders in these three categories. Unpack that for us. 

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Erin 2:03

Yes. My career started when I was 19 as a volunteer and then a concierge, and then it grew to become an executive director. And my path has been taking underperforming communities and creating high-performing teams, which reached high occupancy, high financial goals. And I did that four times consecutively and I really learned kind of what it took to build that momentum and to understand what leadership was and then to how to create that culture. But it took a lot of hard knock lessons to understand what that is and how to do that. And I think the main thing that leaders need to know is that you have to come in and create your vision. You need to understand first before you want to be understood. And then when you have that vision, you talk about it constantly that creates the momentum. 

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Erin 2:58

Leadership is influence. It's not management, right? You follow people in leadership. We can look at that through sports. And so when you have that vision, that's what creates that momentum because you're talking about it, you're casting that vision and then you take massive action on that vision. And one of the things that people lose sight of all the time is you have to celebrate the small victories. I lost sight of that several times, and when I made that consistent effort to celebrate even when there was an alignment, victory, like yes, somebody actually did what I asked them to do. You celebrate that big and you talk about all the positive feedback, that snowball effect is really what you're looking for, right? That's momentum. You celebrate the small wins, and then each win gets bigger and then you have your team buy in. I feel like that's how you create momentum inside of a community. 

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Josh 3:49 

It's a relevant point, I think no matter what level of senior living you're working, whether you're at the community, whether you're at the regional or whether you're at the corporate. And we've talked so much about the culture really should be from the top down as well. And so whether that's the executive at the community level or the regionals that are supporting and coaching and leading the community level or all the way up. And the more that that can be consistent from top to bottom, the better your culture and ultimately the better your results will be. So practical takeaways on momentum before we move to 0.2, as a leader, speak to those community leaders. What are some practical ways and examples that you have seen work in helping build momentum? 

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Erin 4:38 

I think communication. When you have meetings, your standup meetings or your all-associate meetings, or your pep rally meetings, you have to talk about your wins. You have to talk about the positive feedback that you're getting. Every single one. If I got a card that was a thank you note, I read it in a meeting, everybody knew it. You single a person out, tell them how great they're doing, and then you say it in a meeting, go to all the ones that you can as a leader. Don't negate the small things because when the small things become the main importance, then all the big things will come. When we make the ordinary moments count, they will become extraordinary. And that's how trust is built and that's how momentum is taken. And then every problem that we solve is an opportunity to talk about the value, the goal. We need to do this, we need to give this resident her grilled cheese at night because that's what she likes. That will be the first step of creating positive momentum in the dining room. This is why we're doing this. We change lives, and if a grilled cheese is going to change her life, well then let's do it. That's what we do. That's how we start capitalizing on that momentum. Every positive feedback gets shared with the team that will really change the culture quickly. 

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Josh 5:52 

Well, I think that's such a great takeaway and it seems like that should be something that's natural and easy for us. But I could also see that we overlook or we take for granted that those small wins may not be so small. That could be something really big. And it reminds me so much of a book I read years ago, which was the greatest management principle, and the premise of what gets rewarded and acknowledged is what gets done both the good and the bad. So that positive affirmation is exactly what you're talking about and communicating that to all. So we can win together. So in this cake, we're baking that can lead us to potentially a hundred percent occupancy. As you've stated. There's also a couple of other ingredients like leadership and culture. Can you dive into that a little for us? 

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Erin 6:43 

Sure. Leadership is influence. I view leadership as almost being sales. If I have a vision if my community is going to change people's lives, and this is what that means to me, we're going to take care of people, we're going to listen to what they say, we're going to show them that we hear them and we're going to follow up and we're going to follow through, then that's the expectation that I have for my team. But I have to be the one who's setting the tone, who's setting that example. We influence based on our words and our actions. And if our actions don't line up with our words, we're not doing the influence that we want. So we want to make sure when we influence that we understand how we do that. And we can influence based on our position, we can influence based on what we've done for the community, what we've done for that person, the goals that we set, and then who we are and how we represent ourselves to the team. 

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Erin 7:37 

Those are the ways that you can influence a community. And so if you set out to make those ordinary moments extraordinary for your associates as well as your residents, you're going to gain people's attention. One of the big things is in leadership, they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Right? I think that's a John Maxwell quote there, but it's true. And in order to gain that momentum, you have to put in the work as a leader to influence people. And so sometimes that takes a long time and people will stop because they don't see those early wins. But you really have to look for those little small nuances that tell you that you're on your way. Like a smile from somebody who doesn't normally smile those are your clues that you're on the right path. But when you understand that what you do and what you say is your main influential factor and your credibility, which is your success, and focusing on the small, small things first, and then it starts rolling into the big things. 

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Josh 8:40 

So that leadership and momentum, you get that going and it's naturally that influence that comes from that. It rolls into improving your culture. As we know, you hear a lot of people talking about that you got to work on culture. But think sometimes we have to just make it simple. Just like you were talking about practical ways with momentum. What are the practical things that we can do to make sure our culture is supporting our mission? 

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Erin 9:06 

The leader has to exemplify what the culture is. It's your actions, literally, culture is literally what you do every day. How do you value people? People do not want perfection. I think we get lost in this idea of perfection. I know that I have throughout my career, but really people just want connection. They want to know that they belong. They want to know that they're valued, that they're seen, that they're heard. And so if you can create that space to where their thoughts and their ideas on how to improve things, we implement them. It doesn't matter what position it is, because we want to understand that the triangle does kind of go backwards when you're inside of a community. My culture and communities was, everyone is as valuable as the next person. I could miss a day of work and not affect anybody's life. But if you as a caregiver miss a day of work, you affect somebody's life. So that is value. So I'm going to talk to you about how valuable you are and hopes that you understand that too. And then your actions show me that you understand your value to this community. You have to understand in a culture and creating culture that there is no commitment without connection. Period. With connection comes commitment. And so you have to, as a leader, make an effort to show people that they belong here, that they're valued here, and that they do change lives. Because that's what we do in, in senior living. We change lives. 

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Josh 10:37 

This is tickling the ears. It sounds good. I think any of our listeners right now are thinking, I can go do that. That's, that's what I believe in. That's what I try to do. But then we show up and things get a little bit heavy as we've talked about. And you start getting things hitting you from every angle. How do you not lose focus and continue to keep up the grind day in and day out? Because it's not just a one-hit wonder that we can show up one day and be like, okay, here's what we're going to do. And then it just happens. This is a daily commitment. What are secrets, ways, methods that are practical takeaways that people can keep this at the forefront of their, their daily life? 

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Erin 11:27 

Number one, leadership is about principles, not circumstances. So you have to know that it's a grind. I call working inside assisted living and memory care, which is my experience a little bit. Almost like a war. You've got a lot of different things coming at you. We've got five groups of people that are equal and importance in understanding that we have to show them the same level of importance. And we have to be aware of that, number one. And then we have to have strategic ideas on how to balance them. And then how to balance yourself. One of the things that I learned is I believe that there are three-month patterns inside of a community. And so when we focus on like this work-life balance and all this other kind of stuff, we want to look at it very singularly. But really you have to look at it from a big picture perspective. 

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Erin 12:15 

And so if you know that these few weeks you have to grind in, then you know that a few weeks after that, it's going to take a little bit of a lull time. And so then you can then balance out what hours you may have worked on the front end, and the back end. Every storm runs out of rain. So I would say that if you're in your first year, you're not going to understand those patterns quite yet. That's why those first three to six months are going to be very difficult. This is why I say you have to embrace the suck. You have to understand that it's going to take a lot to get the momentum going. It takes nine months, right to birth a baby. It takes a lot of fuel and a lot of energy, for a rocket to launch, it takes time. 

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Erin 12:56 

So you have to understand that and then know your patterns, identify the patterns, use the patterns to your advantage, and then create new ones based on the ones that you see. And every community is different. So you have to kind of be on the lookout for the bigger picture because things do feel like you cannot move forward sometimes. But that's when you need to reach out to somebody and talk about the way you feel. I would've greatly benefited from somebody like me because I did internalize a lot of it. And we can't do that as leaders. I feel as if the five people that we have to keep happy, which are your residents, your families, the associates, your corporate office, and the state regulatory agencies, those are big, big boulders on our shoulder, right? So how we balance that and how we talk about it is, is important. And if we don't talk about it, it can certainly weigh on us in a very heavy way. 

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Josh 13:52 

So, Erin, I'm going to put you on the spot because you're so pro and I'm going to throw something at you here. I know you have a ton of experience leading and doing exactly what you are saying and have proven success. I think we have such a broad listener group, the who's who in the industry across the world, that listen to this show to hear guests just like you. And I think oftentimes we take for granted that it's just the community leaders listening. And we're sometimes we talk from that perspective, or sometimes we talk from the corporate's perspective in this. It seems like we're talking about the community level, momentum, leadership, and culture and how to drive census and results. But I think one big piece, so many of our listeners, they are executive directors, they are administrators, they are the community level leaders and they are being supported hopefully in great ways by a corporate culture or a support system, a regional director. And so put yourself back in the seat of that administrator in things that you either wish you had or needed or received. What is it that the corporate team in that regional really needs to be focused on to make sure if they have an Erin at the community level that's trying to do these things, what does that leader at the community need most from their superiors to make sure that this happens? 

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Erin 15:26 

Well, I'll talk about my experience and of the people that I have spoken to through the course of this last year, for me, one of the things that I wish I would've had was a little bit of understanding mindset and how important it is to combat the negativity that is sometimes a lot of the time inside the community. I grew up inside the senior living industry. Again, I started at 19, I've worked there for 20 years. And there wasn't one retreat, nothing where it really, really dives into positive mindset, what it takes to combat all the negativity that could come your way, how to stay strong in that positive mindset. And it was, that was ultimately my Achilles heel, was that I could lead people, but I struggled with my own mindset. For me and as a leader, we have to put us first. We have to make ourselves more valuable so we can add value to others. 

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Erin 16:28 

But I consistently gave away value. So when we talk about being valuable and we talk about changing people's lives, we have to understand. And what I wish the corporate offices knew is that how do we pour into the leader their value, their mindset? Because I got that when I stepped out of the community, but I was so tunnel-visioned into creating success and changing lives that I didn't understand how to do that for myself. And I think that that's a great way for companies to support their leaders inside the community because of the culture of the country right now and all of the, the different groups of people that we have serving inside of the community. It takes a lot to understand that maybe we're not all speaking the same language. Maybe I say something that sparked anger in someone else, and then the reactions that happen can really weigh you down. 

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Erin 17:24 

And then to be able to walk through that in a safe place, somebody's not going to come back and, and use that against you later and learn from that. And the other thing is, that I learned that failure is actually learning, but I learned that outside of the industry because I was a little bit more fearful to try new things and to be creative because I felt like I had to be perfect. You go in and out of that mindset throughout your leadership journey, but a little bit of grace to understand and to be creative I think would go a long way. And for us to understand that, we can talk about the hard things 'cause it is hard, it's wonderful, but we have moments where it's very hard and difficult. And if we cannot get that out to somebody who understands, then it just stays in. And that's not necessarily the healthiest thing for a leader. 

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Josh 18:17 

This is such a great conversation. And Lucas, I hope you're taking notes on this buddy. This was a nice way to break it to you, Erin. I appreciate you giving this lecture. This was actually just for Lucas. Lucas, you're going in communities all the time seeing all types of organizational structures and community types. How relevant does this seem to you? 

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Lucas 18:39 

Very relevant. We know that senior living is the most complicated business industry that anybody could work in, and I feel like the executive director role is literally, I mean, there's not enough money on the planet. You could pay me to be the executive director. It is extremely complicated. Everybody wants something from you at every moment, 365, and that's a very, very difficult role. I'm in awe of the executive directors and administrators in this industry and just the gravity and the weight that they have and the responsibility that they have. And so I think these types of conversations, like what Erin is bringing to the forefront is really, really important. And you're right, I feel like that this was for me too. Anybody that's in a service-based business, these are great takeaways and I think it's a great conversation. I think that this is a conversation that needs to continue and I know that we're going to do that for the people that want to connect with Erin. We're going to put this in the show notes and I'd like to continue the conversation on LinkedIn. I can't wait for, for this to come out and, and see the comments that are out there. And for people that want more of this type of content, make sure that they connect with Erin and her podcast as well. Erin, any final words of encouragement? 

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Erin 19:51 

I think that we can do anything we put our minds to it. You understand as a leader that leadership is about principles and not circumstances. It's very easy to change course based on a circumstance, but if you really view leadership as being influenced and you are committed to your vision, stick to the principles that are going to make your vision come true. I think that you can run a community like a football team. You really can. If you think about a football team, there's many different people from many different backgrounds on that team, and the coach is responsible for making them a team. And that's with clear vision, understanding their roles, and a lot of motivation. And so my goal is just to inspire people to aspire for more. And that's what a head football coach does. We can talk about Coach Pat, right? And what she did. I went to her basketball camp, so I know, I mean, she was disciplined. She knew what she wanted and she loved her people and you knew what to expect with her because she, she stuck to her vision. And we can do that as leaders if we keep that mindset and we're changing lives and it's worth it. 

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Josh 20:58 

Well, this is what we all needed today. Erin, thank you so much, Lucas. We're feeling charged up. Ready to go, right? 

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Lucas 21:05 

I'm ready to go out. Change the world, 

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Erin 21:07 

That's right. Let's do it. One person at a time. 

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Lucas 21:10 

Awesome conversation. Great to hear that from both of you. I got a lot out of it and I know our listeners did go to btgvoice.com, connect with us, listen to our content there. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap. 

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21:23 

Thanks for listening to Bridge The Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.