Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

David Kinnane

12 Days of Tips for Speech Pathologists in Private Practice: Day 12 – Increasing Productivity

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We can’t believe it!

It’s already Day 12 of our mini-Advent Calendar of tips and resources for speech pathologists in private practice! 

To round out the project, let’s consider our five favourite ‘laws’ of productivity and what they mean for us all:

  1. Gall’s Law: Complex systems built from scratch never work and can never be made to work. Complex systems that work invariably evolve from simple systems that worked.
  2. Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Being busy is not the same thing as being productive.
  3. Gate’s Law: Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year, and under-estimate what they can achieve in ten years.
  4. Yerkes-Dodson Law: Performance increases with physiological or mental arousal but only up to a point. When things because too stressful, performance drops off.
  5. Brandolini’s Law: It takes more energy to refute nonsense than to produce it, meaning the world is full of unrefuted nonsense! 

How can you apply these principles to your private practice? We thought you’d never ask!

  • Start simple. 
  • Choose realistic, long-term goals and avoid over-extending for short-term rewards.
  • Don’t chase too many goals at once. Focus on the main things that will make the biggest contribution to your professional mission.
  • Monitor stress, and stay healthy.
  • Despite bad press and gossip, private practices like ours, around the world, are committed to raising our standards and reputation.  

We hope you’ve found our posts inspiring and useful. If so, please:

  • let us know in the comments! 
  • subscribe to our free newsletter: the Banter BOOSTeR, packed full of additional tips and tricks for speech pathologists in private practice.

Thanks for following our post series.

We want to wish all of our followers, colleagues and friends a wonderful break, and a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

12 Days of Tips for Speech Pathologists in Private Practice: Day 11 – Crush Perfectionism

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Anne Lamott, one of our favourite authors, defines perfectionism as the “voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people”; and as a “mean, frozen form of idealism”.

She’s spot on.

Perfectionism seems like a strength – something to trumpet in your resume. But it’s a cop out, and a big problem in private practice.

As a profession, speech pathology attracts more than its fair share of perfectionists, and many of us try for too long to be all things and to please all people. 

Perfectionism:

  • makes excellent clinicians miserable and afraid to act when they need to;
  • ⬇︎ healthy risk-taking and innovation;
  • drowns the enthusiasm and energy of too many early careerists under waves of dread, guilt, anxiety and hopelessness; and 
  • ⬆︎ turnover and burnout.

Speech pathology is messy, complex, intense and emotional work. We’re all limited by our abilities, energy reserves and resources. We’re fallible because we’re human. 

The world is imperfect, and at times looks untidy, or even chaotic. But the messiness reflects complexity and diversity: it doesn’t mean things needs to be fixed or tidied up according to our own (biased) preferences. 

We must support our colleagues by:

  • calling out perfectionism when we see it;
  • focusing on colleagues as people, rather that nitpicking their day-to-day performance; and
  • normalising mistakes and limits, including owning up to our own.

Paraphrasing Lamott, we all make messes to find out who we are, why we’re here, and what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives.

For more tips on supervising staff in private practice – including supervising perfectionists, under-performers, and stars – check out our book: “How to Supervise Speech Pathologists Properly in Private Practice”    

Are you a bit of a perfectionist? What do you do to manage it? 

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

12 Days of Tips for Speech Pathologists in Private Practice: Day 10 – Communication Overhead

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One of the many lessons we learned from the pandemic was the benefit of keeping our structure flat and work teams as small as possible. 

Why?

“Communication overhead”: a term coined by Josh Kaufman in his classic book, The Personal MBA.

According to Kaufman, once a work group consists of eight or more people, each additional employee takes more investment in communication, that the employee adds in productivity.

Does that mean we should keep our practices lean and flat?

Yes. 

Does that mean you can never scale beyond 8 staff?

No.

But it does suggest that, as you get bigger you need to:

  • ⬆︎ your investment in communication; and
  • organise staff into sub-teams to reduce your communication overhead.

In our practice, supervisors supervise a maximum of four clinicians.

We use different channels for different purposes, including:

  • daily Zoom check-ins with any staff working remotely;
  • weekly team emails from management communicating important messages about safety, quality, resources, training, strategy, operations, projects, people, and systems;
  • weekly one-to-one structured supervision meetings with each speech pathologist;
  • weekly blogs published to our public website sharing new learning;
  • quarterly performance snapshots;
  • quarterly informal team catch-ups over meals;
  • annual competency reviews and training plans; and
  • ad hoc group chats for social discussions and to celebrate milestones, e.g. birthdays, promotions.

How – and how often – do you communicate with the rest of your team at work? Are we missing any good practices?

Let us know in the comments!

For more about supervision and communication, check out our book “How to Supervise Speech Pathologists Properly in Private Practice“.

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

12 Days of Tips for Speech Pathologists in Private Practice: Day 9 – Exhausted? Therapy Essentials – Free Refreshers for busy Speech Pathologists

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Most of us in private practice have a lot going on, including:

  • preparing sessions;
  • seeing clients;
  • writing reports;
  • collaborating with other health and education professionals;
  • advocating for clients;
  • attending meetings; and
  • reading and training.

On top of these jobs, private practice owners and managers must:

  • market services;
  • build systems;
  • manage teams; and
  • pay the bills!

With so much going on:

  • we can lose sight of the fundamentals of evidence-based therapy; and
  • our clinical knowledge can become stale.

Each year, we UPDATE and RECAP the basics of good:

  • speech therapy;
  • language therapy; and
  • reading intervention.

And we wanted to share the love!

Download our three FREE therapy essentials by clicking the link in our bio.

If you find our Essentials useful in your practice, please let us know in the comments!

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

12 Days of Tips for Speech Pathologists in Private Practice: Day 8 – Launch a New Practice

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Who’s planning to launch a brand new private practice in 2022? 

Exciting!

Many years ago, we wrote a free resource for speech pathologists thinking about starting ethical and profitable private practices. It’s still FREE:

From Launch to Waitlist in 12 months

It’s a quick read – designed to inspire and to prompt real world action – and covers the basics including:

  • common doubts (and how to overcome them);
  • how to make a profit while staying ethical;
  • how to stand out;
  • how to find and win clients; and
  • planning essentials for your big launch.

Our little ebook has been downloaded by hundreds of ambitious speech pathologists. So, if you’re thinking about going out on your own next year (or even 2023), check it out and let us know what you think!

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Check out our therapy and provider resources Go to our shop