Git-R-Dun (Part 2)

In Part 1, we recognized that when under pressure, it’s easy to drift into “results first, people later,” even though your MVV says you care about both. The reality is, sustainable performance in an O&P practice comes from leaders who treat results and relationships as mutually supportive, not competing priorities. This post is about how to do that in your day to day leadership, management, and patient care. 

One helpful lens is how you see the people around you. The Eblin Group borrows from Martin Buber’s idea of “I-It” vs. “I-Thou” relationships—treating people as objects versus treating them as humans with inherent worth. In “IIt,” the clinician is a productivity number; the scheduler is a warm body, and the patient is an appointment slot. In “I-Thou,” each person is a partner in the mission, with ideas, limits, and potential. Same environment, wildly different outcomes. 

If you over emphasize the “I-It” relationship lens, you can get short-term results, but you pay for them with burnout, turnover, and distrust. Over emphasize the “I-Thou” relationship lens without accountability and you get the opposite problem—great vibe, inconsistent execution. The leaders who move the needle for their practices learn how to hold both: clear expectations, real accountability, and deep respect. They don’t soften standards; they humanize how those standards are set and lived. 

Let’s translate that into three concrete moves you can make over the next 30 days. 

1. Redesign “how we work” around people and performance 

Start by asking a simple question in your leadership team: “Does the way we operate reflect what our MVV says about people and results?” Then look hard at schedules, communication rhythms, and handoffs. For example, are visit templates, staffing patterns, and on call expectations set in a way that is realistic, or do they quietly say, “Just grind harder”? That’s not a software issue; that’s a leadership and design issue. 

High relationship, high results leaders involve their teams in improving the work itself. Instead of dictating changes from a conference room, they bring frontline clinicians, front desk staff, and billers into problem-solving conversations. They ask, “Where does our current process make it hard to do excellent work?” and then actually use the answers to simplify, clarify, or resequencing tasks. When people help shape the system, they’re far more likely to own the outcomes. 

2. Run meetings that build trust and move the needle 

Most practices default to one of two meeting modes: “all business” (metrics, deadlines, issues) or “all feelings” (venting and support with no follow-through). Neither is enough on its own. The sweet spot is a rhythm where you move cleanly between transactional and transformational conversations. 

Try this with your next recurring meeting: 

• Open with a quick relational check-in: one prompt like, “What’s one win and one challenge from this week?” 

• Move into clear, transactional work: visit volumes, wait times, cancellations, turnaround times, quality metrics—decisions, owners, timelines. 

• Close with a values based question: “Where did we see our mission or values lived—or violated—in how we operated this week?” 

You’re not turning every meeting into group therapy. You’re anchoring the numbers in truth. Over time, this pattern normalizes honest conversation about what’s working and what’s not, without shaming people. It builds psychological safety and sharpens execution. This approach reinforces your commitment to truth and gives your people the confidence to make decisions that align with the MVV.  And don’t forget, you are just as responsible for acting in accordance with the truth you telltell, and the staff should feel safe in calling you out in these meetings. 

3. Lead the nervous system of your practice 

There’s a physiological reality underneath all of this. The Eblin Group points to research like the Harvard Study of Adult Development: strong, healthy relationships are one of the clearest predictors of long-term health and wellbeing. In practice terms, that means the relational climate you create as a leader literally shapes the stress load your team is carrying. 

When people live in a state of chronic fight or flight—constant urgency, criticism, or ambiguity—their thinking narrows; empathy drops, and mistakes go up. When they experience high standards and high support, their nervous systems calm down enough for their best thinking and collaboration to show up. That’s when you see better clinical decisions, smoother handoffs, and fewer “I was just too overwhelmed” errors. 

You can’t eliminate pressure in healthcare, but you can decide how you show up inside it. Small shifts matter taking a breath before you respond, asking one more curious question instead of jumping straight to a directive, checking in with a team member after a hard patient interaction. These are micro moments of “I-Thou” leadership that compound over time into a culture where people feel safe enough to tell the truth, ask for help, and bring their best judgment to the work. 

30 day experiment for practice leaders 

If you want to move from insight to action, here’s a simple 30day challenge: 

• Plot yourself on the “results vs. relationships” grid. Be brutally honest: where do you naturally live? 

• Pick one upcoming meeting and redesign it using the check-in / metrics / values structure. Run that pattern for four weeks. 

• Choose one person each week for a purely transformational conversation—no agenda except to understand their perceptions and what “support with standards” would look like for them. 

None of this trashes your operational discipline, your tools, or your love of data. It actually makes all of them work better. You’re aligning the way you lead with the truth your MVV claims: that people and performance belong together. When that alignment shows up consistently in how you design work, conduct meetings, and regulate your own presence, you don’t have to sell your culture. Your team and your patients feel it. 

Come and see us at the booth 701 at the Academy next week!