Former nurse explains powers of being positive
Podcast Episode
Kyle Geissler talks with Janesville Gazette reporter Frank Schultz about changes Janesville teachers will notice from an effort to improve results and increase satisfaction in the school district.
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Janesville School District employees crowded into the Craig High School auditorium for their annual meeting. This year's keynote speaker was Liz Jazwiecz of the Studer Group, a consulting organization working with the district.
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Liz Jazwiecz of the Studer Group addresses the employees of the Janesville School District during their annual back-to-school meeting at Craig High School on Tuesday. The Studer group is a consultant organization working with the district.
JANESVILLE — Liz Jazwiec is a tough, no-nonsense survivor of an emergency room in one of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods.
She's also a hoot.
Jazwiec had 1,400 members of the Janesville School District's staff laughing almost nonstop for an hour Tuesday morning.
For the first 18 years of her career, she told the 1,400 school employees, customer service was not on her radar screen.
Her attitude in the ER: "I'm here to save your ass, not kiss it."
Yeah, Jazwiec still talks like the battle-hardened chief nurse of the South Side ER.
Imagine her response to a hospital administrator who told her that customer service in the ER could be just like it is at Disney World.
But Jazwiec is no longer a jaded, snarly employee. She's born again, converted to the opinion that:
-- She, not the boss, is responsible for her own morale.
-- Being nice to people turns the workplace into a place where you want to work.
-- Being positive is a life-transforming experience.
-- Negative co-workers should be told to "shut up and eat a cookie."
Preferably, one of those big sugar cookies with smiley faces on them.
Jazwiec's attitude adjustment was forced on her by her bosses. One of them was Quint Studer, who had come to Holy Cross Hospital from Janesville's Mercy Hospital in the early 1990s.
Today, Studer is the boss of his own consulting company. Studer Group is credited with turning hospitals across the country into more productive, more customer-oriented, more positive places to work.
Studer is donating his company's services—including motivational speaker Jazwiec—to the Janesville School District. The hope is that Studer's prescriptions for making good organizations better will work in public education.
School officials are saying that if this works, Janesville would become a national model.
But it's early in the process. A few of the Studer principles started to worm their way into the district last spring. Much more is in store this year.
Jazwiec's task was to warm the staff to all the changes.
Jazwiec was a hard case, resisting every effort of her bosses to get her to improve customer service. Holy Cross Hospital's customer satisfaction rating was in the fifth percentile in 1991. That means 95 percent of hospitals did a better job of satisfying patients.
Jazwiec didn't care. She had a lot of excuses. How do you satisfy drug dealers who are thrown out of cars, bleeding, at the ER doorstep? How do you satisfy homeless people? Drug addicts?
She knew her staff worked hard under difficult conditions. She couldn't bring herself to ask her staff to do one more thing—be nice to people. She saw management as the problem. Management nearly fired her. Twice.
Jazwiec eventually was won over, and Holy Cross's satisfaction index exceeded the 90th percentile in one year.
Hospital officials came from far and wide—although notably not from Chicago—to see how they did it.
Jazwiec's ER was the last department to come around. What did the trick was enforced niceness. Staff members were not pleased, but they found that people responded better to insincere kindness than to snarly and mean.
They also found that taking responsibility rather than blaming everybody else, made the job more rewarding, not more difficult, Jazwiec said.
Find ways to have fun at work, Jazwiec recommended. Even if it's just bringing in a plate of cookies.
The nearly full Craig auditorium gave Jazwiec a standing ovation.
WHAT'S NEXT
Janesville School District employees will learn a new vocabulary and new ways of relating to their jobs this year as a result of the adoption of the Studer Group process. The idea is to improve results while increasing job satisfaction. Among the new concepts:
-- Rounding—Supervisors meet with staff members regularly, asking specific questions, such as what is going well, what is needed to do a better job and who should be commended for good work.
-- Managing up—Employees should tell their superiors about great performances on the job and what they need to improve performance.
-- Surveys—Staff and parents are asked what they think about the job their school is doing. Employees are asked to rate their superiors. Superintendent Tom Evert was the first to go through this process. He pledged Tuesday to heed the evaluations of district employees and to work hard to improve.
-- Pillars—The categories in which the district strives to improve. The district's pillars are service, quality, people, finance, growth and health & safety.
-- Leadership evaluation—Managers are evaluated based on data, including survey results and the extent to which they improve the pillars.
To learn more about Studer Group ideas, go to www.studergroup.com.
Sep 3, 2008 at 4:49 p.m.
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lizajane:Oh, I hear you on the co workers! UGH! I don't tolerate backstabbing and just plain nastiness from my staff. I had a nursing student last summer and she was terrified because of how she was treated at first. It was totally uncalled for. Staff and I had a discussion and the rest of her summer went quite well. They actually found that they liked her despite her new nurse/student status. So much good energy wasted on sheer meanness.
Sep 2, 2008 at 10:32 a.m.
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Wiskitty- not only was Liz talking about the patients, she was talking about the co-workers. Thank goodness for the patients. As a nurse, I can't believe the way we treat each other. If it weren't for the patients, I would be in a different profession. Nurses "eating their young" is the understated truth of the century. I wish management here would tell the growly staff to 'shut up and eat a cookie', and possibly take their own advice.
Aug 30, 2008 at 7:23 p.m.
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garyprimer: I have been to San Francisco and they do some odd things there, but that was back in the late 1970's, long before they sold
Snake oil,"in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1989."
Those 1980's were some crazy years. *LOL* just kidding.
Aug 30, 2008 at 12:54 p.m.
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The composition of snake oil medicines varies markedly between products.
Snake oil sold in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1989 was found to contain:
* 75% unidentified carrier material, including camphor
* 25% oil from Chinese water snakes, itself consisting of:
o 20% eicosapentaenic acid (EPA) - an omega 3 derivative
o 48% myristic acid (14:0)
o 10% stearic acid (18:0)
o 14% oleic acid (18:1ω9)
o 7% linoleic acid (18:2ω6) plus arachidonic acid (20:4ω6)
Aug 30, 2008 at 12:17 p.m.
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I wish I could have been at this event. As a RN I couldn't agree with her more about the power of being positive. I learned a long time ago to leave the negative and any bias at the door. I also learned that no matter who I am treating and what they have done, they are still a human being with a story under it all. I don't have to agree with or even accept their behaviors/actions, but I can usually find what makes them tick and see what has led them down the path they chose. It's not an excuse, just a reason. I have also been able to then gently encourage a change of path. Since they don't get that from anyone very often, they are sometimes very thankful and actually want to try to do something positive. I was taught in nursing school that every human being has some intrinsic worth...somewhere inside them. The insight I have learned has helpe me to help many people, even if it was nothing more than a smile and a touch that they needed. As nurse4u said,"You catch more bees with honey than vinegar." That is absolutely true! It is amazing when you are kind to people and watch them bloom, especially those that aren't usually shown kindness.
Aug 29, 2008 at 6:01 p.m.
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Liz was absolutely amazing to watch. We all laughed so much. There is so much I will take from her speech. I strongly encourage anyone, if given the chance, to see her. I'd also like to thank the Studer Group for paying her fee to come to Janesville.
Aug 29, 2008 at 3:17 p.m.
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I can't wait for the day when I can tell a co-worker: "shut up and eat your cookie"
Aug 28, 2008 at 11:58 p.m.
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I wish I could have been there at the speech!
"You catch more bees with honey than vinegar."
Aug 28, 2008 at 9:39 p.m.
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Evansvillehousewife: Good post. I agree with you. “A smart woman with attitude, spine, and the ability to get things done is always refreshing. NO FEAR!”
I would like to add to your comment that she has also shown that she has the ability to get her message out in a serious way while still being humorous. That makes people remember the message because it shows respect and doesn’t make people feel like they are being talked down to.
Way to go Ms. Jazwiec
Aug 28, 2008 at 8:14 p.m.
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This is my 14th opening day speaker as a teacher. This is the first speach I would recommend to anyone to watch. She was fabulous, and I laughed and learned so much I had to put away the paperwork I was trying to get through. I loved it, to bad we had to go from that great speach into a DVD on blood born illness, and how to read a crisis management folder I couldn't find for $100.
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If you get a chance to watch Liz, do it. Skip the other dvd.
Aug 28, 2008 at 6:18 p.m.
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oops - needS
Aug 28, 2008 at 6:17 p.m.
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Thanks Liz - regardless of how much money a student's family makes, every kid need an "atta boy" now and then.
Aug 28, 2008 at 5:02 p.m.
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I hear that she is a hoot.
Aug 28, 2008 at 4:48 p.m.
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SarahB, you are too right. I encourage you to watch Liz's speech on the community channel (I forget where it is on Charter's lineup, it's the school district channel) if you can next week. She would agree with you 100% that all it takes to make a patient happy (homeless, addict, or otherwise) is to treat them with kindness and respect (and of course to give them quality medical care!).
Aug 28, 2008 at 3:40 p.m.
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Sounds like a nice talk. However, addicts and homeless people are the easiest patients to satisfy. You treat them with respect and give them a sense of hope that life can get better. The majority of people treat those with addictions and the homeless as if they are garbage ... and that is just not right.
Aug 28, 2008 at 3:36 p.m.
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Liz was just an amazing speaker. It was just fantastic!
Aug 28, 2008 at 10:48 a.m.
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You're the best, Jazwiec. A smart woman with attitude, spine, and the ability to get things done is always refreshing. NO FEAR!
Aug 28, 2008 at 10:14 a.m.
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Thank you, Liz and Quint. Liz's message was loud and clear, and yet the entire audience was laughing out loud. What a great way to start out the new school year!
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