[📍 Attn Office Managers] 6 Signs You Are Ready To Be A Director Of Operations

6 Signs You’re Ready To Be A Director Of Operations

Most practices will have an Office Manager and most of the time that Office Manager is promoted from within. The practice continues to grow, change, and make progress.

Until they don’t.

There comes a point when it feels like the practice has hit its glass ceiling and the OM feels the same. Where is upward mobility? Does the practice stay stagnant or do they break that ceiling and evolve and grow?

The practice hits this crossroad nearly as timely as the OM hit’s theirs. Coincidence?

No, and here are 6 signs that you are ready to be a DOO for your practice and break that glass ceiling.

Sign #1: You value responsibility and not the reward. 

When you perform tasks for the betterment of your practices’ processes and gains and not for the credit and recognition from your colleagues, that’s when you know you value responsibility and not the reward. It is not about boosting your ego, rather seeing yourself thinking about the moves of your practice moving forward.

And when you take more responsibility, you do more. This is a sign to the provider that you’re ready for that leadership role. You do your responsibilities head-on with a laser-like focus. It’s not all about being quick. It’s also because they value other factors which lead us to the next point.

Sign #2: Seeing the big picture and deciding when it’s needed.

A Director Of Operations is an executive role that entails the management of a larger purpose and vision. This means that you would oversee the whole practice in a continual forward progression and not just your role and your team—understanding that your work and decisions will affect the totality of where the practice is going...

At this point, you should’ve mastered the basics (if not, you should start now). Take the initiative to sit down with your provider and let them have the hot seat. What’s their big vision for the practice? What do they need as the Visionary to hold their role and let you step in yours?

At the end of the day, seeing things up top gives you the privilege to touchpoints for improvement, and you’ll only be credible at this when you know the intricacies of business management, high-level strategic planning, and operational efficiency.

Sign #3: Opening communication to be reached by your team.

Have you noticed that your team seeks you out? Whether it’s advice, a suggestion or idea, or help to problem solve? If you have paved communication into your culture and seek to have a collaborative team, you may find that you opened up more channels than what you may have started with. This means your team has high respect for you and is seeking the betterment of the practice at a collaborative level. If you are mindful in your tactics and you engage team members in decision making processes, although it will ultimately come down to the provider if you are not given this responsibility. This leadership style will continue to promote relationship building and make the team feel they matter and are part of the practice. 

Sign #4: You’re no longer a, “yes ma’am”

Have you found yourself starting to challenge ideas or changes because you see gaps in the steps? Or perhaps you understand the objective and start to reverse engineer the map to success? Well, you may be finding you no longer quick with that YES and finding you're becoming more of a strategic counterpart in the equation rather than the bottleneck. Of course, if you’re not there yet verbally it’s a dynamic boundary that’s actually limiting you. Start with, “yes, but first..” and slowly work to offer a different viewpoint or suggestion while keeping the respect factor in place as you and your provider work together to adjust the boundary blockage. 

Sign #5: You continue to hone people and their skills and talent

As you move up in leadership more people will come to you for mentorship. This means that you have enough experience to teach ways to be successful in your practice

Use this time to learn from them, too. Make it a two-way channel to improve each other in the process. Since you’ve been in their position, you know that building strong and goal-oriented teams require a leader who is in the same mindset. Especially when you start recruiting people as you build your own team, they rely on you to develop and nurture them for the practice. 

Be mindful that this is a talent that will continue to give back to the practice again and again. Don’t take this innate ability as anything less than wildly important and imperative to the practice growth and long-term success.

Sign #6: You’re being recognized as a leader.

And lastly, you’ve been considering upward mobility in your position. Even though you have a heavy workload, the quality of your work doesn’t suffer. You’ve been trusted with more work. Therefore, that means your provider is confident to trust you and the natural next step is an executive role in the company, too.

Don’t feel pressured if the day that you’ve been waiting for hasn’t come yet. Rather, take this as an initiative to step up your career ladder and put your best foot forward. Talk with your provider about furthering your support, service, and reliability to your partnership and getting trained and certified as a DOO.

For those interested in taking this conversation to the next step with their provider, I have attached The Providers DOO certification program outline.