Keep Your Team and Patients Motivated With These Toddler-Inspired Tips

A few weeks ago, Marah and I took Bennett to the Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh. It’s one of his all-time favorite places because there is so much to do! He spent the day toddling back and forth as fast as he could, stopping in at the tool section filled with tiny hammers and screwdrivers, the miniature “bank” with a real teller window, and the “farm” stocked with animals.

His eyes really lit up at one of the high-tech exhibits where he colored in a picture of a car, wrote his name on it, and scanned it into a machine. As soon as the machine swallowed the paper, the car appeared on two massive, 15-foot-tall screens! You should have seen the way Bennett’s jaw dropped when he saw “his” car driving around in front of him.

It was fascinating for me to watch Bennett play and see the way his brain processes things. He’s a smart little guy. On the “farm,” he found scoops that looked exactly like the dog food scoops we have at home. Right away, he made the connection. He started using the scoop to feed the cows, pigs, and horses! I was amazed how quickly he picked that up.

I was also struck by just how resilient kids are. So many people fall in life and never get back up, but tiny humans like Bennett are constantly falling, and 99% of the time they bounce back with just as much enthusiasm as they had before. Watching dozens of toddlers scramble around the museum like tiny pinballs, I kept asking myself, “How can adults tap into that kind of motivation?”

I picked up a couple of tips from the toddlers that I’ve been using to encourage my staff, and you can try them, too! If it feels hard to keep your team excited about their work or your patients invested in their recoveries, give these ideas a go.

1. TAKE MOVEMENT BREAKS. Ask your team to take breaks and move their bodies every 30–45 minutes during the work day. They can do a couple of jumping jacks, stretch, or go for a walk — whatever feels good. Moving helps our brains refocus and boosts our mood.
2. KICK MULTITASKING TO THE CURB. Studies have proven that multitasking doesn’t really work. When you try to do two things at once, you end up doing them both poorly and getting stressed out in the process! With this in mind, ask your patients and team to give whatever they’re working on 100% of their focus. They’ll do a better job, get better results, and gain the confidence to keep going.
3. CELEBRATE SMALL WINS. You know how excited a toddler gets when you high-five them after they complete a task? Bring that same energy into your office. Every employee success and patient milestone deserves to be celebrated. The more you cheer someone on today, the more excited they’ll be to put in the effort tomorrow.
4. TAKE TIME TO LISTEN. We all want to be heard, and if you take time to listen, you’ll learn a lot about your team and patients. Maybe there’s something holding them back that you’d never have noticed. Once you spot those barriers, you can remove them and move forward.
5. INJECT FUN INTO WORK. This can be as simple as sharing a daily pun or coming up with a silly office mascot. At Chiro1Source, we do a little activity during our morning meeting. Every day, someone picks a famous quote and we all have to guess who said it! We inevitably end up laughing, and the mental exercise gets our brains going.

If you try one of these kid-inspired strategies, let me know how it goes. They definitely work in our office!

-Josh Walker