“I feel like I met my staff for the first time today.”

That’s what a PT owner I’ve been working with said to me last week. She’d been struggling for months—years, really—with inconsistent, disappointing performance in her staff and a high turnover rate. She was constantly having to hire someone—a new front desk admin, another PT aide, a different clinician.

This clinic owner and her staff had a pretty chilly, adversarial relationship. There wasn’t much trust in place, and with people constantly coming in and then quitting (or being fired), there often wasn’t really a chance to establish strong connections.

What turned things around?

This PT owner stopped buying into the myth of the “terrible employee.” If you’re blaming lack of results in your business on your staff, there’s an overwhelmingly high chance you’re wrong.

That’s not my assessment: that’s the conclusion reached by pioneering management expert W. Edwards Deming, who spent decades researching and investigating quality, productivity and competitive success in individuals and organizations.

Here’s how you bust this destructive myth—just like my client did—with some performance-boosting steps…