Most leaders are drowning in buttermilk and calling it cream.
Here’s what I mean.
In Environmental Services, we support everyone. Every patient room. Every hallway. Every discharge, every isolation, every terminal clean. We show up for all of it, and we should. That’s the job.
But leadership energy is not the same as cleaning coverage. You can’t spread it equally across every person on your team and expect it to produce results. When you try, you end up with a department that runs but never grows.
The buttermilk problem in EVS leadership looks like this: a supervisor spends the same amount of time and attention on the employee who does the minimum as on the one who quietly exceeds expectations every single day. The one who asks the right questions. Who comes in early when the floor is short. Who takes feedback on Tuesday and comes back Thursday doing it better. Who watches how things work and wonders how to make them work better.
That person is cream. And most of the time, we’re too busy managing the buttermilk to notice.
I’ve been thinking about how to talk to my supervisors about this. Not about giving up on anyone. We serve every patient, every room, every shift. But mentoring is different from managing. Managing is the floor. Mentoring is the future.
The question I want my supervisors asking is simple: who on my team is hungry?
Not hungry for praise. Hungry for the work. Hungry to understand why we do things the way we do. Hungry to be better next week than they were this week.
Find that person. Pour into them. Give them the harder assignment, the honest feedback, the real conversation about where they could go. That’s where your mentoring energy belongs. Not spread thin across everyone, but concentrated where it will actually rise.
The cream is already there. You don’t create it. You find it, protect it, and give it room.
#EVSLeadership #HealthcareLeadership #Mentorship #EnvironmentalServices #Leadership