Greenwich Study Club
All-team meeting, November, 2010
Full day topic: Managing the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
Greetings, GSC meeting attendees!
It was a pleasure being with you for the November meeting. I found your group to be highly motivated and it was one of those very special meetings I'll long remember. Your acitve involvement made for a very dynamic day. I was especially impressed with the work that was accomplished within your teams. It's that team involvement that makes the topic so significant when you return to your offices. Here is support material to help keep you and your team on target:
Conflict Norming formIn our meeting we discussed the importance of conflict norming. If you need a copy of the form you may access it at this link . If you had a number of team members who were not at the meeting, I encourage you to repeat this exercise with the entire group. Have each team member of INDEPENDENTLY AND WITHOUT DISCUSSION write down his/her personal perspectives. Once everyone has completed the form, a group discussion should occur. In this group discussion it is important that every team member contribute his/her written comments. A master sheet may then be developed. The master sheet can be printed, disseminated to each team member. Post a copy in the break/lunch room. Once the criteria for "Norms" has been developed, each team member is responsible to abide by the criteria and is accountable to the rest of the team for this behavior.
Assertive Communication Form
Here is the format I suggested that you use when you must have a challenging conversation with a team mate (or someone in your personal life!) I encourage you to print this out and use it as a guideline. This approach is particularly helpful when you are requesting that another person make a change in attitude or behavior. AN IMPORTANT POINT HERE: Because you make this request, it's important to recognize that the other person will determine if change actually takes place! You can't force change, so it's important that your approach shows the advantage of the change to the other person ... the change will benefit YOU AND THEM!
Financial discussions with patients
We discussed at length the challenging issues that you face with patients on financial discussions. I mentioned an article that I hope will be helpful to you. I encourage you to share this with every team member who even peripherally discusses fees with patients. Here is a link to the article.
VERY IMPORTANT: based on the special challenges that you and your team face for your area, I strongly believe that a discussion must occur with your team about fees and patient perceptions of fee integrity. If team feel or show any questionable behavior or uncertainty about fees, you can be sure that this uncertainty is unwittingly relayed to patients. This uncertainty can unintentionally undermine you.
The power of office role plays
Role plays among team members are a great way to continue applying learned concepts. Just as you did some role playing in your team sessions at our meeting, I encourage you to continue this practice in the office. I encourage you to plan some lunchtime sessions of role plays on the following topics:
Fee discussions with patients
Conflict-management discussions (REMINDER: "real life" conflict discussions should be managed at the same level that they occur, rather than escalating the discussion unnecessarily)
Articles and Newsletter
To access many of the practice management articles I've written click here.
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Let me know how you're doing!
I'm very interested in the progress you're making with your team. I'm also interested in knowing if you've experienced any roadblocks in your journey that we started in our meeting. You may contact me through the form below or you may
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