Build Successful Teams in Healthcare

In many instances, healthcare management requires a team effort. But what exactly makes for an effective team? For Leonard Friedman, it’s all about having the right people at the table. So, depending on the organization or the task at hand, a good place to start is by ensuring you’ve considered various characteristics, such as the size and composition of the team, diversity, status differences, as well as team norms and cohesiveness.

Transcript

There are a number of characteristics of teams that are really important.

The first is size and composition. Think the question of course, is how many people should be on a team, how large, how small? There is some data that suggests that too small is not good, too large is not good. You need to figure out what is an ideal size and it depends on the organization and the task that needs to get accomplished. My own preference, if I’ve got a work team, they have a team of maybe between four, minimum of four, maximum of eight. Simply because you’re trying to get everybody scheduled, and you got a lot of busy people and getting them all to show up for a certain period of time on a regular basis, that could be a little tough. 

You also need to think about diversity: gender, ethnic, racial diversity, age diversity, I would also include talent diversity. And making sure that you have the right people at the table and not just people who are all trained alike and think alike and have the same set of values. You need to bring in a diverse group of people who can really add to the mix.

Navigate status differences

And how do you deal with status differences, particularly in healthcare, where you may have teams that have high-end subspecialty surgeons mixed in with lots of other people who are not, and there is at least potential for some important status differences that need to be acknowledged.

As the group leader, you need to come up with a way to make sure that those status differences are first acknowledged, and then you have a mechanism so that everyone can equally participate. We talked about psychological safety as a really important idea. This whole notion that if you don’t trust the people that are members of your team, to do the things that they have to do.

And that can be as simple as show up on time, to be fully present in the meeting. If they’re tasked with doing something that they do it, that they follow through, that these sorts of little things have to be part of the team culture. It’s part of getting your work done. 

Issues around group and team norms. How often do you meet, what sort of behaviors are we going to pass a baseball or make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak? What level is there cohesiveness built at?

 And is it sustained? 

How committed are people to the task? You cannot have individual team members checking out and allowing everybody else to participate. That’s what we call the free rider effect. And you ask yourself in terms of equity theory: “Why should I work really hard? Why should I give all of my time? When the person sitting next to me on this team does little or nothing. At least my perception is they do little or nothing. Yet they still get all the credit. It’s this whole idea of team effectiveness, it’s processes, it’s characteristics.

All of these things are critical elements in thinking about the team.