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Transcriptforweek3Discussion.pdf

Working with Individuals

Working with Individuals Program Transcript

NARRATOR: To elicit the best in others and maximize their own potential, health care leaders must recognize the values and motivations that drive human behavior, and understand how those may vary from person to person across an organization.

CECILIA K. WOODEN: So when we come to an organization, when we're working with other people, we need to be aware that our behavior is exemplary of our values.

NARRATOR: In this program, Dr. Cecelia Wooden discusses the alignment between one's personal values and the values of an organization. Dr. Louis Rubino and Dr. Brenda Freshman explain the importance of promoting emotional intelligence in health care organizations.

BRENDA FRESHMAN: When you're aware of your emotional intelligence skill sets, you can begin to make choices to enhance relationships rather than destroy them.

CECILIA K. WOODEN: Values are very important in a couple ways. Number one, they not only guide your behavior, but as a leader or in the workplace, they are also going to contribute or detract from your success or the success of the people that you work with. So continually being aware of what your values are is an important part about being a good leader.

And I would submit that an individual who is happy at work, who feels fulfilled at work, is an individual whose personal values match the values of the organization. Let's imagine that you're confident and comfortable in knowing what your own values are, and yet you find in your workplace that there's a disconnect, or there's a gap between the values that you hold near and dear and the values that either organization holds near and dear or manifests.

And an example of this might be, I went into nursing because of a deep need to care for people. The more time I can just spend talking with a patient, standing by the bedside, the more familiar the patient is with me. And the more we develop an understanding of each other, the more confident she's going to be in the care she or he is getting, and the outcomes are going to be much better.

However, in our organization because we are so short staffed, and the organization does not want to close beds down, does not want to close a unit down, I'm having to work double shifts. I can't spend enough bedside time with my patients because of the technology requirements that I'm struggling with trying to learn. I'm only spending 28% of my nursing day in contact with a patient. That will cause a great disconcert with me and a great disconnect.

Working with Individuals

So the question is, what do I do about it? What can I do about it? Well, at the most elemental level, a good clinician will go to her supervisor immediately and say, I know we're required to do double shifts because of short staffing. Or I know we're having to engage in X, Y, and Z behavior because of financial reasons. It's affecting my ability to give quality patient care.

And here's an important lesson for a leader. You may not be able to change the circumstances, but if you can explain to someone why these circumstances exist, that can often help someone be willing to stretch themselves a little longer, or hold out a little bit longer, or deliver the best they can a little bit longer.

When people are learning a new skill, or they're endeavoring a new task, there is the need to put some deposits in their emotional bank account. And those deposits are small successes that they can experience along the way because you've built baby steps in.

And when the going gets tough, those incremental successes, those deposits in the emotional bank account are going to be there to give them the courage when the going gets tough, and the tasks get a little harder, or the demands get a little higher.

BRENDA FRESHMAN: Emotional intelligence is a set of competencies of how people think and act when working in organizations. Five common dimensions of emotional intelligence popularized by Daniel Goleman his 1995 book are self- awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, social awareness, and social skills or social empathy.

So if we refer to our system stakeholder model, the first three self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation, are skills on the intrapersonal level. Those are about my relationship with myself. And the next two, social awareness and social empathy or social skills, are on the intrapersonal small group, large group level. So they branch out a little bit more.

Why it's important to understand these skills is, every time you speak to an individual or work in a group, you have the opportunity to either enhance or damage the relationship.

LOUIS RUBINO: Emotional the intelligence is recognizing yourself and how you're feeling, and how you conduct yourselves in order to be able to use that to make sure your leadership qualities are being utilized to the maximum. But it's also recognizing other people and how they are dealing with these issues, and how they relate to different people and to their skills.

At the hospital where I serve on the board, it's important for us to recognize emotional intelligence and the impact it can have on our patient safety. We start each of our meetings on our quality and patient safety subcommittee of the board

Working with Individuals

with a story of harm in order to understand that bad things could happen in good organizations, and to put it in front of us as a motivating feature in order to guide us for our future work.

An emotionally intelligent leader recognizes that mistakes do happen. And we need to admit to those mistakes, but then learn from them, and look at systems improvements so that those types of mistakes will not happen again. In emotional intelligence where we have different dimensions that we can focus on, there's ways of doing assessments.

You could do it through your own personal assessments, or you could ask other people in how you are in particular areas. And then there's different ways of utilizing a professional development training plan in order to get you more up on the particular dimension that you might be considered weak in.

For example, just even journal writing or reflecting, taking time to reflect, will increase your self-assessment types of skills. On regulation, reviewing the current regulations and examining your values and your organization values, and see if they are congruent or if they conflict, is a way of touching base on self- regulation.

Each of these different dimensions that you could do practical things, and then bring back to yourself as to what can I use as part of my training plan in order to develop that dimension on a higher level?

BRENDA FRESHMAN: I think a common perception is that the EI skills, emotional intelligence skills, are the softer skills, they're the people skills. And one of the challenges in adoption is there isn't buy-in from the leadership or the employees if they're thinking those skills aren't valuable.

Personally, when individuals don't see the value-- and this could be a leader or employee-- the biggest source of resistance I've seen is an individual's defense mechanism, where they're afraid to learn about themself. An individual has to have a desire to want to understand themself and change their behavior. An organization has to have the leadership and allocate the support and resources to undergo a culture change.

So how does that occur for individuals? Anything that helps an individual focus and tune into themself can develop the intrapersonal skills of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation.

Now, what an organization can do to support that is to provide coaching and counseling. A 360 degree assessment process is a common way, very popular and valuable if done correctly, that can enhance the EI skills in the individual in the organization if it's done with a lot of people at once.

Working with Individuals

So what that involves is each individual in the organization or group that is involved in the 360 will take a self-assessment on various communication skills and their self-awareness. And then also their colleagues and co-workers will take that same assessment evaluating that one individual. Their supervisor will take the same assessment evaluating that individual. The direct reports will evaluate the individual. Hence the name 360.

What happens then is a report is generated where all these different groups or stakeholders give their perspective on that one individual employee. So the employee is able to get a broader perspective of how they're seen and working in the organization.

What happens next is where the rubber meets the road, because then a coaching session or group of sessions is arranged to help that individual identify areas of development, create a development plan, and then continued coaching is usually provided for a certain period of time to help that person rehabitualize and develop that new skill.

And then you're talking about culture change, which is more challenging and broad. But usually, again, starts with the awareness, then there's a needs assessment of why do we need this, what departments need it, what are the issues here?

Then you create some kind of intervention, organization development process, that speaks to those learning objectives and goals. Then you implement it, you evaluate it, you learn from the feedback, and institutionalize what works.

LOUIS RUBINO: The future of health care is all about change and trying to adapt to the environment. Emotional intelligence allows us to adapt better, to recognize that change happens, and change is good, and can be good if we embrace it and that we learn from it.

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Working with Individuals

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