Health Care Leadership Lessons

Chapters 10 and 11 focus on health care, but in many ways the lessons in these two chapters can be transferred to any industry. What are the key lessons in these two chapters and how might you use them in your career?

While reading Chapters 10 and 11, I thought exactly what the prompt addresses, many of the aspects, techniques, and tools that are addressed would be just as valuable in my organization as they would be in healthcare. I found the same thing to be a part of my thoughts when I read about leading virtual teams in the previous chapters. I thought that the leadership techniques in Chapters 8 and 9 could be used to address challenges in any workteam, not limited to just virtual work groups. 

Almeida et al. (2013) write, citing several studies, that "medical databases consistently identified ineffective communication among medical teams as a leading cause of preventable medical errors and patient harm throughout the health care system" (p. 300). I know from having worked for years in our industry of construction and safety in the energy industry that our own databases find the same challenge of communication leading to accidents, injury, and harmful or environmental releases. 

Communication, I often tell my managers and supervisors, is the key to overcoming almost every challenge in our project development and delivery. Poor communication leads to problems and difficulties. Good communication leads to smoother operations. Lencioni (2002) discusses trust and the opportunity to speak openly and have conflict within executive teams. Without trust, without there is no conflict, without the conflict, there is no opportunity to speak openly and communicate. As Covey (2008) writes "low trust slows everything—every decision, every communication, and every relationship” (p. 1).

Additionally, Almeida et al. (2013) write that "establishing a history of failed initiatives gives rise to the dynamic "if we like low long enough, this too shall pass," and typically, pass they do. Enough of these failed initiatives can lead an organization to its destruction" (p. 309). This too is general enough to be applied to any industry. We've seen that in many instances where initiatives are left to crumble into dust and are not picked up again. 

Finally, Lyubovnikova and West (2013) bring up a framework of their own that can be applied to any team, regardless of industry. They discuss that the three aspects that should be followed are "skill differentiation, temporaral stability, and authority differentiation" (p. 334). All of these are techniques and tools that can be used, in my opinion, to help any organization regardless of industry. Having them generated via a study on healthcare shows that the healthcare industry has a leading effort to improve their processes, and proves out how it can best be used. But any leader should take these and apply them to their own industry as well. 

References

Almeida, S. A., King, H., Salisbury, M. L. (2013) Teamwork improvement in health care: A decade of lessons learned every organization should know. In E. Salas, G. Latham, D. J. Cohen, & S. I. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Developing and enhancing teamwork in organizations: Evidence-based best practices and Guidelines (pp. 331 - 372). essay, Jossey-Bass.

Covey, S. (2008). Speed of trust: The one thing that changes everything. Simon & Schuster.

Lencioni, P. M. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. Jossey-Bass.

Lyubovnikova, J., West, M. A. (2013) Why teamwork matter: Enabling health care team effectiveness for the delivery of high-quality patient care. In E. Salas, G. Latham, D. J. Cohen, & S. I. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Developing and enhancing teamwork in organizations: Evidence-based best practices and Guidelines (pp. 298 - 330). essay, Jossey-Bass.