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Recent Posts
- The Journey to Competence : Similarities of Surgical and Naval Aviator Training
- What the NFL Can Teach Us Physicians
- What I Learned at the Recent SEAK Non-clinical Careers for Physicians Course
- Mentoring Assistance for Physician Entrepreneurs
- A Glimpse Inside a Physician’s Life: Review of A Few Small Moments
Skill-Set Development
Team-Building, Negotiation, Conflict Resolution
What do we do about the widespread frustration that has engulfed our profession? Daugird and Spencer (Arch Family Practice, 34:497-501, 1996) identified eleven distinct losses that physicians face, including loss of:
- Financial security
- Status
- Independent clinical decision-making
- Collegiality
- Freedom of choice of specialty and practice location
- Power in hospital governance
We are swirling in a vortex of forces beyond our control, including cost-quality pressures, consumerism, aging demographics, and nursing and other healthcare professional shortages (Cohn KH, Peetz ME. Surgeon frustration: Contemporary problems, practical solutions. Contemporary Surgery. 2003;59(2):76-85).
Isolated, individual approaches are unlikely to improve our situation. We face leadership challenges that require us to learn new skills. Have you ever:
- Said something to someone, expecting them to do it at a certain time and in a certain way, only to find out later that the task was not completed in a timely fashion or was done differently from what you expected?
- Felt that you were outmaneuvered or even misled during a critical negotiation affecting your career?
- Sought to avoid a conflict-laden situation because you feared that dirty laundry might appear that you would like to remain private?
If you answered yes to any of the above, don’t you think that team-building, negotiation, and conflict resolution are important skills to develop?
Team-Building
A team is a small number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, performance, goals, and approach, for which they hold themselves mutually accountable (Katzenbach & Smith. The discipline of teams. Harvard Business Review. March-April 1993, 111-120).
- Common purpose creates a leveling effect, decreasing the importance of titles
- Leadership of a team tends to rotate based on expertise in a given area
- Leaders generate trust, provide direction, focus on meeting deadlines and achieving results, and inspire competitiveness and dedication
- Interdisciplinary teams are key to process improvement
If you would like to speak with Dr. Cohn to build high-performance teams that help you work smarter rather than harder, please click here.
Negotiation
Most physicians never learned about win-win negotiation in medical school, residency, or fellowship training. A common physician refrain is, “If I need to give something up, so does the hospital. That’s lose-lose negotiation.” In Getting to Yes, Fisher and Ury, who teach negotiation at Harvard to diplomats and Fortune 1000 businessmen, cite the following principles:
- Separate the people from the problem(s)
- Focus on interests, not positions
- Brainstorm to create new options
- Invite criticism of new options to build bonds
- Insist on using objective criteria
- Know the best alternative to a negotiated agreement
- Work to build rapport with the other side
If you would like to work with Dr. Cohn to improve your negotiation skills and results, and learn how to negotiate when people act irrationally, please click here.
Conflict Resolution
A physician said, “I would rather be up all night for an entire week than to sit in a room talking about what ‘we’ can do better.” Another confided, “I stink at confronting people. I avoid it every chance I get.”
Conflict:
- Represents a struggle between interdependent people where perceived incompatibilities arouse emotions
- Is predictable when people of different backgrounds need to work with one another in life-and-death situations and inevitable during periods of rapid, disruptive change
- Creates tensions which give rise to renewed energy and focus once group members resolve their conflict successfully
To confront someone safely requires:
- Maintaining respect for the other person
- Using contrasting to reassure him or her what is not going to happen, for example being fired
- Establishing mutual purpose, for example optimizing patient care
- Ending with a question to give the other person a chance to respond (Patterson K, Grenny J, McMillan R, Switzler A. 2005. Crucial Confrontations. New York: McGraw Hill).
If you would like to speak with Dr. Cohn for a 15- minute complimentary evaluation to improve your ability to resolve conflicts and confront suboptimal care, please click here.