Kate and Eddie at Worth Ethic have some great guidance on the need for healthy debate, that I believe is so important in healthcare. Especially in tough business/job climates peers often don’t want to been seen as throwing stones at a colleague who is struggling. It’s as if there’s an unspoken agreement that “I won’t criticize you if you don’t criticize me, especially in team meetings when our manager is present.” As a result, constructive and innovative solutions often aren’t explored, because the starting point of those discussions is to bring a problem more fully to light.
My experience is that some of the craziest comments have lead (after some discussion and processing) to really great solutions to the challenge at hand. My experience has also proven that great solutions to challenges are often delayed or never identified when the environment (set by the leaders) allows or even promotes a "stay out of my business" culture. Instead of teamwork, you get silos of work that doesn't benefit from collaboration and all of the knowledge and expertise assets being paid for by the hospital.
Katie and Eddie offer tips that can be used to increase healthy debate on your team.
· State your objective of creating a team that is more committed to healthy debate, confrontation and receptivity to constructive criticism by a peer.
· Starting with yourself, then going around the table so that each person speaks, answer these questions:
° What have I done in the past to shut down critical input?
° What will I do differently going forward to ensure an open and healthy debate about problems
· As a team, identify the chronic business issues which are not being adequately resolved.
· Brainstorm different people’s ideas about what process or approach might work to address each issue. To dig in deeply enough to get at root issues, it’s important that you get all ideas out before you jump in to evaluate and critique different approaches.
· Clarify commitments. Whoever has the lead responsibility for resolving a particular problem needs to say specifically which of the ideas will be used and what the process is of reporting back actions and improvements.
· Get in the habit of doing a modified version of this process, focused on current problems, at the beginning of every major staff meeting.
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