Saturday, 23 February 2019: 8:30 AM-9:15 AM
Summary
Strong evidence exists that high-quality teamwork can be learned and will lead to better outcomes. This session will provide concrete, evidence-based strategies for successful team leadership and participation.
Strong evidence exists that high-quality teamwork can be learned and will lead to better outcomes. This session will provide concrete, evidence-based strategies for successful team leadership and participation.
Abstract
Healthy work environments require collaborative work in teams. Global leaders rank collaboration as the #1 trait they look for in employees, with 75% calling it a critical skill. Collaboration is one of the top leadership skills that was not needed a decade ago but is now essential. Successful teamwork requires workplace leaders with the skills to manage or be part of collaborative teams. There is a science of teams and evidence-based strategies for better teamwork can be learned. In this session, evidence-based characteristics of effective teams will be briefly summarized: High-functioning teams learn more and faster than individuals, foster creativity, tend toward speed and innovation, are able to address complex problems, and are more successful in challenging environments. Patterns of communication on teams are the strongest predictor of team productivity, regardless of the team or goal. Communication is equal to intelligence, personality, skill, substance of discussion combined. In successful teams, everyone talks/listens equally; team members connect with members; members carry on back-channel or side conversations; and members periodically go outside the team and bring in new information. Following an overview of the evidence, concrete strategies for successful team leadership and participation in the workplace will be presented and discussed. One of the main challenges for successful teamwork is social distance. Social distance applies when working cross-practice sites, -practice specialties, -professions, -countries, and socio-demographic groups. Strategies for leading successful workplace teams and reducing social distance include: being the leader without expertise and working with people with expertise different than one's own; prioritizing building trust quickly within the team; modeling strong communication and balanced participation in the team; having difficult conversations and dealing with conflict proactively and well; and using technology, including email, in-person and video-meetings to improve communication within the team. The strategies will build on the session theme that healthy work environments require skill in successful team leadership and participation, and that this skill can be learned and applied.
Organizers: Beth Baldwin Tigges, PhD, RN, PNP, BC, College of Nursing, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Moderators: Juli Maxworthy, DNP, MBA, School of Nursing and Health Professions, University of San Francisco, Orinda, CA, USA
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