How to improve communication in your medical clinic

You can tell that a member of your staff is unhappy.  You ask them if there is any issue, but they are evasive.

After some hesitation, they say this…

“Don’t say anything, but…”

They share something about another member of the medical clinic but ask you not to say anything to them. 

Why do they do this?

They share something about another member of the medical clinic but ask you not to say anything to them. 

 

Why do they do this? 

 

They hate confrontation.  The very thought of dealing with confrontation keeps them awake at night.

 

But here’s the bigger problem.  They will paint a “façade of harmony” and pretend like everything is fine. 

 

What does this mean for you and your medical clinic?

 

Staff might avoid each other.

 

They might find an ally, and then talk about a person when they’re not around.

 

Perhaps start a WhatsApp thread to talk about someone.  Or have secret meetings in the bathroom or parking lot.

 

You may be thinking: “I can’t believe this would happen”… until it actually happens.  They you not only believe it, but you have to deal with it. 

 

What does this mean? 

 

Less productivity.

 

Items fall through the cracks.

 

Some “take a day” and call in sick.

 

Or worse.

 

They quit and now you have to bring another person into this situation.

 

Fret not, as there is a way to fix this, or prevent it from happening altogether…

1.Create a culture of open communication.  Check out the “path to open communication”. As the leader of your medical clinic team, you can start by being vulnerable with things that you need to improve upon and encourage others to be direct with their feedback to you. When others will see this, they will be more comfortable with doing it themselves.

2. Have a team retreat. Depending on where your team is at, you need to determine whether you want to do team: massage, physio, or yoga.  In other words, do you want to have a fun retreat with temporary results on pain (massage), a retreat that will help to alleviate pain (physio) or a retreat that will look to get rid of the pain altogether (yoga)?  Check out my video on my description of each of these workshops. You can certainly do this yourself. 

3. Have someone who is outside the clinic get to know the team, and then have them help to bring the team together. Teams that I have worked with like having someone like Human Scaffold around because we’re not part of the team, and we can see things objectively from the outside.

Which option would you choose?

Email me anytime if you’d like to chat to learn ways to help your medical clinic team.

Check out humanscaffold.com/blog where you can find more ideas to keep your medical clinic team running in tip-top shape!

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