Success in healthcare IT often hinges on effective teamwork. Yet, establishing clarity around roles and responsibilities within teams remains a common challenge. In this article we offer insights and exercises that can help you overcome this hurdle, ensuring your teams thrive from the start.
Unveiling Role Dynamics
Picture this: your organization has put in the hard work fine-tuning the project intake and selection (governance) processes and ensuring the portfolio roadmap balances resource capacity. Finally, there’s bandwidth to start on a new project aligned with the organization’s strategy. There is a sense of anticipation and excitement as the first project team meeting kicks off. Listening to the discussion, you're struck by the wealth of diverse talent, experiences, and strong personalities on the team. But as the meeting proceeds, the excitement gradually gives way to tension. Undercurrents of role ambiguity, conflict, and (mis)assumption are already surfacing, threatening to sabotage the group’s cohesion and its ability to effectively deliver.
Organizations form teams for many reasons; and often teams are comprised of various roles and have members with varying backgrounds and experience levels. These team members come with pre-established expectations and beliefs about what other members of the team could or should be doing. Consequently, roles and responsibilities are not always obvious – even within the most collaborative and experienced groups.
Lack of clarity regarding the formal and informal roles, responsibilities, and expectations of the individuals within a team will impede success and impact the progress of the team.
Proactively discussing and defining formal and informal roles avoids misunderstandings and fosters cohesion. Operational excellence in team role dynamics calls for establishing an environment supportive of role clarity discussion, transforming team dynamics to drive excellence in healthcare IT.
Crafting a Collaborative Environment
Effective teamwork isn't just about individuals doing their tasks; it's about alignment and synergy. Therefore, when creating a team, it is important to align roles with objectives. Understanding individual team member objectives as well as the broader team purpose and objectives prompts evaluation of experience levels and growth opportunities to determine team membership. This evaluation lays the groundwork for collaboration, fostering healthy, constructive conflict within the team’s dynamics.
When coming together as a team, role guidelines should be applied based on the following:
Individuals (each member’s experience, history, personality, etc.)
- Situation (the immediate and long-term team expectations and needs)
- Size (the number of people involved and impacted)
How will team members be engaging? Different expectations and dynamics exist depending on whether a team is coming together to support a long-term need, daily operations, or a temporary project engagement.
What roles are required, and can/will members support multiple roles? Team roles often differ from HR positions, and it is important to clarify for members what their role is on the team and the expected responsibilities.
Do the team roles or people serving in those roles have overlapping or similar responsibilities? This is common particularly when a team is dealing with ambiguous or complex topics. Rather than creating walls between members, use communication to manage anticipated role overlap and achieve greater team collaboration, perspective, and support.
What are the team members’ experience levels and how will they impact expectations for working together and role responsibilities? As employees gain experience and their capabilities mature, they are better equipped to shoulder additional responsibilities, fostering cross-team collaboration and adaptability. However, this progression may introduce challenges such as role ambiguity, confusion, and conflict. Conversely, newer employees may offer fresh perspectives and be more open to new possibilities.
Do team members want or need an opportunity to grow and learn? Teams can provide good opportunities for members to try new roles, expand their knowledge, and grow their capabilities and talent.
Once a team has formed, ensure continued collaboration and role clarity by utilizing appropriate tools.
Engaging Tools for Clarity
Role confusion doesn’t just occur when a team is initially formed, it often arises at the most critical moments when decisions and action are needed. There are several tools to help navigate the maze of roles and responsibilities and ensure members are comfortable speaking up before role conflict becomes destructive. Tools and exercises such as Team Role Discovery, Work Agreements, and RACI Templates empower teams to dissect roles, foster understanding, and delineate ownership. However, it is crucial to select the right tool based on the team dynamics and environment.
Navigating Role Dynamics:
Team Role Discovery is most useful for more experienced teams or positions, when work is often dynamic and ambiguous, roles have overlap, or when there is not always clear distinct lines of handoff or separation across teams or positions.
The Team Role Discovery exercise serves as a compass, guiding teams through the labyrinth of formal and informal roles. By articulating individual perceptions and expectations, teams gain clarity and coherence. This exercise isn't just about defining roles; it's about fostering open dialogue and mutual understanding, laying the groundwork for effective collaboration, and addressing situational needs unique to the team’s purpose and activities.
Use the Team Role Discovery exercise to increase role clarity and agreement, and to establish comfort discussing complex team dynamics.
Fostering Team Harmony:
Work Agreements are a cornerstone of collaboration, forging a pact of shared understanding and mutual respect. These agreements ensure the team shares responsibility in defining expectations for how they will function together, thus enhancing the team's self-organization process. This includes outlining preferred communication protocols, clarifying task responsibilities, and determining conflict resolution and escalation mechanisms.
Even informally outlined work agreements can minimize friction between teammates. Agreements give all members of the team a template for what is expected during their day-to-day work; creating a culture of accountability and cohesion, enabling teams to navigate challenges with grace.
Use Work Agreements when looking to clarify rules of behavior, increase individual accountability for team engagement, and reduce the possibility of team conflict.
Driving Accountability with RACI:
The RACI matrix can create lines of accountability and responsibilities delineating who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. RACIs are most useful when work is unambiguous and supports hand-offs from one team member to another, and for less experienced teams who are learning their positions and roles.
With countless tasks shared across teams and organizations, and a variety of overlapping, interdependent yet independent work and services, it is easy to lose clarity regarding task ownership. At times, multiple individuals may assume ownership of a task, while at other times, no one takes ownership. Therefore, it is recommended to use a RACI matrix to clarify responsibilities across standard and predictable tasks.
Use the RACIs matrix tool when there are questions, concerns, or conflicts regarding role responsibilities for pre-identified and known tasks within your team.
Breaking the Ice:
Navigating role discussions can be daunting – it is not unusual for individuals to be uncomfortable bringing up role clarity issues and discussing role responsibilities in a team setting.
By acknowledging and addressing emotional responses, teams can break down barriers and foster candid conversations and constructive dialogue.
Use ice-breaker exercises to help a team get comfortable being uncomfortable and better prepared to discuss this complex topic.
Empowering Healthcare IT and Informatics Teams
To deliver value and complete projects and changes on time within budget, role clarity isn't a luxury; it's a necessity. Pave the way for a collaborative team environment up front and encourage the use of tools and exercises to minimize friction and increase communication and productivity. By fostering role clarity, constructive dialogue, and accountability, you can enable and empower healthcare IT teams to succeed.
How MAKE Solutions Can Help
Effective and efficient teamwork is essential for successfully delivering healthcare IT. MAKE’s "Working Together: Roles and Responsibilities Exercise Guide" equips teams with the tools and insights needed to navigate the complexities of teamwork.
Our operational excellence consultants have been in your shoes and have decades of experience navigating role clarity challenges. Our experience and facilitation expertise can help you address role confusion within your organization and support these crucial conversations.
Access the free Resources on our website to discover your opportunities and gain supporting tools for driving improvement.
Learn more ways to optimize your team's performance by visiting our website makesolutionsinc.com or contact Tamara Pomerantz, VP Client Operations, Tamara.Pomerantz@makesolutionsinc.com.
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