Teamwork 2.0

images from www.lmpartnership.org/tools/leading-change-together

Can we ask those we lead, "Are you willing to take ownership of your actions, decisions, and attitudes in the workplace?" Or should leaders hold employees accountable for their actions, decisions, and attitudes? Let us examine two viewpoints.

Accountability or Ownership

According to an article in Nursing Management, the authors suggest that workplace cultures emphasizing accountability rather than ownership are socially dissatisfying in three distinct ways (Tye et al., 2022). First, people associate the vocabulary word accountable as antagonistic. Secondly, accountability is always and ultimately personified and rarely objectified to a place or thing as being responsible for the outcome of an action, either intentionally or inadvertently; ultimately, a person is involved. Lastly, using accountability as a metric for performance promotes low expectations (Tye et al., 2022). The onus to empower others to take ownership of their actions, decisions, and attitudes and to make them congruent with their values and beliefs continues to be an area needing more attention.

Compare what Stephen Covey addresses in his book, The Speed of Trust (Covey, 2018, p. 210), accountability is associated with the trust of direct reports in any workplace where the employees know, believe, and understand that those who diverge from the workplace norms will be held responsible to their actions, decisions, and attitudes. Most people will agree that there is a fine line between the two ideas discussed. However, at least in the literature, it is worth noting that two different viewpoints exist to compare the accountability concept regarding workplace culture.

Policies and Procedures

According to Marquis & Huston (2021), organizations have policies and procedures in place to ensure that, first and foremost, a written set of goals, mission statements, and the aim of an institution are recorded, albeit in a condensed format, to guide its employees to align with the institution's directives.

Furthermore, as healthcare leadership academics, the authors indicate that policies and procedures are in place to guide healthcare practitioners in their practice according to accreditation and licensing standards for all providers. Marquis & Huston (2021) further explain that processes are written down for healthcare providers, or procedural steps available for reflection on how to do a particular task, function, or procedure in delivering healthcare services.

An organization's attendance policy is an example of a policy for professional conduct. In contrast, the written rubric or steps and processes for removing intravenous sheaths to prevent bleeding and obtain hemostasis are examples of procedural documents to guide the how-to of specific skills, operations, and actions. Both are developed to control organization and individual professionalism, organizational citizenship, and best practice models and interventions.

Policies and procedures are the guidelines that promote organizational congruency and ensure continuity of practice (Marquis & Huston, 2021). They should be evidence-based and based on best practices, ultimately providing the backbone and means for leadership to maintain a reference point for the superintendency of its employees.

Labor-Management Partnership

Can superintendency be shared in the workplace between leadership and staff? Scholars and others who have written and published extensively from experts in business relations and management strategies believe so.

Consider what Cohen et al. (2010) report when discussing the theoretical concepts of teams that work together in a unit or, otherwise known as the unit-based team approach to solving and working together to accomplish organization goals when addressing patients' ability to get access to the hospital, the patient's perception of the type and quality of care and their perceptions when receiving medical services, affordability, and medical waste reduction as well as cultural indexes of staff satisfaction in the workplace.

Most pointedly and worth noting is the correlation between the quality of the care given to patients in departments where the staff and providers have an antagonistic relationship (Cohen et al., 2010). The functionality of the teams working together ideally involves a physician stakeholder, although not always the case, staff participation, union representatives, and managers collectively to address the goals above. The literature demonstrates empirical evidence of the connection between teamwork and quality of patient care.

In summary, workplace cultures can aim for an environment where a mixture of accountability and examples of trust in all individuals in a department team are lived out and tempered to a construct of individual and team ownership. In addition, organizations have specific policies and procedures that provide the framework, structure, and guidance for organizational mission, align with industry standards and benchmarks for the patient's benefit, and provide internal control for situations where deviance and variance arise. Furthermore, recognizing the valued importance of teams in the healthcare sector improves patients' experiences. As recalled by Cohen et al. (2010), teamwork reduces the time spent waiting for patients to receive appointments and care. When organizations strive to make the workplace safe for patients and employees, contributing to lowering reported injuries, teams can positively impact safe practices.

Although these details and determinates in the scope of healthcare delivery require initiative, contributive sharing and collaboration, and appropriate resources and knowledge utilization for the best outcomes and organizational success, a reminder is that the patient is ultimately at the center of everything healthcare institutions do.

References:

Cohen, P. M., Ptaskiewicz, M., & Mipos, D. (2010). The case for unit-based teams: A model for front-line engagement and Performance Improvement. The Permanente Journal, 14(2), 70–75. https://doi.org/10.7812/tpp/09-126

Covey, S. M. R., & Merrill, R. R. (2018). The speed of trust: The One thing that changes everything. Free Press.

Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2021). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: Theory and application (10th ed.). Wolters Kluwer Health.

Tye, J., Hanrahan, K., Edmonds, S., Hyatt, D., & Tye, A. (2022). Courageous leadership for a culture of emotional safety. Nursing Management, 53(11), 16–23. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.numa.0000891468.54597.90