Chapter 9. Working effectively with other people
Chapter Contents
Communicating with colleagues122
Coordination and teamwork122
Participating in meetings124
Effective committee work125
Working in partnership with other organisations126
Summary
This chapter focuses on developing skills of working effectively with other people and organisations in order to plan and implement health promotion. The following key aspects are discussed: communicating with colleagues; coordination and teamwork; participating in meetings; effective committee work; working in local partnerships for health with other agencies. Practical exercises and a case study are included.
Some health promoters plan and undertake their health promotion work entirely on their own, but most are likely to be working with other people from the wide range of professional backgrounds that make up the multidisciplinary workforce that promotes health:
• Colleagues, who may be peers, managers or people you manage.
• Colleagues in other parts of your own organisation.
• People drawn from the community and/or from different agencies (local, national or international) who are working with you on a health promotion activity of mutual interest and importance.
A key aspect of success will be how well you work with other people, and this chapter discusses the knowledge and skills needed for interprofessional communication and collaborative working.
Communicating with Colleagues
Some fundamentals of effective face-to-face and written communication are dealt with in Chapter 10. While these are presented primarily with client contact in mind, they are also applicable to contact between health promotion colleagues. The following factors are particularly important to ensure effective working relationships:
See Chapter 10.
• Working in a team which recognises and builds on the strengths of other team members.
• Actively listening to the people you are working with, so that you understand clearly their opinions, ideas and feelings.
A considerable proportion of your time may be taken up by communications with working colleagues, including telephone conversations, face-to-face discussions and written communications on paper and via e-mail. Try Exercise 9.1 to help increase your awareness of how you communicate with colleagues, and how your communication might be improved.
EXERCISE 9.1
How you communicate with colleagues
Record all the types of communication with colleagues that you carry out over one working day, by making a tally of all the occasions in four categories, as set out below. Then add up your total for each category, and your grand total for the day.
You might like to compare your results with those of your colleagues.
| Face-to-face verbal | Telephone | Paper: letters and memos | Electronic: e-mail, Web cam/computer conferencing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ | |
| TOTALS | ________ | ________ | ________ | ________ |
Think about whether there is anything you would like to change or improve; for example:
▪ If you spend a lot of time on the telephone, could you improve your telephone skills?
▪ Could you use your time more efficiently if you used less time-consuming methods of communications (for example, phone or e-mail) instead of writing letters or having meetings?
▪ Are there ways that you can use technology to communicate more effectively and efficiently with colleagues?
▪ Do you need to selectively spend more time face-to-face in order to understand colleagues and establish a closer working relationship?
Coordination and Teamwork
Health promotion often involves multiagency and multidisciplinary working, therefore effective coordination and teamwork are required.
Poor coordination can result in losses in efficiency and effectiveness of programmes; it is especially difficult when big bureaucracies like the NHS and local authorities are working together. There are several ways of coordinating, and it is important to use the one best suited to the situation.
Appointing a Coordinator
A potential problem for coordinators is that they may not directly manage the people they are trying to coordinate and therefore cannot control them in the same way as a manager. They must convince people that any requests they make are legitimate. Coordinators can be at a low level in a hierarchical organisation. A diabetic nurse trying to coordinate the production of a patient information leaflet, for example, might find it difficult to obtain the commitment of a consultant. The very word coordinator may provoke resistance to being organised in some people.
There are several tactics that can help to overcome resistance.
Using your reputation
People will find it difficult to turn down any reasonable requests if your work is well known and well regarded and you are respected by those who work with you. So you need to publicise your work and seek to establish a good reputation.
Establishing good relationships
Building and maintaining good relationships requires effort and is an essential investment for every coordinator.
Bargaining
It may be possible to bargain with individual people or departments: could you offer them something in return for their cooperation?
Out-ranking
This should be used only as a last resort. It requires a senior manager from your hierarchy to request cooperation through the other person’s manager. While the other tactics build trust, this one endangers it and may result in a lack of goodwill.
Discussion and negotiation
Talking to all involved could result in clarification of responsibilities and improved mutual understanding, leading to the group giving you more legitimate authority. This could mean first discussing the issue with individuals, and later convening a meeting when you have got sufficient commitment to solving the problem. Undertake Exercise 9.2 to assess how you might improve your coordination and teamworking skills.
EXERCISE 9.2
Improving coordination and teamworking
In the health promotion work you do that involves working with other people, can you think of any ways by which you could improve coordination and teamworking?
▪ What steps could you take to enhance the reputation of your health promotion work?
▪ With whom could you build a better relationship to improve coordination or teamwork?
▪ What have you got to offer if you are bargaining?
▪ Can you think of any health promotion activities that you undertake routinely together with other people which could be more efficient with a set procedure?
▪ Are there any ways by which you could develop stronger links with other staff at your level in different departments or agencies, to facilitate joint working in health promotion?
▪ Have you any opportunities for joint objective setting or joint planning that could help to coordinate health promotion in your situation?
▪ Can you think of anything else? Discuss this with colleagues who are also involved in health promotion.
Policies, Procedures and Protocols
Making and implementing policies is discussed in Chapter 16.
Policies are increasingly important in coordinating health promotion work. Using set procedures are ways of coordinating routine tasks. Protocols are agreed written procedures that everyone follows, ensuring that everyone carries out a particular task in the same way. For example, there may be a smoking cessation protocol in a GP surgery about how to help a patient to stop smoking. The protocol ensures that whoever is dealing with the patient (the doctor, the practice nurse, the district nurse or the health visitor) will offer the same range of help and follow the same follow-up procedures (for an excellent example of a smoking cessation protocol see http://www.alhcc.scot.nhs.uk).
Joint Planning
In this approach the parties involved not only agree objectives but also meet regularly to develop and implement a joint plan. This may minimise the need for one individual to be given the job of coordinator and prevent the problem of one agency or department being perceived as controlling the agenda. However, it can be very difficult to get all the people involved together on a regular basis, and to ensure that communications are always clear to all those involved.
Joint Working through Creating Teams
An autonomous team is given the authority, training, money, staff, premises and equipment to carry out the health promotion programme. There is no need for a coordinator, since the whole team is working together from the same base. Joint working of this kind is usually not suitable for short-term programmes, but can be excellent for long-term projects such as those involving community development.
Creation of Lateral Relations
This type of coordination depends on strengthening relationships between individuals in broadly equivalent jobs in different departments or agencies. Setting up project teams, which are dissolved once the particular project is completed, can do this. It could also be done by forming interdepartmental or multidisciplinary teams or partnerships, which are given more authority for making decisions, without having to refer them up the different hierarchies. However, this can lead to conflict with the existing vertical lines of command, and works best where there are good links between the various managers.
Characteristics of Successful Teams
There are different sorts of teams. The teams of relevance here are associations of people with a common work purpose, for example a primary healthcare team. Successful teams have the characteristics set out in Box 9.1. If you experience a team that does not seem to be working well, it can be helpful for the team to consider this list together, to identify the roots of the difficulties (for more information on how to develop successful team working see Jelphs & Dickenson 2008).
BOX 9.1
Characteristics of successful teams
▪ A team consists of a group of identified people.
▪ The team has a common purpose and shared objectives, which are known and agreed by all members.
▪ Members are selected because they have relevant expertise.
▪ Members know and agree their own role and know the roles of the other members.
▪ Members support each other in achieving the common purpose.
▪ Members trust each other, and communicate with each other in an open, honest way.
▪ The team has a leader, whose authority is accepted by all members.
Participating in Meetings
The detailed planning and organisation of meetings are beyond the scope of this book (see Barker 2006 and Hadler 2006 for useful guidance on running meetings). The guidance below is an aid to how to be an effective participant at meetings. As a participant there are a number of constructive things you can do:
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