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2024 Women in Practice Management Forum
People Centric Communication - 1
People Centric Communication - 1
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So this is billed as the getting to know you activity. And so we're going to have a little bit of fun, hopefully, but also talk about how we communicate, how we can communicate more effectively. And we're going to learn what our styles are. So this is going to be interactive. And I'm going to hopefully talk to all of you. And we'll talk together versus me standing here for an hour because I'm very, very extroverted. So I would really love it if you would talk with me while we do this. So really just 10 second background on me. I am with People Centric Consulting Group. So our company works in lots of industries, but very, very heavily in health care. And our whole mission is to make sure that people are aligned and empowered. They're the center of every organization. Because we hear a lot of people talk about culture, right? And can anyone give me the definition of culture? Yeah, that's one we hear a lot. Yeah, how things are done around here. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's hard to define culture, right? It's one of those kind of sticky words that we hear a lot. It does define how we do things. But we just would generally say, like, culture is all about just, like, how are your people centered in your organization? What's important, right? Because we'll hear people talk about, well, our culture is so awesome. And so we've got ping pong tables. And we've got this benefit, or this, or that. Or a taco truck comes on Tuesdays to our clinic. And while that is fantastic, and if that happens at your building, please let me know. I would like your address. I would love to come for tacos. That's not really what culture is, right? And so we developed a system to say, how do you actually evaluate your culture? And it's you look at the systems that impact it. So look at your people systems. Do you have the right people in the right roles? Are those clear? Communication. Can people get the information they need when they need it? Do your leaders know how to develop and challenge people and hold them accountable in a healthy way? Processes. Is it easy to do the stuff that we need to do? And then strategy is, does everybody know what winning actually looks like for us? So today, we are going to deep dive into communication here. Because I will say, every hospital, or practice, or any business for that matter that we have ever been in, when we come in and start talking to their teams and leaders, every single person's like, well, our communication needs to be better, right? And so anybody have communication figured out yet? OK, good, because you're going to have to come up here and take it then, because I don't either. So here's what we're going to do in the next 45 minutes, is we're going to kind of talk about how communication works or doesn't work on our teams. You are going to learn your communication style. I've got a fun quiz for you here in a second. And then we're going to talk about how we can use this information to do better as leaders. Sound good? OK, so in our company, we talk sometimes about the difference between science and engineering, because our CEO is a recovering engineer, right? He's about 20 years clean at this point from engineering. But we talk about this, of like, the stuff that's on the left there, you guys know because you experience it every day, right? Like 68% of people say they've wasted time due to communication issues. 53% of people have missed messages. 42% of people have suffered from burnout, stress, fatigue due to communication issues, like Andrew is sharing with us. And then this last one, 75% of communications that are received are interpreted incorrectly. Yeah, it's terrible, right? That one really gets me, because if you are sitting here and you think, oh, well, yeah, other people suck at that. Then you remember, like, you are included in that statistic, Stephanie Anderson. So we're going to learn how to do better this today. And so again, the science behind this is what we talk about. This is a science. If we know this science to be true about how people communicate, how can we apply it, which is the engineering? Because here's the secret. How people work and how people communicate is actually really, really well understood. There's tons of research out there. We understand the science really clearly of how people communicate. It's just applied terribly, terribly. So today, we're going to give you some tools to do that. The impact of communication is huge, because it impacts literally everything we do on a day-to-day basis. When it breaks down, we feel it, and we feel it hard, usually, right? And then again, the impact is that last sentence there, when we know what we're doing, why we're doing it, and who's going to do it, how it's going to do it, right? We've got to figure this out. So here's the other reality that we're living in, is we have so many methods of communication, more ways to communicate with each other than have ever existed to humankind, right? So what are some of the ways that you guys use to communicate in your practice? What are some of those methods that you use? Anybody? Email, text, Slack, Teams. Oh, that sound, yeah. OK. What else? Zoom. Yeah, we've got all like 15 video conferencing tools. I hit my video conferencing bingo card last week, because I think I used four different ones in the same day. So that was fun. Yeah, what else? How else do you guys communicate at work? Meetings, yeah, yeah. What else? Phone, yeah. Good old-fashioned phone call, yeah. OK. Face-to-face, yeah. Thanks for saying that, yeah. So yeah, you guys just listed a whole bunch of these of these things. And then we've got the one that's like the, hey, you got a second? No, right? We just learned about boundaries, and no, I do not. Yeah. But yeah, that one, several of you like visibly reacted to that, right? Because that is the one where you're like, I just was really trying to get something done right now. And then this nonverbal communication, anybody remember that great country song, you say it best when you say nothing at all? That is happening as well. So if we have all of these methods of communication, why isn't everybody getting the information they need to succeed, right? We have literally developed thousands of new ways to communicate as humans, and we're still struggling with it. So a couple of things that we're going to talk about that hold us back from how we communicate, but we are going to jump into our activity first. So if you could pull out your cell phone and scan this QR code, OK? So this is going to take you to a page to take a communication styles quiz. And when you get there, it's going to ask you to put in your name and your email. And that is just to email you a copy of your results. It does not sign you up for a people-centric newsletter. If you want to receive emails from me, you can just ask. I'll be happy to email you, but that doesn't sign you up for anything. So when you get there, just sign in. And then when you start taking the quiz, here's your instructions. The QR code's still up there, or the URL if you need it. You are going to pick two answers to every question. Two answers to every question. How many answers are you going to pick? Two, good job. Yeah, and I'm sorry that I'm talking like a kindergarten teacher there. We've just done this enough times that there's always somebody at the end who's like, my results look terrible. I'm like, well, how many answers did you pick? One. OK, we'll take it again. But go ahead and start this quiz. I'm going to give you about four-ish minutes to take it. So just go with your gut. There's no right or wrong answers here, good or bad. This is just going to tell you what your dominant communication style is. And then when you get to the end, please screenshot your results, because the emails can sometimes take a couple minutes to come through. So it looks like everybody has got it. But if anybody's having trouble, let me know. You're having trouble. Come on. And for those who are. So just a quick reminder, as you're getting to the end, I would recommend screenshotting your results page, just in case it goes away, because the email takes a minute to come through, but you should have a chart that tells you dominant styles. And I will go ahead really quickly and just answer probably our number one most frequently asked question, is what if I have a tie? And so if you have a tie, as we go through these descriptions, think about yourself and which feels most true to you, because the spoiler that you guys already know is you are all wonderful and unique and special in your own ways. And so, yes, we're all dynamic, and you flex and flow out of these different styles all the time, but each of us generally do have one more dominant style, so. Quick show of hands, who's still working? Okay, got a couple. We'll give you one more minute. You're gonna, I believe in you, and if you're, I'm, don't worry, I'll riff a little bit, too, before the next slide, and so you'll have some time. This is always the best part, because you can tell who came together, and they're sitting, you guys are sitting next to each other now, and be like, what'd you get, what'd you get, oh, yeah, mm-hmm. You two are doing great. What'd you guys get? You cheated off each other. Your scores are very similar, yeah. All right, well, if you are still working, that is okay, because you're gonna, again, we've got a little bit of explanation to do before we start, but just to pre-warn you, I am going to ask you to stand here in a moment when we get to your style, because, again, where this is a getting-to-know-you exercise is as we go through this, I want you to be watching and observing around the room who has a similar style to you and who has a really different style than you, right? Because this is how we learn to work well together. So these are the four dominant styles, okay? So, again, yes, there's tons of nuance as human beings. You are all unique, and we are going to horribly stereotype for the next 25 minutes, so please bear with me for that and forgive me for it in advance, but generally speaking, there's four dominant styles of communication. Again, we do all flex in and flow out of these, and if you have a tie and you're struggling to think through it, one good way is, like, when you're frustrated, what comes out, because that is probably what you default to. So the first style is called the go-getters. So quick-stand go-getters. Who had go-getter in their top? Yeah. Awesome, oh, quite a few go-getters. All right, thanks, guys. So go-getters, oh, you're gonna go get your water bottle. Here you go. Yeah, so go-getters, we're gonna talk about you. You are our action-oriented people. Why would we wait till tomorrow to do what we could do today, right? So let's get it done here and now. Okay, empathizer. Who had empathizer as their top style? Awesome. Okay, thank you, guys. So empathizer is the one that always gets moans and groans, because everyone's like, those are the nice ones, and we're all the jerks, which is probably true, okay? It might be a little bit true, but here's what we're gonna say. Empathizers does not mean that these are people that are more emotional than any of the rest of us or have more feelings, because if we go back to the science, we all have the same amount of feelings. We just express them differently, okay? And I only have to say that once in a room full of women. When we do this at other conferences, there's always several people that give me blank stares back and I'm like, yes, we all have the same amount of emotion. We just express it differently. So our empathizers, though, are concerned with people. They're our people-first people. They're thinking about how is this gonna impact this person? How is this gonna impact this? And so they're often even attracted to jobs where there's like a high likelihood that they're gonna get to interact with people all day long. That's why we actually tend to see a high number of empathizers in healthcare, right? Because that's probably what initially attracted you to this field, was you get to help people, okay? Then next is the outliner. So who's our outliners? Oh, yeah, a lot of outliners. Nice, okay, like most of us outliners. That's awesome, okay. So you guys are our logic, process, system, structure, right? You are making sure we've got it all together behind the scenes, okay? And again, these are typically our list makers, right? You're checking things off. We're going through that. We're going through that. All right, and then last but not least, the whiteboard users, or we call them whiteboarders. Who has whiteboarder as their top? Yeah, congratulations, you got the best score. No, just kidding, that's because it's mine. There is no right or wrong, good or bad, but thank you, whiteboarders. So whiteboarders are your people that are your big picture thinkers, your what ifs. You thought you were done with the meeting, and then we said, but here's a twist, and we throw out another idea, right? Yeah, so we're your big picture, visionary, futuristic thinkers, okay? So we're gonna go through these just in a little more depth over the next couple minutes, but here's the challenge for this, because this is fun, right? And we all love taking a good quiz, but I think this is one of the reasons why personality assessments sometimes fail, because who's taken some type of personality assessment before? So like StrengthsFinder, yeah, yeah, Enneagram, or gosh, the hundred others. Myers-Briggs, thank you. And I think what happens a lot is when we in for Marcia's Consultants see people take these, and in companies they take them, everybody takes the quiz, you get your results, and you're like, oh, hey, yeah, that does kind of sound like me, that's a fun magic trick. And then that paper goes somewhere in the folder that falls then behind the filing cabinet, and you find it when you move offices 15 years from now. And so here's the challenge today. You know you, and you probably know you pretty well, and you know how you communicate. The challenge today is not to sit here and take this as just a self-enrichment, and how do I just learn how I communicate better. I want you to challenge yourself to learn how other people communicate, because that's where influence happens in leadership, is when we can meet people where they are is influence, right, that's how we work as leaders. And so we want to learn how other people communicate so we can adapt our style to them and be more successful in our communication. So that's your challenge for this as we go through these, is yes, I hope you do take away something of this, and maybe you learn something fun about yourself that you didn't know, but really lean in and listen for the styles that are not your own. And we're gonna even talk about this too, of like where do we come into most conflict with other styles, because that happens too, right? And so how do we do better? How do we learn to communicate better? So, first the go-getter. So our go-getters, again, just quick raise of hands, you don't have to stand again, but who are our go-getters so we can remember? Okay, awesome, that is my second. And talks too fast, yes. Yes, direct in dialogue, ready to solve the problem. You can often identify a go-getter because they say things like this. Well, what doesn't make sense to you? Right? What will this cost? Right? And those two are typically like happening, you know, when we're having the meeting and we're trying to do this, and our go-getters, we're just asking that, right? Because we genuinely want to know. If we just had the whole meeting about this and somebody's like, I don't, still don't get it, right? Then you'll hear your go-getter go, well like what, just tell me what doesn't make sense to you. Like get to the point, let's just directly address the one or two things that you did not understand so we can move forward, right? And again, that is just how our go-getters brains think. We are action-oriented in our communication, right? What will this cost? Go-getters are often thinking about like the bottom line here, and in this one, let's try it. Which to a go-getter sounds like a completely reasonable phrase. For others of you, you think about the last time somebody on your team said that, and you're like, ha, ha, ha, ha. Like, we can't just try it, right? We can't just try it, we can't just pick something and do it, right? Thank you, right? Yeah, so for my go-getters, is this resonating with you? Yeah, I've heard a couple of you shout it out, which is also why I put you first in the presentation. We've learned our lesson there, okay? You're first in the presentation for a reason, okay? But like, go-getters, tell us how can we communicate with you if we know that this is your style, and the rest of us are here to learn your ways, right? How can we communicate with you? How do you want us to communicate with you? Yeah. So, an email, yeah? Yeah, to the point, right? So, yeah, so if I send you like a long email, how much of that are you gonna read, and it's okay to be real, this is safe. Be really honest. Yeah, and then come back into it later. Okay, yeah. The thinking is the doing right now. Oh, rude. Yeah, yeah, the thinking is the doing right now, yeah. But that makes me, so yeah, my husband will say to me, the thinking is the doing right now, because I'll just get into like, well, let's just try this, and let's just try that, and he's like, no, no, no, we're gonna burn the house down. The thinking is the doing right now, and so that will actually snap me back into like, oh, okay, we've gotta stop and actually think through consequences. I love that. That's good advice for a go-getter. Yeah, we had another one over here. I can come here. I know I'm going off camera. I'm so sorry. I was gonna say for an email, give me bullet points. Yeah, we hear that from go-getters a lot. Like, if you must email me, please put it in bullet points, not paragraphs, so that way I can do my quick glance of what's most important, or like a text message, right? Yeah, we prefer in person, like go-getters, would you prefer just to talk to somebody face-to-face? Okay. Some disagreement. Why? And you guys can shout it out, or we can bring you mics. Too many feelings. Yeah, are those getting in the way of our productivity? Aw, man. Yeah. What else? Okay. Let's keep going. Our empathizers. These are our people-first people, right? So when you talk to an empathizer, one of the first things that they're gonna do or some things to listen for is they're going to talk about other people. They are thinking about what other people's experience in our companies and in our practices might be like, right? They're also gonna use your name pretty commonly, and not in like a weird salesy way, but like they are actually going to remember you and your name, and not just call you her and point, right? They're going to remember your name and use that, and then the middle one is defends the actions of others. And what we mean by this is often if there's, especially if there's conflict or something or there's been a misunderstanding, we'll often hear the empathizer in the group go, well, you know, I can kind of see how Stephanie got there. And that doesn't mean that she's agreeing with me when she says that, but she's relating to me. And she's trying to help the group relate to me, okay? So things you'll hear empathizers say, they often start sentences with I feel, right? Versus an I think, which is more of that logic first approach. How will this affect our people, right? And that reminds me of a time we, and this is a primo way to know you're speaking to an empathizer, is because they typically talk in stories, right? We have an empathizer on our team. His name is Phillip. And our desks are next to each other. And I hear a lot of Phillip's stories. But it's interesting how this comes out, because I'm like white border go-getter. And so I'm in a meeting and I'm like, we're vision casting, we're getting stuff done, it's great. And then Phillip will go, you know, this just reminds me of a time when I was walking my grandpa's farm, and then we get to this peach tree. And then he starts telling this story about this tree, right? And like, I'm sitting there thinking like, oh, what's happening? Like, what's happening? I thought we were talking strategy, and now we're talking about trees. And like, where's he going with this? And he's taking us over the river and through the woods, literally through his grandfather's farm in Colorado, which sounds like a beautiful place, but why are we there? And like, then he'll get to the end, and he's connected it to what we're talking about. And he'll be like, yeah. And that's just why I think it's so important for us to focus on how we show up in the community this year as a practice. And then I will look, and other people are like, yes. And they're nodding, because they just related to his story, and I'm a whiteboarder go-getter and kind of tuned out, because listening is not always the same as hearing. But yeah, you will hear that, though, right? You'll hear our empathizers talk in terms of stories, and why it's stories is because they are relating to you. And they are trying to help you relate to others. So empathizers, how do you prefer to be communicated with? They're all trying to be really nice. Well, I find myself to be a go-getter empathizer. Yeah. Because I do just want the bullet points, but I need the bullet points to include how this will affect other people. Because, I mean, we're just one big cycle, right? Or circle, we're a cycle, too. So for me, I want you to give it to me straight, but give it to me straight considering everyone else, not just yourself, and what you want me to know. Yeah, that's beautiful, yeah. And I like how you gave that analogy of we're all in the same circle, we're all in this ecosystem. Yeah, right, and then this is where Stephanie reveals she is a psychic, no. But yeah, no, you're absolutely right, right? And you're trying to get us to relate. I think I'll hear empathizers a lot, kind of like they don't say it directly, but use the idiom of you gotta dig your well before you need it. So you've gotta build the relationship with people so that way when we are having to make changes, or I have to ask somebody to take on something or do something big, we've got it, yeah. Any other empathizers? How can we communicate with you best? I like having. Ah, what's your second score? Outliner? Yes. Yep. Yeah, that's your, yeah. I warned you that I was going to horribly stereotype, OK? So I'm so sorry. But yeah, that's your empathizer and your outliner interacting. And we'll talk about outliner here in a second. Outliners love and need time to process through things. And yeah, so you're thinking through of like, OK, what information do I need to know? And then how do I need to present that information to this person versus this person versus this person? Because you're thinking through how it's going to hit them all differently. Does that sound like you? OK, awesome. All right. One other empathizer. I'm going to come up here. I'm going to have to talk in person. I would rather have an email with bullet points. And then I have a supervisor that works for me. And when I ask her a question, she gives me all the drama around the question that I just asked. So I'm constantly saying, OK, so what I need to know is. And then she gives me drama again. And I just keep saying that until she finally gets out what it is I need to know. So when I try to have conversations, that's one of the things that I'm thinking about. Just get to the point. Get to the point. Don't tell all the drama. Yeah, but I love that you do that, though, because you're still listening to the drama, right? Yeah, we've got to get the good tea. But yeah, I like that, though, where you're like, OK, I want to know what's happening with everybody. So then I can just be like, you go here, and you go here, and you go here. And you two just cut it out. And you two go talk. And you three figure this out, right? Yeah, that's definitely your empathizer go-getter intersecting. All right, our next one are our outliners. So again, horribly stereotyping, because there's always at least one outliner. I think somebody already said it. It's like, I'm not a list maker. But a lot of you are. And so it's because you're logically processing things. And it's a very natural way to process information is to write it down, to list it out. So we'll often see a lot of outliners who are making lists. They send you the long email with all of the information, because they offer and want all of the details. So a good example of this is I'm on a nonprofit board right now. Our executive director is a former attorney. And he is king of the outliners. So if you can imagine the emails that I get, it's so much. But one time, he sent all of us on the board an email. And if I had printed it, it would have been three pages long to begin with. And then the instructions at the top were, please read and review this entire email. And then select a color. And then write your response under every bullet point in your color. And then everyone else will come back. First off, I don't think he knew about Google Docs. But second, it was like that was like his way of organizing this. And so we could all see it at the end. And it would be this beautiful rainbow of thought and color. But again, the key there is he was like asking all of us to go and respond to every point he made, because he had offered us all of the details. And he wanted all of the details back from us in response. He didn't want me just like thumbs up his text, right? And be like, cool, Evan. I liked it. Great, keep going. He's like, no, I want you to respond and tell me why, right? So sometimes you'll see outliners be like, no, no, no. Give me more, right? And sometimes outliners are non-committal under stress or pressure. This is another way sometimes you can tell if there's an outliner. Because if outliners do not feel like they have enough information to move forward, they will slow down the process. And sometimes you are aware of this. And sometimes you are not aware of this if you are not. It can be intentional or unintentional of slowing down the process, because you're like, we haven't looked into this enough. We haven't vetted this enough, right? We don't actually have enough information to make this decision. So I'm going to add a step to this process. There will be another meeting. There will be another email or something, right? Like I had a CEO call me once. And we did this at their company. And he was so frustrated with his COO, because he's like, she just keeps adding steps to this. Did I just want to launch this product? Did I just want to do this thing? And I was like, and he's very much a go-getter. And I had to remind him, do you remember when we took this assessment? And do you remember what her top score was? And he was like, yeah, outliner. I said, why would an outliner be intentionally slowing down a product launch? He's like, probably because she doesn't have enough information from me. And I was like, yeah. So what if you went and asked her, what information do you feel like we need to move forward? So things you'll hear outliners say. What options, plural, do we have? Because outliners would like all of the options typically put in front of them like a buffet, so that we can look at each one and kind of identify it and pick out what we want. Give me some details. Or how can you support that? Tell me more. So outliners, how can we communicate best with you? How do you prefer to be communicated with? OK, are you sure? Structured conversations. What does that mean? Spreadsheets is a top-tier talent, though. Okay and what's your name and your practice so we can email you? Oh thank you Paula. Yeah I love that answer so much because that is that is like right in the niche of an outliner is structured conversation and could you just put it in a spreadsheet so I can read through it right line by line and I can see all the information separated so I can analyze it and process it and then come back to you with my response right like outliners typically don't love being put on the spot yeah yeah so I I'm out liner was my number two and number one is go yeah so for me an outliner I also want to know what options do we have what have you tried and why or why not why like why haven't they worked and so then that that way I don't start going down rabbit holes that people have already tried so I want to I want to know the list of like okay what have you done what have you tried how can what options level is so yeah it's I'm the worst of all world yeah you have a lot of inner conflict there of like let's just try something but also like did anybody research that and then you're like trying to figure out if it actually happened right okay and then our final one is the white border okay so white borders I am a white border that is my top score by far we are big picture thinkers right so we want to talk about the future and what's gonna happen how is this gonna impact our practice in five years well what does the future of health care look like and how do we need to think about how we're gonna adapt to that and get ahead right we always are gonna think about what's next what's next what's next but so that's a good way to tell that you're talking to a white border the other one is we will tend to leave issues dangling when we are stressed right because what a white border does not want to be is in the details so that is why my last story was about the longest email I was ever sent it's because I'm a white border and I'm like man like I just this this is why like there's people on my team that are smarter than me that are really good at this stuff because I just don't want to be in the details I want to be like in the future and the dreams and what happens and I'll tell a story about younger Stephanie was once in a meeting with a bunch of finance people in her 20s and they were trying to reinvent their look at their business model and how could we do this better right and how can we recruit different people to our company and I'm sitting there and I just say you know what if we just did this in a way that nobody's ever done before and they all looked at me and they're like oh yeah what would that be and I was like I don't know but I just feel like we could come up with something this is a direct quote from me yeah like ten years ago yeah where I was like that is oh that is how a white borders brain works so we're so sorry but that is how our brain works we're like we just like we could come up with any great idea right we are the imagineers of health care we could do it so you're gonna hear us say things like well what are the long-term implications right like as we're working toward doing something new we're gonna ask like how will this impact us five years from now right then what if or here's a twist right I know I know we're the worst but we are we're just big-picture thinkers in that way right so for my white boarders fellow white borders how can we communicate with you how do you like to be communicated with actually we would love to be left alone to think about ideas so thank you we do like honestly if you were just like Stephanie just like take the afternoon to brainstorm like that is like the best day of my life just happened right so I what I'll say for white borders of what I typically hear and what I almost myself experience is I do prefer just like a face-to-face I actually like love a meeting because I love to brainstorm and talk with people and figure out stuff and here's the thing I'm we are fans at people centric of good meetings but most people don't have good meetings because a good meeting should be effective and engaging those should be your two bars so is this meeting effective does it actually accomplish what we need it to accomplish and is it engaging so we actually are coming together and having good conversation about this we're sharing thoughts and ideas people get to ask good questions or could this have just been an email right right and I know I lean on the just could have been an email side because I'm a white border but I will say I love a good meeting because we get to talk through things we get to talk through new ideas and what happens I do I like like a text message or something quick I don't want to read a really long email okay so let me check my time okay awesome all right so in our last couple minutes we're gonna talk about like now that we kind of know what the styles are how do you communicate within those styles and how do you lead because again our challenge today is not just to say hey I learned something cool about myself it's how do I effectively lead within communication styles how do I use this information to become a more influential leader in this space so we're gonna go through these really quickly so communicating with a go-getter anybody know they work with a go-getter and if they're next to you just blink right okay yeah what we know again what we know to be true from the room is we have people of all styles that are here right so it's very likely worth the go-getter so when you're working with a go-getter you need to ask them to slow down and unpack their positions right you have to actually coach them to do that because they are just trying to get things done they're trying to help the team win they're trying to make action happen forward momentum but sometimes we do need them to coach them to slow down and that's remember when I said earlier listening is not the same as hearing right sometimes go-getters need to hear that I'm just like hey I know that we talked about it but like we've got to slow down and actually unpack this and maybe we do need to actually sit for five minutes and just read that full email maybe we're missing something if we don't and then this last one here freedom to think in guardrails to act anybody have a guess of what that might mean yeah that's a good way of saying it yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. It's like bowling bumpers a little bit, right? Yeah. Teenage daughters who are thankfully all in their 20s and it's sort of that same kind of thing, like you're providing a little bit of guardrails. Yeah. Parenting is a great primer for leadership, right? Yeah. But yeah, you guys absolutely hit it right. We went both sides of like, I've got to have your back and actually help you be successful. So like when we talk about strategy in our people-centric systems, do your go-getters actually have an extremely clear picture of what winning looks like for your team? And I mean extremely clear. Really quick story I'll share. We're working with an insurance company. They brought in this new salesperson, best salesperson the company has ever had. He doubled their revenues in one year's time. I mean unbelievably gifted salesperson. By the end of that one year, he was the most hated person in their entire company, walked out of a meeting and never came back. And I'm going to give you just the spoiler of like where that story goes, is when we came in, because that was actually my first meeting with them, is when they hired people-centric to come in and help their team. And he left that meeting and never came back, because everybody in operations was saying like, this has been the worst year of our life. We are so overloaded with work. He's out there selling things we've never done before. We're in different markets for insurance and working with different health care providers than we ever have before. We don't know how to do this claim and they were sick of it. And that team for a long time hung on to that that was the complete truth, is that he didn't care, he was a jerk and he went out and without thinking about anyone else in the company, took them into all these spaces that he's never been, and like some of them were like, it wasn't even worth the money for what he did. About a year later, somebody on their team was really brave and said, you know what, I actually think it was our fault. And they realized like, hey, when we brought him in, he was a perfect fit. Like he had all the experience that we wanted. He was a perfect culture fit aligned with us, with our values. But I don't think we actually gave him any guardrails. And they realized that, that they had actually set him up to fail because they'd never told him, hey, this is really the space we want to grow our business. This is the type of claims that we want to do, the type of hospitals that we would want to work with, the type of providers we want to build relationships with. And these are the ones we wouldn't. These are the products that we're willing to look at and maybe launch for the first time and these are the ones we aren't, right? So, they had to be willing to admit that they didn't do this for him. Like go-getters need freedom to think. You want them waking up and thinking about how they can grow your business, how they can build the team, what's next, how do we get there? We need that forward movement, but you've got to give them guardrails. So, again, my advice there is like radical clarity on what winning looks like, what would actually success look like for our teams, and are there guardrails that we need to put in place. Okay. Next is if you're communicating with an empathizer, you've got to listen but not coddle, acknowledge how your decision is going to affect others, and emphasize the big picture rather than individual perspectives. You've kind of said that over here of like people come to me and they bring me the gossip and all this stuff and then I have to help them think through like, what do we actually need to be focused on here? So, two really quick examples of this, listen but do not coddle. For that, like that's a great example of like don't set up a 30-minute meeting every day just to listen to all of the drama in the office because they keep coming to you, and so you're tired of dealing with them, so you just set up a specific time for them to come and complain. That's a true story, right? If there was a leader who she just was so sick of people just constantly bringing stories to her every day that she was like, let's just have a 30-minute meeting every morning and tell me everything. That's what coddling looks like in the workplace. You have to help the empathizer acknowledge that like yes, everyone on our team is valuable and their feelings are valuable, but we've got to figure out like what is the big picture here? What are we actually trying to accomplish? But also acknowledging like when they are right and we need to listen, right? When do we need to think about, oh my gosh, we're about to shut down that clinic location, and if we move this person here, it's a 45-minute commute and who might we lose, right? Another true story. Communicating with an outliner. Give them time to think. We talked about this earlier. Outliners really do need time to process the information because remember, they are providing all of the details for you and they want them in return, so they actually need time to sit and process and vet through that. With outliners too, you've also got to build strict guardrails around what information is relevant, and give them a deadline for making decisions. Because for the outliner researchers among us, like when I talk about brainstorming being a happy day, like research is a happy day for them. Creating the spreadsheets is a happy day for them, and they could do that for a very, very long time. I was speaking to a group of like CEOs last week, and there was one guy who was like, this is why my wife hasn't bought Windows yet, right? Like he was like, she just keeps researching Windows and we haven't gotten there yet, right? So, you've got to build guardrails around what information is relevant, what do we actually need to know to make this decision, right? How much is enough information about Windows to buy? Or like we had a hospital CEO who kept getting asked like, what color should we paint the new clinic, right? And like what information is relevant, and he would get lost in that, and then like two days have gone by, and he hasn't done any of his CEO duties, because we asked him to research paint. We didn't give him a deadline for researching paint. So, again, just you've got to build those guardrails for your outliners to help them know, because their superpower is finding all those details, and finding that information. Then last, communicating with a whiteboard user. Timelines and deadlines, we don't like them, we do need them, right? But we need that freedom to think, but we've got to also have those guardrails there, and this big one is like emphasizing the importance of the results as opposed to the process of ideation. This is where like Don and our CEO and I, we have what we call a lab, and they are secret spreadsheets that we each have where we keep ideas for our business that we don't show to the rest of our team. It's not because we're keeping secrets, it's because we know we come up with like five to six new ideas on any given day and they're not always great. I mean, sometimes they are. But we have to be given and emphasize like, hey, it's more important to get to the end result here than to come up with the best idea, right? Like I highly value innovation, I love coming up with new things and thinking about ways to do it, but I also need to be reminded from time to time that like, hey, this is what we're actually trying to accomplish. This would be the impact it would make in our community, this would be the impact it would make for the patients or for our team, and so we do need to like narrow the focus in on this. Okay. I think we're about up on time, so forgive me for skipping a couple of slides. But again, your key takeaway here is you already know how you communicate. So it's thinking how do you take this information about different styles and use it to become a better leader, and this is what I'll leave you with, and Andrea tapped on this for just a second too. Effective communication only happens when you know you might be wrong. We are in an incredibly divisive culture, and in case you didn't know, there's an election in a month. But we have a lot of this right now in our cultures, and we have it a lot in our teams, is that when we start hearing ourselves like, I know I'm right, or for me my trigger is if I start using they, instead of like we or us or someone's name. Well, they just don't know what they're talking about, they don't get this, they don't care. We hear that a lot in healthcare, for my purview. We'll talk to people and they'll say, well, this person on our team doesn't follow this girl because they don't care. Like, do you think anybody gets into healthcare who doesn't care? No. So we've got to be willing to admit we might be wrong, and that's how you actually communicate effectively. Again, we talked about beginning leadership, the simplest definition of leadership is influence, and you influence by meeting people where they are versus forcing everyone to come to you. So, if you're actually trying to be an influential leader, you've got to go to people where they are. So, figure out what their style is, listen for those cues. If you know that they love an email with a lot of details, do that. If you know they prefer a face-to-face conversation, if you know they need time to process it, meet them there, and be willing to be wrong. We did put might in there because you could be right. You could absolutely be right, but you're not going to communicate effectively if you know. If you know you are right. So again, that applies to how you communicate. If you are forcing your team to communicate the way that you like to communicate, you're doing this. Be flexible. There's lots of different ways to do it, and to communicate, and meet people where they are. So, I'm going to put my QR code up on the screen. If you would like to get a hold of me or you want more of this information, you can scan that. It gives you my contact info and all those details. The survey link that you took is public access. So, feel free to use that and share it with people. But also again, I would recommend just like listen for the visual cues, listen for the verbal cues of what people are telling you. You can go have your whole team take this or you can just start leading with it. Yeah. Okay. Was this helpful? Okay. Well, thank you guys so much for having me.
Video Summary
The presentation focused on improving communication through understanding different communication styles. The speaker, from People Centric Consulting Group, emphasized the importance of aligning and empowering people within organizations, particularly in healthcare, by effectively assessing and fostering a positive culture. The session was interactive, encouraging attendees to discover their communication styles through a quiz, identifying themselves as either go-getters, empathizers, outliners, or whiteboarders. The speaker stressed the importance of understanding these styles to improve leadership and influence by meeting others where they are in their communication preferences. Strategies for engaging with each style were discussed, like allowing time for outliners to process information, giving empathizers the space to consider others' perspectives, and providing go-getters with direct and succinct information. The session concluded with a reminder that effective communication requires openness to being wrong and adapting to the communication needs of others, which enhances influence and leadership.
Keywords
communication styles
People Centric Consulting Group
organizational culture
healthcare communication
leadership influence
interactive quiz
engagement strategies
effective communication
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