Welcome to Module 1, Session 2 of the Cardiovascular Program Coordinator course. This module is Building Teams and content is provided by Britta Gilley and Christine Keenan. During this session, coordinators will learn foundational skills needed as you journey through the accreditation process and strengthen your program. The learning objectives and agenda for this session will focus on the second and third topics of identify and build a dynamic team and then plan and conduct a successful meeting. In this session, we will begin with taking a deeper dive into identifying and building a dynamic team. There are multiple components to building a successful team. As you see in this graphic, team building requires leadership, identify goals, motivation, coaching, good communication skills, cooperation, and of course, collaboration. The first type of team we're going to look at is an effective team. A team is either effective or dysfunctional. So we want you as a coordinator and leader to ensure that you have an effective team. This is important whether you're building a team for accreditations, process improvement, or other project. The first step an effective team does is to build trust within the members. Without trust, you will not be able to accomplish your goals. Members need to be able to have engagement or open communication surrounding all ideas presented. The team needs to have a commitment to work towards the same goal. They must have a shared vision in order to accomplish that goal. The members also hold one another accountable. So if someone has been given an assignment, the team holds them accountable to completing it so that you can achieve your overall goal. The members should also be focused on the collective achievements. So this is accomplished through the group vision and effort established. To review, these are the basic requirements of an effective team. You must trust without it your team members will be unable to get anything accomplished. You must have open communication, getting everyone engaged. You must have commitment so that all are working towards the collective goal. You must have accountability. Each team member should hold each other accountable for assignments. And then finally, you're all working towards the top of this pyramid, which is the goal. Which could be the goal of accreditation or certification or process improvement initiative or other. Teams that are not effective lack one of these basic requirements. There are five steps to building an effective and dynamic team. First, establish leadership. Identify who is leading the team. Often this will be the coordinator. Second, establish relationships. Third, build upon these relationships. These really go hand in hand. You want to establish the relationship and build these from the beginning. You can do this through team building exercises or just basic getting to know one another from the start. The fourth step is foster teamwork. Observe and discover who really works well together, who has a common interest, who would be great to tackle specific tasks together. And then finally, set ground rules for your team. Start this from the very beginning. Let them know what's expected, how the meetings will be conducted, what time factors are in place. Find out the roles and expectations from the beginning. Also, it's a good idea to have these posted in the meeting room to serve as an ongoing reminder. Now let's pivot and highlight what a dysfunctional team looks like. This is a team we do not want to have working on your accreditation process or frankly any project. The dysfunctional team has the ability or inability to deliver results. They lack clarity and purpose, goal, and expectation. A dysfunctional team has an inability to resolve conflicts or disagreements. They may spend their whole meeting disagreeing on one topic and never cover anything else that's listed on the agenda. They have a lack of commitment. They will not meet their deadlines. They lack the ability to provide timely and effective data. They never clearly understand how they are performing, so the ability to make a change is not going to happen. Dysfunctional teams have a lack of accountability. They do not hold each other accountable for specific tasks given. In this situation, all tasks typically fall back on the coordinator to complete, even though items were assigned to other team members. They have ineffective communication. Typically in these scenarios, senior leadership is left out of the equation altogether. Often they are not aware of what's going on until the deadline is missed. Several of the accreditation certification items require senior leadership involvement, for example, provider credentialing. So ensure all team members are actively engaged. So let's look at the pyramid for the dysfunctional team. For that development of trust, within a dysfunctional team, you have an absence of trust. Without trust of your team members, those goals will never be met. You will lead then to a fear of conflict. When there's a fear of conflict, the team is unable to discuss topics that need decisions. If there is timidity or fear of speaking out, this creates an artificial harmony. The next item is lack of commitment. This causes everything to fall back on the coordinator as no one is held accountable for assigned tasks. Without accountability, there is a lack of commitment to the accreditation process. The team dynamics point to low standards in this situation. At the top of the pyramid is concern for status and ego, which results in not completing goals. If this is the team dynamic, you should go back to the rationale for pursuing accreditation and certification. What was the facility goal? Was it just for marketing purposes? Or is it truly to improve patient outcomes? Make sure the rationale and vision is clearly established and well communicated from the very beginning of this journey. And ensure that this is reviewed frequently by all team members. We talked about Amanda before when we reviewed what skills and time she will need as the coordinator. Now, let's evaluate her team as they are moving along in this journey. Does she have an effective team or a dysfunctional team? Remember, Amanda, the coordinator, made assignments at the first meeting to several of the team members. At the six-month mark, none of the assignments had been completed and the team member said they don't remember her assigning tasks. What are some of the items in a dysfunctional team that are identified in this situation? What jumps out at you in this case study about Amanda and her team? Remember, she is a part-time nurse. She put together a team for their accreditations and now they're at the six-month mark. There is much to be done, but the team is saying they do not remember receiving assignments. What are some of the issues here? The first item that comes to mind is a lack of clarity on the assignments. Any assignments made need to be clearly stated with due dates along with confirmation from the team member responsible that they understand the expectation. Also in this scenario, there seems to be a lack of commitment or accountability. What about a lack of trust from the members or their purpose and vision? Lastly, there's a lack of communication. Amanda should have sent out reminders and had more frequent touch points along the way. Communication is key. Amanda needs effective communication to ensure everyone is working as a team and being effective in pursuit of their goal. We are now going to discuss how to run a successful meeting. I want to start with this quote from Mother Teresa. None of us, including me, ever do great things, but we can all do small things with great love and together we can do something wonderful. This is so important, especially as we discuss teams. Independently, we can do small things, but when we come together as a team, we can do something wonderful. When we look at meeting management, let's begin with the four P's of this model. This starts with purpose, then participants, plan, and then process. The first item is purpose, which we've discussed a lot today. You must have a defined purpose and include that on your agenda. Remember previously, it is a good practice to ask the participants for items they want to discuss, and then send out the agenda in advance of the meeting. Not having a purpose can lead to conflict in your meetings. Participants, you want to make sure that you have the right members at each meeting. Make sure to include appropriate staff. If you are discussing topics related to the ED processes, make sure you have ED management and ED frontline staff. If there are a few topics on, say, cath lab, ensure that there's a cardiologist or interventional cardiologist in the cath lab management and staff. So bottom line, make sure you have the right participants for these discussions. Plan. Determine what needs to be addressed. Send out meeting reminders. This should be to all members to ensure that they know there's a meeting on this date at this time. Be sure you start and stop on time. Be respectful of everyone's time. Finally, process. Identify the needed resources. If you're using PowerPoint, do you have a laptop? Do you have a projector to use? If you're using handouts, are they copied and ready to disseminate? Did you send out the agenda? Do you have someone to take minutes? If you're leading the meeting, you cannot lead the meeting and take minutes also. If you don't, have a device to record on and then also include a parking lot space. Again, this could be somebody writing the items down or you could have a whiteboard or post-its on the wall. If an item comes up that is not on the agenda, place that item in the parking lot and add it to the agenda for the next meeting. What is the structure for the team? We've said it several times. Begin and end on time. Clearly state ground rules. You can post them, pass them out, or even send them by email. Everybody on the team will know these are the rules that all will follow. Ask key questions, such as open-ended questions, to get discussions started. Keep the discussions focused and moving. You may have to redirect at times. Occasionally, conversations will veer off on a rabbit trail to topics not on the agenda, so keep those discussions focused. At the end, you will want to summarize key issues discussed and decisions made. If assignments are made, restate the assignment, who is assigned to this task, and what is the deadline. The rules for team communication is to be a good listener. Often we are planning what we want to say before the person finishes speaking and we don't truly listen, but try to be a good listener. Keep an open mind. Act like a professional. You may have to intervene if discussions seem to escalate at times, but you are the coordinator and leader, and you should be able to redirect the team back to the discussion. You want to create the environment where all team members are engaged and valued and heard. Ask for clarification if you don't understand something. You want to make sure that you clarify the statement to ensure understanding and appropriate response. Give everyone a chance to speak. This is so important. If you see a team member not involved or not participating in the discussion, ask them their opinion. Get them engaged. Focus on the present and future, not the past. We cannot alter what has taken place in the past, but we can impact the present and the future. You need to be prepared to deal with specific problems. Generalized problems are hard to address, but specific ones you can work on and develop process improvement initiatives. Don't be defensive. You're not always going to be liked, especially when you're directing the team to focus only on agenda items. You will need to redirect at times. Most importantly, all comments must remain in the room. The team will discuss very confidential topics and cases occasionally, especially during chart reviews. These are all a part of the accreditation certification process. Team members need to understand these conversations are to stay within the meeting. Everyone is equal in the meeting. There are no titles. You will have leadership, physicians, cath lab staff, emergency department staff, education, laboratory, etc. All members are equal. Be polite and do not interrupt. Everyone should be treated as a professional and each opinion matters. Do not discount someone's ideas or solutions. One method you may find that works well is to put everyone's idea up on a board, like a brainstorm session. As a team, you take a look at that list and then narrow it down to the top three items. Finally, through discussions, you decide which idea is most important or is the solution. Now we've talked a lot about Amanda and we've used her throughout our case studies. So this is the final case study. Amanda has had her first accreditation team meeting. She left the meeting as an open discussion on the accreditation process. Discussion and arguments developed regarding a new doctor and new medications that physician wants. The meeting ended with mad physicians and no actions developed for the accreditation process. What ground rules could have been used to create a successful meeting? What do you think? Write some of these down. Okay, do you have your list? Well, first and foremost, did Amanda give the team ground rules? Did she set the agenda? Remember without an agenda, there will be conflict. Prior to the meeting, did she request agenda items from the team? Did she utilize a parking lot concept? These are just a few points that jump out. This is the end of the team building section. You should now have a working knowledge of necessary coordinator skills, how to build a dynamic team, and how to run an effective meeting. Keep up the hard work and reach out to your accreditation review specialist if you have any questions. This concludes Module 1, Session 2 of the Cardiovascular Program Coordinator Course.

Cardiovascular Program Coordinator

building teams

effective team

successful meetings

accreditation process