In many employment settings managers are selected for promotion because of their demonstrated leadership abilities on the front line. Health care is no exception. Managers begin in their roles with exceptional clinical skills, but minimal, or no management experience or training. In many program areas these managers are left with limited support and mentorship for a variety of reasons. Internal training opportunities are provided intermittently, and external opportunities are also available intermittently but may or may not be supported financially. These sessions are often helpful, but not timely, and in the day to day crises of health care management there is little opportunity to translate knowledge into action.
Two of the management competencies expected in health care is holding others accountable, and conflict management skills. Established managers know that these skills need to be practiced. Training days have been offered through the former health region, but none recently. In my current role I have five managers from different program areas that report to me with varying years of experience from 2 months to several years. All of them have taken the Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad BehaviourTM two day training but it has been over two years. All of us could benefit from a review of the material, but with the advantages of a smaller group, all of us can enhance our skills and abilities by holding each other accountable to practice the skills that we have learned in the reading that week and reporting back to the larger group.
I have chosen this topic to address because these are real, practical leadership problems in my workplace, competencies are expected to improve and can be measured, and the reading/discussion dates have already been set up. Developing this into action research study provides the opportunity to make this even more meaningful to the participants and may have the potential to demonstrate to other leaders in the organization the benefits of applied learning, knowledge translation, and intentional mentorship for managers.