This is a response to Pierre’s response to MSSL ET1 – “EL EQUIPO DIRECTIVO” here:
I have been reading many of the blog posts and especially enjoying the integration of our learning to our professional careers and how both the health and education sector are so closely related. I would like to focus my response to Pierre’s encouragement to Marcelo, to create more groups to tackle difficulties due to the perception of more work (Florendo, 2018). As mentioned by Florendo (2018), the urgent day-to-day activities often keep us from achieving important goals. This is very similar in health care and education settings. We are often inundated by urgent, but non-important issues where we have no other time to plan and act on important matters. In addition in forming more groups to tackle difficulties, I would also suggest the use of the Eisenhower Matrix to assist with prioritizing various tasks and projects. The matrix is sort into four quadrants: Important-Urgent, Important-Not urgent, Not important-Urgent, and Not important-Not urgent (Scott, 2018). Very often, we are plagued with work that is urgent and requires immediate attention. Some of these are important, but many more are not important. What’s critical of note is many of our important, long-term goals and strategies fall under the important-not urgent quadrant. When we are too busy and only spend our time with urgent issues, we often neglect what’s really important and impactful to the organization or team. As suggested by Scott (2018), we should be spending most of our time focusing on quadrant 2 items and not the other way around. Following the suggestion of this matrix can help individuals or team to refocus on what is the most important tasks that would fulfil long-term strategic goals.
In addition to the above suggestion, I would also want to touch on Pierre’s and Marcelo’s point to “there is no blame”. While I understand the cultural challenges to this point, I think it plays out very often in the North Americal culture as well. Very often, leaders forget to hold others accountable in their team. Lepsinger (2010) reported the following in a research study:
In our survey of over four hundred senior and mid-level leaders, 40 percent report that employees in their organizations are not being held accountable for results and 20 percent report that managers in their organizations do not deal with poor performers. It also appears that the presence or absence of accountability in an organization makes a difference—77 percent of leaders in top-performing organizations report that “employees at all levels are held accountable for results,” compared to only 44 percent in less-successful organizations.
We often believe creating a system of accountability is only required when certain individuals or teams are low-performing, or perhaps it is considered too “micro-managing” when leaders expect regular check-ins with their team members. Yet, increased accountability can enhance team performance, experience more success, and express more satisfaction with the members of their teams than those who are not held accountable (Lepsinger, 2010). My personal encouragement to all TSL is to consider accountability as a strategic tool to enhance the effectiveness of their team, whether it is in health care or educational settings.
References:
Florendo, P. (2018). RESPONSE TO MSSL ET1 – “EL EQUIPO DIRECTIVO” Retrieved October 20, 2018, from https://create.twu.ca/pierreflorendo/2018/10/19/response-to-mssl-et1-el-equipo-directivo/
Lepsinger, R. (2010). Closing the execution gap: How great leaders and their companies get results. Jossey Bass.
Scott, R. J. (2018). The Eisenhower Matrix: How to Make Decisions on What’s Urgent and Important. Retrieved October 20, 2018 from https://www.developgoodhabits.com/eisenhower-matrix/
I really appreciated Marcelo’s response to Kamal’s post in sharing his experiences in communication and recognition with his own team. Marcelo mentioned in his post on the challenges he had with communication in Paraguay due to its culture is so important and relevant in our culture here in Canada as well. In my experiences as an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) in Vancouver, we routinely perform inspections at various restaurants and food places. Vancouver’s pride in its multi-ethnicity means we have many restaurant operators originated outside of Canada and allowing our citizens the opportunity to taste cuisines from all over the world. This also means as EHOs, we often have to work with operators from different cultures. If we are not culturally sensitive in our communications with operators, we often misunderstand each other and reach a different outcome. For instance, when a verbal order is directed to an operator who is accustomed to the North American culture, we expect he/she to listen to our instructions and ask questions if they do not understand. The “silence is agreement” model is often used. However, in other cultures, silence can be interpreted differently. In order to “save face”, some operators would stay silent even when they are uncertain or confused by the situation. They may not agree with the directive but continue to keep silent. The result of this is the EHO would leave the premises thinking we an agreement was made and yet when returning later for a re-inspection, all the same issues persist because the operator did not understand what needs to be done.
Pierre’s blog post on his personal experience with a high-producing health care team is an interesting and thought-provoking read! In summary, Pierre was part of a high-producing team in health care, where the team consistently achieved the highest level of accreditation, yet upon his evaluation of the team based on the Strategic Team Review and Action Tool (STRAT) as described by Hughes, Beatty, & Dinwoodie (2014, pp. 290), the performance of the team appears to be poor in terms of strategic leadership. From your description of the team and its dysfunctional leadership, it is definitely not surprising to hear from your evaluation. But the fact the team continued producing at a high level leads me to believe there were some positive aspects that came from its leadership team. Despite leadership’s nepotism and lack of engagement of other staff members, staff turnover still remained low. From my own personal experience, success rarely happens by accident and I wonder if there some positive experiences or strategies that can be gleaned from this experience and from the previous leadership team? One of my mentors encouraged me some time ago and said, “people who are learning to be leaders will learn many different ideas and strategies as they progress but it is up to them to decide what works well for yourself”. I would personally love to hear more of Pierre’s insights on this, especially when he is now in a leadership position. It sounds like there will be quite a challenge in the future ahead for Pierre in creating a high-functioning, strategic team.