Welcome to the Making Conversations Easier podcast. In this episode, our hosts Professor Peter Gillen and Wini Ryan are joined by Professor Michael West to discuss Team-based Working. Michael is a Senior Visiting Fellow at The King’s Fund, London, Professor of Organisational Psychology at Lancaster University, Visiting Professor at University College, Dublin, and Emeritus Professor at Aston University. He has authored, edited and co-edited 20 books and has published more than 200 articles on teamwork, innovation, leadership, and culture, particularly in healthcare. His latest book, Compassionate Leadership: Sustaining Wisdom, Humanity and Presence in Health and Social Care was published to critical acclaim in July 2021. Michael was appointed a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2020 for services to compassion and innovation in healthcare. Michael is on Twitter as @WestM61 and can be contacted at m.a.west@lancaster.ac.uk. Tune in while he shares his insights on team-based working and how we might work together in healthcare to create team cultures of care and compassion.

Key Takeaways:

• Within the healthcare services, caring for the patient depends on the various activities of many different multidisciplinary teams. For those teams to achieve co-ordinated, high quality, safe care, they must work collaboratively with patients, their families and carers and with each other. 
• The word ‘Team’ describes groups of employees which have these characteristics:

1. They share objectives
2. They have the necessary authority, autonomy and resources to achieve these objectives
3. They have to work closely and interdependently to achieve these objectives
4. They have well-defined and unique roles
5. They meet regularly to review their performance and how it can be improved.

• The 4 key principles of team-based working are Safety and Trust, Common Purpose, Effective Communication and Collective Leadership.
• Flattening the hierarchy is vital for an open, blame-free culture where staff are valued, seen as equals and are supported to voice their opinions and concerns. 
• It is team working that ultimately determines whether or not patients receive high quality, continually improving and compassionate care. And so the leadership of healthcare organisations must ensure high quality and continually improving team- based working.
• To deliver compassionate care, staff first need to practice and develop self-compassion. This involves paying attention, understanding their own life situations, practising empathy towards themselves, and compassionately taking wise, kind action to help themselves.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.