One of the best things about working as a consultant is the variety of projects I get to be involved in. This episode is about what actually happens when I’m brought in to help a team. I’m going to share five moves that I make that might be helpful to you and your team.
Hi, everybody. This is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners. Since 2017, we’ve been giving you inspiration and strategies to improve engagement, experience, and satisfaction. I’m Dr. Anne Marie Liebel, a researcher, consultant, and educator specializing in communication and education. This podcast makes space to dig into what it’s easy to take for granted about communication in our professional lives. especially in healthcare and public health, but increasingly across sectors because communication touches everything. We’re here to learn and get inspired. Most importantly, make the difference we got into our jobs to make.
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I recently heard from a client I’d worked with years ago, and it kind of gave me a chance to look across projects that I’ve done over time and see if there was a through line. What do they have in common? And I’m figuring out it’s usually something like: “We have a thing we want to make happen. We’re just not totally sure how to make it happen.”
And typically, these are not people who need better strategy. They definitely don’t need better ideas, but they do seem to need someone to help them think together so they can turn to action. That turning to action is definitely a theme across projects that I’ve noticed. Because I’m not usually there to deliver answers. It’s not that. These are also people who are on the ball. These are excellent communicators. So I tend to surface what the team already knows. And then we find ways for them to use it. Like, how is this going to work? How can we make this usable?
When I get pulled into those situations, I tend to do the same handful of things. So I thought I would share these with you in case it gives you some inspiration for what you’re dealing with in your team. All right, here we go. Five things.
Number one, listen. No surprise here. The last two episodes have been about listening. So yes, I’m listening, but…like I talked about in the prior episode, you’re also listening, not just for what people are saying, but for silences. What doesn’t get said? So I’m paying just as
much attention to what’s not said, or those quiet signals, or hesitations, maybe things people are skirting around. Maybe there’s a whole lot of energy around one idea, but you got that one person who’s quiet. You kind of feel they’re not on board. So addressing that is key to the way I work.
If you want to try this yourself in your team, you don’t have to overcomplicate it. Just notice what feels like it’s sitting underneath the
surface. What would feel slightly uncomfortable to say out loud right now. Definitely check out that most recent episode. And then the move is just gently bring it in. Not in a big dramatic way, just something like, “feels like there might be a concern here that we
haven’t named yet around X. What do you think? Should we go there?”
Number two, creating space. This is a phrase that gets thrown around. It’s not easy to do in practice. I try to make space for disagreement, try to make space for multiple perspectives, try to make space for people who… are not in the conversation, or for various reasons are marginalized from the conversation. Because in most teams, there’s a few perspectives that dominate. And then there’s a bunch of other perspectives that would be really useful, but don’t make it to the table for various reasons.
So in your team, maybe a quick gut check: in your last couple meetings, whose input would have helped? How can you safely get them to the table next time?
All right. Number three, acknowledging the overload. This is a big one. Everyone is overloaded. No one has a bunch of spare hours just kind of hanging around. There’s usually just too much, too many priorities, too many projects, too much pressure. And all of this is in the backdrop of what we’re doing, and sometimes in the foreground of what we’re doing. So it’s important to acknowledge overload, overwhelm. I’ll slow things down even for just a little bit. I’ll also present options whenever I can, especially if they come from a team member.
There’s a saying: if you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any priorities. So if you’re in that situation, a simple question is: “What are we actually trying to prioritize right now?” And there can only be three. The rest are not making the cut. Because again,
a lot of teams that are in the midst of some sort of change or initiative are also on overload.
All right, four, synthesizing it. At a certain point, I’ll start reflecting back to people what I have been hearing. just enough to make it concrete so people can actually react to something real. And I love this part, too, because it’s when the co-created nature of what we’re doing becomes visible. I make a thing. There’s now a thing. Well, I didn’t make the thing. We made this thing.
So I’ll make a plug here to reflect back what you’re hearing from your team in some concrete way. Even just a short bulleted list or sure, yeah, use the AI, but not just at the end, when everyone’s like mentally checked out. Do pulse checks during your meetings, during projects, just pausing and saying, “here’s what I think I’m hearing.” Quick list, quick couple items. That can change things a lot. It can change the tone of things.
And here I want to give a shout out to Samantha Cinnick, who’s been on the show multiple times, and did a mini series on interprofessional communication. I’m going to drop one of those links into the show notes too.
All right, number five, structure. Adding just enough structure so we can get moving. Finally, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll add a bit of structure, but just as much as the team needs. We don’t want overkill here. Now structure can take many different forms, but I want to share one here that’ll make the project managers in the audience smile. Maybe.
This is about clarity on decisions. “What decision are we actually making right now? Who owns this decision, right? Whose is this? And when do we need to decide?” If things start feeling muddy on your team, giving just those three questions a whirl can open
things up.
Now, I mentioned I was talking to a former client recently. This is a group I worked with over three years ago, and they got in touch to tell me they’re still using some of these ways of working that we did. Which I loved, because yay, but also because like I didn’t come in,
like I said, and deliver wisdom or drop some big framework on them, “go implement this.” We changed how they work through things together and it stuck.
This is the kind of work I love doing, helping teams that have a lot of good thinking and need to turn that into movement. So if your team is in that place – there’s plenty to do, but it’s hard to prioritize or move forward – feel free to reach out. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, or visit healthcommunicationpartners.com and click on contact.
This has been 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners. Audio engineering and music from Joe Liebel. Additional music from Alexis Rounds. Thanks for listening to 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, LLC. Find us at healthcommunicationpartners.com.