Culture Over Coffee
Culture Over Coffee
Communicating Clearly to Foster Engagement with Liz Dickson
In this episode, we’re talking about how important it is for leaders to get the communication piece right when it comes to fostering a solid culture of engagement.
And joining Beth is one of the best communicators we know, Liz Dickson, Managing Director at Press Ganey.
Liz has so many amazing thoughts to offer, like:
- Why it’s important for companies to create psychologically safe environments so employees feel comfortable speaking their mind
- How just as patients in a hospital experience better outcomes when given clear communication, the same can be said for employees and their level of engagement
- And, finally, why ensuring your visibility and approachability as a leader goes a long way toward breeding trust amongst your people.
Links:
[Blog] How to Become a More Impactful Listener
Liz Dickson
Beth Sunshine
Up Your Culture
Hello and welcome to Culture Over Coffee, a podcast focused on improving company culture and fostering employee engagement. Every week, we chat with experts and thought leaders about the latest information and proven practices you can use to reduce regrettable turnover, increase productivity on your team and retain key customers. So pour a cup of your favorite brew and join us. I'm your host, beth Sunshine, sbp, it up your culture and the Center for Sales Strategy.
Beth Sunshine:In this episode, we're talking about how important it is for leaders to get the communication piece right when it comes to fostering a solid culture of engagement, and joining me today is one of the best communicators I know, Liz Dickson, managing Director at Press Gaming. Liz has so many interesting thoughts and experiences to share, like why it's important for companies to create psychologically safe environments so employees feel comfortable speaking their mind. How, just as patients in a hospital experience better outcomes when given clear communication, the same can be said for employees and their level of engagement. And, finally, why ensuring your visibility and approachability as a leader goes a long way towards breeding trust amongst your people. So welcome, liz. I have been so looking forward to having Culture Over Coffee with you today. Thank you for joining me.
Liz Dickson:Thank you for having me, Beth. I'm thrilled to be here.
Beth Sunshine:We're going to have fun. We'll be talking about why communication is key in fostering engagement, and I'm just so incredibly excited to get your perspective, especially because your perspective is from the healthcare industry, where I know this is exceedingly important right now. Now, for those listening who don't know this, liz is my neighbor and my friend, so we get to chat about things like this really anytime we want, but we have never sat down for a structured conversation like this, have we? So, yeah, this will be fun. So, liz, before we get to our topic, I do always like to begin with just a quick brain jolt to kind of get us in the mood. So here it is. When you envision just the very best company culture that you can think of, what three to five words would you use to describe that ideal culture?
Liz Dickson:Oh gosh, that's such a great question, beth. I think mutual respect between leadership and employees, and then amongst your peers, is critical. It's critical because it will then drive that positive teamwork. We need to have that great culture, transparency throughout the organization as much as we can. I think is really important because that builds trust and the most important thing that we can have to build a culture is great trust amongst the teams.
Beth Sunshine:Love it. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, your ideal culture and my ideal culture have a lot in common. All right, so let's jump into today's topic Now. Not too long ago, we sat on my friend Paul Fort and we talked about the concept of high reliability organizations, which I really find fascinating. Can you share a bit about the history of the HRR concept and really how it relates specifically to improving communication and overall culture in healthcare specifically?
Liz Dickson:Absolutely. I think HRR is some of the most important work that's happening in healthcare right now. It came from mission critical organizations like the nuclear, space and aviation those fields where you have to be safe or people lose their lives and it was that same concept that was then moved from those spaces and taken into healthcare, with the original thinking that the goal was to protect patients. But we've now grown and evolved into other spaces of protecting patients, of protecting our employees, with the overall goal being zero harm to anyone within the organization. And what HRR really does at a very high level, is it puts in place the right processes and has our people trained in the right way so they know exactly the behaviors that are expected and they know what right looks like. It makes it really easy for them to do the right thing and really hard to do the wrong thing, because they firmly and clearly understand the processes and the behaviors that are expected.
Beth Sunshine:I love the way you describe that and I can see how that would be so important in mission critical, where it's a life or death kind of situation, those jobs. But I also can see how that would extend to really any company, how that would give employees just a sense of I don't know comfort of knowing exactly what they should or should not do, what will and won't be okay. So I love that. I work with company leaders all the time to increase their level of psychological safety in their organizations. That's a true mission of most companies we work with. The goal is to create a culture where employees know they can share their ideas, their concerns, their feelings without the risk of humiliation or rejection of any sort. Now I've heard you talk about what you call a just culture, which I think directly relates to the concept of psychological safety.
Liz Dickson:Is that right, absolutely so. A just culture ideally means that anybody within the organization, no matter your role you can be the janitor, you can be the CEO has the right to stand up and speak their mind, share a concern without fear of backlash or harm. It's critical in healthcare. If you think about the operating room, for example, that's where a lot of the safety work started was in the OR with. You may have heard of the operating room checklist being able to go through a checklist with the entire team, and anybody on that team, whether it's a tech, whether it's the anesthesiologist, it's the surgeon or it's the lead nurse, can raise their hand and say I have a safety concern here. Let's stop the line and discuss Things like let's confirm are we operating on the right leg today?
Liz Dickson:Yes, we are operating on the right leg today, it's important things like this that allow anybody within that team to speak up without fear of repercussion because, it keeps people safe. It keeps us all safe. It also drives engagement because we've removed that authority gradient amongst different levels of the team. We're all one team now working towards a common goal of keeping ourselves and our patients safe.
Beth Sunshine:I love that we're all one team working towards the same goal. Every voice matters really cool. What happens, besides the obvious that you might do surgery on the wrong leg? What happens if there is a lack of psychological safety in that environment?
Liz Dickson:That's such a great question because it happens, still happens a lot. We're working hard to fix it. But when you don't have psychological safety, people don't raise their hand, people don't stand up and say I have a concern here because they're fearful. They're fearful of keeping their jobs, they're fearful that they're going to get reprimanded. They just have that driving fear. But when you've got that psychological safety, the fear is removed and you can stand up, raise your hand, knowing that there may be discussions had, there may be some repercussions if something is egregious enough, but that in our culture anyone can say anything and it's okay.
Beth Sunshine:I love that we talk a lot in Up your Culture about the concept of a valued voice, and that's really what I'm hearing there that every voice is valued and when someone's voice does not feel valued, they don't share their voice anymore. I can only imagine some of the obstacles that might pop up when that happens. So, in my experience, strong communication reduces anxiety in people. I know personally, the more I feel informed, the more equipped I feel to deal with whatever it's ahead, even if it's bad news. I just I want it all, every detail, because then I can deal with it. In your experience, how does strong communication positively impact not only patients and caregivers, but employees as well?
Liz Dickson:It's such a great question and it's an area where we spend a lot of time focusing and supporting our clients at Press Ganey. From the patient perspective, when nurses and physicians communicate clearly, when they listen well, when they treat others with respect, we have better outcomes of care because patients understand their care better, they feel respected, they understand and that creates buying and it creates a trust and relationship between the patient and the care team. We know on the back end there's data that shows when that happens we have lower admissions, patients hupe faster. They just have better outcomes in general. For the employee perspective, when we communicate clearly, it drives engagement.
Liz Dickson:We understand what's happening. We have clear expectations of our roles, what we are supposed to do within the organization. When that comes down from leadership, when we have units in the hospital or clinics who are clearly communicating amongst themselves, it drives teamwork, which we know is really important to patients and employees, but it drives the overall experience.
Beth Sunshine:We're clear on what's expected.
Liz Dickson:We're clear on what we are supposed to do and we can work together to achieve our common goals.
Beth Sunshine:I love that Once you shared with me. You are a patient once and you actually experienced communication and a lot of what you're talking about from the patient's perspective. Would you mind sharing a little bit about what you shared with me? Yeah?
Liz Dickson:absolutely. It's fascinating being a patient because All of your autonomy that you have in your normal life is gone all of a sudden and that's a really scary feeling. It absolutely can drive fear and anxiety. So we believe that one of the most important roles for caregivers is to reduce that fear and anxiety. The best way we can do that is communicating really clearly about what is happening, what the care plan is, what the next steps are, and then asking questions like do you have me? What questions do you have? Using skills like teach back. So I'm going to tell you three things that's going to happen with your care. I want you to tell me back what's going to happen so that people really understand. When people understand what's happening as a patient, it reduces that fear and anxiety and, frankly, once that fear and anxiety is reduced, you're then really listening, you can listen, you can comprehend, you can better understand and then you can work together with your care team to move forward.
Beth Sunshine:I love that because as a patient, you really do feel like you're in an information vacuum and a lot of what you're sharing I can relate to as an employee as well. The more that I really understand the big picture, the more I mean. The teach back concept is really smart, like here's what I'm hearing you say Do I have that right? Are we both on the same journey together? I think that's a really neat concept.
Liz Dickson:Yeah, and it's a great concept that can be used in any industry. I use it with my eight year old all the time. Here's what we're going to do. Do you understand? Here's what I need you to do. Yes, I'm going to put my socks all into my shoes and then we're going to get in the car and go to school.
Beth Sunshine:I love that Great parenting tip at the same time. All right, so at Up your Culture. We often talk about what we call trust builders versus trust breakers, and it seems that a lot of what we are discussing today, even you know we're talking about communication, we're talking about psychological safety, the teach back concept, the just culture a lot of it really directly connects to trust. So I have a question for you related to trust. In your opinion, what do you think builds trust?
Liz Dickson:Step one listen to me when you and I are talking. If you're my leader, you come in to talk to me. You come in and ask how are things going. It's a simple basic, but it's so often missed Make eye contact, really listen, do great listening, don't interrupt, listen to understand, don't listen to answer. And that's the hardest possible piece.
Beth Sunshine:I've been working on it for years Really listening.
Liz Dickson:Thank you for understanding. And then you can use the teach back and when you say I heard you say X, y and Z, people feel like you've been listening and then they feel like you care and that's step one for building trust.
Beth Sunshine:Listening and caring. I love the way you tie that together, because if you want to make someone feel cared about, they really need to feel heard, they really need to know you're listening. I love that you started there, and I also think this is harder now than it ever was before, because now we all are, you know, we have a phone on us which is dinging, texts are coming in, messages, we're all available 24 seven, and I once heard someone say you multi-task things, but you should never multi-task people. And yet it's really hard not to do that, to truly shut everything out and really listen. And I love what you said too not to respond but actually to listen. Ooh, that's hard, yeah, fair.
Liz Dickson:One of the big things we talk about, big tips we discuss in healthcare, especially in large organizations, is executive rounding and that's the biggest key to executive rounding. Go out talk to your people across the board. Ask them how they're doing, what they need. What can you solve for them to make their day better? Listen, take notes and then go back and work on some of those things if it's something you can solve, obviously, but having that executive visibility and that executive presence really shows people that the leadership team is listening and cares.
Beth Sunshine:Yeah, it really does. I know a lot of our clients will do what we call skip level meetings. Is that something that exists in healthcare? Is that kind of the same thing?
Liz Dickson:Maybe tell me more.
Beth Sunshine:So a skip level meeting is where you would let me see if I can explain this. So my manager wouldn't meet with me, but my manager's manager would meet with me, not with the purpose of finding out what I really think about my manager, but with the purpose of showing me that, from a very high level, they care about me, that my opinion, my thoughts matter all the way up, and also to be for that person to be able to listen and really learn from a different perspective than when they may receive what is really happening on the ground. So we recommend skip level meetings from time to time, certainly with full communication between managers as well, but just another way to show that the executive presence is a valuable one.
Liz Dickson:Absolutely, absolutely Similar, very similar. It's all really just about that executive presence ensuring that we are touching all the different spaces and areas. I think we probably have different terms for it manager rounding, nurse leader rounding but I like that when I'm gonna. I learned something today, I'm gonna tell you.
Beth Sunshine:I didn't know, it was my partners. That's awesome, all right. So last question If you could recommend just one piece of advice for other company leaders who are looking to improve their communication, who want to boost their company culture, who want a thriving level of employee engagement, what would that one piece? That's the hard part. What would that one piece of advice that if they heard nothing else from you today, they heard this. What would that be?
Liz Dickson:You know, I once heard someone say and I thought it was beautiful and it stuck with me that visibility breeds credibility and credibility breeds trust. So if there's anything you can do, it's ensure that you are visible, you're approachable, you're out there listening, you're talking with your employees of all levels across the board, and that will that will breed trust for you.
Beth Sunshine:I love that. So visibility breeds credibility, and credibility breeds trust. That's it. I'm stealing that from you.
Liz Dickson:I still have somebody else. I thought it was terrific.
Beth Sunshine:That's awesome, and thank you, liz, for the time you spent today with me talking about culture over coffee. You shared a lot of great information, great ideas related to strong communication that I'm sure our listeners have found valuable. I would love for those listening. Is it okay if I drop your LinkedIn information in the show notes so they can connect with you?
Liz Dickson:Absolutely, beth. I'd love to connect.
Beth Sunshine:Good good, so we'll add that to the show notes. Reach out, connect with Liz. I'm also going to add the link to a blog called how to Become a More Impactful Listener, which I think just sort of dovetails nicely with everything that Liz has shared today. It outlines seven specific tactics you can use right now to improve communication on your team, and that's a great way to build trust as we learn today. So thank you everyone for joining and thank you, liz, for having some culture over coffee with me. Thanks so much for spending time with us on Culture Over Coffee. If you've enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe and join us for every episode. For more helpful information on the topics of company culture and employee engagement, visit us at upyourculturecom. Enjoy the journey as you increase engagement and up your culture.
