I’m an old hack when it comes to teamwork and pain management: I’ve worked in this field a long time. I’m familiar with reactions to both interpersonal differences within a team (and the myriad ways these can be expressed), and to the discourse that happens when posting a publicly available message. In fact, that’s why I publish on social media: so we can have open conversations rather than ones hidden behind paywalls, or in rarified academic settings. Humans are odd, and when poked – even when poked with good evidence – want to react, to bite back. The following comments are not about any specific organisation. I’ll repeat that: comments about what we do in healthcare (ie bullying – nurses call this ‘horizontal violence’, stigmatising, excluding, not supporting etc) in the two articles I’ve written so far on how to prevent good clinicians do not relate to any one organisation. They are based on personal experience (my own) and experiences I’ve read in the literature.
There is an elephant in the room. It’s possibly the biggest one we have in teamwork and it’s about dispute resolution. How do we resolve contrasting clinical models, interpersonal styles, personal and professional values, hierarchies (explicit or implicit) without compromising important and valid points, and without blowing relationships between team members out of the water? An alternative is to leave, as I did, having seen several clinicians put through the wringer by accusations of bullying and being the recipient of bullying myself.
I’m drawn to Dr Todd B. Kashdan’s work in his most recent book “The Art of Insubordination: How to dissent and defy effectively” because he offers well-researched strategies for individuals and groups to disrupt the status quo – not for the purpose of disrupting for the sake of it, but because of personal integrity and ethical standards. Values that clash with “received wisdom”. Creative ideas that could change practice positively, but land flat because they’re “different”. The desire to create social value – not from a place of “I’m superior, you should do it my way” or spite “I just want to get you back for being dominant” or self-interest “I want you to do this because it’ll line my pockets” (p. 11., The Art of Insubordination).
You see, principled insubordination is one reason for disputes in teams. It could be an occupational therapist identifying that participating in daily life really matters to people with chronic pain but working in a team where everyone gets the same recipe for treatment. It might be a physiotherapist who sees that there could be ways to see people in small groups, rather than individually – but gets smacked down because “that’s not the way we do it”. It might be the social worker who dreams of bringing whanau/family into pain management, but can’t get a toe in the door of a team with a strong medical procedure focus.
Each of these people holds strong values, wants to be person-centred, can see there are opportunities, and sincerely communicates them to the team. Even the idea of interprofessional or transprofessional working, where each person steps up to do what matters to the person in front of them although it doesn’t look like conventional “role division” can be an effective way to be a radical and principled rebel.
While the ideas Todd articulates SO well in his book are absolutely worth doing if you’re the principled rebel, one thing I worry about is placing the responsibility only on the rebel. It’s difficult being the one swimming against the current. It can lead to personal isolation, burnout, poor team trust, difficulty sharing information that is unique to your profession (or your encounters with a patient), less reporting critical problems and ultimately, to closing down and walking away (O’Donovan, De Brun & McAuliffe, 2021).
Stephanie Zajac and colleagues (Zajac, et al., 2021) developed a framework for healthcare team effectiveness and clearly identifies the crucial contribution of the organisation, team leadership, technical competence and having team roles and purpose (Fig. 1, p. 4). Without a supportive culture, executive leadership and teamwork reinforcement as a value, the organisational conditions likely work against effective teamwork. Without shared leadership, accountability and coaching, teams flounder and fragment. Without adequate training, the capability to do the work well, and sufficient staffing, teams don’t have sufficient technical competence to be effective. Finally, without role definitions, team directions and developing and monitoring team norms, teams will likely experience conflict and who should or can do tasks, and what’s OK and not OK within the team. Note this doesn’t inevitably mean “my role” and “your role” – inter and transprofessional team work demands blurring between roles. This is about articulating and being clear about how team members work together.
And who needs to ensure these organisational “meta-team skills” are clear, supported and maintained? Yes, it’s everyone’s job – but it’s also the organisation’s leadership team’s job to make sure it happens. After all, the leadership team should have skin in the game.
Conflict is inevitable. Some schools of thought believe that conflict is healthy, a sign of divergent thinking rather than conformity, that conflict enables people to challenge their own assumptions (O’Neill, Allen & Hastongs, 2013). At the same time, forms of conflict can be painful and damaging to the individuals involved. Disagreeing about what is done is less damaging than conflict with a member of the team. Consequently, two points spring to mind: 1. Left to fester, interpersonal conflict will reduce team trust, and ultimately stymie collaboration. People will revert to silence, and a “them and us” will emerge. Processes involving transparent, open conversations (see this link), often moving beyond the key antagonists and into the whole team, are crucial. These may involve clear policies and procedures, and need to be facilitated – preferably by someone external to the team, but knowledgeable. 2. “Ground rules” must be established about how to disagree, challenge one another, articulate different perspectives. Why? Because disagreement and conflict is inevitable, so we need to minimise the fall-out, but more importantly, because conflict when well-managed is the lifeblood of creativity and responsiveness (psst! it’s also really good for critical thinking).
Kim, S., Bochatay, N., Relyea-Chew, A., Buttrick, E., Amdahl, C., Kim, L., Frans, E., Mossanen, M., Khandekar, A., Fehr, R., & Lee, Y. M. (2017, May). Individual, interpersonal, and organisational factors of healthcare conflict: A scoping review. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 31(3), 282-290. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2016.1272558
O’Donovan, R., De Brun, A., & McAuliffe, E. (2021). Healthcare Professionals Experience of Psychological Safety, Voice, and Silence. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 626689. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626689
O’Neill, T. A., Allen, N. J., & Hastings, S. E. (2013). Examining the “Pros” and “Cons” of TeamConflict: A Team-Level Meta-Analysis of Task, Relationship, and Process Conflict. Human Performance, 26(3), 236-260. https://doi.org/10.1080/08959285.2013.795573
Zajac, S., Woods, A., Tannenbaum, S., Salas, E., & Holladay, C. L. (2021). Overcoming Challenges to Teamwork in Healthcare: A Team Effectiveness Framework and Evidence-Based Guidance. Frontiers in Communication, 6(6). https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.606445
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