You have great people, exceptional systems, and clear goals, but something may still be missing.
I recently kicked off Culture College: Leadership Essentials for Creating an Engaged Culture with a cohort of attendees from 76 healthcare organizations. When I polled the group to ask them about their biggest challenge, the answer was both overwhelming and surprising.
It wasn’t technology. It wasn’t rising costs. It wasn’t competition.
It was communication breakdowns!
Today’s healthcare organizations, like organizations across most industries, have access to the latest and greatest communication tools, from email, to project management tools, to Slack channels, Google Chat, video conferencing, and good old-fashioned face-to-face communication.
Yet despite the proliferation of all of these amazing systems, they’re still experiencing communication breakdowns on a large scale.
Why Communication Breakdowns Happen
There are some common drivers of communication breakdowns that we see most often in healthcare organizations. These include:
- When there’s a gap between what leaders say matters and what leaders actually do.
- When team members are so focused on their own piece of the work or process and nobody’s looking at the big picture.
- When too much of the work is being done in silos with different departments, locations, and teams operating like they’re separate companies.
But in all of the above situations, communication breaks down because of culture.
When nobody’s talking, it’s usually because the culture doesn’t make it safe to talk. It’s not a communication problem. It’s a culture problem wearing a communication mask.
What Communication Breakdowns Cost
In healthcare, communication breakdowns cost more and have more dramatic repercussions than in other types of companies.
- A patient calls with a question and gets routed to someone who doesn’t have their information.
- A clinical decision gets made with incomplete data because the specialist didn’t have access to the first provider’s notes.
- A treatment plan changes and nobody tells the team.
- An executive team shares information about a merger, but the information isn’t shared to the frontline staff who first hear about it in the evening news.
Patients feel unseen. Staff feel frustrated and devalued. Quality of care declines.
And then people leave—both employees and patients. They go to organizations where communication breakdowns are less common, even rare. They go to organizations with strong communication cultures.
The Power of a Strong Communication Culture
Organizations don’t communicate well because they’re better at email, or their staff love using Slack. They communicate well because their culture embeds open, honest, ongoing, and transparent communication as an integral part of the overall climate.
Leaders model the strong communication climate they desire. When decisions change, they communicate the what and why. When mistakes happen, they own them, tell people what happened, work to find ways to do better in the future, and move forward with continued passion and purpose.
Systems can support communication. But systems aren’t responsible for communication. Leaders are.
Leaders need to create a communication culture that offers psychological safety. A climate where people speak up and share their opinions and input because they feel safe doing so. A climate where team members feel confident asking for clarification, seeking help, or admitting when they don’t know something. Where small concerns are raised before they grow into big ones.
What’s the communication culture in your organization? Is communication breaking down, or building people up?
Tags: Communication, Culture Change, Culture Improvement, healthcare leadership, leadership development, Organizational Culture, patient care, Patient Experience
