Mining for Conflict

Dr Jeremy Blanchard is CMO of North Mississippi Health Services. In addition to several other physician leader roles earlier, he also served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps for 11 years. I thought of Jeremy this past 9/11 as I reflected upon the many great servant leaders I have known in the Medical Corps and the Medical Service Corps.

?Have you ever thought about how conflict can play a role in physician engagement? The frequent response is often, “avoid conflict to ensure high physician engagement,” while the opposite might be true – “make sure there is some conflict to ensure high physician engagement.”

?Jeremy’s chapter, “Mining for Conflict,” is a true gem in the book, Enhanced Physician Engagement, Volume 1: What It Is, Why You Need It, and Where to Begin and the chapter helps us look at conflict rather differently.

?Jeremy writes:

?? Many teams never fully embrace the necessary robust debate over administrative matters. They hesitate to disagree in public, and they walk away from meetings and discussions acting in a way that some would describe as passive-aggressive. Lencioni (2012) suggests ways to avoid this problem: “One of the best ways for leaders to raise the level of healthy conflict on a team is by mining for conflict during meetings. . . . By looking for and exposing potential and even subtle disagreements that have not come to the surface, team leaders—and, heck, team members can do it too—avoid the destructive hallway conversations that inevitably result when people are reluctant to engage in direct, productive debate.”

?? Leaders in healthcare live in four very different worlds: the world of societal perceptions and expectations, the scientific and clinical world, the business world associated with healthcare, and the world of their own personal lives. The complexity of reconciling these different worlds in itself creates natural conflict. Add to these challenges the intimacy of delivering healthcare.

?? When leaders can welcome productive conflict and help parties truly resolve differences, their value to the organization quickly grows, allowing their own careers and those of the healthcare system’s other professionals to accelerate and increasing people’s professional fulfillment.

Jeremy provides great suggestions in the chapter about ensuring that conflict occurs, that there are set rules for how to engage, and how leaders need to be particularly sensitive to issues where conflict can actually help better address problems.

?Some of my favorites include:

??? E-mail messages and texts are poor forms of dialogue. They work best for monologues and orders. In an e-mail and text, the tone is lost, nonverbal cues are missed, and real-time exchange is not possible. All texts and e-mails can be forwarded as well, so mistakes can live on for a long time.

?? Conflict is prevalent in the roles that all leaders play, and the more sensitive leaders become to developing conflict and the more they respectfully mine for it, the more successful they become as servant leaders. And as a result, the more engaged others feel. Physicians develop as leaders from the moment they are accepted to medical school, but unfortunately, they are seldom taught conflict-mining skills. Their greatest gap may be the ability to manage conflict and communication.

?Read more great chapters contributed by physicians and leaders just like Jeremy in these physician engagement books. And many organizations have started to use them in discussion groups or as course content / curriculum for their physician leaders.

The two Health Administration Press engagement books have 24 physicians who contributed different chapters ranging from

?·??????What is physician engagement

·??????Various tactics to enhance physician engagement

·??????Engagement vs. alignment

·??????Diversity and inclusion and impact on engagement

·??????Conflict resolution

·??????Physician burnout and its impact on physician engagement

·??????Economic factors & engagement – is it all about money?

·??????Assessing physicians for leadership positions

·??????Developing dyad, triad, and quad organization structures

·??????Creating physician leadership development programs

·??????Measuring physician engagement success

Enhanced Physician Engagement, Vol 1: What It Is, Why You Need It, & Where to Begin https://www.ache.org/learning-center/publications/books/2440I

Enhanced Physician Engagement, Vol 2: Tools & Tactics for Success https://www.ache.org/learning-center/publications/books/2441I

We took the summer off from the newsletter - now we are back! Next physician engagement newsletter in 2 weeks. See you then!