Behavior Based Expectations – Functional Leadership Behaviors

Team leadership and team performance are connected to the success of a healthcare organization. Team leadership is a key indicator in the effectiveness of team performance. Effective leadership has the ability to motivate their employees to perform better by building values of trust and integrity.

According to Galford & Drapeau “as difficult as it is to build and maintain trust within organizations, it’s critical. An established body of research demonstrates the links between trust and corporate performance. If people trust each other and their leaders, they’ll be able to work through disagreements. They’ll take smarter risks. They’ll work harder, stay with the company longer, contribute better ideas, and dig deeper than anyone has a right to ask. If they don’t trust the organization and its leaders, though, they’ll disengage from their work and focus instead on rumors, politics, and updating their résumés”. Leaders have to have the skill and art of knowing how to build trust within the people they are responsible of leading.

Leaders within a healthcare organization are expected to display a certain kind of emotional intelligence that will create a foundation to improve the relationships within the organization to develop the talent within. Leaders need to tell the truth to their employees in order to build the foundation of trust "trust is confidence, the absence of suspicion, and an ongoing record that confirms expectations of behavior and performance. Trust is expressed in the behavior toward others and will grow or shrink due to interactions and experiences. In general, trust building is a slow process, between individuals and even more so among teams. But high-performance teams accelerate it with communication among team members that is honest, open, consistent, forthright, and respectful”.

Communicate roles and responsibilities

Healthcare and communication are vital to the transformation of healthcare. Communicating the right things at the right time is vital for patient safety. As healthcare leaders one of the areas we should strive to see results is in communication good communication enhances safety.

Create a workplace culture that values real people relationships

Building relationships are paramount and uniquely human. Building relationships does not develop overnight but over time. In order to have a relationship with someone there has to be trust and communication “while integrity generally revolves around an individual's clarity of purpose and action, engendering trust relates to how a specific individual view his or her working relationship with a specific leader. As a general rule, trust is not given or gained freely; employees will not trust a leader until that leader has earned their trust, through a combination of displaying integrity and demonstrating that the leader understands and respects employees' wants and needs. Once earned, trust carries forward only with regular maintenance and can easily be diminished through even a single indiscretion”.

Trust is a learned skill that we as humans have to learn to develop through interactions and being accountable for what we say and do. Trust, have engaging and rewarding relationships, that make a difference in our daily lives and the lives of others. Building relationship at our jobs; among the people we spend most of our time with is the key to doing a great and rewarding work. Building effective relationships through trust within a healthcare organization is important as a leader “it takes more than personal integrity to build a trusting, trust worthy organization. It takes skills, smart supporting processes and unwavering attention on the part of top managers”. As healthcare leader it is our responsibility to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason.

• Be fair and open
• Model the behaviors you seek
• Accept Responsibilities and Take Initiative for Performance
• Hold yourself Accountably
• Pursue Effective Communication Leadership Accountability Clarity
• Commitment
• Trust

Leaders need to strive to honor commitments whenever they can; however, how leaders handle failed commitments can be even more important in trust building. If a leader cannot honor a commitment, employees will need and expect an explanation; that explanation will build trust in that it demonstrates that the leader recognizes the importance of commitment to employees and conveys accountability and clear judgment. For example, telling an employee, "I'll see what I can do" explicitly promises action, but it also implicitly promises that the leader will circle back to the employee to explain what was done, why it was done, and what resulted. “Recognize the association between effective relationship management and overall effectiveness, and make a firm commitment to actively improving professional relationships. The firmer the commitment, the greater the outcome”.