By Valerie J. Dimond, Contributing Reporter

Problems crop up every day in healthcare. Although some are tougher to solve than others, one of the biggest and most common obstacles to finding good solutions is disagreement among team members. People will always have dissimilar ideas and perspectives on how to reach a shared goal. However, successful outcomes can occur more easily and frequently when stakeholders become very aware of the different “influencing styles” people use and incorporate those elements into their case to cement buy-in and sustainable change. Sounds reasonable but the practice is harder than it sounds — as dozens of healthcare leaders discovered during the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 2019 National Forum, December 8-11 in Orlando, Florida.

Janet Porter, Ph.D., a professor and board member at Ohio State University, commenced the first half of a three-hour session “Leading, Managing, and Coaching to Excellence” with an interactive, eye-opening presentation on how to build consensus and solve problems more effectively. She said the trick is to understand and leverage the various approaches people take when working together. Porter explained how individuals tend to communicate using one or more of the following five styles:
• Asserting: “Assertive people tend to feel comfortable insisting that their ideas are heard and consider challenging the ideas of others,” said Porter. “They say things like let’s talk about the elephant in the room. You guys tend to push your perspective and assert your ideas. You like to challenge the organization and say we should do this because it’s in the strategic plan. You should do this because it’s a policy. You believe in structure and rules.”

• Rationalizing: “Rationalizing people like data and expert opinion and facts; you’re logical thinkers. You like things to make sense,” said Porter. “If you’re doing something on quality improvement it has to be logical to you. You like to use expert opinion or historical data or benchmarking data.”

• Negotiating: “Negotiating people tend to look for compromises,” continued Porter. “I do a lot of work with AARP and they are experts at how to persuade every senator before they go in the office. They know what their constituents’ latest poll shows and how they’re going to persuade that base on what’s in it for them. They’re good at bargaining. You might say I know this is not a long-term solution but perhaps we can make some progress.”

• Inspiring: “Inspiring people tend to advocate and encourage a position by giving a shared sense of purpose and possibilities. You’re likely to say 'imagine if we could be a zero-harm organization — imagine what that would be like.' You like to pull people together by encouraging them with a sense of shared purpose. 'Can you imagine if we lived in a country where we really had opioid abuse under control?'”

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