The Importance of Relational Feedback (Nursing)

00:00 Shrewdavy saw Rovy walking down the hall towards her.

00:04 The 2 have worked together for years, but only spoken a handful of times.

00:10 Rovy only spoke to her when he had a problem with her performance or needed her to do something.

00:18 He rejected conversation when Shrewdavy tried to speak with him otherwise.

00:22 Now, Shrewdavy had noticed several big errors in Rovy's performance and she needed to speak with him.

00:31 However, because they had little relational capital, a somewhat uncomfortable conversation now seemed impossible.

00:40 This brings me to another important aspect of communication in your team.

00:45 You need to build relationships with your team members.

00:51 Remember that trust is the foundation of a higher performing team and communication is critical to trust.

01:00 Trust is only built through small opportunities exemplified consistently over time.

01:09 Here are a few practical ways that you can build relationships.

01:15 First, you can champion your team members' success.

01:19 This means being available for any questions, available to support, encourage, advice, and give resources to help champion your team.

01:31 You can build trust by sharing successes, setbacks, lessons, and best practices in a genuine way that aims to help champion the support of others.

01:43 Next, you can be mindful of your responsiveness.

01:47 I've had a manager of a cardiac floor ask for feedback from his team and received only bland generic responses.

01:57 The comments were noticeably elusive to any real substance.

02:03 I began to work with the team and noticed that the manager did not respond to informal feedback in a healthy manner.

02:11 He would become defensive, dismissive, and disregard the insight from his team.

02:18 The team recognized that truthful feedback in a formal review would likely be as ineffective as the feedback in his informal daily situations.

02:30 Be mindful of your responsiveness.

02:34 Also in your team, designate intentional time to check in even if you are a travel nurse and will not be in the unit for longer than your 3-month contract, I want you to check in.

02:50 I was working with 1 team that had a team member that was extremely private.

02:56 The team felt uncomfortable around this team member as the private individual would actually ignore others and avoid interaction.

03:06 This made collaboration conversations very difficult.

03:10 Here was my solution for this case.

03:13 I challenged the individual to engage in morning conversation in the break area every morning.

03:20 That was it. 5-10 minutes in the morning, nothing more, nothing less.

03:27 Those 5-10 minutes were transformational.

03:32 The team began to learn more about the team member and build trust.

03:37 The daily check-ins were a simple yet powerful way to create trust in the team.

03:44 I get it especially if you are moving around to different units and you won't be there long, but these 5 to 10-minute conversations are where you can build trust.

03:56 Learn who to ask for help and create a more effective team.

04:02 Lastly, understand that I am not saying that you have to become bestfriends with all of your team members.

04:11 Well, that is the situation for some teams, that is not always the case.

04:16 My standard is to get to the point where you can have a conversation, understanding, and respect to trust each other well enough to perform with confidence with your team members.

04:30 Some teams may already have tension and challenges and the thought of becoming bestfriends is overwhelming.

04:40 That's okay. You don't have to be bestfriends, but you do need to respect one another and trust one another enough to do your job.

04:52 A good first step is to begin genuine supporting conversations with your team members and be mindful of your responses in conversations. So, here's what I want you to do.

05:08 Understand that feedback goes far beyond performance.

05:13 If you are only speaking with your team about their unmet performance expectations, the impact might be minimal.

05:22 Strengthen the impact of your feedback conversations by strengthening the relationships that you have with those in your team.