Team building activities have been shown to improve overall workplace performance by increasing productivity, improving communication patterns, and encouraging creativity and innovation. But measuring your progress toward these overhead objectives can be challenging if you don’t know where to look or what metrics to focus on.

Measuring the return on your corporate team building investment is not as elusive as you might imagine, especially if you plan ahead and set clear goals. Some impacts can be observed, while others can be objectively measured. Our list includes both evaluation methods to help you gain a more complete picture of how team building initiatives are impacting your business.

1. Establish a Baseline of Comparison and Identify Long-Term Goals

It’s much easier to measure the success of your team building event if you establish a baseline for comparison and defined key objectives early in the planning process. Recording certain metrics prior to hosting your event will help you establish a benchmark and identify areas for improvement. Indicators such as absentee rates, retention rates, productivity rates, and customer satisfaction rates are all good metrics to consider measuring against.

In addition to collecting performance and productivity data, observe how your team operates on a daily basis and take note of internal dynamics and behavioral patterns. Do meetings drag on too long because people aren’t aligned on key issues? Do only a few employees contribute to group discussions? Have miscommunications resulted in inefficiencies or mistakes?

Identify areas where your team is struggling and decide how you will define improvement in those specific areas. Measuring against this definition using your baseline metrics and observations will help you gain a clear picture of your progress.

2. Know What a Successful Team Looks Like

Although this may sound abstract, studies have shown that successful and productive teams share certain social characteristics. In a Harvard Business Review study, researchers were able to accurately predict what team would win a business competition based on learned social characteristics alone—regardless of the quality or strength of their pitch.

Of course, some people are naturally more charismatic or communicative than others, but research shows that group dynamic—specifically group communication—is as important to a company’s success as the innate skills of individual contributors. Unlike our more hard-wired qualities, effective communication skills can be nurtured through team building activities that aim to establish trust and respect. Furthermore, team building events encourage individuals to forge personal connections that engender more engaged and cohesive group dynamics.

Clearly, communication is king. But what does effective communication look like in a professional, group setting?

The most successful teams exhibit these qualities:

• Everyone in the group speaks and listens roughly the same amount.
• Contributions are clear, succinct, and energetic.
• Communication is multi-directional and not just between leaders and subordinates.
• People demonstrate engaged body language, such as facing one another and using active listening and speaking gestures.
• Members actively brainstorm in small groups and bring ideas back to the larger team.
• Team members make an effort to collaborate face to face whenever possible rather than using technology.

Knowing how a successful team operates will help you determine if your employees are trending in the right direction and will allow you to identify areas to target in your next team building event.

3. Ask for Feedback

This is perhaps the most obvious evaluation method and the most widely overlooked. If you’re not sure where your team stands, it never hurts to ask. Sending out anonymous surveys using apps like TINYpulse or SurveyMonkey can help you gauge how your team feels and measure the impact of team building events.

Ask questions about workplace communication, group dynamics, productivity, creativity, job satisfaction, and office environment before and after your event. This can not only help you identify which areas need immediate focus, but also help you track your progress and identify opportunities for growth. To understand the long-term impact of your team building initiatives, make sure to ask for feedback at regular intervals rather than limiting responses to a one-time questionnaire.

Along with asking for more general feedback, don’t be afraid to ask employees about the team building event itself. Encouraging them to reflect on the event and discuss how team building lessons or skills might be applied to their job will boost engagement and content retention. In addition, this feedback can promote buy-in for future events by ensuring that their thoughts are heard.

4. Look at Your Bottom Line

Companies that invest in team building activities typically have higher employee retention rates and are more cohesive, innovative, and efficient—all qualities that directly impact their bottom line.

For example, when employees stay with a company longer, recruiting, hiring, and employee onboarding costs decrease. If teams are more effective, efficient, and innovative, then customer satisfaction and retention rates should improve, driving sustainable revenue growth. If your employees are happy and feel valued, you’ll not only attract the best talent, but also retain them—helping expand your brand’s influence.

These impacts may not be immediately evident, but team building should be thought of as a long-term investment in your company’s health. The behaviors and thought processes that you nurture today will lead to greater success and savings down the road.

The Takeaway

For the best results, make a commitment to incorporating team building events into your annual calendar and optimize as you go. Take stock of what worked and what didn’t after each event and identify areas to improve upon in the future. Don’t be afraid to seek out professional guidance to help you make the most out of your event budget, determine what activities are most likely to accomplish your goals, and execute the most engaging and compelling team building experience possible.

Successful corporate event planning takes more than just a great agenda and a high-quality venue. Preparation and multiple people in varying roles must all participate in order to deliver an executive-worthy event. Key stakeholders must be involved throughout the process; support staff must have clear directions, and the point person running it all must work closely with the entire team to bring it all together.

Here are the must-have players on any corporate event planning team:

Decision-Makers

Depending on the scope of the event and the size of the organization, there will most likely be one or more executives involved in laying the groundwork. It is important to understand what their thoughts are on the business goals associated with the event, the budget, the agenda, and so on. Some of the responsibilities that executive decision-makers have during planning are:

• Determining the overall budget for the event
• Determining the business objectives, theme, and tone of the event
• Vetting the speakers and activities
• Approving major expenditures
• Participating in development of the agenda
• Making crucial decisions throughout the planning process
• Not only participating in and championing the event itself but also the activities pre and post to set the tone

Keeping these key team members informed throughout the planning process makes it easier to achieve fast decision-making and allows corporate event planners to quickly get buy-in on new ideas.

Learning and Development/Human Resources

If the event includes a learning element, the appropriate people in the organization must be involved. Having these team members involved will ensure your event is aligned properly with existing initiatives and will make the most effective impact on key stakeholders. Some of the responsibilities of this role are:

• Recommending training content for the event
• Developing a curriculum if necessary
• Sourcing a partner to deliver training content
• Ensuring that learning events are in line with the organization’s objectives and strategy

Learning and development professionals can offer unique insights into corporate event planning that other team members might not have. If this role doesn’t exist in the organization, it could be filled by an HR professional or the event planner themselves.

Event Planning Staff

Nobody has unlimited time in the day, and a corporate event planner cannot be in two places at the same time. Having support staff available is essential for a successful event. Remember that when assigning the following tasks, it is your responsibility to work with team members to create individual project deadlines so that you can manage the timeline and optimally use your available resources. These team members are responsible for tasks such as:

• Ensuring presentation technology is functioning
• Working with venue staff to provide food and other amenities
• Registering event participants
• Coordinating lodging and transportation for participants and presenters
• Preparing information packets and setup/takedown of the event materials

Attendees

You can’t have a successful corporate event without participants. The more engaged they are before, during, and after the event, the higher the chance of success for all involved stakeholders. Bear this in mind as you plan the agenda and schedule learning events. Incorporate a variety of sessions to keep people engaged and consider one or more experiential events. Start engaging attendees in the days and weeks before the event to generate excitement and maintain the momentum you’ve built by investing time into planning a reinforcement and measurement strategy for after the event concludes.

Corporate event planning is no small task. Even a single-day company event can take months of careful planning and a tight-knit team to successfully execute. Form your team early to ensure faster decision-making and greater buy-in from all the key stakeholders throughout the process.

Every individual is unique, and everyone brings with them a unique set of traits to the workplace—from their personality and past experiences to the way they learn. In fact, there are several types of learning styles and ways that workplace training can be designed to meet those diverse learning needs, as well as decrease learning decay. While some individuals learn best with written material, others are make sense of new information when they can see or hear an explanation of what is being taught.

In order to ensure that employees get the most out of their training experiences, it’s best to tailor workplace training to address the needs of all types of learning styles as much as possible. By making small adjustments to existing training or larger changes to your training programs, you can position your organization to achieve strong training ROI, improved employee engagement, and sustained behavior change.

How to Tailor Training to the Various Types of Learning Styles

Though there are many learning theories, we’ll focus on one of the most popular, Howard Gardner’s Seven Learning Styles. There are a number of elements that can be included in workplace training so that it appeals and connects to each learning style, helping individuals learn new behaviors that will help improve performance and job effectiveness.

Here are some ways your training initiatives can be designed to appeal to the various learning styles:

Visual Learners

Visual learners learn by what they see and build comprehension of new concepts through pictures, images, and the spatial relationships of objects. Workplace training for visual learners can be tailored to include presentations with plentiful diagrams, videos, and charts.

Auditory Learners

Auditory learners are excellent listeners and discern patterns in spoken, lecture-type teaching. This type of learner prefers speeches, audio recordings, and training that includes plenty of opportunities for dialogue.

Reading/Writing Learners

These individuals learn best through close examination of text, reports, stories, and case studies. Workplace training for reading/writing learners can be tailored to include manuals, handouts, quizzes, and presentations.

Kinesthetic Learners

Kinesthetic learners expand their comprehension of new information through their senses, and enjoy hands-on activities like simulations, walk-throughs, and sessions that include building or working with physical objects.

Logical Learners

Sometimes referred to as mathematical learners, these individuals learn from studying whole systems, patterns, and high-level concepts. They are particularly drawn to spreadsheets, multi-step methodologies, and graphs. Logical learners respond well to workplace training that includes opportunities to distill multiple concepts into one big idea, showing them how to improve their behavior.

Interactive/Social Learners

These learners are strong at understanding the feelings and motivations of others. The thrive on team learning activities, role-playing, and group discussions.

Solitary Learners

Solitary learners focus on self-reflection and introspection as their prime way of synthesizing and making sense of learning. Training for these learners should be tailored to include opportunities to work through the content at their own pace, as well as a balance of collaborative activities with those that allow them to work independently.

Experiential Learning Works for a Range of Learning Styles

Experiential learning can be an appealing workplace training choice because it addresses the different learning needs of employees. Here are some examples of how experiential learning works with many types of learning styles:

• For visual learners – The immersive nature of experiential learning features stories with vivid details that allow these types of learners to visualize desired behaviors introduced to them in training.

• For auditory learners – The discussion and dialogue inherent in experiential learning allow auditory learners to learn by hearing how others synthesize and apply newly learned behaviors.

• For reading/writing learners – Reading/writing learners thrive on making connections through what they read, and experiential learning addresses this by offering discovery-based learning that compels learners to create order out of the information presented, then take action based on their understanding of the material.

• For kinesthetic learners – Kinesthetic learners love to learn by doing, which is at the heart of experiential learning. Participants engage in immersive activities that mimic real-life situations and are directly relevant to the workplace.

• For logical learners – Experiential learning works for logical learners because it challenges them to think about their actions and behaviors, and link it to what they did with the aid of a facilitated debrief.

• For interactive/social learners – Experiential training appeals to social learners because it is by nature an interactive experience. Expert facilitators engage groups of participants and help them to learn from their shared experiences during the session.

• For solitary learners – After the collaborative portion of experiential training wraps up, a facilitator-led discussion gives solitary learners the chance to think about their behaviors and actions, how those affected their results, and how the experience relates to their everyday life on the job.

Selecting a Solution That Appeals to All Types of Learning Styles

Though it may be challenging, it is possible to implement workplace training that addresses the needs of the many types of learning styles. Everyone learns differently, so it’s worthwhile to consider the various learning needs that exist within your organization and adjust your training accordingly. Experiential learning in particular includes elements that naturally appeal to many different learning styles and offers benefits that can be appreciated by every employee.

The goal for every organization is to create a high-performance culture allowing employees to perform to their fullest potential. When you cultivate a culture that supports skill development and continuous learning, you’re creating a work environment that encourages high productivity and performance. But other factors contribute to high employee performance, including fewer environmentally-influenced traits like IQ, EQ, and personality. While there may not be a clear answer (which is most critical), you may want to consider some important factors  when thinking about key contributions to employee performance.

IQ

IQ is a measure of an individual’s intelligence—their ability to learn and synthesize information.  Individuals need a certain level of intelligence to function in life and do their jobs effectively. Historically, IQ was considered a strong predictive measure of performance. In the early 2000s, organizations began to recognize that IQ, while an effective measure of cognitive ability, could not effectively measure an individual’s ability to be smart about the needs and motivations of others—key skills needed to succeed in business. The limitations of IQ began to pave the way for an expanded discussion about intelligence based on the introduction of emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence and EQ

Emotional intelligence, measured as EQ (emotional quotient), is the ability to identify and manage your emotions and the emotions of others. It helps you navigate and manage tough personalities at work while guiding your ability to display empathy, demonstrate active listening, and work successfully as part of a team. There is evidence of a strong link between high employee performance and high EQ, as research has found that high emotional intelligence determines 58 percent of success at work.

Some organizations value a high EQ over a high IQ, in large part because intelligence about the motivations, desires, and emotions of others is such a critical success factor at work. In fact, in a CareerBuilder Survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, 71 percent said they favored emotional intelligence in an employee over IQ.

Personality

A high IQ and EQ are not the only traits that can contribute to an individual’s high performance. Personality—what makes you ‘you’—also impacts performance. Despite many theories on the psychology of personality, the traits comprising our personalities do impact job performance. For example, our level of extroversion and introversion, communication style, and level of conscientiousness affect our behavior at work. In fact, one study found that 37% of variations in job performance are attributable to extroversion personality characteristics.

While personality (who we are) is not exactly the same as behavior (what we do), it can affect job performance and the way we approach our work. For example, when faced with the challenge of giving a presentation at work, an individual with an extroverted personality may feel energized by the prospect of being in the spotlight. Conversely, an individual with an introverted personality might feel less comfortable as the center of attention, and might structure the presentation to pull the audience into a discussion so more views can be heard. Depending on the expectation level, either the extrovert or the introvert will perform better when giving the presentation.

Secret Sauce for High Performance?

Research has shown that environmental factors, as well as IQ, EQ, and personality, contribute to high employee performance. The combination of an individual’s innate characteristics and a high-performance work culture are the main building blocks for employee success at work. When all these ingredients for success merge, when they come together, then an individual is in the best position to learn new skills and behaviors that will lead to continuous performance improvement.

Experiential learning is an ideal tool to support continuous learning and performance improvement.  When individuals learn and repeat behaviors, neurons in the brain grow stronger, and performance improves. This is at the heart of experiential learning; individuals learn and practice new behaviors in training, which are reinforced through repetition, coaching, and follow-up after training.

While there are indicators, there is no secret sauce for high performance. Coupled with the fact that each individual is different and possesses a unique mix of capabilities and personality traits, the reality is that IQ, EQ, personality, and work culture must blend together to support individual learning and productivity.  Once experiential training is added to the mix, your employees can be well-positioned to learn, practice, and master the behaviors that will contribute to sustainable high performance.

Trends come and go in the learning and development space. Sometimes new approaches stick, profoundly influencing the shape taken by workplace learning and training for years to come. One such hugely influential trend: Social Learning Theory. Let’s explore how Social Learning Theory works (and why it’s more than hype), how it relates to a newer, “experiences”-driven learning approach, and how this landmark theory can have a positive impact on the future of workplace learning.

Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

To understand Social Learning Theory, let’s look to its originator, psychologist Albert Bandura. Bandura created this landmark theory in the 1970s to explain how we learn, which he developed after conducting his famous “Bobo Doll” experiment. For the experiment, Bandura split a group of children into three sets. The first set observed adults acting aggressively toward a doll called a Bobo Doll; the adults hit the doll with a hammer, tossed around the doll, and committed other aggressive acts. The second set of children observed adults acting non-aggressively toward the Bobo Doll; they played with the doll quietly. The final set of children made no observations and served as the control group.

Later, Bandura and his team directed each child to play with the Bobo Doll on their own. Bandura found that the children who observed the aggressive adults also acted aggressively toward the Bobo Doll, while the children who observed non-aggressive adults imitated their non-aggressive play. From this landmark experiment, Bandura theorized that we learn from each other through imitation, modeling, and observation. He also developed four components of social learning theory, claiming that all of these components must be present for learning to stick:

• Attention: Behavior must grab our attention in some way for us to imitate it.
• Retention: We best recall learning when faced with situations that are similar to our initial learning environments.
• Reproduction: Learning is more likely to be reproduced when it’s reinforced.
• Motivation: We’re motivated to learn by punishment and rewards.

Social Learning Theory and Experiential Learning: A Comparison

Social Learning Theory has influenced workplace learning design for decades, but it actually has a lot in common with experiential learning, in which participants learn new skills and behaviors by working through hands-on, game-like scenarios. Participants learn that the skills needed to win the game are the same skills they need to “win” at work.

In fact, experiential learning contains the essence of all four crucial components of Bandura’s Social Learning Theory. This is how they fit together:

• Attention: Bandura theorized that people are more focused on a task if it’s new or different in some way—and that’s what experiential learning provides. Experiential learning combines immersive activities that mimic real-world challenges with a targeted debriefing session that connects the lessons learned with the reality of the workplace. It allows participants to learn by doing, and not by just listening, reading, or watching.  Certainly it’s a different approach from traditional workplace learning, and one guaranteed to capture attention.
• Retention: According to Bandura’s theory, people are able to recall and apply what they have learned when faced with a situation that resembles their initial learning context. This is exactly how experiential learning is designed—to mirror real workplace scenarios, without being exactly the same.
• Reproduction: Bandura also posited that people are more likely to reproduce learning when it’s reinforced. That is why post-training retention strategies, such as coaching, one-on-one, small group meetings, and digital reinforcement, are integral to the success of experiential learning.
• Motivation: Finally, Social Learning Theory puts forth the idea that people are motivated by punishment or reward. With experiential learning, the positive (or negative) outcomes of approaching the game in a certain way are made explicit during the debriefing session, so learners can clearly connect their actions and the consequences.

It’s clear that experiential learning shares much in common with the watershed social learning discoveries made by Bandura many decades ago. Now we can apply more current knowledge about how we learn from each other to the power of experiences. No wonder experiential learning boasts retention rates as high as 90 percent!

The Future of Social Learning and Experiential Learning

At their cores, both social and experiential learning methods are about learning from experiences—experiences that are immersive, interactive, and captivating, leading to learning that sticks. What does it look like as we move forward, this intersection of these two learning approaches? It’s time to bring experiences into the digital realm. Thanks to sophisticated software advances and an abundance of connected mobile devices, we can now learn from practically any place and collaborate with anyone, at any time.

Retention strategies, in particular, represent a new learning frontier; retention and reinforcement programs are particularly suited to involving digital elements that draw from both Social Learning Theory and experiential learning. Gone are the days when “reinforcement” simply meant emailing the slides after a presentation. For example, take the trend of gamification in reinforcement. After an in-person training event, the core teachings of the training are reinforced through online “games,” where learners are immersed in an interactive experience fueled by rewards (like digital badges or prizes). In this way, gamified retention strategies draw on both experiential learning (i.e. their immersive, interactive nature) and social learning (i.e. rewards-based reinforcement).

It’s evident that social learning and experiential learning methods are both built on the same foundational concepts. When these methods are combined, you get learning that lasts, resulting in permanently changed behaviors.

Stress in the workplace is a reality for most people at some point, although some handle it better than others. With remote working and a hybrid workforce introducing a new realm of workplace stressors.  The American Psychological Association report on Stress in America found that the majority of people (61 percent) cite work as a source of stress, and a Paychex survey identified the top three sources of stress at work as:

• Complicated or hard work
• Long or erratic hours
• A lack of control at work or a lack of resources

While these factors cannot always be avoided, it’s entirely possible to manage stress better by equipping yourself with the right skills.

Understand the Impact of Stress in the Workplace

Stress is a real issue, and depending on the severity of it, it can have a significant impact on the mental and physical well-being of employees. we can’t ignore that working from home can create added stress, with the constant juggle of work and personal life. Chronic stress can lead to health issues for individuals, such as increased risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks, and stroke.

Stress in the workplace also impacts business performance. According to Harvard research, higher levels of stress lead to more missed days at work, costing U.S. businesses $30 billion per year. Fortunately, an investment in skills training can help employees at every age, experience level, and in any department reduce their stress by learning to manage challenging situations more effectively.

3 Crucial Stress Management Skills

1. Time Management

Managing time to be optimally productive—and not just active—helps reduce stress by making it easier for employees to meet their deadlines, manage expectations, and achieve their goals. Some of the most practical tactics to use for managing time better include:

• Writing to-do lists
• Understanding what is urgent
• Prioritizing tasks
• Defining goals and the paths to reach them
• Proactively scheduling tasks
• Making weekly plans

Training sessions and individual coaching focused on time management teach employees how to plan their time, handle interruptions, prioritize incoming tasks, and alter their behavior to overcome procrastination. All of which lower stressful situations because employees are able to manage them.

2. Conflict Resolution

Whether between individuals, teams, or competing priorities, conflicts arise in the workplace all the time and can be major contributors to stress. Employees who develop strategies for handling these types of situations will not only reduce their own stress levels, but will contribute to a more collaborative work environment. Some of the strategies that help reduce stress related to conflict include:

• Using active listening skills to understand other perspectives
• Having an open group conversation in which everybody has a chance to speak
• Addressing the issue in a timely manner to avoid further escalation
• Knowing when it is appropriate to escalate the issue

Ignoring conflicts—or engaging in them—is a sure way to increase stress and tension. Equipping employees with the tools they need to effectively address conflicts as soon as they arise benefits everyone.

3. Project Management

Successfully managing a project can help prevent stressful situations from arising in the first place. Although everybody experiences crunch time or an emergency every now and then, it should not be the norm. With the following project management skills, employees will be better able to deliver results without unnecessary stress:

• Set realistic deadlines and make a plan to stay on top of them.
• Use time management skills to avoid unnecessarily working long hours.
• Learn how to prioritize tasks so that the most urgent work is completed on time.
• Set realistic goals and allocate resources appropriately.
• Implement an effective communication plan.
• Incorporate risk management and contingency plans.

While it might not be possible to entirely avoid stressful situations in the course of managing a project, it is possible to minimize them.

Learning to Manage Stress

Stress is a real issue that has an impact on both individuals and organizations. Taking steps to avoid stress and giving people the tools to handle stress when it’s unavoidable will help you create a healthier, happier, and more productive workplace. Although there are many ways to teach new skills, experiential learning has one of the highest retention rates, enabling participants to quickly and effectively practice and then apply their new stress management skills on the job.

If a key executive member—including you—left your organization tomorrow, would your company crumble? The long-term success of a business depends on the sustainability of leadership. If your company is currently successful, it can be assumed that your leadership program is effective. However, many companies do not invest in the resources to prepare future leaders for future roles.

Developing a strong leadership pipeline can help your organization not only achieve immediate success, but also ensure that success over a longer period of time. To help grow your leadership strategy, consider these five techniques.

1. Mentoring and Coaching Initiatives

Coaching and mentoring are crucial components of an effective leadership pipeline. That’s why it’s important for your strategy to engage existing senior leaders so that they devote time to nurturing potential leaders across your team. Establish a mentoring program and make it responsibility for leaders to coach employees through both formal and informal mentoring sessions.

An effective coaching program emphasizes the connection between the coach and the student. Your leadership team must first take the time to connect, to understand, and to build trust and respect with their team members. Once this is established, it’s far easier to share industry insight and expertise, instruct on important organizational operations, and share role-specific hard skills.

2. Leadership Development Programs

Implementing a leadership development program allows you to cultivate leaders from within your organization so that you have a stable of prepared, talented individuals who can step up when need be. While many organizations have programs that either cater toward senior-level employees or require team members to apply for consideration, think about offering leadership training to your entire organization. When you keep the program open, you create a pool of candidates to fill open positions.

For front-line professionals with no direct reports, leadership training can help develop individual potential and overall leadership strength for the future. These programs drive focus, improve efficiency, and maximize individual contributions to the organization. For mid-level leaders, or those who display focus and confidence in their assessment and coaching techniques, leadership programs help develop their own capabilities in order to tap into the potential of those they lead.

3. Real-World, Real-Time Experiences

On-the-job training programs should be supportive and challenging. To truly groom leaders, offer them more and more responsibilities over time and challenge them with new situations and assignments. Much of what individuals learn happens in real time, so encourage them to work through situational problems to experience real-life workplace situations. Ultimately, it’s your executive team’s responsibility to offer team members the necessary training and resources to be successful.

4. Regular Feedback

According to a Gallup study that measured how Millennials want to work, regular meetings and consistent feedback improve engagement and performance. The survey found that 44 percent of Millennials are more likely to be engaged when their manager does meet with them on a regular basis. Despite these benefits, only 21 percent of Millennial workers meet with their managers on a weekly basis. Your team members want feedback; it’s up to you to provide it.

Relevant, on-the-job training can mirror real-life situations. Without feedback, however, employees are left to assume that their behavior is acceptable. It’s clear that feedback is an essential motivator in developing leaders. Be aware that this applies to both negative and positive feedback. On one hand, a leadership team that does not correct poor employee performance can’t expect change. Conversely, without positive feedback, employees are not provided with the opportunity to flourish and grow.

5. Cross-Departmental Learning

Silos and turf wars impact even the strongest organizations. That’s why it’s up to your current management team to create opportunities in your leadership pipeline for different departments to work together. After all, executive leaders must actively engage with all employees. When departments collaborate and communicate with each other, they gain a greater understanding of the role of other team members and how they function, as well as a more comprehensive overview of how the entire organization functions.

Below are some ideas for cross-departmental learning:

• Team building events
• Peer mentorship
• Cross-departmental project teams
• Job shadowing assignments

Not only can cross-departmental exposure help future leaders understand your company as a whole, but it can inspire ideas for their own roles. This type of learning can improve productivity and ensure that individuals have the right amount of diverse work experience to step into leadership roles.

Individuals who communicate effectively can achieve far more than those who give confusing feedback or struggle with an awkward communication style or poor message delivery. It’s one of the reasons most organizations list strong communication skills among the competencies one working in the modern workforce needs to be hired or secure a promotion. In a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers rated verbal communication skills as the most important skill sought in job candidates.

Strong communication is more than a buzzword. It’s a powerful tool that can make a difference in an individual’s overall performance. To become effective communicators, individuals need to master a range of communication techniques and behaviors; one of which is patience.

What Does It Mean to Have Patience in the Workplace?

Someone who has patience in the workplace has both the ability to listen and the ability to deliver the message directly to the intended recipient in a way they fully understand and connect with.

These two skills are very closely linked. If you have the ability to let the person finish speaking through until they are done, without interrupting, then you will be able to understand more clearly what’s on their mind and why they feel the way they do. When you interrupt you cause them to change direction, and then respond to what you said rather then finish what it was they were about to say. The better you understand what they were thinking, the better you are able to respond to them where they are.

Alternatively, when you’re speaking and they interrupt, let them! This gives you additional information as to where they are coming from, and what’s really important to them. This is difficult when we want to finish what we are saying, but if effectiveness is your objective then it is more effective to let them interrupt than to finish what you have to say. What they’re really thinking about is what they’re going to say when you’re done anyway.

As we grow to appreciate the importance of really effective communication, rather than simply the sense of relief we feel when we’ve said what we want to say, even if it’s not been heard as well as we would like, then we should be willing to be patient. This patience when listening, or patience when being interrupted, pays big dividends if you are then able to better understand your listener and tailor your message accordingly.

Developing Patience Through Training

Communication skills influence how employees interact with each other and with customers, as well as how they approach problems and deliver feedback. Improving communication may involve some simple concepts, but achieving it will be a challenge if individuals don’t know how or what to change.

Training that provides the necessary communication skills and knowledge will help employees at every level of the organization become effective communicators and show patience to their colleagues, superiors, and direct reports. It is not a skill that employees can learn by just reading, watching a video, or listening to a presentation about it. Instead, employees need opportunities to learn how to become better communicators by doing, and what better way to do this than by learning through experience, otherwise known as experiential learning. Experiential learning teaches skills and behaviors by presenting individuals with a low-risk opportunity to learn and practice face-to-face techniques in an engaging experience that seems completely unrelated to their lives at work. By engaging in experiential learning, individuals begin to understand why the skills and knowledge being trained are so important in the workplace, how to improve them, and how to apply what they’ve learned back on the job.

Mastering excellent communication requires patience. Both patience as the organization who wants to see it developed in its people, but patience as the one who is communicating with others every single day. Though through intentional effort on implementing practical training solutions, organizations can make this a reality.

Rather than focusing on customer service or the customer experience, healthcare professionals appropriately concentrate on their patients’ experience. Creating a positive experience goes beyond meeting a certain standard of medical care—it has to do with the entire patient journey, from the first person patients have an interaction with to the very last (and we’re not just talking about medical staff here). Now more than ever, this has become particularly important to healthcare organizations, because patients have more choice and the ability to shop around for their healthcare providers.

In addition, healthcare professionals face challenges beyond the typical customer-provider relationship, because they must adeptly handle sensitive information, physical examinations, and the expected emotional stress that patients feel. Shifting your organization to a patient-centric mindset can help address those challenges and ensure that the entire patient experience is a positive one.

What Is Patient Centricity?

Patient centricity is about more than customer service training—it’s about behaviors. You more than likely already have programs in place that teach employees skills such as how to maintain a positive attitude with patients, handle billing disputes, and so on. To go one step further, consider whether every employee personally understands and believes the power they have to influence the patient experience. What your employees believe will inform their behaviors, and ultimately, the patient experience.

When an organization commits to a culture of patient centricity, the culture must be implemented at every level, especially with those not directly interacting with patients as they be most unclear about their effect on the patient. Creating a patient-centric culture requires every person in the organization to approach every decision with the mindset of “how will this impact the patient experience?” Not only does this make a challenging or stressful situation more positive for patients, it also leads to improved performance in patient metrics, and ultimately, a true, lasting change within the organization that inevitable efforts employee engagement and the employee experience.

5 Benefits of a Patient-Centric Culture

One of the end goals of cultivating a patient-centric culture is to improve patient satisfaction. A culture change, not just skills training, can do this, thanks to:

1. Better Communication

Patients and loved ones are often anxious to hear status updates throughout their journey with you. Whether the news is good or bad, the more clearly and more frequently healthcare professionals communicate, the better the experience will be for the patient. In addition to learning the skills to communicate with compassion, patient centricity also creates the impetus to be proactive about communication so that questions are answered before the patient feels the need to ask.

2. Culture Alignment

Every organization has a culture, including healthcare organizations. When all providers and support staff are on the same page about how to interact with patients in a patient-centric culture, the experience will be more consistent. Get your employees aligned around why your organization does what it does, the vision for how that is done, and the values to live by. This gives everyone a greater purpose and allows them to ensure their everyday actions support them.

3. Empathy in All Situations

Many healthcare providers are naturally skilled at expressing genuine empathy about health issues, but are not always trained to do the same about service issues. The patient experience encompasses every interaction, and when billing errors or other administrative mistakes occur, it’s important for staff—including medical staff—to respond with sensitivity and to help resolve any issues. In a patient-centric culture, employees are able to see beyond their own roles and contribute to delivering what patients need, even if it’s outside the scope of their job descriptions.

4. Employee Engagement

While it’s true that many healthcare professionals and support staff start their careers with a sincere commitment to providing excellent patient service, this can wane over time as the rigors of the job take effect. Organizations that take steps to keep employees engaged and enthusiastic about their work will benefit from the results of a good employee experience and a stronger commitment to the entire patient journey.

5. Less Burnout

Burnout is a real issue for healthcare professionals. Patient centricity encourages employees to look at the bigger picture and take the necessary steps to deliver an exceptional patient experience. Creating an environment in which employees know to look at the bigger picture when they are overwhelmed, and seek help to achieve what’s needed, will allow them to serve others better.

When you strip away the details, healthcare is a business and patients are customers. However, the practitioner-patient relationship is a complex one. Creating a culture of patient centricity is the way to achieve lasting change and the desired results, such as increased patient loyalty, more referrals, and a better return on investment.

Performance management best practices encompass so much more than a yearly review. A company with a strong performance management system facilitates the communication between leaders and employees, with an eye toward achieving both employees’ professional goals and the company’s business goals. Companies who understand the massive impact that a clear set of performance management best practices can have on employee and team performance will invest in their leaders. This will develop the all-important “soft” leadership skills needed for the manager to be successful in performance management.

What’s more, when organizational leadership puts an emphasis on performance management, it sends a message to both leaders and employees that professional development is an important priority. The message the organization sends is “we want you to invest in this company, and we know that for you to do that we must invest in you first.” As with all strategic initiatives, the directive for a strong performance management system must come from the top.

If your leadership is ready to ramp up its performance management system, here are three performance management best practices to keep in mind.

1. Provide Actionable Feedback

Not all feedback is created equal. Effective performance management relies on set clear standards for what managerial feedback should look like. Clarity, honesty, and transparency are essential. For feedback to be valuable for employees, leaders must feel comfortable speaking the truth about an employee’s performance—and they must also possess the skills to do so tactfully. During performance review sessions, however, the focus shouldn’t linger on how an employee may be underperforming, but how that employee can improve.

You may need to shift the mindset of some leaders who view performance reviews as “report cards” rather than roadmaps to success. Don’t limit feedback to review sessions, either. Help leaders adjust their feedback delivery for different kinds of situations—like giving more immediate feedback while an employee is working on a big project. This is especially important if you manage millennial employees, who greatly value more frequent feedback.

2. Don’t Make It Personal

Part of the reason performance reviews aren’t always as effective as they could be is because speaking the truth about an employee’s performance puts leaders in a pretty uncomfortable position. Discussions about poor performance are tough on both parties. To limit the discomfort—and ensure employees are getting actionable feedback—train leaders to deliver feedback in terms of employee behaviors, not characteristics. That way, employees don’t feel personally attacked during reviews.

Moreover, leaders should clearly draw the line between employee behaviors and their results (or lack thereof). It may be hard for employees to see the result of a project as a consequence of their behaviors, when other workplace factors—like constraining budgets or deadlines—are in play. It’s a leader’s responsibility to clearly articulate the consequences and benefits of employee behavior, which will encourage an employee to take accountability for their actions and results.

3. Invest In Training

Performance reviews are great tools for identifying employee behaviors that need improvement. How, though, will employee behaviors actually improve? Through training that focuses on instilling lasting behavior change. By implementing training that uses methodologies such as experiential learning, individuals learn by participating in hands-on, interactive learning scenarios that mimic the workplace. The key differentiator of this delivery method is that it builds conviction and confidence within employees to do things differently.

Just as vital, however, is training for your leaders. Invest in leadership training that equips leaders with the skills they need to help their employees succeed, like strong communication skills, adaptive feedback styles, and effective listening techniques. All too often, under-trained leaders become barriers to employee success. Change this narrative by investing in training for both employees and leaders that fosters mutual trust, accountability, and professional growth.