Personal effectiveness in perioperative care

Now in its 7th Year, the 3M AfPP Academy offers a series of non-clinical workshops, delivered by independent trainers, which are designed to improve personal effectiveness, communication and leadership skills. Training in these non-technical skills is often overlooked, yet such skills are invaluable in promoting effective team-working, ensuring patient safety in the perioperative environment, as well as enabling career advancement. Open to members of AfPP, the academy is free of charge to chosen delegates and covers a range of topics including: personal effectiveness, legal issues, communication, managing change and leadership. Since 2010, the programme has been further extended to include a workshop entitled “Selling your idea”, which offers practitioners a clear understanding of how to turn an idea into a formal proposal, present the idea and obtain “buy-in”. In the healthcare setting, this ability is often required when influencing colleagues to buy into new ways of working and adopt innovation, or when persuading patients to do things that are in their best interests. Understanding human behaviour, developing effective communication and building a rapport are all crucial to achieving a successful outcome. “Persuading others to appreciate your point of view and take action can be a real challenge in the workplace, with barriers to accepting change and resource limitations,” commented Julie Owen, communications manager, 3M. “The workshop is designed to help practitioners to negotiate the outcomes they desire, both professionally and personally.” Combining psychological insights with practical exercises, the course aimed to improve practitioners’ understanding of the techniques which can be employed to improve their “personal power”. The Clinical Services Journal attended the first of the “Selling your idea” workshops, delivered by professional trainer, Phil Yates. “The key to being successful in influencing others requires being flexible in terms of strategy, but fixed in terms of the outcome,” he commented. “Very often organisations bring people in from outside to change processes that are not efficient or are not working, but the best people to change these processes are those who are operating within them. Those involved often have lots of ideas on how things can be improved, but they simply lack the ability or confidence to express them.” He explained that influencing others is more about “personal power” than “positional power”. However, individuals often try to influence others without fully understanding what they want to achieve in terms of outcome, the perspective of the other person, or how to adapt their approach when dealing with different personality types. “The best way to get someone to buy into your idea is to enable them to see the benefits from their perspective – or even to persuade them that it was originally their idea. They need to be able to see how your proposition will help them personally. Understanding the perspective of the other person is crucial to success, therefore.”

Identifying your sphere of influence

The setting of realistic goals is often the first hurdle that must be overcome, according to Phil Yates. Highlighting a key message from Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he pointed out that there are “two spheres that surround us” – the “sphere of influence”, which includes all the things that we can do something about, and beyond this (to infinity) is the “sphere of concern”. “We spend far too much time and effort worrying about things that we cannot influence. If we spent more time focusing on the things that we can do something about, our sphere of influence would expand, making us more influential,” he commented. “For example, if communication is poor at your Trust, influencing change at the top will be beyond your control. However, you can focus on your immediate sphere of influence within your department and the people you interact with, in order to improve communication. “As a result, others within your Trust will start to notice that your department is more efficient and productive, and will want to copy what you are doing – in short, you will start to spread your influence from within. This is a much more powerful way of exerting influence than ‘knocking on a door that is closed’ and attempting to get others to take action from the top.”