Talking your way to the top

Dr Michelle Griffin, National Medical Director’s clinical fellow

I recently took part in an ‘action learning set’, one of my actitivities as part of my year as National Medical Director’s clinical fellow.

During such a session, you must ‘bring your own story’ to the table, explaining a personal position with which you would like some advice and help.  Once you have described the situation to the group, you take a step back as your peers discuss their impressions and opinions, which as you can imagine can be somewhat uncomfortable!

To set the scene, I was being ‘helped’ by my peer group in regards to my sometimes problematic relationship with one of my work colleagues The general feeling from my action learning set, was that I must see the problem from the other person’s point of view. Of course, this sounds simple, obvious and really something we should be doing continuously both professionally and personally – examining our behaviour from the other person’s perspective and how they could or do feel about it.

Taking this advice to heart, over the next few days I really worked on behaving and relating to my colleague in a way they would understand and appreciate. Since then, we have worked together much better. This was beneficial for both of us, as well as being a good learning tool for the fellows in my group.

However, I also felt it had significance to me across a much wider perspective, so I began to take note of how my seniors and leaders communicated and related to others. I felt I could learn a valuable lesson from this.

Only recently, medical tribalism has been discussed. Groups, usually same speciality or similar training level, stick together, fighting against anything different, fervently defending their territory, whether it be with regard to referrals or multidisciplinary case review. However, simultaneously doctors are often (sometimes wrongly) stereotyped as being egotistical and arrogant. It is not unusual that we do not get on with everyone, including key people in our teams, but that is similar to any other human being in any other walk of life!

But is it possible to get around this problem without causing upset or backing down?

From what I have learned, it seems to me the leaders that inspire me and that I admire have a very real talent in this respect. I tend not to see these people involved in conflict with others. Their behaviour is seamless and they are seemingly able to change themselves to fit into any situation with any person. They quickly determine what works for their audience - whether colleagues, patients or public - and adjust their manner and behaviour to suit and attune to that audience. In no way is their message or agenda lost, it is simply repackaged to fit in with the audience – it does not equate to a change of meaning, but simply a change in delivery of the plan. This way of working is elegant, harmonious and avoids unnecessary conflict.

Such people are chameleons, they adapt to their environment and in doing so, survive and thrive. In this current climate where short careers as a senior leader are a concern, the ability to survive is the greatest of all talents and is based on the ability to communicate effectively.