Engaging stakeholders is an essential part of developing teams that can drive change. Improvement in any healthcare organization requires leadership participation at every level. This becomes increasingly challenging as stakeholders face barriers to engagement such as time, lack of alignment and goals, personal gain, and generating buy-in. Developing skills that can improve stakeholder involvement and relationships is also imperative. Leaders must evaluate each stakeholders individual barriers and determine the best approach to ensure they can champion change.

An article by the Harvard Business Review outlines steps to ensure that leadership takes an effective route towards improving their relationships with all stakeholders. This includes: 

1. Relationships matter - Build up rapport with stakeholders on your team

2. Listen first - understand their barriers and concerns

3. Be there for your team - show that you care and are committed to change 

4. Model ideal behavior to your team - be as engaged as you desire your stakeholders to be 

Each step outlined above is critical to developing a strong team, and foundation, to drive change. Each step is also not significantly challenging or a huge barrier for leaders to overcome. goShadow supports healthcare leaders across the globe in their ambition to build great times and positively impact patient and employee experiences. Our expertise has supported and enabled large and diverse teams in accomplishing major milestones such as increasing OR efficiency by 20% at a major UPMC facility.

goShadow uses person-centered methods in order to build upon team and stakeholder relationships. By using the “What Matters To You? (WMTY)” tool, goShadow engineers a system that equally prioritizes what matters to every stakeholder, including point-of-care teams, patients, and families. When leaders take the time to truly understand what matters to all stakeholders, and then do what matters, change becomes so much more attainable.

To learn more about goShadow’s comprehensive suite of tools, and to get support in your next patient or staff improvement project, contact us at info@goshadow.org.