Whether
you are a physician leader, an entrepreneur, or a physician business
person, your success will be largely determined on how well you can
communicate your ideas. I know this is a bold statement, but
it's true. The first step to improving your effectiveness is
understanding your OWN communication preference? Notice I
didn't say style, I said preference. How do
YOU prefer to take in information? What gets YOUR attention?
Do you prefer a brief, get-to-the-point report? Do you like
drawings and diagrams in order to "get the big picture?"
Do you need some quantitative date in order to believe what you
hear? Would you feel better if you could try out the idea or product yourself
"hands on"?
Your
response to each of these questions will give you a hint about your
where you fall in what author Ned Hermann's "Whole Brain
Model". He categorizes our preferences into these four:
A:
FACTS
B:
FUTURE
C:
FORM
D:
FEELINGS
For
each of us, one of these four perspective most naturally reflects
where we place OUR attention, and therefore affects our decisions
and our satisfaction. Review each of the four quadrants
below and decide what your preferential perspective is:
A:
FACTS - You tend toward logical, analytical, fact-based,
quantitative perspectives.
In
a project team you gravitate to financial data, costs vs..
benefits, comparative analysis of different options, support
requirements, how the underlying technology or method works
B:
FUTURE - You tend toward holistic, intuitive, integrating
synthesizing perspectives.
In
a project team you gravitate to concepts, strategy, how it relates
to organizational vision; you are attracted by the
experimental or risk aspects, and how the project fits with long
range trends
C:
FORM - You tend toward sequential, organized, detailed and planned
perspectives.
In
a project team you gravitate to project tasks and timeline,
appropriate resources, schedules for tasks, completion of
milestones before proceeding to the next step
D:
FEELINGS - You tend toward interpersonal, feeling-based,
kinesthetic and emotional perspectives.
In
a project team you gravitate to group dynamics, adequate and fair
input from team members, consensus building, the affect of the
project on organizational culture
Most
of us will have a "primary" quadrant where we feel
most at home, a secondary quadrant that we can easily "get
into", and our blind spot quadrant, that requires deliberate
effort on our part to attend to. One way of identifying our
blind spot is to substitute the phrase "tend to forget"
for the words "gravitate to". If you
"tend to forget" group dynamics, organizational culture
and feelings, then Quadrant D is probably NOT your preference.
I
started out by talking about communication and success. How can you
use the Whole Brain Method to improve your communication? One
rule: Communicate to all four quadrant-types whenever
you lead a meeting, address a group of clients, pitch a business
plan, or update the executive team. For Quadrant A's, be sure
to include facts and figures, for Quadrant B's, draw the big picture
to represent your concept, for Quadrant C's, be methodical and
logical in how you arrive at your conclusion, and for Quadrant D's,
include a story or demo that illustrates the personal interaction or
impact on culture.
Francine R.
Gaillour, MD, Business Consultant and Executive Coach for
Healthcare Leaders francine@physicianleadership.com,
(206) 686-4205
