Most managers spend the better part of their work lives in meetings. Managers who lead these sessions typically have little education or training in group dynamics or “what goes on in groups.” As a result, both managers and work groups often see meetings as a necessary evil. As healthcare organizations continue to move from traditional command-and-control models to participation-and-empowerment models, this view of meetings cannot survive. A successful manager must facilitate group interaction and teamwork or run the risk of creating an obstacle to continuous improvement and employee involvement.

Work group dynamics involves the interaction of two factors:

* Group members have individual needs, and each person’s needs differ; and

* A work group operates at two levels simultaneously, with events occurring at both “content” and “process” levels.

Content and process. The content of a group’s activity is the tip of the iceberg and includes visible or apparent occurrences. Content includes mission, authority, rules, exchange of information, and public agenda.

As with an iceberg, substantial group interaction occurs below the water line. Group process is less apparent than content but no less important in achieving group goals.

Process relates “how we do it,” including group members’ personal needs, informal leadership, norms, feelings, and hidden agendas. Effective groups lower the water line as much as possible, so that content and process are treated equally.

An ineffective group process will interfere with performance regardless of the competence of individual members. To avoid this problem, managers should pay attention to critical process issues: decision-making methods, quality of communication, and the roles group members may play.

Decision making. Many groups become stuck because they fail to discuss and agree on decision-making methods. At the start of a project or meeting, a manager should clarify decisions to be made and how the group will make them.

Quality of communication. A group process manager must develop an ability to recognize key characteristics of a group’s communication, including

* Direction: Does everyone feel free to communicate with all other members? Is communication centered around the manager?

* Openess: Do individuals feel free to express their feelings?

* Tone of group feelings: Enthusiasm? Belligerence? Boredom? Acceptance?

* Understanding: Is everyone making an effort to listen and understand before responding?

Roles people play. Group members tend to take several roles within a group. These roles fall under broad categories:

* Task roles involve getting the job done no matter what:

* Initiators contribute new ideas or encourage new directions;

* Summarizers pull things together, recap, or add perspective;

* Clarifiers help others understand what is occurring;

* Information seekers ask for input or direction;

* Information givers offer facts or background on issues; and

* Decision testers seek consensus.

* Maintenance roles involve ensuring that a job is done well and that the group feels good about it:

* Encouragers boost morale by commending others;

* Harmonizers mediate others’ differences; and

* Gatekeepers ensure that everyone has a chance to contribute.

* Non-group roles indicate concern that a person’s own needs are not being met:

* Blockers insist on their position and reject consensus;

* Dominators attempt to exert authority by manipulating the group or dominating conversations; and

* Avoiders withdraw.

When considering the roles that group members can play, four points should be kept in mind:

* Depending on the circumstances, any group member can play several roles;

* Non-group role behavior is not always bad. It means that someone’s needs are not being met; that someone may be saying, “Stop and let me make my point;” or that dealing with non-group behavior can help a group continue to grow;

* To get a job done, a group needs both task and maintenance role behavior; and

* A manager may have to fill roles not taken by others.

Work group dynamics can be used to perform more effectively, but managers must develop skills enabling them to act as observers and participants in the group process. By diagnosing what is happening in a work group and steering members toward effective behavior, managers can contribute to teamwork, quality, and productivity.

Edward A. Kazemek

Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, AFL-CIO, forged a Labor Management Partnership Agreement in 1997. The agreement followed more than a decade of pitched battles – including a series of strikes and jobs actions – which left both unions and management agreeing on the need to radically change our relationship.

Rather than respond to aggressive competition from non-union, for profit HMOs by fighting each other, we decided to join together. We envisioned an organizational transformation that would support our common goals. We knew our future success would depend on our ability to create workplaces that would encourage union members’ full participation.

Goals of the Labor Management Partnership: The goal the 1997 LMP agreement is to demonstrate that Partnership produces “superior health care outcomes, market leading competitive performance, and a superior workplace for Kaiser Permanente employees.” The LMP has these additional goals: Improve quality health care for Kaiser Permanente members and the communities we serve. Assist Kaiser Permanente in achieving and maintaining market leading competitive performance. Make Kaiser Permanente a better place to work

Kaiser Permanente and the union coalition have a common history and social mission. In the 1940s, our organization and the labor movement made history by changing the face of health care. Kaiser Permanente was actually built with help from the unions, dedicated to providing – for the first time in American history – affordable, quality health care for 30,000 workers building World War II ships in Richmond. In fact, KP was once so closely identified with unions and working people that during the 1950s, most large employers (as well as the American Medical Association) were openly hostile to the organization, and Kaiser Permanente relied on unions to provide almost all of its health plan members. By 1997, we knew it was time to return to our roots of working together, with a new competitive strategy.

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, AFL-CIO, is made up of six international unions and 29 local unions representing more than 82,000 employees. About 20,000 managers and some 12,000 physicians are also covered by the agreement. It affects the more than 8.3 million health plan members of Kaiser Permanente.
Structure

Departments across the organization are at different stages of implementing the Partnership. The success of the Partnership ultimately depends on the relationship between the supervisor and the union steward in each department. The goal, which is already working in some departments, is for union-management teams to provide joint, equal leadership on key decisions regarding day-to-day operations.

The Labor Management Partnership is governed by the LMP Strategy Group, a senior leadership team composed of union, management, and physician leaders. Regional joint leadership bodies oversee LMP organizational change efforts in Northern California, Southern California, the Northwest, Colorado, Ohio, Georgia, and the Mid-Atlantic States regions.

http://www.lmpartnership.org/history/index.html

Just as successful partnerships share many of the same traits, struggling labor-management partnerships are beleaguered by many of the same problems. Here are some of the most common barriers to partnership that we saw in agencies across the government.

1. No Common Understanding of What Partnership Means

One of the comforts of traditional labor relations is the clearly defined role for labor and management outlined in statutes, regulations, and collective bargaining agreements. Partnership recasts these roles, blurring the traditional union-management lines. Figuring out where those lines are drawn and what partnership really means can be a major roadblock for many agencies and unions.

Labor and management face a number of difficult questions when they seek to form a partnership. What are the critical elements of a genuine partnership? What are the roles of labor and management in a partnership vs. a traditional relationship? Does partnership mean that labor and management make decisions jointly on every issue? How do partners deal with issues that are outside the scope of bargaining? What is the connection between collective bargaining and partnership? Who should sit on the partnership council? Who sets the agenda? Are some issues off limits?

There are no simple answers. Responses will vary among partnerships and from agency to agency, and answers that seem sensible today often need revisiting over time as relationships mature. Topics once considered non-negotiable or just too difficult to address may become ripe for discussion as the partnership builds trust and a track record of success. But even if some ambiguity is to be expected, it is vital to the success of any emerging partnership for the union and management to have a reasonably clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities at the outset.

A related issue often frustrating labor and management is the tension between partnership and other reinvention goals. To some union officials and even some managers, reinvention is not defined primarily by worker empowerment or labor-management cooperation, but rather by workforce reductions, budget cuts, privatization, and other strategies that are viewed as direct threats to job security. In some cases, the threat of job cuts and the focus on “doing more with less” have threatened to undermine the principles on which partnerships are built.

Labor and management can and often do work through these issues in ways that actually strengthen their relationships. When agencies and unions partner early in the process, communicate openly and honestly, and try seriously to meet the interests of the other party, reasonable solutions can be crafted. Nevertheless, several union reports described non-existent or dysfunctional partnerships, which they attribute to unresolved tensions between partnership and other reinvention goals.

2. Lack of Trust and Mutual Respect

Trust and mutual respect are the cornerstones of any successful labor-management partnership. The Federal Government’s long and well-documented history of adversarial labor-management relations sometimes conspires to keep trust and mutual respect in short supply. In struggling relationships, labor and management are often unable or unwilling to move beyond past rancor and disputes. This often undermines efforts to build trust and form a more constructive relationship. Trust cannot be imposed. It takes time to build. Success is usually achieved in small steps.

One of the most effective strategies for building trust is open and honest communications. The parties must understand that the patterns of communication found in traditional labor-management relations are often wholly inappropriate in this new setting. By taking the time to rethink and relearn how they communicate, agencies and unions can create a climate where trust and respect can grow and partnership can succeed.

3. Turnover and Changes in Leadership

When it comes to partnership and interest-based bargaining, the common wisdom says to separate the people from the issues. Labor and management are taught to focus on the problems at hand and not on the personalities involved. While this advice makes good sense in theory, labor-management relations is still a people business. Success depends more often than not on the people involved and the way they relate to one another.

Not surprisingly, we found that successful labor-management partnerships are often the result of a strong personal relationship between management and union officials. While personal relationships can provide an early foundation of trust and respect, problems can arise when key people leave the organization. If the trust and respect that marked the relationship has not filtered down to other management and union leaders, the partnership may get off track.

A good example of an agency facing significant turnover of key people is the Department of Defense. Here is how DoD described the challenge:

“Turnover, a problem for any labor-management relationship, is a central factor in the highly mobile military . . . Partnership takes time to develop and is dependant on the players involved. Attitudes play a major role in the success or failure in the partnership. Both management and union respondents indicated it was difficult to establish a successful partnership when the members left due to military rotation, union elections, employee turnover, a base realignment, a base closure or a reduction in force.”
This problem can be addressed by careful succession planning and appropriate training for parties new to the partnership. Bringing new members to partnership council meetings as early and as often as possible exposes them to an effective labor-management relationship and gives them a chance to see how it works. Providing new members with training in consensual forms of dispute resolution and decision-making gives them tools to be productive members of the council early in their tenure. By finding ways to institutionalize partnership, both the agency and the union can increase the chances that it will flourish in spite of changing membership.

4. Inconsistent Commitment to Partnership

In some agencies, commitment to partnership is not absent altogether but is spotty and inconsistent. We sometimes see strong partnerships at the national level while local field facilities struggle with even the rudiments of partnership. Conversely, it is not uncommon to see instances where local partnerships are flourishing even while national leaders are unable to work together constructively. This phenomenon is not limited to the management side of the equation. Federal employee unions can also demonstrate an inconsistent commitment to partnership.

When the commitment to partnership is not visible and firm throughout the agency and the union, employees get mixed signals about how important partnership really is. It is extremely disheartening for a partnership council to work through a problem only to find its solution unacceptable to top management. It is equally disheartening to have management implement those solutions but see them falter due to lack of support from front-line workers. This barrier can be overcome only by unifying all tiers of an organization behind a common vision of partnership.

http://www.opm.gov/lmr/report/section_5.htm