It is 88 degrees in Tampa as day one kicks off for the SIOP LEC on Developing and Enhancing High Performance Teams.
The amazing speakers: I will list their names and content and the thoughts they have provoked in me from a safety dog perspective.

Gary Latham the co-chair of the LEC gave an inspiring introduction about the purpose of these LECs as not only to hear great speakers but also to compare notes as practitioners. more:

Micheal Beer was up next talking about the Silent barriers in team performance.
thoughts: what kills an organization is what is NOT talked about (Beer likened this to hypertension and heart attacks)
honest communication must be allowed if leaders want the culture to change. to get honesty talks have to be confidential, findings cannot be challenged and questions can only be for clarification or understanding. his Strategic Fitness Process would be a fantastic framework for the safety rounds concept.

Wagerman spoke about the current CEO job being too big for any single individual in today’s society due to the pace of change and global presence. She has followed 120 leadership teams and found only 25% to be outstanding.
thoughts:This has major initiatives for creating a safety culture which has been shown in many studies to need to be embedded in senior management’s agenda.

Beatty spoke about her research on developing teams to lead strategic change. Her most powerful point: culture EATS strategy for breakfast.
thoughts: the term culture makes me think of organisms which proliferate in an infection.

Haskins was one of my favorite speakers. He had a one slide presentation with 9 premises for team success in creating change.
Quotes: we have to start from where we are not where we would like to be. Old processes only do old things. In a complex system, everything has side effects:things in isolation don’t work the way they do in context. **Too much efficiency can be as bad as too little efficiency since it prevents resilience and adaptability.**

Salas the current president of SIOP presented the results of a review of 25+ years of review of team literature. This cumulated in his 6 Cs of teamwork: cooperation. coordination, communication, cognition, coaching and conflict.

Tannebaum’s presentation on team debriefing is a tool with direct application to patient safety. https://www.siop.org/article_view.aspx?article=725

Day two

Heidi King from the Department of Defense spoke about their patient safety initiative called Team STEPPS. Read about this process here at the AHRQ http://teamstepps.ahrq.gov/

Hackman spoke about shared leadership and whether it was possible. He talked about what works and doesn’t work using the example of the Orpheus Chamber orchestra which is a conductor-less group of musicians. Here is an example of a lesson plan for shared leadership using this group as an basis view
thoughts: Hackman’s work is important to anyone trying to sustain or implement a model of shared governance in healthcare teams.

Michael West, is from Aston University, UK. Dr. West describes the benefits I-O psychology has brought to the UK healthcare system including addressing absenteeism, facilitating teamwork, dealing with bullying and violence, addressing employee health and well being and job satisfaction, and reviewing causes of errors and incidents.
thoughts: West mentioned that one way to find the best hospitals in the UK is to look at their employee satisfaction surveys because high satisfaction has been shown to correlate with high quality. All their employee satisfaction ratings are public!