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Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979

Section 1
Track #1: Your Dynamo or Powerhouse

Table of Contents | NCCAP/NCTRC CE Booklet

Get Audio Track: Open a new window with Ctrl N,
Left click audio track to Listen, Right click to "Save..." mp3

Note-Taking Exercise

What are the first two steps in getting along better with the staff members you deal with every day?
1.
2.

Find Your Teamwork Style!
Check one word from each pair, responding to the statement, “If I were forced to choose, I would say I am...”  Pick the one that applies 51% of the time or more.

Key for scoring communication style on the previous page
The higher your score is in a particular teamwork style category, the more strongly you exhibit that style of teamwork.  For example, scoring a 10 in quadrant A indicates you have a strong driver type teamwork style and a very low amiable type teamwork style.  No teamwork style is better than another, as long as you are aware of your style and how to shift it when working with other staff members exhibiting the same or different style.

Transcript of Track 1

Welcome to the Course sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute.  This course, which is part of our activity Management series, is not only intended for activity directors and activity staff, but clearly other departments can benefit from the content, which deals with Teamwork "The Impossible Dream" How to make it come true! 

Our primary intent for this home study course is to provide quality education to foster your professional growth.  The Healthcare Training Institute has provided quality education since 1979. The developer of this course is Cathy Zugel.

The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding Team work.  As individual concepts are given, if the concepts seem to be applicable to your situation, I encourage you to turn your CD player off and make notes regarding the application of the idea to your facility.  Also each track is very content dense.  So feel free to replay the track to review the content.

For the purposes of brevity, most generally, I will use the term “resident.”  However, if you deal with patients, consumers, clients, etc., transpose “resident” for the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting. 

This two CD set deals with the team work styles of the driver, the expressive, the amiable, and the analytical, After these four styles of communicating are reviewed we will discuss these styles under stress, manipulation and conformity, style synchronization, four steps to a great working relationship, levels of assertiveness and responsiveness, synchronizing to drivers, synchronizing to expressives, synchronizing to amiables, synchronizing to analyticals, and overuse.

So let’s get started

As you know surveyor guidelines are placing increased emphasis on activities being conducted by all staff members, including CNA's.  Thus, a Teamwork environment becomes a necessity. But how do you make this seemingly impossible dream come true.  By the end of the last track of this two CD set and the Manual you will know exactly how.  But team work takes, as the word says, "work."  And the work starts with you.  You will be needing to make some behavior changes towards various team members if teamwork is to well….work!

And building a team environment in your facility is all about communication!  Agree?  You probably have heard of, read about, or taken courses regarding a system of grouping various types of communication style.  As was just mentioned in the first four tracks of this CD we will discuss four types of communication in relation to building a teamwork atmosphere in your facility.  The four communication groups we will talk about are:  communication group of : the driver, the expressive, the amiable, and the analytical.   After listening to the first four tracks you will probably have a pretty good idea which is your primary and which is your secondary communication style.  Then to enhance or act as a springboard to create a team environment in your facility we will talk about shifting you style to be an effective team builder.

If you haven't studied about communication styles before, let's briefly review some basics to make sure we are all on the same page.  As you know, each person’s thought process works differently.  However, researchers have found that there are four basic ways of thinking, and each of these manners of thinking has its own strengths and weaknesses.

So why are we talking about four types of thought process in a course devoted to team building?  Well, in order to better get along with those staff members you deal with everyday, if you understand another's thought process, you can shift your style of communication, to communicate more effectively with them.  I would like to repeat part of what I just said.  "You need to shift your style to communicate more effectively with them."  You may be thinking, "Me?!  I have to change?!  I think they should change!!"  I have found you can spend a lifetime wishing, hoping, thinking, and perhaps even praying that someone else will change; and be molded into the ideal person that would make your life in the facility oh so-so much easier!  However, the only person you can truly change is who?  You've got it!  The only person you truly can control or change is yourself!!!  So let's forget about pie-in-the-sky idealism of wishing, hoping, thinking, and perhaps even praying that the other staff member or other department head were different. 

And also while we're at it, let's forget about playing the blame game and griping about what an awful, terrible person the dietary supervisor, director of nursing, volunteer, activity assistant, or other staff member is.  If you're into this type of blame game, you definitely need to purchase our course on stress management, which teaches you how to shift from problem-focused thoughts to solution-focused thoughts.  Anyway, the point to be made is, in order to build a team atmosphere in your facility, it needs to start with you, and not with going on a witch hunt, pointing fingers, and trying to get the other departments or your department to mold itself into your concept of what should be.

So perhaps now you realize what I am saying is, as far as building a team in your facility, buck-passing will get you nowhere.  The metaphorical buck stops with you.  Just like the military several years back developed the slogan to create an “army of one”, each person listening to this CD set and reading the manual needs to become a team-builder of one.  A team builder of one sounds like a contradiction of terms.  But by a team-builder of one, like the army of one, I mean each person taking this course needs to be a team building dynamo or powerhouse, an expansive force from which team building generates.  So at this point, you're probably asking how.  By the end of this two CD set and the manual, you will know exactly how you can change your behavior to more effectively communicate with others within your facility, and become that army of one or team builder of one or in other words, a team building expansive force within your facility.

It’s a simple process of learning what type of thinker you are, and identifying the types of thinkers your co-workers are. Once you have done that, it’s just a short hop to create a more productive and pleasant work environment  in your facility with a team atmosphere.  When you are using your brain in its most competent way, everybody around you benefits.  Would you agree? Thus, as mentioned earlier, each staff member who has taken this teambuilding course becomes a springboard for the creation of a team atmosphere within the facility.  If you are curious, what type of thinker you are, there is a questionnaire in your Note Taking Booklet to help you decide whether your communication style is that of a driver, amiable, analytical, or expressive.  If so, when you hear the musical tone turn the CD player off and take and complete the questionnaire in the note-taking booklet that accompanied this course.  MUSIC

On the next track, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the team work style of the staff member I will call the Driver.  As you hear the strengths and weaknesses of the Driver, evaluate if a driver is a primary or secondary communication or thinking style for you.  Also make a mental check list of others in the facility who may be a Driver.