Leadership and Management: How Well Can You Communicate?

Yesterday I witnessed a situation that I would like to talk about.  There were two people, a mother and a daughter at a table at the restaurant that my husband and I were visiting.  The mother, who was dressed as though she was in a professional, maybe managerial, postion, was on her phone talking to someone about a contract of some sort.  Her daughter, in her early twenties I would hazzard a guess, reminded me of my daughter, a college student, dressed in jeans and a pretty pink tee shirt.  Her hair was long and pulled up into a pony tail.  She was impatiently waiting for her mother to get off the phone.  As she was waiting, she was playing on her cell phone looking at Mom to "hurry up" the conversation.  Mom continued to talk until the food came.  At first, their conversation was blending in with the hum of the restaurant noise.  Soon, both my husband and I noticed voices becoming louder.  Mom was angry and the daughter was too.  Mom soon became verbally aggressive in an authoritative voice and refused to listen to the daughter.  The daughter, after responding defensively, clammed up and sat sullenly at the table while Mom either ignored her or spoke with harsh tones.  Shortly after the heated conversation erupted, Mom requested the bill and they both left.

I began to wonder how would I have handled that same scenario.  I also wondered how the mother would have responded to a coworker or an employee, if she was trully in a managerial situation.  Then I thought about how we communicate in general. What is communication?  We know that communication is when one person sends a message and the other, the receiver, receives the message.  The receiver then sends the message back to the send, and this of course is feedback.  Back and forth it goes, either until the conversation is ended or the communication fails.  As we know, there are two types of comunication, verbal and nonverbal.  In the scenario described, the two types were used as evidenced by the mother and daughter's words and behavior. The part of communication that tends to get lost is the active listening that should take place between the two individuals.  Most of the time we hear the words, but do we really listen to what is being said?  Listening is crucial to identify not only the information being received, but also the emotions of the other person so that the response is appropriate (Anderson, 2009). 

As the healthcare environment becomes more complex and diverse, communication becomes an essential skill for the nurse leader and the nurse manager. In addition, there will be a need to communicate effectively, not only with other healthcare members, but with patients and their families.  As a manager, or as a nurse leader, you have the responsibility of accomplishing work and goals through others, and part of how to make this happen in the clinical environment is through successful communication (Covey, 2004).

Please watch the video and take a few minutes to think about how we communicate when we are at work, in the classroom or with our family members.  Please see the next blog for the video.  Thank you.

References

Anderson, M. A. (2009). Nursing leadership, management, and professional practice for the LPN/LVN in nursing school and beyond, (4th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: F. A. Davis
Covey, S. R. (2004). The seven habits of hightly successful people. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster