Our Work Speaks For itself...

CChange Partnership Case Study

Royal Glamorgan NHS Trust

"A highly recommended experience" - Claire Bevan, Medical Directorate Manager of the Royal Glamorgan NHS Trust

Context – why we needed CChange

It was continued service pressure, rather than inadequate team performance, that provided the context and motivation to improve inter-personal communication.

Our team was generally regarded as supportive and communicating effectively, so the workshops were not seen as a response to team inadequacies.

The directorate as a whole had recognized that it had to secure significant organizational change in order to respond to demanding organizational pressures.

To achieve change our team needed to be strongly focused and consistently supportive. Many targets were set externally and internally for the team to meet, and individuals felt overwhelmed by workload and demands.

The aims of the training

We had a strong belief that the development of effective communication skills was a key component in achieving these aims, for both the directorate as a whole and for individual members.

The quality of leadership provided by nurse managers and support team leaders was recognized as one of the pivotal factors in sustaining and retaining clinical and non clinical teams, this team brought together the directorate's senior management team.

So, enhancing the team's capacity to communicate effectively could potentially influence directorate working on a much wider scale.

How we worked with CChange

Our approach drew on Claire Bevan's own experience of communication training. This had made her aware of the critical importance of skilled external facilitation when exploring issues relating to something as personal and basic as individual ways of communicating.

Jim Lister of CChange Partnership was brought in to facilitate both workshop sessions.

Workshop content and format:
CChange in collaboration with Claire designed two away-days for the team: each with a focus on effective communication.

Each team member had a workbook, which set out the main themes and recorded individual responses and insights.

The workshops required each participant to be actively reflective about their own communication behaviour. Sessions focused on taking responsibility for communicative behaviour , developing specific communication skills, embedding effective communication into organisational systems, and engendering a positive team culture.

Outcomes of our work with CChange Partnership

• Participants evaluated the workshops extremely positively; sessions were described as ‘very useful', ‘fantastic', ‘enjoyable', and continuing to influence the way members thought about how they communicated.

• Members acquired a vocabulary and a set of skills with which to enhance their existing ability to communicate effectively. They gained a sharper understanding of the need to check each other's position and the meaning each one brought to complex or contested situations.

• Phrases and questions likely to generate productive or negative responses were identified, and new approaches explored and developed.

• The importance of non-verbal signals was examined, as was the impact of praise and encouragement.

• There were noticeable changes in the way individuals interacted by the second workshop.

• Following on from the second workshop, team members constructed and approved a directorate ‘Communication Agreement', copies of which are prominently displayed at each directorate support office site. This has proved to be valuable as a standard to call on if the quality of communication is seen as less than ideal, as inevitably can happen at times within teams .

We leave the last word to Claire…

"The entire session was delivered with much interaction; group and individual work, motivation, energy, and the training maintained the focus and enthusiasm of the entire team.

The skills attained can now be taken forward by the team to assist with each member's personal development - identifying strengths and skills individuals are willing to share, and those identified as learning needs. Through using these new skills a whole new set of tools can be shared amongst our team to achieve improved performance and delivery as a team within the NHS".

To find out more - for free - how CChange can help you, click here for more information about how to get your no obligation free consultation.

For the Macmillan case study click here

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Trust Details

The team participating in the workshops were senior staff from the medical directorate of Pontypridd & Rhondda NHS Trust, which provides acute, community, and mental health services for around 180,000 residents in and around the Rhondda valley.

The team leader is the Directorate Manager, Claire Bevan. The Directorate is seen as an innovative, high performing service, and the Trust was commended in the last CHI report. The Directorate Manager is also involved in developing a Trust wide communication strategy.

There are 14 team members, 12women and 2 men, 3 (I) grade nurse managers covering medical services across the Trust's 5 hospital sites, plus administrative staff, support manager, training and development nurses, a coordinator for quality and a health and safety coordinator.