Managing motivation in dyad leadership

Ages ago when I was an avid student of history, I had a professor who insisted that it’s dangerous to underestimate personal motivation in any situation — it was equally true whether you were trying to get inside the head of a historical figure or trying to make a bargain in your everyday life.

Those intimate rationales behind decision-making were a major focus of the general session workshop “Negotiating: Strategies for Success,” at the MGMA 2017 Financial Management and Payer Contracting Conference (FMPC) in Las Vegas. Jeff Cochran, master facilitator, Shapiro Negotiations Institute, Baltimore, highlighted how a traditional understanding of winning and losing doesn’t bode well for getting to a deal that stands the test of time.

I had the pleasure of taking part in Cochran’s negotiation scenario with a conference attendee, both of us tasked with finding our own strategy for agreeing on a hypothetical book deal. I had the role of the would-be publisher of the book, my counterpart serving as the agent of the book’s authors.

Structure is important, but the personalities you manage and the culture that they develop can be crucial determinants of whether your organization succeeds or fails.

While we quickly arrived at a deal — in fact, my opening bid was swiftly accepted with an enthusiastic handshake — we both learned after the pact was made that our individual motivations went well beyond the book’s projected sales or how much the publisher was prepared to offer in terms of an advance and royalties. Without spoiling the details, each side of the negotiation brought a lot of personal, nonprofessional baggage to the bargaining table.

In that scenario, it worked out to what some would call a “win-win,” but the exercise underscored the tremendous role played by the often-unseen motivations of people from different backgrounds when they sit down to do business.

As medical groups expand through new hiring, practice acquisition and other forms of integration, acknowledging and, in some cases, overcoming a litany of personal, cultural and professional differences is a key factor in achieving success. This issue of MGMA Connection magazine includes a feature story on building effective dyad teams that outlines how to approach such hurdles and define a process for getting to a robust “physician-led/professionally managed” structure.

The article’s focus on MountainView Medical Group, Las Cruces, N.M., is an intriguing example for anyone attempting not only to navigate generational gaps between practice workers, but also the crucial part that personality plays in how team members communicate and solve problems.

While dyad leadership is nothing new — the concept goes back to the early 20th century with MGMA co-founder Harry Harwick and Will Mayo, MD, implementing it at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. — it remains an organizational framework that refreshes itself as so many aspects of medical practice management (value-based reimbursement and compensation strategies, for example) become more data-driven.

The Bright Ideas article takes a closer look at the role health system administrators have in developing physician leaders to help “share the burden” of practice improvement through a dyad structure, which in turn helps a medical group’s executive team shape a better future for the organization. 

As MGMA works on our service commitment to our members, we rely on a similar multidisciplinary approach to identify areas where we can grow and build teams across departments, as well as to start the dialogue about what we want to achieve and how best to do it. In our experience, that means information technology project managers, data analysts, marketing managers and certification experts come together — not just to share their unique expertise, but to gain a stronger appreciation for everyone’s technical competencies and a deeper understanding of the organizationwide mission and goals. Ultimately, we aim to have that shared mission reflected in the individual goals across all our teams.

This approach can be a personally revealing exercise for those involved — one that asks team members to bring what makes them special to the table and then forces them to question and sometimes transcend their own assumptions and beliefs. That kind of re-evaluation with an eye on the bigger picture can make a big difference in shaping how the individual is motivated toward organizationwide success.

This month’s issue of MGMA Connection magazine invites you to broaden the way you look at how your organization is governed and the leadership needed to manage change. Structure is important, but the personalities you manage and the culture that they develop can be crucial determinants of whether your organization succeeds or fails.