Building a high-performance team

Health care managers and supervisors face a particularly tough challenge. Today more than ever they must balance the increased demand for productivity with their own desires to provide excellent care. Many health care workers seem to feel that these objectives are antithetical. Given the methods for promoting productivity and increased performance that have been inflicted upon them in the past, such a view is not surprising, but it does not have to be this way. Most, perhaps all, health care workers have an intuitive awareness of what they need to do to meet their customers' highest expectations, because they have all been customers themselves. They know that productivity, quality, and courtesy are components of high performance. The wise manager taps into this knowledge and experience on the part of his or her employees to develop a vision of high performance that generates excitement and commitment within the work group.