Workshops & Courses

Facilitators:  Wale Olaleye, Anthony Suchman and Jody Hoffer Gittell

Relating Across Difference - An Improvement Process for Clinical Units is a workshop series that uses principles of relational coordination to help healthcare teams leverage the rich information offered by their diversity to achieve better outcomes.  It is structured as a coach-the-coach model in which workshop participants are process improvement coaches or organizational development coaches. Workshop participants learn how to coach healthcare teams to do process improvement while building relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect across professional and social identity differences. Four workshops are offered over a six month time horizon, with project work carried out in between each workshop by workshop participants and the teams they are coaching.  

The workshop series is led by Wale Olaleye, PhD, MA, MBA, BPharm, Anthony Suchman, MD, MA, and Jody Hoffer Gittell, PhD.  The curriculum is currently being developed and tested in partnership with three health systems including Cleveland Clinic/Case Western Reserve University, Mass General Brigham, and the University of Washington Medical Center, with funding from the Josiah Macy Foundation.

Facilitators:  Dr. Marjorie Godfrey and the IEHSS Team

Teaches the origins of relational coordination (a theory developed by Dr. Jody Hoffer Gittell) and multiple change models and interventions that can be applied in practice. Participants will work with a real team and “learn by doing.”

Session 1 (Virtual): Tuesday, January 30, 2024 | 4-6pm ET

*DATE CHANGE* Session 2 (Virtual):

Wednesday, April 3, 2024 | Noon - 5:00 pm ET

Thursday, April 4, 2024 | 9:00 am - 4:30 pm ET

Friday, April 5, 2024 | 9:00 am - 2:00 pm ET

Session 3 (Virtual, Optional): Tuesday, April 16, 2024 | 4-6 pm ET

Session 4 (Virtual, Optional): Tuesday, May 14, 2024 | 4-6pm ET

Facilitators:  Dr. Marjorie Godfrey and the IEHSS Team

Blends the art and science of team coaching, improvement science including measurement, and effective communication and team-building.

Session 1 (Virtual): Tuesday, January 30, 2024 | 11 am - 2:30 pm ET

Session 2 (Salt Lake City, UT):

Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | 9:00 am - 5:00 pm MT

Wednesday, March 13, 2024 | 9:00 am - 5:00 pm MT

Thursday, March 14, 2024 | 9:00 am - 5:00 pm MT

Friday, March 15, 2024 | 8:30 am - 2:00 pm MT

Session 3 (Virtual): Tuesday, April 9, 2024 | 11 am - 2:30 pm ET

Measurement Session (Virtual): Tuesday, April 30 | Noon - 1:15 pm ET

Session 4 (Virtual): Tuesday, May 7, 2024 | 11 am - 2:30 pm ET

Session 5 (Virtual): Tuesday, June 4, 2024 | 11 am - 2:30 pm ET

Facilitators:  Tina Foster, Cindy George and Marjorie Godrey

Highly interactive 5 session program that improves communication, relationships and partnerships among interprofessional members of health and social systems. Topics include the communication cycle, relationship building communication, conflict engagement, negotiation, relational coordination, resilience, partnering with those that you serve, humble inquiry and equity.

Programs are held in Fall and Spring. Click here to see dates and learn more. Can be customized to provide in local contexts based on identified needs.

Facilitators:  Tony Suchman and Jody Hoffer Gittell

Offered May 14-18 at the 2024 SGIM Annual Meeting in Boston, MA

In healthcare, as in any human endeavor, we work in systems to perform work and achieve outcomes beyond what we can accomplish as individuals. Engaging people as a system not only increases the quantity of effort that can be sustained; it brings a diversity of perspectives and skills to the work, increasing scope, scale, adaptability and creativity. To coordinate and align the work of individuals and to harness the benefits of their diversity in all its forms, a system needs a strong relational core. 

Relational coordination is communicating and relating for the purpose of task integration. It is an empirically validated framework for assessing and improving the relational core that determines the success of every work process. RC makes relationships and interdependencies visible and manageable. It highlights dimensions of relationships (shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect) and communication (frequency, timeliness, accuracy, and problem-solving rather than blaming) that are associated with high performance. RC also helps participants to design structural, relational and work process interventions that support the relational core. 

After a brief review of RC theory and research in a plenary session, we will offer two workshops to explore practical implications of this framework for building relationships across differences in order to enhance the performance of systems, from small work teams to multi-institutional consortia.

WORKSHOP 1: Relational Mapping: A Tool for Assessing and Improving the Relational Core of a Work Process

WORKSHOP 2: The 3 Conversations of Systemness: How to Strengthen the Relational Core of a Work Process and Enhance Interdependence

Facilitators:  The IEHSS Team

Research has shown that team coaches are essential in supporting busy frontline teams who provide care and services and continuously improve their processes and systems. COVID has further reinforced the role of the team coach to offer encouragement, praise, reframing, reminders, and celebrations of efforts to improve healthcare outcomes. Team coaching has always emphasized the “humanistic” side of improvement while implementing and testing technical change. Now more than ever, the “humanistic” side of improvement, including promoting resilience and well-being in individuals, teams, leadership and organizations, is essential to support post-COVID burnout, poor morale, mental health challenges and compassion fatigue. Participants have access to a novel research-based web application (RēsWell App) that assesses individual and team well-being and provides recommendations for improvement.

Click here to see dates and learn more. Can be customized to provide in local contexts based on identified needs.