Lack of Trust

This fall and winter, we’ve been exploring different areas and reasons for struggles within the healthcare industry. Only a few weeks away from the New Year, we prepare to wrap up this series and begin to look forward for solutions. However, we’re not quite to the finish line yet. There are several more distinct areas of lack we’ll be diving into over the next three weeks.

And this week’s a doozy

A Fundamental Lack of Trust

While lack of trust in any workplace is a serious threat, in the healthcare industry, it’s literally a matter of life or death. Lack of trust comes as the culmination of many of the problems already unpacked and discussed. Because physician training is so far removed from Chief Medical Officer (CMO) or physician leader training (or lack thereof), it’s easy to understand why physicians may be wary of their CMO’s motives. This misunderstanding of motives -- such as physicians thinking CMO’s are only interested in profits or CMO’s assuming physicians are only not doing their best work -- when coupled with poor communication, inevitably breeds distrust in a workplace culture.

Simply put, physicians and the people who lead them do not feel they are playing for the same team. 

With a foundational lack of trust, like that which exists in many healthcare organizations, often, leaders sense it and attempt to address the issue by creating programs designed to engage physicians or build trust. The foundation of distrust that already exists, however, dooms these programs to failure before they even begin. Physicians may take part half-heartedly because they are required to be there, but participate guardedly as they inherently mistrust the organizer. It’s a cyclical problem as old as the fabled “chicken and egg” debate.

Distrust breeds more distrust and, over time, the compounded distrust becomes impossible to break through. 

Often, compounding the lack of trust even more, incompetent (or oblivious) supervisors will think to themselves, “I created this trust-building program that everyone participated in. Good for me.” While nothing about workplace culture changes even in the slightest.

When leaders are more committed to checking arbitrary boxes instead of investing time and energy in changing the culture of their hospitals, the cycle of distrust is doomed to repeat itself again and again.

Checking boxes can never be the goal of a true leader. True leadership demands you are invested in the health and wellness of both your employees and the group as a whole, not completing your own to-do list.

Next time we’ll look at the lack of connectivity that exists in many workplaces in the healthcare industry, both remote and in person.