How SydKIP laid the foundation for even better collaboration in a new department in Region Southern Denmark

This is the story of how the leader and staff had the courage to change direction with us when a desire to learn feedback techniques opened up a completely different focus on development in a department of skilled employees.

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Signe Skaarup Andreassen is a leader in a department at Region Southern Denmark, focusing on quality development in the healthcare sector. The department is called SydKIP.

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"KIP stands for Quality in Practice. Among other things, we support the general practitioners in the region in quality development," explains Signe.

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At the beginning of 2022, Signe had a plan: She wanted to work with feedback techniques. Both to foster better collaboration internally in SydKIP and to have tools when working with others outside the department, such as the general practitioners in the region.

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Danni from Feedwork could help with that. But when the feedback theme day began, it became clear that we had overlooked something.

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"Even though we had scheduled half a day for feedback, it quickly became apparent in the room that there was actually another need that was more pressing. We realized that we could benefit from taking a step back and discussing the prerequisites for giving and receiving feedback instead."

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That shift created a more useful day for the employees and enabled us to create even better learning with Signe and the others from SydKIP about what they actually needed. Here's why:

Gained language to handle significant changes in the department

Signe explains: "On paper, SydKIP is 3 years old. It became an independent unit in January 2020. But then Covid came in March 2020, and the employees have been working from home a lot since then. I myself was only hired in 2021. So in practice, we are actually a very new department consisting of 14 people with different seniority, histories, and educational backgrounds."

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And what did that mean for the department?

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"Some employees had moved from other locations in the building, and some were hired into this new unit. So the understanding of what SydKIP meant for these employees was without historical context. While other employees brought more history with them. So we simply had very different prerequisites and expectations for our collaboration on the common task. We realized on this theme day that we hadn't really had a language to talk about this. Now we do."

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The employees learned the foundational principles of psychological safety, which opened up constructive conversations across the team. Because even though psychological safety in a workplace may already be at a good level, it can be beneficial to discuss things like:

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- How do we create space for multiple viewpoints?

- How do we signal to each other that we respect each other's different backgrounds and histories?

- And how can we become even better at creating these safe spaces for others?

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Tools for increased psychological safety through dedicated effort

Together with Signe, we therefore changed the approach from a single theme day to instead focus on a process centered around psychological safety that spanned the rest of 2022. The process consisted of meetings with the employees, where they learned new tools for cross-team collaboration, and coaching sessions between Signe and Danni.

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"The collaboration between Danni and me enabled us to implement a systematic effort," Signe explains.

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"It is my impression that we have increased the psychological safety in the department, and that everyone contributes to maintaining and further developing it. Additionally, I had valuable coaching sessions with Danni between meetings, which made me feel completely confident in letting Danni lead the process during the meetings."

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Signe's story is an example of how a task can evolve in the moment because employees naturally need to work on what they need most – not just plow through the slides we brought that day. It is our experience that working with psychological safety as a foundation is meaningful for giving and receiving feedback. Just as in Signe's department, where they gained a language for the significant (yet somewhat invisible) change process they underwent with the establishment of the new unit during Covid.

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If you want to learn more about how we work with psychological safety, please take a look here:

https://www.feedwork.dk/viden/webinar-sadan-oger-i-jeres-psykologiske-tryghed

https://www.feedwork.dk/viden/psykologisk-tryghed-skab-en-kultur-hvor-medarbejdere-toer-udfolde-sig

https://www.feedwork.dk/viden/5-ting-du-kan-goere-for-at-styrke-dine-kollegers-tillid-til-dig

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