Another notice went to United Healthcare’s plan participants this week. The summary? “We’re still negotiating with the hospital, but if we can’t come to agreement then you’ll soon be ‘out of network’ if your favorite hospital is Medical Center of Central Georgia.”

After some digging, we find that this is not an isolated incident at all.

In fact, back in January members that United Healthcare insures in New York got similar notices relating to the services they might wish to procure from the Continuum Health Partners, a consortium of five well known New York hospitals. The standoff ended in March and no New Yorkers had to find new medical facilities after all. United Healthcare was quick to point out in a statement that, “Not a single person will lose healthcare coverage because of the Continuum contract termination, although some people will have to change hospitals or physicians.” Right now, Tenet is in similar negotiations with Blue Cross and thousands of insured employees could be affected if they can’t work it out.

But they’ll probably work it out so there’s no need to worry. Right?

---

This is the question your employees ask every time they sense the threat of change.

---

Change Threat Kicks Off Coping Cycle

If you aren’t yet familiar with the Coping Cycle, now would be a great time to take your team through a training class on the subject. Coping is a sequential process, starting with something called a “cognitive disturbance” in which the person recognizes that something is out of balance. When employees learn they may have to change physicians or hospitals, it’s a cognitive disturbance. Off everyone goes on personal coping journeys, moving through the steps in the cycle.

If you don’t understanding the effect of coping skills on motivation and productivity, how can you possibly manage your people effectively? Though you are not licensed therapists, your managers should be able to recognize when employee behaviors are being motivated by problems in coping. Targeted interventions can be planned to help move employees through the coping cycle successfully, though some employees may eventually need a referral to outside assistance.

Minimize the Uncertainty with Information

You probably don’t have a direct influence on how the insurer/provider negotiations work out and you may not influence the outcomes of other change threats your teams face. However, one of the things you can do next time your team notices the threat of change is to provide as much information as possible as often as possible. During times of change, your messages will not be understood the first time. Send a memo with details and then follow that with an e-mail, a webinar and a voice mail.

Consider the varying needs of your stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, investors – and craft change communications documents to address those specific questions. Above all, try to reduce the uncertainty for your organization as much as possible but stop short of promising that nothing will change. Instead, express your confidence in the coping skills of those you work with; tell them that you know they will be able to manage the change successfully.

---

You may find it interesting to tune in to negotiations between health care providers and insurers. Those situations may eventually affect all of us.  Whatever you do, recognize the impact that “change threats” deposit into the lives of your employees. Take positive actions to help your employee population cope.

---

—————————————————————————————————————-

Jean Houston Shore works with organizations that want their people to work together better. She can be reached at 770-643-9724, by email at jean@thinkbusiness.com or through her website at www.working-together-better.com. Ask for your free copy of her book Working Together Better.

Copyright © 2010, Jean Houston Shore, Business Resource Group. All Rights Reserved Internationally. No portion may be reprinted or used without prior written permission.

As children we learned to look both ways at railroad crossings; the school bus driver would sometimes wait for an eternity for us to be quiet. Making sure to do everything she could to keep us safe from an coming train, our leader looked carefully and listened intently for danger signals.

Your workplace may be sending danger signals to you, too. Sometimes coping problems come from personal situations and affect only one or two team members. When that’s the case you should coach the employees individually. But sometimes, thanks to a more widespread disturbance like a merger or industry meltdown, coping challenges saturate your whole work unit.

Here are twelve signs your workplace may face a coping crisis:

Fretting: In normal times, moaning, whining and moping are not appreciated or tolerated. If fretting behavior becomes so widespread that it begins to seem normal, it’s time to intervene. (more…)

Recently I ran across a letter I wrote but never sent. It was addressed to an industry acquaintance I worked with periodically. I wasn’t sure she would be able to “hear” what I was trying to say; I imagined that my letter might just make the situation worse. So I never sent the letter.

Here was the situation that caused me to write the woman I’ll call Janice. In my view, Janice really needed to get her act together. She had gone through a difficult personal time – all would agree on that. However, it was my belief that her publicizing of personal troubles in industry settings had gone on for far too long. (more…)

Georgia may be taking Tennessee to court. The goal? Move the state line 1.1 miles to the north, back to the 35th parallel that marked Georgia’s northernmost boundary when
Tennessee became a state in 1796. It turns out that a mapmaker, James Camak, incorrectly calculated the line and marked it with a stone boundary marker in 1818. Since no one has corrected the problem, about 51 square miles of Georgia have been treated as part of Tennessee ever since.

The reason it is coming up again is a simple one – Georgia wants water from the Tennessee River. But unraveling a boundary problem that is almost 200 years old will be tough. (more…)

While the term custodian often refers to the person who cleans and maintains a building, custodian can also mean one who safeguards and protects any company asset. For example, a custodian bank holds equities and bonds in safekeeping, all the while collecting and disseminating information about the condition of those assets to interested others. For years companies have trumpeted that “our employees are our most valuable asset.” If that is true, what should you be doing as a manager (or custodian) of that asset? (more…)

Dominic’s Day is an fabulous example of how problem-focused coping behaviors sometimes spread to create a greater good. My colleague, Bill Kovach, connected me with this website, pointing out that it explained a “worthy cause.” Only later did I connect the dots and realize that Bill is little Dominic’s grandfather.

As I’ve written before, when there is a cognitive disturbance (when something alters our environment in ways we interpret as negative) we humans work tirelessly to try to restore equilibrium. In the case of the Dominic and his family, a pediatrician’s diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), placing the infant in the 97th percentile of severity, was quite a disturbance. (For Dominic, the ventricular septum of his heart muscle was already three times larger than it should have been. Though he might be expected to live up to five years with this heart, the only treatment for Dominic’s HCM is a heart transplant.)

The Dominic’s Day website chronicles how family members and friends rallied over the next weeks and months, all convinced that they just had to “do something.” Indeed, the site, which has been equipped to accept donations from the public into the 501(c)3 foundation that has been formed in Dominic’s name, explains, “We will NOT stand idly by, waiting for something to happen . . . WE ARE MAKING IT HAPPEN.”

This is exactly how problem-focused coping works. The reason it works is that taking action focused on the problem gives us back something the disturbance stole from us – our belief that we are in control. The very worst thing about experiencing a crisis is the possibility that we may not be able to control the outcome of the situation. Nothing takes away our motivation faster than thinking our actions may not make a difference.

But, if we can believe something we can do might make things better, we become energized and creative. So far, enthusiastic supporters of Dominic’s Day have raised more than $13,000 through various fundraising efforts. And they are just getting started.

If your organization is facing some sort of disturbance, you can help your people cope by leading the way to problem-focused coping behaviors. Here are some suggestions:

• Ask employees to list the pros and cons of the situation or to make schedules to show what might happen when.
• Set an example of problem focus by verbalizing the things you can do rather than those you can’t.
• Rally the troops by sharing the load. Pull together a team to focus on particular parts of solving the problem at hand. Being involved in crafting a response to the disturbance helps each person who contributes.
• Discuss the “bigger picture” impacts of the situation you face. Lead people to think about what happens in the longer-term and make plans to impact the future in the most positive way possible.
• Leave room for emotion-focused coping, too. Though this article describes the positive result of problem-focused coping skills, your people will eventually need to talk about their feelings too.

Former President Harry Truman is credited with saying, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” In the case of Dominic’s Day, as in your situation, making the vision larger than just one person’s crisis situation is the key to lasting impact. As you lead and as you cope, miss no opportunity to enlarge the vision and express your confidence in those who are contributing. Only then you will make your cause theirs.

The man spoke urgently, throwing his words together much faster than usual, a short burst of syllables followed quickly by a torrent. His father, it seemed, had died weeks before. Even though the passing wasn’t unexpected, my friend was feeling the loss. And the worst part about it, he said, was that the family, after choosing cremation, had planned a memorial service still months away. My friend “just had to talk about his Dad” and with no official funeral having taken place he could keep his feelings bottled up inside no longer.

My friend reached out to me, as he had to others. He was using us for emotion-focused coping. This was a normal – and healthy – thing to do after having experienced a loss.

In the workplace, however, emotion-focused coping can definitely cause problems. We know from earlier articles that there are generally three types of behaviors that take place as people cope with crisis in their lives: problem-focused behaviors, emotion-focused behaviors and avoidance behaviors. For the most part, mentally healthy adults exhibit both problem-focused behaviors (such as list making, planning and scenario-analysis) and emotion-focused behaviors (talking with friends, taking comfort in religion and trying to find the good in the situation) in the weeks and months after a disturbance. The trouble starts when a person ignores emotions completely or when they focus only on emotions without taking steps to focus on more logical actions. (People who exhibit avoidance behaviors only, such as drinking too much, refusing to acknowledge the situation or putting more on the line than is appropriate, are at great risk and should be advised to seek professional help.)

Here are ideas you can use to help those in your workplace who are exhibiting excessive emotion-focused coping behaviors:

1) Offer your condolences if appropriate and state that you know some time may be needed for them to regain their equilibrium given what they have experienced.

2) Express your confidence that they will be able to cope successfully.

3) Explain available options for outside assistance; confidential counseling offered through an employee assistance program is ideal. Resources are also often available through community groups or religious organizations.

4) Be careful not to share personal information about one employee with another. If the employee wishes to share with other employees that is one thing; you should maintain the employee’s confidence.

5) Should the emotion-focused coping go on for too long or begin to disrupt team effectiveness, you must confront the employee and offer constructive feedback about how the emotion-focused coping behavior is impacting the workplace. Be sensitive as you offer your guidance, but do not cross the line and become your employee’s psychotherapist. You are not qualified to offer such advice, even if your intentions are pure.

6) Continue to offer your encouragement to the employee while pushing them to maintain a high standard of professional behavior at work.

7) Do not be surprised, should the employee fail to cope successfully, if you are eventually required to terminate them for cause. While this is a worst case scenario, it is a possibility you cannot afford to ignore.

Each of us may face moments, even months or years, of crises in our lives. If we learn to recognize successful coping strategies, we will be well positioned to help our colleagues as they face theirs.

In over twenty years of working with clients in various industries, I’ve seen some of the same problems pop up over and over. This blog will allow me to share some of those problems (and their potential solutions) with a wider audience. Feel free to comment here, whether you agree or disagree with my conclusions.Some of the topics I expect to cover are:

• Leadership (When Leaders Fail to Lead)
• Coping Skills (How Those Who Fail To Cope Affect All of Us)
• Feedback (The Magic of Making Teams Work)
• Performance Measures (Why Measuring the Right Things May Not Be Easy)
• Motivation (How to Engage Employees So They Are Productive and Happy)
• Reward and Recognition (How Handling These Things Poorly Wastes Everyone’s Time)

Subscribe to our RSS Feed and let’s connect! You can also visit our business website at: http://www.thinkbusiness.com.