HLTH 5003 Module 4 Communication Strategy and Team Development Plan Example

From Three Staffs to One Front Desk: A Communication Strategy and Team Development Plan for the Staff of a Merged County Family Clinic

Student Name

American College of Education

HLTH5003: Leadership and Management in Public Health Organizations

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

October 26, 2026

The Team to Be Built

On the day the composite county's combined family clinic opens its doors, 38 staff who have worked in three separate programs will share one front desk, one schedule and one waiting area. Eleven work in WIC, fourteen in immunizations and thirteen in family planning. They include nurses, nutritionists, clinic assistants and clerks, and most have never worked a shift together. The previous module set out a plan to lead the organizational change, and the first two analyzed the leadership approach and the culture behind it. This module addresses what happens on the floor: how 38 people from three cultures become one team, and how they communicate with each other and with families during the transition.

The earlier culture analysis found three strong assumptions: WIC staff believe trust built over time keeps families coming back, immunization staff believe efficiency is a form of care, and family planning staff believe privacy is the condition of care. A team that respects all three is possible, but it will not form by itself.

How Teams Develop

Tuckman (1965), reviewing studies of small groups, proposed that groups pass through a sequence of stages, which he named forming, storming, norming and performing. At first, people get their bearings, working out what the task is and what conduct the group will accept. In storming, conflict and resistance emerge as members react to the demands of the task and to each other. In norming, the group develops cohesion and shared norms. In performing, the group's energy goes into the task itself. The sequence is a simplification, and real teams move back and forth, but it helps a leader anticipate that conflict is a normal stage rather than a sign of failure.

For the clinic team, forming will begin during cross-training, storming is likely when the shared schedule forces choices between WIC's longer appointments and immunization's throughput, and norming depends on whether the team agrees on rules that protect each program's core value. A manager who treats the storming stage as insubordination will prolong it.

Leading the Storming Stage

The storming stage deserves its own plan because it is where merged teams most often break. The likeliest flashpoint is the shared schedule. In the first weeks, immunization staff will see WIC appointments running long while families wait for a quick vaccine, and WIC staff will feel pushed to cut counseling short. Rather than settle the conflict by decree, the charge persons will bring it to the weekly team meeting with the data: how long each appointment type actually took and how long families waited. The team will then set the norm itself, for example a 25-minute WIC slot with a flag that calls a second counselor when a visit needs more. Managers will also watch for quieter forms of storming, such as staff eating lunch only with their former program colleagues or referring to 'their' families and 'our' families. Those signs will be discussed openly, not punished. A team that argues about the schedule in a meeting is storming productively; a team that argues about it only in the break room is stuck.

What Effective Teamwork Requires

Salas et al. (2005) boiled teamwork research down to five core components: someone leading the team, members keeping an eye on each other's workload, members stepping in to cover, the team's ability to adjust, and members putting the team's goals ahead of their own. In their model, those five rest on three supports that coordinate the work: a common understanding of the task, messages that are confirmed back, and trust among members. The framework is useful because it names behaviors a manager can observe and build.

Each component translates into a specific practice at the clinic. Team leadership means a charge person on each shift who assigns families to staff and resolves bottlenecks. Mutual performance monitoring means staff notice when a colleague's line is backing up. Backup behavior means a WIC clerk can check in a vaccine-only family when the immunization desk is full, which requires cross-training. Adaptability means the team can shift when a clinic day runs heavy with one program's families. Team orientation means staff see a family as the team's rather than a program's. A shared mental model, in practice, is a common picture of how a family moves through the clinic, which the team will build together by walking through family journeys before opening.

Psychological Safety

None of this works if staff are afraid to speak. Edmondson (1999), studying 51 work teams, described team psychological safety as members' common sense that they can take personal risks, such as admitting an error or asking for help, without being punished, and found that teams feeling safer in this sense did more to seek feedback, discuss errors and try new approaches, and that this learning was what connected safety to better performance; team efficacy was not associated with learning once psychological safety was accounted for. For the clinic, learning behavior means raising problems early: a family planning nurse saying a patient's name was called too loudly, or a WIC counselor saying the schedule is cutting counseling short. In a merged team, the first person to report a problem is doing the team a favor, and the manager's reaction decides whether anyone does it twice. The charge persons and program managers will model this by naming their own mistakes in daily huddles and thanking staff who raise concerns.

Internal Communication Strategy

Communication inside the team will run through four channels, each with a purpose. A ten-minute huddle at the start of every clinic day will review the schedule, staffing and any problem from the day before, using closed-loop communication: requests are repeated back and confirmed. A weekly thirty-minute team meeting, rotated among the three program managers, will review family feedback and the transition measures. A shared message channel will handle schedule swaps and urgent notices, with a rule that anything affecting a family's privacy is discussed in person, not in writing. And a monthly all-staff session with the health director will report progress and answer questions openly. The strategy deliberately mixes the three programs in every channel so that staff hear each other's concerns directly rather than through program managers.

Communicating With Families

Families need to understand the change before they experience it. Two months before opening, every family with an upcoming appointment will receive a text message and a letter in their preferred language explaining the single check-in, where to go and how privacy will be protected. Front-desk staff will use a short, agreed script so that every family hears the same explanation, and the script will be tested with families from the WIC advisory group in each of the county's four main languages. For the first month, one staff member per shift will greet families at the entrance to guide them. Family comments will be collected on a short card and reviewed at the weekly team meeting, closing the loop between what families say and how the team works.

Development Activities and Measures

Team development will be deliberate rather than left to chance. Before opening, staff will complete paired cross-training shifts in each other's programs and two half-day sessions in which mixed groups walk through family journeys and agree on norms, such as how long a WIC appointment can run before help is called and how a family planning patient is called from the waiting area. After opening, the team will review its norms at the end of the first and third months.

Progress will be measured by a short team survey at months one, three and six covering psychological safety, clarity of roles and confidence in backup, adapted from published items; by the share of shifts on which cross-trained backup was used; by the number of problems raised in huddles, where a rising number early on is a good sign; and by family ratings of the check-in. If the survey shows low psychological safety in any program group, the manager will meet that group separately to understand why.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Salas, E., Sims, D. E., & Burke, C. S. (2005). Is there a "big five" in teamwork? Small Group Research, 36(5), 555-599. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496405277134

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100