What IT Pros Can Learn From Doctors About Communicating with End Users

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As CIO of Schumacher Group, a Lafayette, La. company that staffs and manages hospital emergency rooms, Douglas Menefee provides technology that helps clinicians collaborate more efficiently on patient care. But when patients report how satisfied they are with their treatment, they don't point to great IT. Happy patients like their doctors; unhappy ones complain that their doctors failed to communicate.

Menefee observes a similar pattern in feedback about his IT support team. "At the time of closing any support ticket, we issue a customer satisfaction questionnaire," Menefee says. He reviews any case in which the business user says he or she was very dissatisfied. In nearly all such instances, "There wasn’t communication with that customer. There’s a bunch of communication within IT but the customer didn’t experience that communication,” Menefee says. For example, “They didn’t know they got passed onto another person or that we were waiting for a shipment of equipment.”

It isn't a surprise. Physicians and IT professionals have more in common than one might think, including a reputation for lacking interpersonal skills. Among both groups, successful performance depends upon deep technical proficiency, problem-solving skills, intense focus, and efficiency. A cardiologist focuses on a patient's bypass, not his worries; a network administrator may not acknowledge the stress of business users who are sitting on their hands while he swaps out dead routers.

Yet strong social skills—especially a willingness to listen and to empathize—are so critical to a good bedside manner that medical schools invest in teaching future physicians how to interact with patients. "Even though you may want to be compassionate, you may not know how to express it, or you may not be skillful at expressing it, or recognizing when the patient is asking for some empathy or support," says William T. Branch, Jr. director of the Division of General Internal medicine and the Carter Smith senior professor of medicine at Emory University.

Better conversations with business users also lead to improved outcomes for IT projects. But aside from being coached to avoid using technical jargon, IT pros don't always get formal training or even informal feedback in how to talk to business users. CIOs who want to create a better rapport between IT managers, staff and business users—call it a better desk-side manner—can draw on the experience of medical professionals.

Users Aren't Stupid

Michael Gaskin is director of IT with the Fresno, California branch of Clinica Sierra Vista, a provider of health care services to low-income residents and migrant workers. Doctors at the clinic often treat immigrants who may not be fluent in English and may not be accustomed to typical U.S. medical practices. 

"The provider has to constantly be trained in how to communicate medical information in a culturally sensitive manner and in a way that feeds the soul, in a way that registers," Gaskin says. "People aren’t stupid. They don’t want to purposely not be compliant" with a doctor's instructions. The clinic's residency program trains future doctors in how to bridge cultural divides. It's not a huge stretch, says Gaskin, to apply the same principles to IT. 

Gaskin doesn't offer formal training, but he gives individuals direct feedback if he hears a conversation or reads an e-mail message that he thinks could be improved by using less technical language or conveying a service-focused attitude. The staff could benefit, however, from a focused discussion, specific guidelines, or more frequent feedback. "It should be an agenda topic," he says. 

IT leaders might apply the lessons from a study by Emory University's Branch. Branch and colleagues at four other medical schools developed a curriculum for teaching medical faculty to improve their own skills for relating to patients and, in the process, learn to provide better feedback to medical residents.

During 18 months, participants attended one or more sessions where they focused on five skills: giving feedback, dealing with difficult learners, demonstrating caring and compassion in clinical settings, helping students extract lessons from their clinical experiences, and teaching caring attitudes. Participants wrote and discussed stories about important or successful experiences as clinicians or teachers; shared their teaching goals and processes; and contributed to facilitated case study discussions. "We try to do reflective sessions where people can learn from each other and keep alive the spirit of idealism that brought them in" to medicine, says Branch.

At the end of the study, which was published in the January 2009 issue of Academic Medicine, medical students and residents rated the participants as being better than a control group at recognizing and supporting "the emotions of patients, team and self in difficult situations." Students and residents also reported the participants were better listeners and role models, and were more likely to teach communication and relationship skills explicitly. 

Similar principles apply to teaching medical students and residents. "You’re trying to alternate experiential learning of the skills with reflective learning that builds on attitudes and values," says Branch. Individuals learn skills, apply them, and reflect on the results. "People learn that they’re capable of achieving higher levels goals."

Branch thinks professionals in other fields can benefit from reviewing interactions with real clients, as well as honing communication skills and getting feedback by practicing different scenarios. 

Better communication between IT and with business users is more important than ever, says Gaskin, as IT services move to the cloud. "We become decision support people. In order for that to happen, we have to be able to talk to them."

Healthier Relationships

The most effective IT pros do more than provide technology. At Schumacher Group, IT "picked up the slack where we as a company should have had other departments aiding in the process of design," says CEO William "Kip" Schumacher. "People think they know what they want, but they really don’t think through what that means. If you don’t have good ways of approaching and scoping out different projects, there’s frustration, and people feel you aren’t listening."

Schumacher hired Menefee six years ago when he was frustrated himself with an IT communication breakdown. Just as physicians direct patient care that is executed by nurses, technicians and pharmacists, IT professionals have to guide business users to make good IT decisions.

"Just like medicine, if we don’t approach things in a systematized way, and make sure we're incorporating all the different stakeholders, we’re going to be in trouble. You can’t just go out make a bunch of decisions on your own," says Schumacher. IT pros must be able to shepherd users through business processes, adds Menefee.

"I often tell IT professionals that they need to take acting classes because they need to be able to demonstrate that level of empathy, that they understand what the issue is for the customer," he says.

It's not about pretending, but about knowing how to make an impression. IT professionals who are engaging and sociable have better career prospects, says Rick Swanborg, a professor at Boston University and president of ICEX, a consultancy. 

Swanborg says MIS degree programs won't teach soft skills. To learn them, students need to take classes in organizational behavior that are typically offered as part of a business degree. Students at BU's  Graduate School of Management can get a dual degree—an MS in IT and an MBA—that includes instruction in communication, team building, public speaking, and facilitation. Undergraduate MIS majors are also encouraged to double major in business to get the same training.

"You have to pose questions and listen really well," says Swanborg. As IT becomes more tightly integrated with healthy business operations, IT pros who can't do so may be unable to do their jobs.