Other Managers

Becoming a manager means changing your peer relationships. Instead of competing with another work silo, you now need their cooperation. It is essential to transition from the subordinate-supervisor relationship to this new peer setting to complete projects and achieve success.

A new manager can't do it alone. As this article from the Harvard Business School suggests, seeking assistance is essential to growth--superior and lateral, internal and external. Building relationships in an organization helps ensure success. And while your experience is different from a nursing manager, advice and emotional support are invaluable.

To be sure, "intractable" attitudes are hard to schmooze away. Nurse managers can perceive themselves as more qualified or authoritative. Other departments with more access to physicians can isolate your laboratory.  But it's often what happens on the floor that can determine your success in dealing with other departments. It's what makes building relationships with other managers so critical.

For instance, when a physician complains about your laboratory at a nursing station, is your department defended? Incident reports can offer clues. If a nurse manager writes up an adverse treatment event as "The lab did it!" there probably isn't much time spent defending your laboratory. This is a relationship problem as well as a system failure. Fixing the latter won't help the former.

One solution is to develop lateral relationships. Seek out counterparts in other departments to ask for advice, share information or just chat. Social settings--even the hospital cafeteria--are non-threatening environments in which to meet. I make a point to walk through nursing stations at least once a day to see what's going on and if I can be of help with anything. It helps make my job easier. And maybe--just maybe--the laboratory is defended once in a while.