Health staff get their mojo back

In a busy South African hospital recently teams of nurses and doctors were given an unusual task: to figure out who could build the tallest freestanding structure out of spaghetti sticks and then balance a marshmallow on top. They had 20 minutes to do it.

These were stressed individuals, not used to working together or communicating this much, let alone on such a seemingly random task. They were tense. But this soon changed.

Their manager commented afterwards: “My staff all went into it with apprehension, anxiety and fear of the unknown, and all of them without fail came out of it with a different vibe.

“They just had energy. It changed them. I don’t know how in less than half an hour, but they came out with a positive outlook.”

The hospital staff were participants in a University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business study on how creating psychological safety in workplaces can improve team morale and performance.

The team building exercise they were asked to complete as part of the study was the marshmallow challenge, a design thinking game used to foster team cohesion and communication.

Over the past decade, a number of conceptual papers have proposed that games and experiential exercises can help improve team learning and team performance in the workplace. One study showed how a game could be used to develop leadership skills while another examined the use of a simulation to develop critical thinking skills.

In the study, the marshmallow challenge was used as a catalyst for building trust in the unit.

Research globally has shown that creating a space where people feel safe to voice opinions, make mistakes and risk ridicule when offering an idea can have a significant effect on teams. Quite simply, an environment of trust and mutual respect is crucial if you want to get things done.

Hospitals in the public sector have resource constraints, high workloads and risks.

These dynamics often hamper the development of psychological safety and negatively affect the overall quality of work of healthcare teams.

Participants reported that team psychological safety improved directly after playing the game. And after the intervention, teams at the hospital communicated better and staff interacted more freely and felt more engaged and less anxious.

The study on which this article is based draws on a paper co-authored with UCT GSB alumnus Dr Earle du Plooy.

Parker is an asssociate professo at the, University of Cape Town.

The Conversation