Business Communication

Asking the Right Questions

Convincing others to buy into an idea, a product, or an initiative requires listening and communicating effectively. Asking the right questions can help people to open up and to discuss upcoming changes more freely, while understanding that they have a voice in the process.

Scenario: Your company has developed a new initiative or product, or it is introducing a change to technology or personnel that will affect your team and its daily working environment. You are tasked with gathering buy-in from your team, as well as learning if they have any objections to this initiative.

You call a meeting with your team:

  • Briefly describe the new initiative and why it is important (e.g., a reorganization, a new product, a new technology, etc.)
  • Draft three questions for your team designed to gain buy-in and support for this new initiative

Next, share your communication strategy with us:

  • How will you know if your questioning was effective?
  • Your team needs to know they have a voice – during this meeting, how did you let them know you are listening to them and that their opinion matters?

Post your initial response by Wednesday, midnight of your time zone, and reply to at least 2 of your classmates’ initial posts by Sunday, midnight of your time zone.

I hope this will be helpful:

 

There are four questions (4) to answer in your Discussion Post.

Please make sure you do all the week’s readings and listen to the videos before answering the following questions:

1. What is the new initiative and why it is important (e.g. a reorganization, a new product, a new technology, etc.)?

•  Explain to the class and me what the new initiative or product is.  Why it is important? Make sure to explain why the team’s input is so important.

2. You are going to ask your team three (3) questions that will generate a healthy conversation about this new initiative or product. Draft these questions and share them with us. 

•  In your readings this week, you will learn about open-ended and closed-ended questions. You need open-ended questions as they give you the most information. As Munter says this week, open-ended questions are designed to elicit the most information from others (1). They usually contain the words, what, why or how.

3. When you ask your team these three questions, explain to us how you will know if your questioning was effective? 

You need to ask questions that prompt a conversation because that is how you will gain, as Jack said, “get every brain in the game” (Welch, 2). The discussions will let you know that your questions were effective. One of the most important ingredients for buy-in and winning is trust. Without this, it is unlikely that the stakeholders will show support for your initiative. Trust can be gained by candor and transparency, creating a connection, and communicating clearly. If you have candid and transparent discussions with your team, the answers they give will let you know that your questions were effective.

4. Your team needs to know they have a voice – during the meeting, how will you let your team know you are listening to them and that their opinion matters?

Being an effective communicator means learning to talk less and to listen more. Explain how you will schedule times for the team to meet and voice their opinions. Let them know that their opinions will be incorporated into your initiative.

As you think about the DQ topic this week, you might enjoy the article, “Key Tips for Active Listening” which includes the importance of asking questions. See: https://hr.mit.edu/learning-topics/comm/articles/active-listening

Respone 1

 

Scenario: Your company has developed a new initiative or product, or it is introducing a change to technology or personnel that will affect your team and its daily working environment. You are tasked with gathering buy-in from your team, as well as learning if they have any objections to this initiative.

Background:  My company is a clearinghouse that process claims to various payers from hospitals and doctors’ offices. The company’s name is Ultimate Billing. We developed a new process called Management Access Process. It was designed to enhance the patient financial experience and increase the revenue cycle results for our future and current clients.

(I have a team of six individuals that will be directly working with the beta sites, clients that volunteered to test the software).

Good Morning Team:

The R&D Department developed a new software process and we were selected to oversee the implementation to our clients. The Health Care Industry is lacking a “real-time” process such as this and the projections are estimated to return an 80% percent in revenue which would allow a forming of a new department with several management opportunities. Therefore, your opinions, suggestions or concerns are welcomed. On the last Thursday of the month for the next 3 month we will be meeting in the courtyard at 3:30 pm to discuss our progress. Will send calendar invites as a reminder.

Management Access Process is designed relieve the hassle of complex registration procedures collections processes allowing front office personnel to concentrate on the patient rather than policies.

The Process consists of the following component’s:

  • Address Verification
  • ID Verification
  • Eligibility/Compliance
  •  CMS Medical Necessity
  • Estimation
  • Financial Follow up

The most important benefit within all the components is everything happens in “real-time “for the front-end users, which allows them to have access all the information that would almost guarantee payment immediately for services rendered.

When the patient checks into the doctors’ office or hospital with address verification it immediately confirms if correct address, the same would happen with the patient’s id just using the ID verification piece that prevents potential identify fraud.

Eligibility and Medical Necessity checks the claims codes and diagnosis against Compliance guidelines and CMS’s requirements as soon the information is entered for the requested procedure for patient. It lets the provider know if codes are covered by the patients’ insurance company.

Estimation and Financial Follow sounds just what it is, gives the patients an estimate of what they are responsible for then based on the procedures the doctor has ordered or have performed. The follow up makes it easier for the provider to reach the patient after services have been rendered for payment.

Three (3) questions that will generate a healthy conversation about this new initiative or product.

  1.  CMS come out with quarterly updates, how will the CMS Medical Necessity edits and requirements be updated to the client to ensure when the necessity component is activated or run against the claim, the information it returns with is current and or valid?

2. With the ID Verification, how will it handle, if the provider sees the father and son as patients, they both share the same address, name, and date of birth but except for the suffix of Jr., II and Sr., in which they may or may not use. How will the verification query and confirm the correct information for the correct patient in a real-time environment?

  1. Eligibility is typically supposed to reduce the claim rejection rate for the clients and increasing the clients revenues, most clients have to account for a high claim rejection rate, how will Eligibility allow the client to track all the re-billed claims that were previously rejected within the same month? and will those statistics affect in the clients end of month revenues.?

References

  1. Mary Munter & Lynn Hamilton. 2014. Guide to Managerial Communication

Tracy Waddles

2 response

RE: Week 3 DiscussionCOLLAPSE

Hello Everyone,

1. What is the new initiative and why it is important (e.g. a reorganization, a new product, a new technology, etc.)?

Aircraft records digitization

It involves the scanning of aircraft records from back to birth and saving them on the cloud. We have been postponing this process for the past six months, but with the current COVID-19 pandemic, we have had to prioritize the activity to make working from home a reality.

Even though this whole process is tedious and time-consuming, the benefits are immense. With the digitization, all the aircraft records will be one click away. As a result, the time and energy used to retrieve these records will reduce. Similarly, the documents will be accessible from any location.

2. You are going to ask your team three (3) questions that will generate a healthy conversation about this new initiative or product. Draft these questions and share them with us. 

  • How would it be like to have all the aircraft records one click away?
  • What would it take to have all the records, digitized, and uploaded to the cloud?
  • What are some of the challenges that we may experience while implementing this project? How can we overcome these challenges?

3. When you ask your team these three questions, explain to us how you will know if your questioning was effective? 

Reading the team’s body language and how they answer the questions will be vital in knowing the effectiveness of the questions. If the team members engage one another, ask follow up questions, suggest the best ways to implement the project, and identify the possible challenges, then this will be a clear indication the questioning was effective.

4. Your team needs to know they have a voice – during the meeting, how will you let your team know you are listening to them and that their opinion matters?

Before the meeting, I will send an email to the team with the questions, and since we cannot meet physically, I will set up a zoom meeting.

During the meeting, I will ask the questions one at a time and listen to the responses of each team member. While the team members are responding, I will be silent while nodding and maintaining eye contact to show interest (Munter,1). At the end of each response, I will paraphrase the content shared to make sure I got the points. Munter suggests paraphrasing as one of the following techniques to check the accuracy of the contents shared (1). To get further clarification, I will ask follow up questions while noting down the responses.

At the end of the meeting, I will send an email with a detailed summary of the meeting. The email will incorporate their responses and the initial steps to be undertaken to make the project a success.

Regards

Victor

References

  1. Mary Munter & Lynn Hamilton. 2014. Guide to Managerial Communication