D235 Task 1 Working Style Reflection Example

Working Style and Communication Reflection: What a 5 Dynamics Profile Showed an Outpatient Infusion Nurse About Working With Others

Student Name

Leavitt School of Health, Western Governors University

D235: Interprofessional Communication and Leadership in Healthcare, Task 1

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

Working Style and Communication Reflection: What a 5 Dynamics Profile Showed an Outpatient Infusion Nurse About Working With Others

Introduction

I have worked for seven years as a registered nurse in a 24-chair outpatient infusion center, where I give chemotherapy, biologic therapies and blood products alongside pharmacists, oncology providers, social workers and schedulers. Before this course I thought of myself as easy to work with and good at my job. The 5 Dynamics assessment confirmed the second belief and complicated the first. This reflection describes what the results showed about my working style, how that style affects the people I work with, and what I have learned about my conversations at work and at home.

Part One: My Working Style

The 5 Dynamics model describes four energies people draw on as work moves from an idea to a finished result: Explore, which generates ideas and possibilities; Excite, which brings people together and builds enthusiasm; Examine, which organizes, tests and checks for quality; and Execute, which drives work to completion. The fifth dynamic, Evaluate, is the pause in which a team looks back at what it did before starting again. The assessment ranks the four energies by how naturally each comes to a person and how quickly using it wears them out.

My results placed Execute first, with the highest intensity, followed closely by Examine. Explore came third, and Excite was last, with the lowest intensity and the fastest depletion. In practical terms, I am energized by finishing things and by getting them right. A day in which every patient's treatment starts on time, every double check is complete and the schedule runs cleanly leaves me satisfied rather than tired. A day of brainstorming meetings, open-ended problems or social events leaves me drained, even when nothing goes wrong.

What the Results Reveal

The results matched my behavior more closely than I expected. Colleagues come to me when a chemotherapy order looks wrong, because I will check the dose against the protocol, the patient's weight and the last laboratory results before anything is mixed. I am the nurse who notices that a premedication is missing or that a consent form is out of date. Those habits come from Execute and Examine, and in an infusion center they protect patients.

The low Excite result explained something I had not understood. When our unit adopted a new scheduling system last year, the nurse manager asked me to help staff feel positive about it. I agreed, then gave a detailed, accurate briefing on every step of the workflow, and nobody felt more positive at all. I had used my strongest energies for a task that needed my weakest one. Seeing that pattern named made me realize the problem was not effort but fit.

Part Two: How I Work With Others

My working style has a cost for the people around me. Colleagues with strong Explore energy, including one of our oncology nurse practitioners, like to talk through possibilities before settling on a plan. When she raises a new idea for how we could manage patients with infusion reactions, my instinct is to ask immediately how it would work, who would do it and what could go wrong. I mean it as help; she hears it as a door closing. I have learned from this course that my questions are valuable later in the cycle, once an idea has been explored, and that asking them too early can end the exploring before it starts.

I also work well with colleagues whose energies match mine. Our lead pharmacist has a strong Examine profile, and our double checks are fast and thorough because we both enjoy precision. The risk is that two detail-focused people can miss the human side of a situation, such as a patient who is frightened by a new regimen and needs reassurance more than another explanation of the premedications. Our social worker, whose Excite energy is high, often notices those moments first. The national competencies for interprofessional practice treat this kind of difference as a resource: team members are expected to understand their own roles and those of others and to communicate in ways that draw on each profession's strengths (Interprofessional Education Collaborative [IPEC], 2023).

Communication Insights at Work

The most important insight is that communication problems between professions are often style problems rather than disagreements about the patient. Leonard et al. (2004) argue that effective communication in healthcare is too often dependent on personality and situation, and that standardized tools and a culture where anyone can speak up make teamwork safer. I see this at work. When I call a provider about a patient with a low neutrophil count, a structured SBAR report gives my Execute style a clear shape and gives the provider the information in the order they need, regardless of either person's energy profile.

Self-assessment of this kind is increasingly used in interprofessional leadership training. In one workshop for residents, pharmacy, physician assistant and psychology trainees, self-assessing communication styles and emotional intelligence and then applying them in a team exercise left participants more comfortable working with other professions and more prepared to encourage leadership on their teams (Shrivastava et al., 2022). I will change two habits. In planning discussions I will hold my implementation questions until the group has finished generating ideas, and I will say so out loud: 'I have some how-to questions for when we are ready.' In handoffs to the social worker and schedulers, I will start with the patient's situation and concern before the logistics, because my instinct to lead with tasks can make colleagues feel like items on my checklist.

Communication Insights at Home

The same pattern shows up with my family. My partner has a strong Explore profile, and our conversations about a vacation or a house project often stall because he wants to imagine options and I want to book something. My teenage daughter has told me that talking to me feels like 'being graded,' which stung but fits a style that jumps to evaluation. At home I will try the same change I am making at work: listen to the whole idea first, ask one question about what excites them before any question about how it will work, and save the planning for a separate conversation.

Conclusion

The 5 Dynamics assessment gave me language for strengths I already relied on, finishing and checking, and for a weakness I had not seen clearly, building enthusiasm and making room for other people's ideas. In an interprofessional team, both matter. My plan is to bring my strengths to the parts of the work that need them, to lean on colleagues whose energies differ from mine instead of working around them, and to change how and when I ask questions so that others stay in the conversation.

References

Interprofessional Education Collaborative. (2023). IPEC core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Version 3. https://www.ipecollaborative.org/ipec-core-competencies

Leonard, M., Graham, S., & Bonacum, D. (2004). The human factor: The critical importance of effective teamwork and communication in providing safe care. Quality and Safety in Health Care, 13(Suppl. 1), i85-i90. https://doi.org/10.1136/qshc.2004.010033

Shrivastava, S., Martinez, J., Coletti, D. J., & Fornari, A. (2022). Interprofessional leadership development: Role of emotional intelligence and communication skills training. MedEdPORTAL, 18, 11247. https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.11247