Communications & Team Management Micro-Credential

Effective leadership depends on the ability to communicate clearly, navigate conflict, build high-performing teams, and manage complex interpersonal dynamics in high-stakes healthcare environments. This micro-credential develops the essential interpersonal and emotional intelligence skills that enable leaders to drive results through people, create psychologically safe work environments, and foster collaboration across diverse personalities and professional backgrounds. This self-paced micro-credential includes over 30 hours of content, with all courses filled with actionable takeaways.

What You'll Learn:

Through five comprehensive courses, you'll develop sophisticated communication capabilities starting with the DISC psychometric assessment to identify your personal communication style and learn to interpret non-verbal cues and word choice that reveal underlying intent. You'll build strategies for adapting your approach to work effectively with colleagues, patients, and teams who communicate differently.

Conflict is inevitable in healthcare settings, but how you navigate it determines team effectiveness and organizational culture. You'll learn to recognize conflict early within professional relationships, practice naming and clarifying conflicts constructively, and employ the BRAVING model of trust to build high-trust environments. Develop enhanced conflict competency through effective listening, boundary-setting, expectation management, and delivering feedback that changes behavior without damaging relationships.

Emotional intelligence becomes your foundation for managing disruptive behaviors and preventing burnout. Using personalized EQ assessment results, you'll devise strategies for behavior management that account for mental health factors and differing personality types. Learn both self-awareness techniques for analyzing challenging scenarios and systemic approaches to preventing and mitigating physician burnout—for yourself and your teams.

Advanced behavioral management skills prepare you to investigate professional behavior complaints, determine appropriate action steps, and integrate your leadership style into effective intervention strategies. You'll formulate proactive and reactive approaches that address disruptive behavior while supporting the wellbeing of all team members.

Finally, you'll master the art and science of building and leading effective teams. Explore team structures that produce results, understand how recruitment, selection, and even chronotypes impact team chemistry, and differentiate between coaching and mentoring approaches. Examine leadership frameworks for individuals versus teams and discover strategies that promote efficient teamwork and navigate change management successfully.

Action Plan:

The micro-credential culminates in developing a comprehensive action plan where you'll apply these integrated skills to address a real communication, team management, conflict resolution, or behavioral challenge in your organization. You'll analyze current team dynamics, establish baseline measurements, design evidence-based interventions using frameworks from the coursework, and create an implementation roadmap with measurable targets and accountability mechanisms. This capstone ensures you translate learning into tangible improvements in team performance, workplace culture, or stakeholder relationships.

Who Should Enroll:

This micro-credential is designed for physician leaders, clinical department chairs, medical directors, chief medical officers, and healthcare executives who lead teams, manage complex interpersonal dynamics, address disruptive behaviors, or seek to enhance their emotional intelligence and effectiveness in building high-performing, psychologically safe healthcare teams.

Courses Included in This Micro-Credential:

Fundamentals of Physician Leadership – Communication

Resolving Conflict

The Emotionally Intelligent Physician Leader

Advanced Behavioral Management Strategies

Building and Leading Effective Teams

Action Plan

Learning Objectives:

1. Analyze personal and others' communication styles, emotional intelligence, and behavioral patterns using frameworks like DISC and EQ assessments to adapt leadership approaches that enhance relationships, prevent misunderstandings, and effectively manage diverse personalities in healthcare teams.

2. Apply conflict resolution frameworks including the BRAVING model of trust, effective listening, boundary-setting, and feedback delivery to recognize, name, clarify, and navigate conflicts constructively while building high-trust environments that support psychological safety and team effectiveness.

3. Evaluate disruptive behaviors and professional conduct concerns using self-awareness of personal leadership style to investigate complaints, determine appropriate interventions, and implement both proactive and reactive strategies that address mental health factors, prevent burnout, and mitigate behavioral issues at individual and systemic levels.

4. Design and lead high-performing teams by identifying effective team structures, applying leadership frameworks appropriate to individuals versus team compositions, understanding the impact of recruitment and team chemistry factors, and employing coaching and mentoring strategies that promote efficient teamwork and successful change management.

5. Create a comprehensive action plan that addresses a specific communication, team dynamics, conflict, or behavioral management challenge in your organization, including gap analysis, baseline measurements, evidence-based interventions drawn from communication theory, emotional intelligence principles, conflict resolution frameworks, and team leadership strategies, with clear implementation steps and accountability mechanisms that drive sustained improvement in team performance and organizational culture.

Disclosures

Planner Disclosure: The planners (American Association for Physician Leadership® staff) for this activity have no relevant financial relationships with commercial interests to disclose.

Faculty Disclosure: The faculty for this activity have no relevant financial relationships with commercial interests to disclose.

Accreditation

The American Association for Physician Leadership® is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing education for physicians.

Designation

The American Association for Physician Leadership® designates this enduring material for a maximum of 33 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.