Table 1 Summary of key findings
Facilitation area | Key factors |
|---|---|
IF project management and improvement skills | - Clear goal-setting |
- Step-by-step planning and delegation of tasks | |
- Organization and attention to detail | |
- Clearly defined roles | |
- Willing to complete frontline work | |
- Adequate bandwidth to devote to project | |
- Frequent follow-up and tracking of progress | |
- Prior project management experience | |
IF team and process skills | - Thought leader, champion, model, guide, motivator |
- Instills sense of teamwork and unity | |
- Respected and trusted by team, has sense of authority | |
- Well-established in team prior to implementation project | |
- Formal supervisory or leadership role | |
- Clear and transparent communication | |
- Seeks team’s input and feedback | |
- Effective management of team tensions and conflict | |
IF influencing and negotiating skills | - Higher level leadership position, or connections to these levels |
- Prior establishment within mental health | |
- Successful advocate for team, ability to secure leadership buy-in | |
- Understanding of contextual factors (e.g., relation to other service lines) | |
- Willing to address conflicts with service line or leadership | |
- Prior influencing and negotiating experience | |
IF personal characteristics | - Warm, personable, outgoing, optimistic, self-motivated |
- Practical, goal-oriented, patient, non-punitive | |
- Confident, assertive | |
- Natural leader and problem-solver | |
- Flexible, open, willing to take a “leap of faith” and trust a new process | |
- High impetus for change | |
- Willing to ask for help and acknowledge weaknesses | |
- Willing to approach conflict, respond to challenging feedback from team members | |
EF/IF dynamics | - EF serves as expert, consultant, and educator regarding intervention content and implementation process |
- IF serves as expert on local needs, policy, and culture | |
- Goal of tapering EF effort over time as IFs gain experience | |
- EFs make substantial contribution to project deliverables, frequent follow-up with IFs | |
- Lack of IF/EF role clarity; EF could have been more direct in working with IFs to shift balance of responsibilities more towards IF as implementation progressed |