April 15, 2026
Today’s perioperative teams are more diverse than ever, and that diversity can lead to team-damaging conflicts, misunderstandings, resentments and prejudices. As a perioperative leader, how can you overcome those interpersonal issues to build strong, harmonious, respectful, productive teams that truly focus and collaborate to provide consistently superior and efficient patient care?
During her highly interactive session at October’s Periop Leader Week in Savannah, Ga., “Managing generational and cultural diversity: How to build cohesive, respectful, successful clinical teams in today’s perioperative settings,” Kathleen Hickman, RN, BSN, MS, CASC, CLI, administrator/clinical director at Dutchess Ambulatory Surgery Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will focus on answering that question with the participation of those in attendance.
Her presentation will be directed toward both new and experienced perioperative leaders who are faced with interpersonal conflicts, staff retention concerns and productivity issues in their workplace. Among the issues Ms. Hickman will address are the divergent work ethics and personalities of Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z and Gen Alpha staff, which can present challenges centered on stereotypes, technology knowledge gaps, communication styles and, essentially, how different staff members view the very nature of their work and each other.
Ms. Hickman will present real-life scenarios and achievable strategies that can help leaders manage diverse staff, improve relationships, inspire motivation, and drive measurable and sustainable results in the day-to-day work environment. Together with those in attendance, she will identify challenges leaders face when leading clinical professionals, define four key areas of focus that leaders should consider when designing and building a team, and provide evidence-based examples of managing cultural diversity, work-life balance and generational differences.
We recently spoke with Ms. Hickman about her upcoming session.
Why should perioperative leaders attend your session at Periop Leader Week?
Staffing challenges can be a nightmare for perioperative leaders. We’ll talk about how to find the right candidates and not hiring “in a hurry.” We don’t want to fill a spot because we’re desperate; that never ends well. We’ll talk about waiting a bit, trying to get that right candidate, and how to find that right candidate.
We’ll talk about the culture we want in our surgical facilities. How do you find that culture? How do you grow it? How do you find the right people to sustain it?
And we’ll discuss the generational situation. We’ll talk about their different personalities and expectations. We need to learn how to accommodate those differences and work with them – and make it work for our facility or department as well.
You describe this as an interactive session. How so?
When I do a session, I don’t want to be the only one speaking. I like to bring everyone together and have everyone be part of it. It’s so great when we interact with each other.
I’ll ask the audience to give us some ideas. I’ll ask you to share some of your biggest staff dilemmas and see how we can help you work through them. Another person might raise their hand and say, “Oh, I have that same problem!’ That builds the audience into feeling they’re a team, and as a group we work together.”
At the end of our session, we will all feel like we’ve learned from each other and worked together on these problems – and that we’re not alone in our problems. You might find a colleague you just met who you can rely on to help you through the problems of retention, recruitment, generational differences, handling conflict.
How does encouraging interpersonal harmony among diverse staff translate into harmony in the OR? How do diverse teams embrace their differences and work together as a high-functioning surgical team?
Honestly, it’s not always harmonious. There are days when we have arguments and conflict, and we should anticipate that. When that happens, we should say, “Let’s sit down as a team and discuss this.” We’re not going to always have harmony, but we need to understand each other’s beliefs and lifestyles and how they contribute to the concern.
For boomers and Gen X, we grew up in a time where we just went to work. It didn’t matter, you went to work. But times have changed. The continuum is different, the paradigm has shifted, and we need to work together.
During your session you’ll define areas of focus that leaders should consider when building a team. Can you preview that a bit?
When I interview people, I like to ask key questions to find out if they are going to be a good fit. “How well can you adapt to others?” “What are your interpersonal dynamics?” “How are you going to work with others on a team?” “Are you a problem solver? “What will you do when you’re confronted with dynamic issues you don’t know how to manage?” “Tell me one time when you thought out of the box.” “Tell me how you troubleshoot.” “How do you work with people of different generational capacities?” To build the team we want, we can learn a lot by asking questions like those.
Remember, we might have dynamos who are 65 years old, and we might have 25-year-olds who we need to keep lighting fires under. So when you interview people, keep an open slate and open mind no matter what their age or cultural background is. Let them tell you what they’re going to bring to the table. Give them that opportunity.
Or maybe you’ve learned that someone on your staff isn’t right for your team, and it’s time to talk with them and determine if they truly fit into your team. We all have those kinds of heartaches in our recruitment and retention situations. We’ll talk about that too.
What do you hope members of the perioperative leadership community will take back to their facilities from your session?
I like to think they’ll walk away with a few pearls of wisdom. They’re not going to walk away with a book that’s three inches thick on how to manage this, and with the expectation that work life will always be Shangri-la. It won’t be. But if you can walk away with two or three pearls, discover one more interview technique you haven’t used, or explore one conflict resolution technique from some of the examples we’ll talk about, I’ll feel I’ve accomplished something positive.
