How do I become a better consumer leader?

Learn the tools and partnerships needed

As a consumer leader with your Alliance, you represent consumers who use health care in your community. By honing your leadership skills, you can use your knowledge and experience to inform other stakeholder leaders about the unique needs of local consumers, ensure that initiatives are relevant, and mobilize consumers to take action and help facilitate change.
 
Effective consumer leaders have several tools they can use to define roles, facilitate action, and ensure accountability, such as: 
 
1) Defining your role using the person-role-system framework; 
2) Interest-based negotiation that relies on collaboration to produce mutually beneficial solutions; 
3) Proposal-based decision making that helps groups converge around options everyone can support; and, 
4) An accountability pathway to help group members gauge progress and determine what they need in order to make and keep commitments. 
 
Building strong partnerships with the other stakeholders at the table can be tricky. But for every challenge, there is a counter-strategy. For instance, consumer leaders often need a lot of time to influence and activate their networks. Managing each stakeholder’s expectations can ensure adequate time is given to consumer leaders to accomplish their assigned tasks. 
 
Don’t underestimate your importance at the table, of keeping your communities moving forward in the face of competing interests and large organizations that have their own interests.”—Rhonda Moore Johnson, AF4Q National Advisory Committee and medical director, health equity and quality services, Highmark, Inc.
 
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