Behind the scenes of healthcare reform, hospitals and health systems are preparing for new financial incentives. Those new rules will require a higher level of performance and care coordination than ever before.

That means a whole new level of collaboration between the professionals that serve patients in modern healthcare. To make care processes seamless, efficient and error-free all of those busy professionals–doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, health educators, medical technicians, schedulers—will have to work with much greater mindfulness of how their work relates to everyone else’s.

This is not unique to health care. Across the economy, there is a growing awareness that high performance is not as much about the competence and efforts of individual workers as it is about the space between them. It’s about how they work together.

The National Academies of Practice recently invited me to present a 45-minute workshop on how to create a culture of inter-professional collaboration. It was particularly fitting since this unique organization brings together distinguished practitioners and scholars from 10 different health professions, each with their own academy.

 The short, highly participatory format pushed me to get right down to two practical take away messages:

First, people with diverse skills and perspectives need specific communication skills for harnessing their differences as a resource. All too often, differences become a sticking point. If someone sees something differently than I do, it’s easy for me to fall into the trap of assuming that one of us must be wrong. I get busy proving that it’s not me, which provokes similar self-defense in the other person and the conversation goes nowhere. It’s been hijacked by our fears.

But if I can remind myself that there are many lines of sight, and that none of us can see the whole picture, then I can approach difference with a sense of curiosity rather than threat. I can ask the other person to help me better understand their perspective. That turns from advocacy to inquiry. We can put our different perspectives together to form a new one that is broader and richer than what either of us can see on our own. Our differences give rise to creativity and growth.

Second, team members with diverse skills and roles must have frequent “conversations of interdependence.” The must regularly ask one another, “How does the way I do my work help you do yours?” and, “What could I do differently that would help you do your work better or more easily?” Such conversations foster mutual understanding and respect; they enable timely independent problem-solving without the need for intervention by a supervisor or director.

Jody Hoffer Gittell recently introduced the term “Relational Coordination.” It describes this kind of self-management, which allows a team to carry out complex tasks and adapt in real-time to ever changing circumstances, coordinating its work through effective communication and relational work practices. (Read Jody’s books High-Performance Healthcare or The Southwest Airlines Way to learn more about this.)

Harnessing difference as a resource and self-coordination through conversations of interdependence: these are the keys to high-performing teams in healthcare, or anywhere.

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Tony Suchman is a Senior Consultant and head of the Health Care Consultancy at McArdle Ramerman. He has just published a new book, Leading Change in Healthcare.