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Healthcare Leadership: A Discourse

Healthcare Leadership:  A Discourse

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An Appreciation of this Moment

04 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by Scott Southard in Uncategorized

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business, business advice, business leader, business management, communication, Scott Southard

WHAuden

One of my favorite quotes is from W.H. Auden.

Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit

A social science.

Thou shalt not live within thy means

Nor on plain water and raw greens.

If thou must choose between the chances, choose the odd:

Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

And take short views.

The last stanza, as many scholars will tell you is a nod and wink to Reverend Sydney Smith who handed off this football coach-like advice: Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.

W.H. Auden was a brilliant and bold writer who was known to make few compromises in his art or in his personal life. He was also no football coach.

As a social scientist and a manager I couldn’t agree with him more about with whom to sit or socialize although I have found many anthropologists to be witty drinking buddies.

I part ways, however, with Auden and the Reverend Smith about taking the short view although I’m all for living in the moment without being hamstrung by the past I can’t change and the future I don’t know.

It has been taking the long view, however, where I have developed a profound understanding, and yes, sympathy, of people, events, and even organizations. By taking the long view, I back up from the situation, take a few mindful breaths, and discover what I perceived as black and white is really more variations of grey. With grey comes empathy, recognition of the ambiguity of life, and, hopefully, acceptance and peace.

Some people may appear not to be capable of taking the long view like the elderly and the dying, but having spent time with the elderly and dying, they, too, even in their suffering are thinking about the future and most often, the future that doesn’t include them. They are thinking about their legacy. That is if they are conscious and are still able to navigate their fate. Here is an opportunity for the rest of us who are not as aware of the slippery slope that is life, to watch or help and learn.

Breathe.

Living in the moment, on the other hand, is liberating and can be a goal of a Yoga practice. Listening closely to instructions, not anticipating, and focusing on every movement and breath allows us to transcend the monkey brain that all of us grapple to control.

Like a Yoga practice, Mindfulness is challenging and liberating. Mindfulness is a therapeutic approach composed of the three key interdependent elements of:

1. Awareness,

2. Of present experience,

3. With acceptance.

By becoming aware of the minute details of every activity like eating, walking, and even breathing, many of my clients, especially those plagued with anxiety, will find a peace that had been eluding them since their injury. I tell them: By slowing the breath, the heart and the mind will follow.

Short view or long view, the act of living deserves observation and appreciation.

David Henry Thoreau famously said: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  Believing that to be true, how can we spend so much of our time hating one another? Yet hate and fear appear to be the motor driving many people’s ambitions and relationships with others. My experience has taught me that life is fragile and needs to be handled accordingly. The Yogi Emily Dickinson observed: To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.

I do love those New Yorker cartoons.

Breathe.

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Relevance and Resumes

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Scott Southard in Uncategorized

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business, business leader, business management, business solutions, Scott Southard

mm

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For indeed that’s all who ever have. ”

― Margaret Mead, The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future

Margaret Mead, perhaps one of the most popular modern anthropologists, is best known for her work in explaining that gender roles varied from culture to culture and that all cultures should be weighed equally. She did this in profound and yet sweeping statements that made a lot of sense to those of us entering adulthood in the early 70’s. We were rejecting the truths of our parents knowing that there were better answers out there. I found great joy that her research and conclusions made many members of the Greatest Generation red with rage. And here Margaret Mead was of that same generation.

Not related to Margaret Mead or to those living in Samoa, I have found first as an only child to two career minded older parents and later making some independent (and sometimes foolish) choices that I missed out on having siblings to mock and roughly guide me along my life journey.

My parents, God love them, gave me unrelenting praise and plenty of freedom and rope to hang myself. My impression is if I had a sister or brother that they would jar me into reality every time I would be feeling good about myself with an insult or a smack in the back of my head: immediate feedback.

On my career journey I have discovered a wisdom I was not expecting. I have found that I do not have an audience (or even pigs towards which to toss!) these pearls. I think that people in my generation are discovering we have failed in our experiment to improve society and are becoming less relevant to the generations that are in our wake. America needed a Generation X president. Have you ever wondered why so many men over fifty years old are consultants or Something or Other Emeritus? These situations are the career opposite of being turned out to stud.

Regardless, one such pearl I’d like to toss out is that you need to make sure that you have more tools in your skill toolbox than Cute. Cute has a limited life span of which I located my end just recently. Actually, I no longer had Cute in my toolbox when I turned 39 years old, I just didn’t know that until I was about 59 years old. Yes, my house has mirrors, but I don’t have siblings to set me straight. Also, I am nearsighted.

Be aware, however, that Experience may not be the word you want to replace what Cute might have done for you in the past. Experience equates to Old and that is not a highly sought out asset in the eyes of many. It is better to take on the qualifications of the job you seek head on and pray that someone looking at your resume knows you.

I have another pearl that I want to share that may be helpful for those seeking new employment. Attitude is crucial for success especially with interacting with people who don’t know your history. Related to this is that I have found in my readings published in this new millennium is that I can happily draw a line connecting many of our major religions. This line is that you have to let go of hate and to love your enemy to be truly free. Nice.

The cynic in me might declare that this conclusion is simply a ploy to calm those who thrive on hate and/or to better prepare others for their inevitable loosening of their mortal coil; but I choose not to be that cynic today. Good for me!

Margaret Mead appreciated the world as a salad bar of so many elements and combinations only limited by one’s imagination. Gender, like color, like culture, like age were to be wondered at and embraced simply for their intrinsic humanness. I love her, and miss her, when I quote her: “I measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her fellow human beings.”

Leadership as a Calling

23 Monday Dec 2013

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business, business management, hospital management, leadership, Scott Southard

Image

Policeman: Do you have any disgruntled employees?

Nathan Arizona Sr.: Hell, they’re all disgruntled. I ain’t running no damn daisy farm. My motto is “Do it my way or watch your butt!”

Policeman: Well, do you think any of them could’ve done it?

Nathan Arizona Sr.: Oh, don’t make me laugh. Without my say-so they wouldn’t piss with their pants on fire.

From “Raising Arizona”

With all my heart I want this fictional film character to just stay that:  fictional.

I would guess that we have all had a boss like Nathan Sr.  Without a detailed character sketch, one can see that he saw his employees as something less than human and pretty stupid at that.

Reflecting on why I chose a career path of leadership—a path that is never linear and more vulnerable to sniping than even Nathan Sr’s employees—I wonder how I arrived there.  One explanation I have is that much like the claims I’ve heard from priests, I’ve always felt that I, too, had a calling.  I had a call to leadership.

Early memories from elementary school include being asked by teachers to keep an eye on the other students when they left the room and being elected class president and editor-in-chief of the school newspaper.  Junior high and high school was more of the same with being elected to positions of leadership to sports teams, band, varsity club, and the executive board.  I took much of this for granted and just figured it was because I had an inclusive personality, I wasn’t afraid to speak up, and that I was more responsible than my peers.

One key experience one summer with the Leadership Development Corps of the State YMCA of Michigan at Camp Hayo-Went-Ha gave me the opportunity to learn about the responsibilities of leadership with my own group of campers.  Leading a group of boys, often only a few years younger than me, and not my peers from high school that retreated to their homes and families at the end of each day, made me realize the power of being a role model and of being a dependable support person during the long stretch of summer.  Honestly, this model of teenagers leading teenagers, had the potential of becoming “Lord of the Flies”, but it didn’t go there.  What I found was that I could be more than a benevolent big brother or a surrogate parent.  I was the leader most boys wanted: fun, positive, supportive, protective, zero tolerance to meanness, patient, and available.  I saw how quickly trust developed between us and I learned about the stuff of which I was made.

I liked what I discovered about myself and how it made me feel.

–

Now health care operational leadership, like camp counseling and like parenting, if you are doing it right, never really stops.

If your job is to oversee more than one shift or you have staff working every day of the week, you need to be available whenever they may need you.  On my designated times off, I first wore a pager and then a cell phone so that I could be alerted immediately in times of emergencies or sick staff or issues that couldn’t wait until I got back to my job the next morning or on Monday.  There have been several occasions when I had to leave a movie theater to answer a call and times I had to go in to help with coverage or talk to a physician or an athletic director.  Could this be considered a hassle?  Sure, but it is part of the job and I know that my staff, often flying solo, needs me to be no more than a call away.  I know that this is the kind of leadership I would want and so it is the standard to which I hold myself.

I’d like to make it clear that I make myself available not just to my fledgling staff, but also for those who have been out in the field for decades.  I have to be, after all, a role model for all of my staff, displaying by example my dedication to the job, to them, and to our organization’s goals.

–

The more I watch “leaders” and read about leadership—and there are more articles on the internet dedicated to detailing what elements are necessary to being a leader then you could read in a life time—I am always a little disappointed. See, I find this cookbook approach to leading deceiving.  Unlike baking a pie, one does not simply fold all the “necessary ingredients” into any one container with the anticipation that another leader has been made.

Employees know when they are being lead or being managed or being manipulated.  Creating teams, instilling a vision, and guiding people in developing their careers, takes the care and attention that I found manifesting in myself as a State YMCA LC and camp counselor.  Wouldn’t it be a perfect world if our managers treated us like someone’s son and daughter that they have the responsibility to protect, educate, and nurture as opposed to being a human resource?

Yet, you’re right about one thing thing though Nathan Sr.  I need to do a better job watching my butt.

Recent Posts

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