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| Leadership in Eden |
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Page 2 of 4
“On Leadership in Eden” Welcome to the second edition of “On Leadership in Eden” . . .
As we learned in our training, Kenneth Galbraith contends we have three types of leadership “power” available to us. They are compensatory, condign and conditioned. Conditioned power is the type of choice for leaders in Eden. With the Conditioned approach we educate, persuade and call people to do what is right, proper and good for humanity. A true life story from Nancy Fox, Executive Director of the Eden Alternative in her book, “The Journey of a Lifetime.”I had been working at my facility for only two weeks when I received a call at 6am. The ringing of the phone woke me from a sound sleep. It was the day charge nurse on the Alzheimer’s unit. She said, “Nancy, Mr. A has smeared feces on the wall and the night shift left it.” Not knowing how to respond to the news, and having been awakened from a sound sleep, I replied, “Thank you very much.” And I hung up the phone. Although I found the call puzzling, I really didn’t think much about it. I thought maybe the previous administrator had wanted to be called if there were feces on the wall! As I arrived at work that day, I went back on the Alzheimer’s unit to make my rounds, and four very angry people came rushing at me. They said, “Mr. A smeared feces on the wall. The night shift left it, and we’re not cleaning it up!” Stunned I replied, “You mean it’s still there?” They replied in unison again, “The night shift left it and we’re not cleaning it up!” My mother taught me to count to ten before answering if I was ever upset, so I started counting. As I was counting, I was thinking. I had a choice to make. I could fire the whole lot of them and start over, or I could start leading them. So I said well, “I believe that Mr. A deserves to have a clean room, so give me a rag, give me some gloves, give me some cleaner, and I’ll clean it.” They gladly found me the supplies I needed. I took them and headed toward Mr. A’s room. As I entered the room, I was stunned! This gentleman managed to spread feces everywhere! It coated every surface in the room! And now it was dried! So I started scrubbing. And as I was scrubbing I was thinking to myself that if this didn’t work, I could possibly spend the rest of my career right there in that room cleaning feces! But as I had guessed, it did not take long for the word to spread to the farthest reaches of the facility. People were coming in droves to see the administrator cleaning feces. And before I knew it there was someone standing on my right helping me clean. And pretty soon there was another to my left. It was not long before the room was filled with people helping me clean. What I realized as we worked together was that these people were not bad people. They were just screaming for someone to get out in front and lead them. Working together, we had a good laugh and got the mess all cleaned up. Where is the conditioned power in this real-life scenario? By becoming CEAs, you have answered a Call of Eden. NOW, will you bring to life the Commission of Eden by sharing what you’ve learned with the nations and actively create a life worth living for our Elders and ourselves? “You can’t quarterback from the stands.”-Nancy Fox |