As I write this it’s 6.10pm on a Monday evening and I’m sitting in my office.
Through the glass to left and down one floor is Mary, our housekeeper, who works until 6.30pm, four days a week.
She’s one of the hardest working, happiest and most important person in the business, having only been here for a few months.
It was always, always my ambition to have someone in the practice who took as much pride and care in it as the rest of us should and I do, so that when people come in, they are amazed at the cleanliness of the toilets or the floor or how everything seems to be in the right place.
It was only recently we had both the space and the resources to allow us to do that.
Mary and I have developed quite a close relationship as I always speak to her at every opportunity I can and we’re often (but definitely not always) the only two people left in the practice at that time of night.
Understanding how important Mary is to the practice is fundamental to understanding how important (or not important) other people might be.
When I worked as a senior house office (SHO) at Derby Royal infirmary, my consultant at the time was a bombastic, arrogant, full of life and full of character, classic male, white consultant type but one of his redeeming features was that he never ever passed a ‘porter’ or a ‘domestic’ in the hospital without stopping and speaking to them.
When asked about that he would always answer “I can’t get my patients to theatre without a porter unless I go and get them myself”.
What his actions did though was demonstrate to his SHO’s and registrars and other clinicians that he held the porter in higher regard than he did them.
He equalised things and helped us see what was important and over the hill of our young hubris.
In the online business course this week one of our delegates posted an amazing little paragraph in their project that I’ve never heard before and I so hope is true.
I’ve listed it below.
During a visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962, President Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?” The Janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.”
The most important trick I think in leadership (and it’s not arrogant to consider yourself involved in leadership in any aspect of your life when there’s more of you around than just you and even when there is only you) is allowing every single person in the organisation to understand they have a critical role in the mission.
If they don’t have a critical role in the mission then why are they in the organisation in the first place and if they do have a critical role, then surely it is the job of the person who considers themselves to be at the top of the tree (and maybe everybody else) to reinforce the critical role that they have.
Leadership is not complicated; it has another name, and that name is example setting.
It’s fine, all the time, to choose which example you would like to set.
The most important thing then is to set it.
Blog Post Number - 3031