If you are lucky enough to become a facility’s activity director you have a lot of responsibility. Like it or not, you are instantly a leader in your department as well as throughout the facility. Your activity staff will look to you, for better or worse, for an example of what to do and as someone to follow.
There are many components to being a great leader, and I don’t intend to cover all of them in this post. However, there was one that hit me yesterday that is crucial for any position you may find yourself in life.
When people in your facility look to you, do they think you follow through what you believe in? This can make all the world to the staff underneath you. If they believe you really follow what you say you believe, they are more likely to get on board with your new ideas. If they can see a discrepancy between your words and your actions, you’ll run into problems. I’ve been slowly implementing a new approach to planning our activity calender that really involves our program’s participants. Yesterday, I was challenged by one of my staff to prove that I was willing to do what I’ve been preaching.
I believe it was yesterday and I saw an article in the Detroit Free Press that pointed out John DeLorean had predicted General Motors’ demise almost decades earlier. Yes, that DeLorean, whose car was featured in Back To The Future. In a book published in the late seventies, titled On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors, DeLorean shared his frustrations with the corporate beheamoth that GM had become, and amazingly, his main bone of contention was the culture of the company.
Although successful as an employee within the company, being promoted to its flagship brands throughout the years, DeLorean eventually left GM because of the culture he described in his book. Mainly, there was an attitude that GM was too big to need to do improvements, that the GM way was inherently the right way, and the fruitfulness the company enjoyed would never and could never pass away.
We who work in long term care, and especially the nursing home, have been hearing about the need for culture change for almost a decade now! Sure, nursing homes continue to generate income and jobs for those they employ, and with the baby boomers coming into retirement, we should all feel very good about our job security. Or should we?
If you are lucky enough to become a facility’s activity director you have a lot of responsibility. Like it or not, you are instantly a leader in your department as well as throughout the facility. Your activity staff will look to you, for better or worse, for an example of what to do and as someone to follow.
