Lessons in Mercy
Because my wife and I don’t get as much time together as I’d like, I decided to sit through the premier episode of a new drama, Mercy. Its main characters are nurses in a Jersey City hospital. My wife’s been a nurse for a decade. In the first 15 minutes of the show, a new nurse, freshly graduated from an Ivy League Master’s program, joins the nursing staff. The two lead characters, taking advantage of the naivete of their new colleague, take her with them to visit a patient who has terminal cancer. Upon pushing open the door to the patient’s room, the two veteran nurses dodge left and right, leaving the newbie in the cross-hairs of flying food from the cranky patient. Her new smock appropriately soiled, the two veteran nurses wink and nod and go about their business.
My wife looks at me and says, “real nurses do that.” I passed off her observation as a typical prank of initiation. But I later recalled a conversation she and I had several years before when she, herself, was a nursing student.
An important part of the nurse-in-training is the clinical preparation where nursing students spend significant hours on various floors in a hospital, attempting to absorb as much as they can about the various medical disciplines while also learning from their mentor.
A frustrated wife came home one evening and said, “nurses eat their young.” My reaction at the time was,”that’s a heck of a way for nurses to encourage and motivate future colleagues.”
While I completely understand hyjinx and gentle hazing of new colleagues, this impresses me as a different dynamic. One that has become pervasive with some in leadership positions.
We seem to have fallen into this trap of those in leadership positions feeling it as their duty to put their subordinates in their proper place. In other words, the leader wants to make certain that everyone knows his or her place (beneath the leader) in the hierarchy of the office or division. This is a futile attempt for the leader to secure his or her place at the top of the proverbial food chain. Trust me, the subordinates aren’t as dumb as they appear.
Is this what we want from our leaders? To be put in our places? To be reminded that we’re an underling?
Meet me back here soon when I start to outline the characteristics of great leaders. Trust me, we’ve forgotten who and what they are.
Tags: women and leadership