Leaders: The Whip or the Carrot?

           

(From left to right, Jennifer Martinez, Denise Cummins, Jana Shearer)  

It’s true what Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. On April 11, 2014, Loma Linda University (LLU) Medical Center hosted a tour of their facility’s third floor. The Leadership Connection program from the Apple Valley and Rancho Cucamonga offices teamed up and enjoyed presentations from a variety of health care professionals from the LLU Medical Center.

             Denise Cummins, a supervisor/nurse practitioner told us her story and how she became the nurse she is today. She became a nurse out of necessity; she just needed a job. She told us, “I never wanted to be a nurse… [but] I fell in love with it along the way.” However, she didn’t fall in love with it immediately. She’s been working as a nurse for more than 15 years, but she told a story from when she first started; a story from when she’d been working for less than a year. It still brought tears to her eyes. (And to the eyes of many of the students in her audience).

When she first started, she was not the best nurse. She was doing the best she could in a job she never wanted. One day, she was in the break room, talking with her coworkers and making jokes. She heard a nurse at one of the tables behind her make a comment about ‘the new, useless nurse’, and Denise knew that she was talking about her. She was stricken. She was ready to give up. But she didn’t. Instead, she strived to become better. She sought out more training. More certifications. She told us “I thought, well maybe if I was good [in one area] I would be better”. 

            And all this, she still remembers more than a decade later. The emotions from that day remain burned into her memory. Who is a leader? At some point in our lives, all of us, whether we lead a Girl Scout troop or an army. The nurse in the break room was a leader and there are many ways to lead people. Much of it boils down to, do you wish to lead with a whip or a carrot? Some leaders choose to lead people by their hair or the scruff of their neck. Some leaders choose to lead people by the hand. 

           Today, I challenge you to be a different kind of leader. Lead with a vision. And choose to lead people by showing them who they could be, not tearing them down for who they are not.