Today, I started yet another journey. Fridays are gonna be extra full and extra fun this semester.
There was the perfect blend of late summer sun and early autumn nip in the air today. I checked things off of the to-do list and drank a Bloody Mary in the middle of the afternoon and took time to do small and slow tasks like brushing the dog. We finished the evening with a much-needed date night and I fell in love with my husband all over again, which was also much-needed (for both parties). Some days, I think everything is broken and nobody cares. Other days, I think I cannot believe I get to live this life.
Tonight, I got the Sunday scaries real bad. I have back-to-school whiplash and a sense of overwhelm with schedules and house projects and for someone who talks about how much she loves winter, the autumn nip in the air nearly sent me into a panic this evening. So I waited for Chris to come up from putting the kids to bed, dog harness in hand, and asked him to take us both on a walk. The walks always work. Chris may have tried a little too hard to make me talk it out, which he still has not learned is not the way, but we’ll get there. The walks always work.
Turns out, parenting and leading in an organization aren’t too different from one another. What people need is a psychologically safe space to show up, try their best, and fail forward.
The other day a lady asked me why I thought staffing is so difficult these days. It wasn’t this bad before the pandemic. Do people just not want to work? I tried to gracefully exit with a comment about affordable housing and childcare, but I wanted to shake her and scream a million people have died. There are a million fewer of us now.
This morning, I got to announce that we are down to only two residents with COVID-19 in Long Term Care. This evening, I got to make supper with my daughters. Today was a good day.
The very first move I made after accepting the challenge of Chief Nursing Officer was to gather the people. Every Monday afternoon, I ask leaders from all over the organization to sit at a conference table for an hour and talk about issues impacting the nursing workforce. It’s been seven months now, and they keep showing up. We are not solving giant, global issues but we are making incremental deposits of trust into one another. We are building bridges, not silos. I have to believe that kind of earned relational equity eventually cashes itself in and solves giant, global issues. Gathering the people seems to do that.