By Jack Cumming
My father had an adage intended to deflate an ego which was rising too high. “The more he spoke,” my dad would say of the boaster, who, truth to tell, was often me, “the more the wonder grew that one small head could harbor all he knew.”
Listening and Learning
We often write here of the qualities that make good leaders. We seldom focus on the one essential quality for constructive leadership, active listening. Listening is the path to learning in a world in which change makes continuous learning essential.
That needs repeating. In a world of change, learning is central, and listening is the path to learning.
Listening for Change
The biggest change now confronting senior living is the desire of many prospective residents to have ownership or a comparable say in the governance of nonprofits. Technology, which may seem like the big change, follows naturally from that governance reversal. Younger prospective residents expect advanced technology, so they’ll push for it. Organizational concepts are also changing. Employees no longer want to be underlings. They expect empowerment, and residents are more likely to give it to them than are hierarchical authorities.
Getting those with decision authority (executives) or influence (trade associations) to listen to these growing expectations is difficult. Do you know people who start talking before listening, who interrupt while you are saying something to help them, and who always claim to know more than anyone else in the room? It might be your boss, or the CEO of the enterprise where you work, or just the pompous oaf who lives down the hall from you.
CEO Panel
I thought of this recently at an industry conference among nonprofit providers. I asked a CEO panel if their behaviors would change if they were to lose their tax exemption. The most self-inflated among them immediately took the question, grabbed the mic, and responded, “That’s not going to happen.” Wow, that’s denial escalated exponentially to near infinity.
Selection to be CEO of an enterprise is a high calling to a position of great trust. It calls for a person who listens, understands, and reasons deliberatively. It’s not a position of entitlement. It requires qualities of character and disposition that are rare. The obligation of the board in making such a selection is to know of who is best suited at any time to take that helm.
The CEO should be a person with the vision and judgment to sustain the enterprise, to lead the people it touches, and to adapt the business for the emerging future. Too many called to that service are mere administrators repeating the standard banalities popular in the industry.
Sycophants
We all know people who fall short in senior executive positions. They are often distinguished by their grabbing the mic and by talking more than they listen. They may appear in industry journals spouting “wisdom” and describing how their brilliant leadership has made their organization the best of the best.
If the know-it-all is our boss, we soon learn to just nod appreciatively and to praise him effusively. I don’t mean to be sexist here, but truth to tell, most of these braggarts are men. Most women leaders master listening during their struggle to get to where they are, and, generally, they try to lift folks up as they themselves rise.
Senior living can be richer if the industry reforms itself to attract younger residents who want a voice in self-determination and who are still capable of contributing effectively toward the betterment of their homes. These independent-minded young oldsters are now trumpeting “aging in place” as the antidote to an industry which many view unfavorably. That’s something that the industry should be working to reverse.
A Better Place to Age
Consider a senior living executive who is nearing age 60 and who soon will be age-eligible for residence in one of the communities that he or she manages. Why not let that executive move in now while still working? What is the fear of having residents who contribute and make a difference? That simple move to break two taboos — the age taboo and the work taboo — would immediately make senior living a better place in which to age, i.e., not “aging in place” but “a better place to age.”
Why wouldn’t the more enterprising organizations in senior living be well along in adopting such outside-the-box thinking and acting on it? It’s probably the same reason that the industry has lagged in taking advantage of technology. It’s probably why “artificial intelligence” evokes more fear than hope among many industry insiders.
It’s probably why there are so many CEOs who are so busy talking that they don’t hear much. Or, as those with memory might put it, “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
