Generalities on Leadership

While on the topic of “Leadership” in my activity director class, I picked up the autobiography of retired army 4-star general, Ann Dunwoody.  A woman general should have some insight on leadership, after all.  Now, a lot of the details in her book, A Higher Standard, are strictly military issues.  But, at the same time, Dunwoody explores how the military deals with staff: assignments, training, evaluation, advancement, and discipline, as well as planning, appropriations, logistics, and office politics.  All good stuff for an activity professional.

I was especially drawn to her assessment of the goals of training.  Dunwoody describes the irony of training to meet “standards.”  A standard might be something like being able to hit a target 65% of the time when you shoot a gun.  This sounds reasonable until you think back to school days.  What is 65%?  That’s a grade of “C.”  

Dunwoody points out, “We spend a lot of leadership time at the lower levels training and retraining soldiers so that all of our troops can meet the standards.  For what?  A whole unit of C students?”    P.28

She goes on to state her own goal of challenging her soldiers to make their own personal standards something much more than average.  And she feels it is important to “eliminate, separate, isolate, or retire those who are not willing to improve.”   P.30

She "wanted them to be proud of what they did and to be the best at what they did.” P.31

Obviously, Dunwoody didn’t lead where she hadn’t been.  Her personal standard was extraordinary enough to land her the position of general in charge of the U.S. Army Material Command (AMC), moving and tracking equipment and supplies all over the world.  In other words, she is an expert at organization and planning.  One of her major successes was in convincing the army to change the way it was doing things and adopt a centralized online tracking system.  That Culture Change allowed the AMC to move into the modern world, and it was just barely in time to meet the current world military situation.

Dunwoody wanted her soldiers to be successful, too.  She did all she could to make sure that the training she gave them (plus the right attitude on their part) could actually lead to success and advancement.  What a gift!

©Donna Stuart, ADPC             September 19, 2015

Dunwoody, Ann. A Higher Standard. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2015.

The Great Chicken Rides Again

What do you know about the history of the world?  It’s chickens, symbolically, economically, gastronomically, geographically, politically, scientifically.  It’s all chickens.  At least you’d think it was after reading Andrew Lawler’s book, Why Did The Chicken Cross The World?  264 pages, not counting 42 pages of references, trace the path of chickendom across continents and oceans to its ubiquitous position on a Chick fil-A® billboard along a highway near you.

I grew up with chickens in the background.  They were my dad’s hobby and a source of extra income.  We lived in Buffalo, and I can remember my dad having to trudge to the chicken coop through the snow in order to thaw out their drinking water during the winter.  (He was a generation too early to cash in on the Buffalo chicken wing craze, though.  Nobody in Buffalo wanted to buy chicken wings back then.  He had to practically give them away!)

For my dad, the fun side of keeping chickens was to raise show birds.  Most people don’t realize how many dramatically different - looking chickens there are.  The prototype bird started out as a beautiful, but wily and fierce jungle animal, hard to catch, hard to domesticate.  Still, it seemed like every time humanity took a step, the chicken was carried along.  

Lawler documents times in the past when collecting exotic chickens was a tremendous fad.  Even Queen Victoria got in on the action.  But the fads faded.  There was real money to be made if someone could genetically build a chicken that matured faster and produced more meat or eggs.  So, of course, they did.  And these “industrial” chickens are warehoused, slaughtered, and delivered plastic-wrapped to our grocery stores without us ever catching a glimpse of the live bird.

Chickens were never my hobby, but I caught myself nodding and smiling as I read some of the stories.  They were never my hobby, but I was there.   If I were admitted to a nursing home and they were filling out my activity history intake form, I would never put “raising chickens” as something I had done.  But the memories - happy memories almost forgotten – would surface if I were exposed to an activity related to chickens.  Maybe, in providing  person-centered care, we need to ask what someone’s parents did for a hobby?

© Donna Stuart, ADPC   April 14, 2015

Lawler, Andrew. Why Did The Chicken Cross The World? New York: Atria Books, 2014.

Here, Rover!

(Continuing with the developments in Iran since their revolution)

Hooman Majd is an expatriate Iranian.  His father was serving as a diplomat under the late Shah.  When the Shah’s regime was toppled, Majd’s family found itself stranded in the West.  Majd, himself, became a journalist/author who is willing to analyze Iranian politics from an insider as well as outsider viewpoint.  Once in a while, he risks returning to his homeland temporarily so that he can write about it. This does not endear him to their current regime, hence the tongue in cheek title of his book:  The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay.

What Majd documents are the multiple versions of reality and denial that describe Iran.  Like Nafisi in Reading Lolita in Tehran, he questions whether the current situation promotes the expression of Islamic ideals or, conversely, invalidates Islamic expression because of coercion.  Was the time of the Shah the good old days or the bad old days?

Obviously, Iranians don’t control the market on multiple realities and denial.  We see it on a smaller scale in the “age in place” versus “retirement community” mindsets.  People have their preferences, but rigid thinking can lead to problems.  It can be nice to be in a safe environment surrounded by peers you can socialize with – until you notice how regularly they tend to die off and be replaced.  It can be comforting to stay in familiar surroundings, forget safety – until you find yourself trapped there alone.  Or maybe you’re the kind who doesn’t even notice these things when they happen.  That’s a problem in itself.

We can’t really solve this dilemma for our seniors, just as Majd can’t solve the Iranian dilemma.  Still, activity professionals are in the position to mitigate some of the negative aspects of senior community/institutional settings.  We can make things better in the places where we work.

p.s.  Majd proudly described the colorful Yazidi cultural group, as well as the increasing popularity of pet dogs in Iran.  Since I began reading his book, however, ISIS reportedly targeted the Yazidis for genocide.  And Iran’s Revolutionary Guard pushed through a new law allowing them to give 74 lashes to anyone they catch with a pet dog.

© Donna Stuart, ADPC    March 24, 2015

Majd, Hooman. The Ministry Of Guidance Invites You To Not Stay. New York: Doubleday, 2013.

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003.

You Just Don’t Know

Back in the 1930’s the WPA sponsored the Federal Writer’s Project.  Over 2,200 former slaves were interviewed for posterity’s sake about what life under slavery had been like.  Lynette Tanner showcases 42 of these interviews in her book, Chained To The Land.

This is hard reading.  Many times I’ve had to set the book down because I could not emotionally process the stories it held.  These are first person accounts of perseverance, pride, and even triumph, but with the background of abuse, loss, and hardships.

What chills the bones is the matter of fact way these survivors tell their stories.  Human beings, yes, you and I get used to the way things are.  At some level, we accept things as normal that should not be normal.  In this case, the storytellers had an even greater challenge.  They had to transition to a different normal, sometimes a different kind of bondage, after the war.    

It makes me wonder what story is behind each of our residents.  Part of the enjoyment I get from working with seniors is the fact that they each do have a story, one with lots of chapters.  They are books that just haven’t been written.  We collect some notes we call their “activity history” and put it in their file.  But we will never know the whole story.  ‘So and so’ never learned to write.  His neighbor was famous in his field.  This one over here has family who avoid her.  That one over there never married.  Some have led charmed lives, others struggled with each step.  Maybe the one who now curses his caregivers used to be soft-spoken and the former athlete just sits and watches.  Most of these folks have suffered many, many losses.  Yet, they still survived.  You just don’t know.

©Donna Stuart, ADPC        February 7, 2015

Tanner, Lynette Ater, ed. Chained To The Land. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, Publisher, 2014.

Forgettable – That’s What You Are

What would it be like to live in a country that has been taken over by a totalitarian government?  It happens now and then.  It happened in Iran back when I was in college.  I remember tutoring some foreign students in English.  One of them, an Iranian, spoke passionately about overthrowing the shah.   But authoress Azar Nafisi described how things really turned out in her book, Reading Lolita in Tehran.  Though the socialist-leaning college students in Iran were running the revolution one day, they soon found themselves shouldered out of the way.  The better organized, more entrenched, Islamic hardliners were easily able to commandeer the power structure.   What happened next could be called disenfranchisement.  Not only had the leftist students lost their power, they (and especially the women like her) quickly became “irrelevant” in the culture that emerged.  She went from being a respected college professor who wore western clothes, to being forced to wear the hijab, to being forced from her position altogether.  People like her were no longer “needed”, no longer considered to belong to the important side of the culture.

Does this scene sound familiar to our seniors?  I think so.  They know firsthand what it feels like to go from running the “show” to relative powerlessness.  They might have lost control of their finances, their families, their health, their homes, or even their minds.  Life goes on without them or their input.  Their children or even perfect strangers are calling the shots.  Who actually made the decision for them to move to assisted living?  Are they doing the hiring and firing of staff, or setting up the facility budget?  Did they decide to wear a wheelchair alarm?  Did they even decide to stay sitting in a wheelchair for most of the day?

I’ve heard that culture change involves giving the residents more say-so and opportunities to make a difference in the institutional setting.  That way, the institution becomes less that and more homelike.  We can’t fix everything, but we want our seniors to be less “irrelevant” to their own culture.  So how come some of the nicest places spend mega $$ on interior decorating, but don’t allocate any public space for the residents to display their own art work?  Well, it might spoil the perfect image the facility feels necessary to project.  How come some places spend mega $$ on landscaping, but don’t provide opportunities for the residents to be actively involved in the process?  Well, only landscapers can choose a flat of pansies, and resident outings need to be to more entertaining places than the local nursery.

What does it mean to be irrelevant?  Well, how many aspects of your facility are running very–well-thank-you without the residents’ help?

© Donna Stuart, ADPC    11/28/2014

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003.

Ma, I Hardly Knew Ya

Kelly Corrigan’s biography hooks the reader from the get go.  Things have changed dramatically in her life, and you want to know why, how.  She had had a cool relationship with her mother while growing up.  Now her mother was the one person she wanted to have nearby.  She had thought that all the important stuff happened when you got away from home.  Now she was settled with a home and family of her own.  What happened in her life to make the change? Was it just growing up?

Glitter and Glue is how her mother describes Corrigan’s father and herself.  He was the good cop.  She was the bad cop.  He was the exuberant, encouraging support for anything Corrigan chose to do.  The mother was the practical one, the structured one, the one who couldn’t ignore the negatives.

Corrigan and a buddy decide to travel the world.  They save their pennies, buy their tickets and head off into their great adventure.  Her dad is supportive.  Her mom thinks it’s a dangerous waste of time.  All does go well until the girls find themselves in Australia with their funds depleted.  They want to work for a few months to raise some cash, but can’t find any jobs.  Finally, Corrigan gets hired as a nanny, living in another family’s home, experiencing the new “family’s” drama. Suddenly, with no chance to grow into the role, Corrigan finds herself in the position of surrogate mother.

The drama seems to involve only a dad and his two children.  The mother had died not too long before, after a long illness.  The dad is still shell-shocked, the little boy has not quite grasped what death means, and the slightly older sister is bitter and suspicious of her new nanny.  Gradually, though, more characters emerge from side apartment and back room.  There is the college-age stepson who isn’t in college. There is also the elderly father-in-law who does the family’s laundry.  Neither of these two materializes until the father has left for the day.  He hardly acknowledges their existence, but in some sense each individual in the family is helping to hold the family together.  Corrigan finds her assumptions challenged when it comes to people and their roles in other people’s lives.  She feels the gaping abyss left by the loss of someone who was at once a person/wife/mother/daughter.

Fast forward and Corrigan has her own family.  But cancer enters the picture.  In stark horror, she sees her new life merging with the experience of the Australian family.  She wants, she needs her own mother.  And her mother understands and drops everything to be there for her.

Sometimes bad relationships can become better.   Sometimes it doesn’t take a whole lot of change.  People can still be who they are, but when you see them in a different light, you see them as different people.  I would keep the name of this book somewhere in my files.  This is not a “how to fix relationships” book.  But it might be a good one to recommend to a resident’s family struggling with closure when relationships have been strained. 

© Donna Stuart, ADPC         September 15, 2014

Corrigan, Kelly. Glitter and Glue. New York: Ballantine Books, 2014.

Aha! I Knew This Was Going To Be Fun

What makes information feel good to the brain?  My husband knows that information about the brain feels good to my brain, so he gave me a subscription to Scientific American Mind.  In it, Matthew Hutson describes the research conducted by Sascha Topolinski at the University of Cologne in Germany.  Topolinski is a psychologist who decided to look into the same question that I started with here.  He relates it to what he calls “processing fluency.”

Maybe you tried to learn a second language back in your school days.  It probably did not feel good to you when you struggled to speak, read or understand ideas in a new way.  You lacked fluency, that wonderful place where the language flows easily to do whatever you need it to do.  For Topolinski, fluency is not just about language, but about how well the brain handles any information.

He found that the faster the brain works, the more fluently it is processing data.  Two ways to increase fluency are repetition and hints of what’s ahead.  Each of these tends to increase familiarity with the subject, and therefore brain speed.  Fluency feels good, and he noticed that a sudden rise in fluency, that “aha” moment, feels even better.

This of course makes sense in the senior care setting.  Which music do our residents tend to prefer?  Which topics do they most enjoy talking about?   Are your answers “oldies” and reminiscing?  Maybe dementia has obscured more recent things, so these are all that are consciously accessible.  But some of you have already noticed that there is more to it than that.  Maybe when we provide activities which take advantage of previous exposure, we are helping our residents get that “rush” of fluency.

There is a set of booklets that includes “Finishing Lines,” by Beckie Karras.   Each of these has page after page of famous sayings, famous book titles, famous song lyrics, etc., that are missing the last word or two.  We get some residents together and, as a group, they try to come up with the missing words.  And they usually succeed.  To say that this activity is popular is an understatement.  My Activity Director noticed that being able to come up with the answers really gives the residents a boost in confidence and feelings of self-worth.  It’s also a half-hour or so of multiple “aha” moments.

And so, late in the afternoon, I like to play some very simple classics on the piano for my residents to listen to.  They enjoy most of the music, but when I hit a Strauss waltz, they will hum along, maybe sway a little in ¾ time ... and they will glow.

© Donna Stuart, ADPC        July 30, 2014 theactivityconnection.blogspot.com

Hutson, Matthew. "Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?" Scientific American Mind May/June 2014: 12.

Topolinski, Sascha. "A processing fluency-account of funniness: Running gags and spoiling punchlines." Cognition and Emotion 28 (5) 2014: 811-820. www.researchgate.net, online abstract.