Leadership Journal

From my journal: About two years ago, the wife of a friend of mine signed on to do volunteer work for a hospital. After appropriate training and skill-matching, she was assigned to the information desk at the front entrance with the charge to make people entering the hospital feel welcomed, at ease, and properly informed.

To put it mildly, my friend's wife has flourished in this task.

I'm speaking of someone who has always been a volunteer. Some might describe her as an activist. Forty years ago before her Christian faith came alive, she (and her husband) had been among those who, as students, were highly involved in the civil rights movement. They were two of the many who marched in the streets, organized sit-ins, and distributed pamphlets calling for change in our nation's racial attitudes.

Later, when she and her husband became "observant" Christians, they redirected all this volunteer energy toward the church and made significant contributions to the life of our congregation. They were the kinds of people you could always count on, whether they were out in front of the crowd (where the applause or criticism can both be found), or back in the kitchen (absent the crowd) where there was food to prepare and pots and pans to clean.

But now, two years back, the efforts of my friend's wife were redirected into the life of a hospital (for free, mind you). At first I paid little attention to this, a regrettable oversight on my part.

Admittedly, I did notice over time that there were discernable, very pleasant changes in her personality. I was in a position to see this because we are all part of a small group that has met together monthly for more than 15 years.

What I saw was a person who was becoming more joyful, more self-expressive, more confident. If asked, she told inspiring stories of people she'd met at the hospital and how something she and others had done had served to captioner a bit of that person's world. There was an obvious enthusiasm about her experiences. What was absent was complaint or criticism about organizational systems or forms of leadership, the kind of stuff I wish I heard less about. It was clear that she was proud of the institution she was serving and what she was doing for it.

More than once I asked myself: what was behind the transformation? After all, you don't think about people in their late sixties going through fresh conversions of disposition.

Last week I mentioned my observations to her husband and asked him if I was seeing things correctly. He assured me that I was right on.

"It's the hospital work," he said. "The people there have a way of making every volunteer feel as if the hospital could not get along without them. From the CEO to the janitor, everyone is always finding ways to make the volunteers feel as if they are the most valuable people on earth." He went on to regale me with stories of how hospital personnel—nurses, doctors, administrators, patients—showered his wife with words and gestures of appreciation.

PAGE 1 of 2