The Ancient Wisdom of Conversations will be my theme in 2020 laced with Florence Nightingale wisdom.
In 2019, I wrote Getting Real About Caring: What I discovered about authentic caring as a nurse leader and one step forward.
In 2020, I’m having more conversations with nurse leaders and nurses about their authentic caring conversations.
2020 — being the Year of the Nurse, prompts me to read, learn and write about Florence Nightingale (something I have always wanted to do).
Being a Leader in Organizations
I’ m going to use another author, Margaret Wheatley, who nearly brought me to my knees at a Nursing Management Annual Conference? or AONE Conference? in the mid 1990s?. Wheatley was the keynote speaker presenting on her book, Leadership and the New Science.
She and her book showed me a new way to “see” and understand organizational life. It transformed my perspective about working in organizations, and helped me feel not so boxed-in.
Interestingly, Wheatley’s language about organizations rang similar to Watson’s language about caring. Bells rang as I read both. The similarities were hard to totally discern for me then. So now I can explore them further.
Another thing- As mind-bending as Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science is, it is not unlike Nightingale’s writings about hospital organizations in the 1800-early 1900’s.
How’s that for serendipity all around?
Wheatley’s book is in its 3rd edition, 2006, and is acclaimed to be “one of the top 10 business books of all time”.
Conversations
One more spin: Wheatley has a newer book (2002), Turning to One Another: simple conversations to restore hope to the future., which … you guessed it … rings true with my message in my book.
I will use Turning to One Another as a guide through the year.
I hope this comes together for us in 2020
If the following key words are NOT of interest to you, don’t hesitate to unsubscribe to my blog. I know how tedious it is to get emails that are not meaningful.
Authentic Caring
Conversations between nurse leaders and nurses
Organizations and how to be free within
How to engage with nurses around caring
Caring Science
What nurses need from leaders
Florence Nightingale
I’ll end today with some quotes from Wheatley’s Turning to One Another :
- Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change—personal change, community and organizational change, planetary change.
- Good conversation is different from most of the meetings we are so used to.
- It is a much older and more reliable way for humans to think together.
- Before there were meetings, planning processes, or any other techniques, there was conversation—people sitting around interested in each other, talking together.
- When we think about beginning a conversation, we can take courage from the fact that this is a process we all know how to do.
- We are reawakening an ancient practice, a way of being together that all humans remember.
- It reminds us how to be human.
- How do we start conversations? We tap into those things that open our hearts.
- Once our heart is engaged, it’s easy …
May 2020 be a year of good conversations for us all. 🙏