- Email: [email protected]
Deborah Washington, RN, MS
Leader To Watch Deborah Washington, RN, MS Interview by Catherine Robinson-Walker, MBA Photography by Paul Batista © 2005 Massachusetts General Hospital
My interview with Deborah Washington started provocatively when she expressed concern over the increasing dearth of nurse leaders. “It takes my breath away. Who are our role models? What happened to the days when we liked and wanted to emulate our leaders’ values?” It is my sincere pleasure to introduce Deborah Washington, director of diversity for patient care services at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), to the readers of Nurse Leader. She is a wonderful role model for all of us who engage in leading others. When I first met her in the late 1990s, I was drawn to her immediately because of her soft-spoken and powerful way of communicating who she is. Since then, I have learned that Deb has significant gifts and insights about leading and developing others.
Deb, please tell me about your background. I am a baby boomer, and I grew up in a small town in the South in a large family with four brothers and three sisters. I was raised at a time when segregation was very much in force. Integration started when I was in the 9th or 10th grade. My mother was so afraid of what it would mean to go to school with white kids that she arranged for my aunt to shuttle me to the all-black school an hour away. 10 Nurse Leader
My teachers were my original role models. These were the people who said I was not limited to the small town in which I was born. They encouraged me; they said, “Don’t talk yourself out of making a move that might lead to success.” I was always quiet, and I really enjoyed books. I read about Boston in the World Book Encyclopedia, and I decided to come here after graduating high school. I had no one in Boston. I lived in the YWCA. It was difficult adjusting to a predominately white urban environment after coming from a predominately black rural environment. I took my first cab ride in Boston. I eventually found parttime work at Orion Research. This company had a program for tuition reimbursement, so I was able to attend Boston University School of Nursing part time. I got my bachelor of science in nursing degree from Boston University in 1986.
How did you come to serve in your current role? I worked in medical/surgical services at MGH for 7 years, and then I got the itch to return to school. I got my master’s degree in adult mental health in 1993 at Boston College, then worked in the inpatient psychiatric unit at MGH for 1 or 2 years. During that time, I became involved with a committee that worked with diversity. The work of the committee involved recruitment
and retention of professional staff, pipeline programs to local schools of nursing, mentor and scholarship programs, staff development in relation to cultural competence, and working collaboratively to help create an organizational environment of inclusion. After a while, I became chair of that committee. Eventually, the vice president of patient care services decided MGH needed a staff point person for this work. Up until that time, I had been the quiet staff nurse. I was very happy taking care of patients.
What was most significant to you as you moved into this new position? When I became chair of the committee, it was the first time I had been seated at the head of the table. It was intimidating to me, yet so many people were guiding and teaching me as I started the work of that role. I felt like I was packaged for success. They encouraged me to apply for the position. I kept saying “no,” and they kept saying, “You really should apply; you are already halfway there.”
What do you mean by the term “packaged for success”? These leaders were looking out for me, and I believe the mentoring I received was intentional on their part. They sat down and decided February 2005
that we at MGH needed a leadership initiative in diversity and asked themselves who would be good candidates to lead the effort. People knew me, and they knew what I would need to be successful because of their knowledge of me. These were people who I admired and trusted. This whole approach made a very significant difference in my growth. I could feel that guiding hand—even in the “deadly pause” I sometimes experienced when things weren’t going so well. Even then, someone would step forward and say, “Deb, do you think we ought to…?” Or they would engage me in an off-line conversation.
How does your early leadership experience influence the work in which you are now engaged? Workforce development is a key priority at MGH. Although I don’t
February 2005
specifically work on recruitment and retention in the conventional human resource sense, I do focus on the whole concept of “growing your own” and recognizing potential in the staff we now have. So I am focused on mentoring and connecting the hospital with communities of color. Integrating my own background and remembering my own needs and how they were met as I go forward keeps me passionate and very committed to these concepts and these initiatives. I am also currently studying “cultural pain” in the doctoral program at Boston College, and I am once again in the realm of good teachers and mentors. Here too, I see how important they are; they help me have a sense of anticipation again. It’s possible to reach a point in life, in work, and even personally where we’ve done so much and worked so hard that we don’t realize we no longer have a
sense of anticipation. How many more milestones are there for us? And yet I am a beginner again in my doctoral studies. I see the world with fresh eyes, and I again appreciate how important good guides and teachers are to us all.
Do you have guiding principles in your work at MGH? Yes. For me, the first and most important guiding principle is my spirituality. This encompasses being available to others, giving, focusing on others rather than myself, justice, fair play, and forgiveness. I am also guided by knowing how important it is to others to be seen and heard by the leaders around them. I am very conscious of how much people can learn and give back because of these gifts their leaders can give, and I am also very conscious of those responsibilities. If leaders are not here for others, we end up having nothing.
Nurse Leader 11
We’ve not only lost an employee; we’ve lost the “personhood” of that individual.
What leadership strategies work best for you?
Name: Deborah Washington
Hometown: Patterson, Louisiana
First job in nursing: Staff nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital
Current job: Director, diversity, patient care service
Being in a leadership position gives me the opportunity to: Sit at the decision-making table to expand the mainstream perspective
Most people don’t know that I: Did five static-line parachute jumps
I’m interested in learning more about: Belief systems and how they drive organizational culture
My best advice to aspiring leaders: Know beyond any doubt what is true about yourself
One word to summarize me: Conceptual
12 Nurse Leader
I enjoy working in groups most of all. I like the energy in the room when people are thinking, when ideas are happening—you can just feel the juice and the energy out there. I like to synthesize the key points from that process. Also, I like to run meetings, and for me it’s very important to mention people’s names. I like to make sure there are no “winners” and “losers” in those conversations. Even if I have to bring back history, I don’t mind if it’s so everyone can feel recognized. People just glow with that; when people are still chattering after the meeting has ended, it’s almost like we just finished having a party. Also, I like for people to cut to the chase. As I mentioned, I enjoy brainstorming and processing. At the same time, people need to let go once a decision is made. Being directive in this way serves me, and other people respond well. Another important aspect of leadership is that everyone can come to me. They can speak honestly and it will never leave my office. I can patch together a big picture for them based on trust, so they can see things they did not see previously. What I have learned about guidance is that I want to be very careful with the person who comes to speak with me about his or her experience. It’s easy for the two of us to have a conversation that is goal-oriented and focused on task and strategies. That’s fine, but if I’m not careful, I’m going to miss something very important that is underneath— the human experience of that person. It’s easy to get into the mode of processing people. When I have limited time, I want to figure out what we can do in 5 minutes and how we can arrange to meet later when more time is needed. Here is one last point: When I first began in leadership, I wondered if I needed a leadership style that complemented the fact that I am an African American woman. As I think back on this, I now realize that concern had a dual purpose. I believe I wanted to shine, to be successful, while at the same time if someone was not showing me respect or if I was conscious of being undermined, I wanted to put a stop to it in a way that did not alienate others but did command respect for my cultural identity. By the way, this is always an issue for a leader from a cultural background different from that of the majority. Now I have let that go as an active, conscious part of me. I no longer feel the need to culturally arm myself, so to speak. Success, support, confronting questionable behavior, and much encouragement have allowed me to move forward with the sense that the world has moved forward as well. February 2005
As a person of color and someone who is shy, I always have questions about what motivates people’s comments, how sincere they are, etcetera. But over the years, I’ve learned how sincere they are by getting to know them. I especially enjoy those unplanned moments of feedback and support I often encounter from colleagues. Attention to diversity has made a difference in many ways to people on both sides of the issue, I think.
What hobbies do you have, and do they influence your work? One of my hobbies is horseback riding. When I started to learn to ride, I was keenly aware that horses are huge animals, and yet they are very skittish Once I got on top of the horse, I was supposed to be in charge! Developing the skill and the sense of being in charge while riding has been important in my own development as a leader. I learned to enjoy that same sense of being in command when I also got interested in dogsledding. If you ever want to enjoy the effects of voice and encouragement as a way to lead a team, try dogsledding. I’ve found that the hobbies we choose can affect who we are as people and how we lead others in our organizations.
What are your favorite quotes? There are two. The first is, “If you do what you’ve always done, then you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” The other is one attributed to Albert Einstein, I believe. It says, “The consciousness which creates the problem is incapable of solving that problem.”
What advice do you have for future nurse leaders? There can be an internal itch that makes us restless in our current roles. To me, that’s a signal that we are ready to try something new. There is seldom a mystery about what the next step should be. It’s usually a response to something in our lives at the time. So when that restlessness or itch starts to happen, it’s important to be sensitive to what’s going on in your life at the time. What is that restlessness saying about taking the next step in your career?
Deb, what would you like readers to take away from our interview? I would like for them to see me as an African American woman who was significantly influenced by my early teachers, mentors, and role models. It would be so easy for me to still be in my small town in the South, perhaps working at Wal-Mart. I would like for the readers to know how important they can be to others. My biggest lesson is to never think that something is beyond your reach. None of us wants to fail—no one wants that humiliation. That’s why we need that objective voice, the voices of those people who recognize our potential. Left on our own, we might dismiss real possibilities out of hand, seeing them as big risks or gambles we are afraid to take. It’s the rare individFebruary 2005
ual who can self-talk in ways that help them achieve all by themselves. The rest of us need an additional voice telling us, “Let’s go, I can help you.” It’s important that we be important to someone else. We have these leadership roles in life, and we don’t use them to the fullest. We do well in terms of the life of the organization, but the more meaningful piece is the life of the individual. People’s sense of community is different now; individuals are not connected to communities in the ways they used to be; for example, knowing and speaking with their neighbors. The workplace can address some of the changes in the larger social structure. The opportunities are there for us to help people in so many ways. I would like for nurse leaders who read this to look around and think about someone who works for them. Think about how much that person would love to have their attention and how much they could achieve if they had that attention. I would like for them to blink a bit and say, “Gee, I wonder…” and then I’d like for them to say to someone they see in this light, “Here, take my hand.” Catherine Robinson-Walker, MBA, is president of The Leadership Studio in Oakland, California. She can be reached at www.leadershipstudio.com. 1541-4612/2005/$ - see front matter Copyright 2005 by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.mnl.2004.11.006
Nurse Leader 13
My interview with Deborah Washington started provocatively when she expressed concern over the increasing dearth of nurse leaders. “It takes my breath away. Who are our role models? What happened to the days when we liked and wanted to emulate our leaders’ values?” It is my sincere pleasure to introduce Deborah Washington, director of diversity for patient care services at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), to the readers of Nurse Leader. She is a wonderful role model for all of us who engage in leading others. When I first met her in the late 1990s, I was drawn to her immediately because of her soft-spoken and powerful way of communicating who she is. Since then, I have learned that Deb has significant gifts and insights about leading and developing others.
Deb, please tell me about your background. I am a baby boomer, and I grew up in a small town in the South in a large family with four brothers and three sisters. I was raised at a time when segregation was very much in force. Integration started when I was in the 9th or 10th grade. My mother was so afraid of what it would mean to go to school with white kids that she arranged for my aunt to shuttle me to the all-black school an hour away. 10 Nurse Leader
My teachers were my original role models. These were the people who said I was not limited to the small town in which I was born. They encouraged me; they said, “Don’t talk yourself out of making a move that might lead to success.” I was always quiet, and I really enjoyed books. I read about Boston in the World Book Encyclopedia, and I decided to come here after graduating high school. I had no one in Boston. I lived in the YWCA. It was difficult adjusting to a predominately white urban environment after coming from a predominately black rural environment. I took my first cab ride in Boston. I eventually found parttime work at Orion Research. This company had a program for tuition reimbursement, so I was able to attend Boston University School of Nursing part time. I got my bachelor of science in nursing degree from Boston University in 1986.
How did you come to serve in your current role? I worked in medical/surgical services at MGH for 7 years, and then I got the itch to return to school. I got my master’s degree in adult mental health in 1993 at Boston College, then worked in the inpatient psychiatric unit at MGH for 1 or 2 years. During that time, I became involved with a committee that worked with diversity. The work of the committee involved recruitment
and retention of professional staff, pipeline programs to local schools of nursing, mentor and scholarship programs, staff development in relation to cultural competence, and working collaboratively to help create an organizational environment of inclusion. After a while, I became chair of that committee. Eventually, the vice president of patient care services decided MGH needed a staff point person for this work. Up until that time, I had been the quiet staff nurse. I was very happy taking care of patients.
What was most significant to you as you moved into this new position? When I became chair of the committee, it was the first time I had been seated at the head of the table. It was intimidating to me, yet so many people were guiding and teaching me as I started the work of that role. I felt like I was packaged for success. They encouraged me to apply for the position. I kept saying “no,” and they kept saying, “You really should apply; you are already halfway there.”
What do you mean by the term “packaged for success”? These leaders were looking out for me, and I believe the mentoring I received was intentional on their part. They sat down and decided February 2005
that we at MGH needed a leadership initiative in diversity and asked themselves who would be good candidates to lead the effort. People knew me, and they knew what I would need to be successful because of their knowledge of me. These were people who I admired and trusted. This whole approach made a very significant difference in my growth. I could feel that guiding hand—even in the “deadly pause” I sometimes experienced when things weren’t going so well. Even then, someone would step forward and say, “Deb, do you think we ought to…?” Or they would engage me in an off-line conversation.
How does your early leadership experience influence the work in which you are now engaged? Workforce development is a key priority at MGH. Although I don’t
February 2005
specifically work on recruitment and retention in the conventional human resource sense, I do focus on the whole concept of “growing your own” and recognizing potential in the staff we now have. So I am focused on mentoring and connecting the hospital with communities of color. Integrating my own background and remembering my own needs and how they were met as I go forward keeps me passionate and very committed to these concepts and these initiatives. I am also currently studying “cultural pain” in the doctoral program at Boston College, and I am once again in the realm of good teachers and mentors. Here too, I see how important they are; they help me have a sense of anticipation again. It’s possible to reach a point in life, in work, and even personally where we’ve done so much and worked so hard that we don’t realize we no longer have a
sense of anticipation. How many more milestones are there for us? And yet I am a beginner again in my doctoral studies. I see the world with fresh eyes, and I again appreciate how important good guides and teachers are to us all.
Do you have guiding principles in your work at MGH? Yes. For me, the first and most important guiding principle is my spirituality. This encompasses being available to others, giving, focusing on others rather than myself, justice, fair play, and forgiveness. I am also guided by knowing how important it is to others to be seen and heard by the leaders around them. I am very conscious of how much people can learn and give back because of these gifts their leaders can give, and I am also very conscious of those responsibilities. If leaders are not here for others, we end up having nothing.
Nurse Leader 11
We’ve not only lost an employee; we’ve lost the “personhood” of that individual.
What leadership strategies work best for you?
Name: Deborah Washington
Hometown: Patterson, Louisiana
First job in nursing: Staff nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital
Current job: Director, diversity, patient care service
Being in a leadership position gives me the opportunity to: Sit at the decision-making table to expand the mainstream perspective
Most people don’t know that I: Did five static-line parachute jumps
I’m interested in learning more about: Belief systems and how they drive organizational culture
My best advice to aspiring leaders: Know beyond any doubt what is true about yourself
One word to summarize me: Conceptual
12 Nurse Leader
I enjoy working in groups most of all. I like the energy in the room when people are thinking, when ideas are happening—you can just feel the juice and the energy out there. I like to synthesize the key points from that process. Also, I like to run meetings, and for me it’s very important to mention people’s names. I like to make sure there are no “winners” and “losers” in those conversations. Even if I have to bring back history, I don’t mind if it’s so everyone can feel recognized. People just glow with that; when people are still chattering after the meeting has ended, it’s almost like we just finished having a party. Also, I like for people to cut to the chase. As I mentioned, I enjoy brainstorming and processing. At the same time, people need to let go once a decision is made. Being directive in this way serves me, and other people respond well. Another important aspect of leadership is that everyone can come to me. They can speak honestly and it will never leave my office. I can patch together a big picture for them based on trust, so they can see things they did not see previously. What I have learned about guidance is that I want to be very careful with the person who comes to speak with me about his or her experience. It’s easy for the two of us to have a conversation that is goal-oriented and focused on task and strategies. That’s fine, but if I’m not careful, I’m going to miss something very important that is underneath— the human experience of that person. It’s easy to get into the mode of processing people. When I have limited time, I want to figure out what we can do in 5 minutes and how we can arrange to meet later when more time is needed. Here is one last point: When I first began in leadership, I wondered if I needed a leadership style that complemented the fact that I am an African American woman. As I think back on this, I now realize that concern had a dual purpose. I believe I wanted to shine, to be successful, while at the same time if someone was not showing me respect or if I was conscious of being undermined, I wanted to put a stop to it in a way that did not alienate others but did command respect for my cultural identity. By the way, this is always an issue for a leader from a cultural background different from that of the majority. Now I have let that go as an active, conscious part of me. I no longer feel the need to culturally arm myself, so to speak. Success, support, confronting questionable behavior, and much encouragement have allowed me to move forward with the sense that the world has moved forward as well. February 2005
As a person of color and someone who is shy, I always have questions about what motivates people’s comments, how sincere they are, etcetera. But over the years, I’ve learned how sincere they are by getting to know them. I especially enjoy those unplanned moments of feedback and support I often encounter from colleagues. Attention to diversity has made a difference in many ways to people on both sides of the issue, I think.
What hobbies do you have, and do they influence your work? One of my hobbies is horseback riding. When I started to learn to ride, I was keenly aware that horses are huge animals, and yet they are very skittish Once I got on top of the horse, I was supposed to be in charge! Developing the skill and the sense of being in charge while riding has been important in my own development as a leader. I learned to enjoy that same sense of being in command when I also got interested in dogsledding. If you ever want to enjoy the effects of voice and encouragement as a way to lead a team, try dogsledding. I’ve found that the hobbies we choose can affect who we are as people and how we lead others in our organizations.
What are your favorite quotes? There are two. The first is, “If you do what you’ve always done, then you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” The other is one attributed to Albert Einstein, I believe. It says, “The consciousness which creates the problem is incapable of solving that problem.”
What advice do you have for future nurse leaders? There can be an internal itch that makes us restless in our current roles. To me, that’s a signal that we are ready to try something new. There is seldom a mystery about what the next step should be. It’s usually a response to something in our lives at the time. So when that restlessness or itch starts to happen, it’s important to be sensitive to what’s going on in your life at the time. What is that restlessness saying about taking the next step in your career?
Deb, what would you like readers to take away from our interview? I would like for them to see me as an African American woman who was significantly influenced by my early teachers, mentors, and role models. It would be so easy for me to still be in my small town in the South, perhaps working at Wal-Mart. I would like for the readers to know how important they can be to others. My biggest lesson is to never think that something is beyond your reach. None of us wants to fail—no one wants that humiliation. That’s why we need that objective voice, the voices of those people who recognize our potential. Left on our own, we might dismiss real possibilities out of hand, seeing them as big risks or gambles we are afraid to take. It’s the rare individFebruary 2005
ual who can self-talk in ways that help them achieve all by themselves. The rest of us need an additional voice telling us, “Let’s go, I can help you.” It’s important that we be important to someone else. We have these leadership roles in life, and we don’t use them to the fullest. We do well in terms of the life of the organization, but the more meaningful piece is the life of the individual. People’s sense of community is different now; individuals are not connected to communities in the ways they used to be; for example, knowing and speaking with their neighbors. The workplace can address some of the changes in the larger social structure. The opportunities are there for us to help people in so many ways. I would like for nurse leaders who read this to look around and think about someone who works for them. Think about how much that person would love to have their attention and how much they could achieve if they had that attention. I would like for them to blink a bit and say, “Gee, I wonder…” and then I’d like for them to say to someone they see in this light, “Here, take my hand.” Catherine Robinson-Walker, MBA, is president of The Leadership Studio in Oakland, California. She can be reached at www.leadershipstudio.com. 1541-4612/2005/$ - see front matter Copyright 2005 by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.mnl.2004.11.006
Nurse Leader 13