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For this successful manager the practice of service grows out of her daily prayer.
Meg Clapp, director of the 250-person Pharmacy Department at the 900-bed Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, leads through spiritually based service.
Founded in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital boasts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, admits 45,000 inpatients annually, and has more than 19,500 employees. Its mission statement reads:
"To provide the highest quality care to individuals and to the local and distant communities we serve, to advance care through excellence in biomedical research, and to educate future academic and practice leaders of the health care professions."
While MGH has no explicit spiritual foundation, Clapp has not found that to be a barrier to living out her spiritually based servant leadership at work. For Clapp, the practice of service grows out of her Christian faith. She views her work and the work of her staff as God's work. Prayer forms the foundation of her service: her personal daily prayer, her weekly worship at her church, and prayer throughout the day at work. She knows that she needs to pray both when she's alone at work and when she's working with someone else.
What does Clapp's servant leadership look like in her day-to-day work? For Clapp, service is a way of life. First, her leadership role provides her with an opportunity to serve her employees. She seeks to provide an environment that brings out the best in the pharmacists and support staff in her department. Respect for others, fair treatment, caring and concern, listening responsively and regularly recognizing others' contributions are hallmarks of Clapp's leadership. Not only does she practice these herself, but she also creates a culture of these practices throughout the entire department.
Second, her leadership role provides her with an opportunity to serve patients and their families. This same culture that is cultivated in the department characterizes interactions with patients and their families, with physicians, and with other professionals, both by Clapp and by other members of her department.
Clapp also serves her employees by helping them grow. She works hard to cultivate a workplace for people to grow, with an eye toward long-term employment and professional success. Each employee also receives coaching: "We learned long ago that there are all different styles and paces of learning, and therefore we are obligated to coach employees for success."
In addition to training for skills, the training program builds relationships which serve the department well over time. The training buddy and mentor grow into trusting relationships, as does the cohort of people who go through the training together. The trust that grows through the training introduces new hires to the trusting culture of the department.
Currently, the department has committed itself to a "dignity and respect" initiative, agreeing to treat everyone in the department with dignity and respect. Recently Clapp used a "spiritual leadership" survey to complement the dignity and respect initiative, with an eye toward assessing the ethical and spiritual wellbeing of the management staff. She was delighted to learn that organizational commitment ranked high among her leadership colleagues, with statements like "I feel my organization appreciates me and my work" and "I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this organization" receiving consistently high ratings.
The survey also engendered further conversation about attributes it highlighted. For example, while Clapp had intended to erase the spiritual leadership model from her whiteboard after the completion of the survey, she found it useful in a subsequent meeting. A group of managers found themselves wrestling with how to address their "professional arrogance," which candidates for hire and new employees found offputting. Glancing at the whiteboard, one of the participants noticed "humility" as an attribute of the spiritual leadership model, and discussion ensued about how the leadership team could practice humility and what that behavior would look like in the workplace. From this discussion arose the practice of beginning every meeting with a statement from each person about one thing learned that week.
What are the results of Clapp's commitment to servant leadership in her department? Newcomers comment that the energy is palpable in the reception area, upon first entering the department. That intuitive sense is borne out in the department's low rate of turnover and absenteeism. The department's reputation is one of bright, competent professionals, well respected in the medical community, who regularly extend themselves for patients.
Recently Clapp completed her annual review, in which she received the highest grade for human resource management. Her practice of spiritually based service pays off, both in terms of employee morale and patient satisfaction.
Margaret Benefiel, Ph.D., author of "Soul at Work: Spiritual Leadership in Organizations," works with leaders in business, healthcare, government and non-profits to help them develop spiritual leadership. Visit her website at www.ExecutiveSoul.com .
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