By Frances Hesselbein 

Major General Randall Fullhart and I were met in Colorado Springs by my aides, Captain Emily Bulger and Cadet Katherine Dials for the 17th Annual National Character and Leadership Symposium, Guardians of Trust: Leaders in the Modern Era, where I was invited to speak. 

The Mission of the United States Air Force Academy is to educate, train, and inspire men and women to become officers of character, motivated to lead the United States Air Force in service to our nation. 

While touring the Academy Visitors Center with Cadet Olsowski, who happened to be a proud Brownie Troop leader, I learned that a cadet’s first year begins in June with six weeks of Basic Cadet Training called “BCT.” At the end of BCT, cadets receive their shoulder boards signifying acceptance into the Cadet Wing and the official start of their freshman year. 

The Symposium was kicked off with Superintendent Lt General Mike Gould and the Cadet Rifle Team. There were more than 700 participants from all three sectors. 

Judith Registre, the Director of Policy and Outreach at Women for Women International, UK, was a featured speaker. She has spent the last eight years doing field work in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa and Sudan. 

 

 

 

By Peter Fragale

The call came in from an excited new father. “I have a new baby boy!” the dad said to Linda Spiegel at Margaret Tietz Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, a member of Beth Abraham Family of Health Services (BAFHS). 

“Wonderful!” she replied. “So how can I help you?” 

“We’d like to know if, next week, we can have the traditional Jewish bris ceremony and reception inside your facility so that Great Grandma “Bubbe” can be there to celebrate with us. It wouldn’t be the same without her.” 

Spiegel said yes without a moment’s hesitation. A week later, after hours of planning and preparation, the ancient Jewish tradition – complete with kosher refreshments for 

200 invited guests – went off without at hitch.  

At BAFHS, we celebrate and treasure everyone’s diverse backgrounds and experiences.

 

Margaret Tietz is just one example of the dedication to diversity reflected in all BAFHS facilities. At our Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation Jamaica Adult Day Health Care program, Director Sheva Turk ordered Rosetta Stone language-learning software and told interested staff members that they could use late-day work time to learn Spanish, in order to better serve their many registrants who are native Spanish speakers. More than half the staff, including Turk herself, immediately signed up to participate. 

At BAFHS’ various Comprehensive Care Management (CCM) facilities, daily activities, the music playing on the speakers and the food reflect local populations. Visitors can play dominoes at one site and do Tai Chi at another. There is even a Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) site serving the Dominican Sisters of Amityville. The program is sensitive to the Sisters’ religious traditions, while also catering to the health care needs of members from the community. In Chinatown, a quilting program mingles Spanish- and Chinese-speaking patients. Many of the women in both ethnic groups had worked in the garment industry, so they started quilting together and have now produced several quilts. These women have grown very close and are a cohesive group now, all without sharing any spoken language. 

Diversity even comes home through Best Choice Home Health Care, also a member of BAFHS. Clients are able to speak with the central office in any of numerous languages, and home health aides speak the languages they are comfortable with – from Algerian and Chinese to Russian and Spanish. Aides take specific in-service trainings focusing on Diversity in the Home, receive special recipes and learn to cook in different styles to create meals that home-bound clients from different backgrounds will all say “taste like home.” 

The variety of our clients is mirrored by the diversity of our own programs and services as well as our staff.  BAFHS offers home care, skilled nursing and rehabilitation, adult day health care, managed care, music therapy, HIV/AIDS care, senior housing, and training for home health aides, among other specialties.  Our employees speak about 72 different languages and dialects.  This multitalented workforce has been our key to success when it comes to providing high quality healthcare to diverse groups of people.

 

 

By Debbe Kennedy  

 

Invictus is an uplifting true story about Nelson Mandela's remarkable leadership. You get a front row seat to witness a leader as he invites a nation to EXPERIENCE the "end he has in mind" he holds for their rise to greatness. Morgan Freeman received a well-deserved nomination for a Golden Globe and also an Oscar for his portrayal of South African President Nelson Mandela—a role, reportedly, Mandela himself chose for Mr. Freeman. It is moving and memorable.

 

It seems during a time when so much is messed up in both business and society, INVICTUS should be required watching for all leaders and aspiring leaders and anyone interested in creating a better world and society than we know today. Although, the movie chronicles a sports event, it is about something far bigger and richer—it is about people struggling and questioning one another. Kicking and screaming at first, but coming around again. Coming together. Doing their part. Lifting themselves up and everyone and everything around them. Experiencing the miracle that comes when we UNITE in a kind of oneness that suits our humanity well. As I watched, I flashed on times in my life and work, when I felt this same rush. A few of those were flashbacks from my career at IBM when a team of us reached inside ourselves to do something far greater than we thought was possible.

 

Before watching the film, I wished I had known both the words of the poem by heart and the story behind it. 

 

INVICTUS by William Ernest Henley, 1875 

 

 

  

 

LEADERSHIP LESSONS TO SHARE

 

I wrote down three lessons that were validated in this timely film...

 

1. SEE DIFFERENCES DIFFERENTLY. Master seeing DIFFERENCES differently so you can see through the eyes of those who are essential to CHANGE—especially, if they are your "enemies." Understanding what matters to them and genuinely caring about it is important. It sets you free to authentically do your important work.

 

2. INVEST IN KNOWING YOUR PEOPLE. If you want people to follow you, teaching them to believe in themselves first makes it easier. To do this, invest in knowing and caring about who they are. Then demonstrate mutual trust and respect with every day-to-day opportunity afforded to you.

 

3. THE POWER OF "THE EXPERIENCE." Helping people experience "the end in mind"—even for a short while—makes it easier to take the leader's vision to the next level, step-by-step. It shows people they are in charge of their destiny.

 

"It always seems impossible until it is done." -Nelson Mandela

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Original oil painting by Sally K. Green . 

 

  

By Tamara Woodbury

 

Girls are the most hopeful solution to growing social and economic challenges throughout the world. Girls and women accomplish nearly 70 percent of the human work efforts that not only sustain families, our civil societies as well as our economies. Unleashing the potential of girls is the pathway to shifting the patterns of inequality and incivility in virtually every community around the globe not just those in developing countries. Research is clear that in societies where women and girls are oppressed and underutilized the economy also suffers. This makes girls the most powerful and underutilized resource available to humankind.  

Last summer, one New York Times article captured both the various facets and importance of investing in girls. The Women’s Crusade by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is actually several stories within a story. Staggering statistics of genocide based on gender. Profiles of individual girls and women who overcame abuse, poverty, lack of education, societal stigma—enormous odds—then improved their own lives and lives of those around them. 

 

The Girl Effect is a movement that began several years ago to illustrate the magnified return on investment when girls are educated and supported to take their place as leaders in society. I encourage you to watch this video, which parallels two lives: the first, a girl who lives in poverty, following in the footsteps of generations of women before her; the second illustrates the life of an educated girl, investing her earnings in a cow to feed her family, expanding the herd, and sharing the profits with her community members, who are able to learn and follow her example. The exponential effect, over time, can change (save) the world.

 

In a separate but related blog, Kristof announced the Half the Sky Competition, soliciting stories from readers who have had an experience of needs of girls and women in countries around the world. Also invited were solutions – simple actions that build on the capacities of women and girls in their communities. In the multitude of responses, there was one that said, “I live in a Third World country. You know it as Detroit.” The author, Frances Saad, goes on to discuss the plight of the impoverished in the United States of America and question why it seems less in vogue to recognize and address poverty here, rather than in countries that are readily accepted as “third world.” Her question is timely. This is why some of us have gathered to bring voice, attention and organization to a movement called The Girl Effect USA.

 

While the illustration of the original Girl Effect video, set in a third world country, is perfectly clear, it is much more difficult to see The Girl Effect in a wealthy nation like the USA. Few American girls will begin their gainful employment raising cows.  Yet, millions of American girls are oppressed in myriad ways, from situations of abuse and the trafficking of them for sexual exploitation to being socialized to believe their value is largely set their sights low and see their value focused on how they look – their beauty, rather than who they are and what they can accomplish. The Girl Effect USA proposes that the erosion of civil society in the USA must be addressed and that girls are the solution here, too.  

 

The power of women and girls is ancient and universal, and we can no longer afford to squander the potential of their full contribution to the health and well being of our families, communities and economies.