Leadership

Whatever job you have, movies you watch, organization you belong to, or family you are in, there is a leader. Sometimes it's you. Sometimes the leader is someone else. Sometimes you share the responsibility or you lead while being under another person's guidance.

You get the point.

Today I started thinking about some stuff. I know, sketchy situation, but it happened.

I was Googling conferences and retreats to go to, when I started thinking about the various conferences and retreats I've been to.

There is a leader who has the idea. They enlist the help of others to help get this idea off the ground. Those people then begin to pick subjects, dates, locations, and the millions of other details that go into such an event. The speakers start to carefully choose the subject matter and words they want to use, and work it over and over until it's "just right".

All of this to say that I feel woefully unprepared to be a leader. I don't feel like I can be a leader for a bible study (the one that I am presently doing). Nor do I feel that I could lead at a church, or at work, or anywhere else. I feel unprepared and subpar.

The thing that I have learned about leaders is that they have often walked some rough roads and learned some really difficult lessons. This isn't always the case, but occurs often. Good leaders need to be able to listen to and respect those they are called to lead. This helps them to be effective and *usually* respected. Leaders typically have some type of wonderful lessons that they teach others, whether on purpose or inadvertently.

We look to leaders to know what to do. To burden the responsibility of decision making so that we can carry out orders without bad outcomes being our fault. We want reassurance or gentle guidance to help us in our quest to fulfill our goals. We want someone to give us tasks to complete in order to help us feel like we have purpose and meaning in what we are doing.

We want someone to have the idea, to carry out a great deal of legwork, and then to present to us an idea that is interesting to us, so that we can partake of the benefits. I do it. I want someone to research the things I am interested in, put it in a pleasing format, and then provide me with the invitation to decide whether I want to hear the info or not. (i.e. Invitations to conferences, with speakers talking on subjects they have studied for years that have piqued my interest. But I want the choice to say no.)



The problem here, and the reason I am writing this post is because I feel people keep shoving me into "leadership" kinds of positions. Sometimes I shove myself into said position. Sometimes there is just a huge push from others. Then, however, I get into said position and flounder. At which pint I get told that it was not the right time. It was too soon. It was wrong.

I know it's not good to simply do things because someone else is telling me to do it, but sometimes we are supposed to follow another person's guidance in order to start something.

I get frustrated because there are times when it seems G-d is calling me to do something. Without telling anyone else about this, I get a friend or family member who encourages me to do this something. So, I do it but it was wrong.

Then I'm left feeling like a fool. I want to climb in a hole, cry myself to sleep, and proceed to not have to wake up. Yeah, this is a bit dramatic for the minute-ness of the situation and I can see that. I also know that I'm not actually going to crawl in a hole and die. For some stupid reason, I keep waking up. Day after day, week after week, month after month. For YEARS. It hasn't stopped me in the last 24+ years. Sometimes I sleep the day away, but there are moments of being awake in there.

The shame of failures does not keep me from going on about my day. It doesn't keep me from talking to the family and friends who shame me, unnecessarily. It doesn't cause me to miss work, or to hide out in bed (unless I don't have anything scheduled that particular day.)



I am, by no means, a leader. I have no desire for the responsibility and I am woefully unprepared.

Somebody please remind me of this when I think to try some type of leadership role in the future. Be the one to save me from humiliation. Somebody be the one to snap me back to my senses and keep me from the pits of self-inflicted troubles. Good gosh, I'm a fool.

Info Blockage

A problem I have run across, and recently discovered the other new girls are experiencing as well, is that there is a lack of communication to the newbies.

Depending on who we talk to, we are given 15 different answers to the same question that we didn't have until someone told us we needed to do something different.

I was called in for 2 extra shifts one week, and they were day shifts. So I missed the night/weekend differential that I would normally get, and I worked an extra day that week. Normally, when we get called in for a shift that was not scheduled, we get an extra $250 for that shift because we came in when we weren't expecting to. I didn't know that until I ran in to night shift nurses that told me to ask about it. I asked about it and was denied the money because somebody in HR decided that I was working my "normal" shifts, just switched times. Okay, when you get called to come in at 0630, in order to be there at 0700, that's called GETTING CALLED IN. That is not a normal shift. Then getting texted at 1130 p.m. that night to come in for another day shift, that was not scheduled, is also not normal. Somewhere, there is a disconnect and I suspect it lies with the charge nurse that called me in for both shifts...

A few days ago, I got called in at 1901 (7:01 p.m., and shortly after the start of the night shift) to come in and go to the pediatrics floor. I got an email saying that I got the $250 for that shift, for some reason.

I emailed our DON, but the way it was explained makes little to no sense and I think HR doesn't understand what happened and all of the charge nurses that we keep having during these situation are charge nurses that don't normally act as charge so they aren't used to the strange problems that occur, like random call-in pay.



Besides this, I learned that I wasn't supposed to get floated the other night when I went to be a patient sitter. I learned this from a few other charge nurses that are normally charge nurses. I didn't even know it was a rule that I'm not supposed to get floated for 6 months!!!



One of the other new girls is struggling with the rules too. We have a little paper you can sign, then sign up for an extra shift or two within a pay period. IF you sign this paper, sign up for the shifts, and get to work all of you scheduled and extra shifts, then you get $400 each of the extra shifts (1-2 per pay period). Score! Right? Thing is, you can work all of your scheduled and extra shifts, but if you are given a low census for even one shift that pay period, the extra money is denied and all of the extra shifts you worked count as regular pay. So, it's a bit of a gamble, but the risk is way lower when we are in summer and there are tons of babies on the unit and everyone is working 3-4 extra shifts a week.

The new girl got told she needed to sign up for these extra pay shifts, without being told the stipulation of how to not get the extra money. She was volun-told to stay home one night (after she had already arrived to work), even though there were other girls who had wanted to stay home and she wanted to work. So, she found out that she does not get her extra money and that all of her extra work days were a waste because they called her off.



A similar charge nurse surfaces amidst all of these troubles, but I don't want to go starting troubles where there were none. I'm not going to fight my aunt on the extra pay days, but I might go ask her if all of us new girls could be given information on all of the rules and extra things that we are supposed to do with our jobs because the information that we are not being told is coming back to bite us all in the ass.



Speaking of which, we have these blood tests that get sent to another lab. When sending the tests, we have to fill out some form with a bunch of info about the kid we are testing. Nobody ever told me that it couldn't be done in blue ink, and could only be written in black ink. We got a mass email and signs up ALL OVER THE UNIT specifying that the form must be written in black and yada, yada, yada. I know people probably don't know it was me, but they might. Everyone knows I'm new, so I'm not too concerned about it. Still, I'm irritated for getting shamed for things that we were never taught.

Whatever, I'm pretty much just rolling with it. I certainly don't get nearly as embarrassed as I used to. This is another unfortunate side effect of being constantly humiliated by exfiance, exboyfriend, and several other people who used to be friends and are now confused as to why I don't talk to them anymore. It's a mystery really.*** (*Heavy sarcasm there*)