Nonprofits
Patience is a virtue
How to add a personal touch to your business
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business Pittsburgh | April 2009
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Bobbi Jo Haden, executive director
Friendship Village of South Hills
With 230 employees and more than 400 older adults under her care at Friendship Village of South Hills, Bobbi Jo Haden has a lot of responsibilities to juggle.
“You have to be a very patient person to work in this environment,” she says of the life-care retirement community.
To practice patience, Haden slows down her busy schedule to devote personal attention to employees and residents alike. From handwritten notes to working alongside her staff, the personable Haden demonstrates how much she cares for individuals at the nonprofit, which reported 2008 revenue of nearly $19 million.
Smart Business spoke with Haden about how to make the time to get to know your employees and become a patient leader.
Q. What’s the first step to becoming a patient leader?
Leaders are being asked to do more with less. And they put themselves under time constraints: ‘This meeting can only last 20 minutes, and then I have X, Y and Z to do.’
Well, being patient doesn’t put yourself on a time frame. Granted, that meeting may take longer than you anticipated, but in the long run, it’s going to save you a whole lot of time.
So you can’t shortcut through your messages, and you can’t put yourself on such a tight time constraint that you actually are limiting your potential as well as the message that you’re delivering.
Q. How do you make time for your employees?
We’ve gotten so caught up in the technology age — e-mail, phones, cell phones, pagers — that we don’t communicate like we used to. How hard is it to drop a note? I would venture to say that most leaders don’t take the time to write a thank-you note to a staff member that performed very well. They may send an e-mail, or they may say thank you. But drop a card.
(The residents), they write notes all the time, and they send notes to me saying, ‘I just want you to know that this person … ’ and so on. (I tell the employee), ‘I received this note from such-and-such resident. You went above and beyond. We want to thank you.’ I post it on the bulletin board so all the residents see it, all of the employees see it.
It’s important to do that, and that’s something that we got away from. I find myself sending an e-mail to someone who’s right next door to my office, or we’re calling or sending a text. We have all these methods of communication but what do most businesses still complain about? Communication.
There’s more ways to communicate today than ever before, but it’s still a problem in any organization. So taking the time to be personable, it goes a long way.
I send birthday cards annually to each employee and write a personal note. The card not only wishes them a happy birthday but also expresses appreciation for their work, dedication and services they provide.
