The health care leader’s job is to take care of the people who take care of people. – Erie Chapman
The secret of great health care leadership isn’t a secret. It’s perhaps the best advice I’ve ever offered to managers who seek to do their work well: Take care of the people who take care of people."
Love 
the first line caregivers. These are the one’s who give care. Most executives (fortunately) don’t look after patients. They often lack the skills and their calling is to lead. The best way to model care giving is to serve the servers.
This is what Jesus modeled for us when he knelt down to wash the feet of his disciples (see painting by Ford Madox Brown, circa 1852.) Whether you are Christian or not, you can see the power in Jesus’ example. Leaders can talk endlessly about humility. But the best leaders teach by modeling the behavior that they seek from their staff….
Rev. Becca Stevens, (see photo) founder and head of the Magdalene charity in Nashville,
adopted a literal
expression of the footwashing ritual which she does periodically with staff and members of her o
rganization. She also models
caregiving in the organization by constantly urging staff to care for themselves and by consistently offering them the best leadership presence she can. As a result, Magdalene, with astonishing recovery rates among the former prostitutes and drug addicts who come to them for care, has become one of the most successful charities of its type anywhere in the country.
The first example of loving leadership I saw was in the actions of my late father (see photo) during his many years as a YMCA general secretary.
He got out there with his
staff and helped them deliver services to
kids. He led classes in calisthentics, helped clean toilets,
cleared brush and picked up trash at Y camps, and set an example of health, energy, caring and integrity for his staff and 
everyone who knew him. In 1990, in recognition of his example of loving leadership, he was elected to the YMCA Hall of Fame.
I discovered the secret of effective healthcare leadership while working at the old Riverside Hospital in Toledo (now called St. Ann.) in 1975. As a new Vice President with some departments to run, I was a complete novice in healthcare, having spent the previous seven years as a trial lawyer. I was used to taking care of my clients. Untrained as a clinician, I wondered who I was supposed to take care of in the hospital. Suddenly, a Code Blue was announced over the hospital PA system. Someone was having a heart attack. Instinctively (if not wisely) I jumped up from my chair and began racing down the hallway toward the site of the Code. Halfway there, I slowed my pace, stopped, and turned around. As a lawyer, what the devil was I going to do at a Code Blue? Write someone’s last will and testament?
It was then that the idea began to emerge. I had several hospital departments reporting to me including housekeeping, dietary and maintenance. I’ve always admired the work people in these area do. It involves tiring and repetitive task work to do the job well. I realized that these were my new clients. Their work is meaningful and sacred. These were the people I needed to look after with love. I want to emphasize that this kind of leadership must be done with sincere intention. The truth, for me, is that I love the regular staff in hospitals. I love how hard they work for low paychecks, I love how they usually get along with each other and identify with the pain of patients, I love how they commit to their work with (usually) very little recognition. I love the humility I so often see among this group of caregivers.
Take care of the people who take care of people. It’s amazing how simple this leadership "secret" seems to be. Yet I see it practiced infrequently by leaders in charities and hospitals across America. Leaders have a dangerous tendency to get carried away with their power and position. I’ve sometimes fallen victim to this mistake myself. Caught up with some of the exalted sounding titles I’ve held, I’ve let myself hide too many times in the relative comfort of my office instead of spending the maximum time out on the floors where the real caregiving is taking place.
Debi Villines, a former nursing leader at Nashville’s Baptist Hospital, handed us a great line one day when she was talking about the relative unimportance of executives. "The hospital really starts in the ER and on the second floor," she said. "What executives do doesn’t really matter to most caregivers."
She’s right. And in her wisdom is also an invitation to leaders. If you want your work to matter, get out of your office, put on the clothing of first line caregivers, work alongside them as often as your schedule permits.
Take care of the people who take care of people and you will be performing the best service a healthcare leader can provide.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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