{"id":384,"date":"2018-06-03T23:41:08","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T03:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/?p=384"},"modified":"2018-06-03T23:41:08","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T03:41:08","slug":"relationship-focused-culture-at-st-jude-childrens-research-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/2018\/06\/03\/relationship-focused-culture-at-st-jude-childrens-research-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"Relationship Focused Culture at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

So much of what St. Jude does and is is centered around relationships. \u00a0The day this became the most apparent to me was my third day of work at the quarterly Town Hall meeting held by the CEO of ALSAC, Rick Shadyac. \u00a0To start off the meeting, a mother of a patient came over from the hospital to share her story of her journey to St. Jude.\u00a0 At one point, she disclosed the fact that Mr. Shadyac had brought her daughter double stuffed oreos after one of her tougher treatments. <\/span><\/p>\n

After the introduction, Mr. Shadyac updated the employees on different statistics, projects and advancements that happened in the past year. \u00a0Every time he mentioned one of these, he made a point to call out the people that made the project possible. The recognition builds a relationship and makes the person feel like the work they are doing is important. \u00a0This type of recognition could be a type of carrot and could play in to his use of transactional leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was also at this meeting that I saw his transformational leadership style first-hand. \u00a0After giving the updates on the company, Rick Shadyac went off script to make a statement about diversity and inclusion. \u00a0St. Jude was the first hospital of it\u2019s kind and opened its doors in 1962 to people of all races, religions and backgrounds and to people all over the world. \u00a0He began his talk with the recent issues that Starbucks had and wanted us to know that we don\u2019t have to close down for a day to talk about diversity and inclusion because it is part of the conversation every day. \u00a0He also recognized his privilege and the fact that he is white and no one would call the police if he fell asleep or was sitting at Starbucks, but that he strives to make sure that he understands and attempts to keep the conversation open and promote inclusion and diversity because he understands the value in that. \u00a0Another thing he did was challenge his employees with the power to hire people of different cultures, as he attempts to do. He told us that he understands that not everyone will have the same point of view as him and that that is ok. But this is the legacy that he wants to leave on the company while he is in a position of power \u201cas long as they will have him\u201d because it is \u201cthe right thing to do.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

ALSAC\/St. Jude is a non-profit organization, but also a $1 billion dollar organization and fortune 500 company. \u00a0To see the CEO of such a large organization calling people out by name and opening up a space for conversation was amazing. \u00a0After his rant, the floor was opened for a Q&A session. Multiple different people stood up to comment on how blessed they feel to have a leader who is attempting to make us comfortably uncomfortable and to open the conversation about inequality and diversity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another woman stood up to thank him for opening the conversation and for being such a good person. He then launched in to a story about <\/span>her<\/span><\/i> and how he had actually seen the woman go well above and beyond her duties to become close with a family that had learned their child was not going to make it. \u00a0She went on errands for them, headed to the hospital after her work as done for the day and comforted the family when the time came. The story speaks to the relationship oriented organization and how Rick\u2019s values of going out of the way to form relationships has permeated into the values of his employees. \u00a0I believe a large part of the success of the organization is due to the group trust in and admiration for their leader, allowing him to accomplish his job effectively and efficiently.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not only is this happening in ALSAC, but on the hospital side as well starting with the research. \u00a0We were able to tour a lab where they were doing research on kidney cancer cells and the thing that stood out to me the most was that the doctor told us that St. Jude and ultimately medicine in general is taking a turn towards patient centered treatment. \u00a0Doctors now are able to do a scan of the patient’s genome to understand which drugs will react best with the persons system which is truly amazing when you think about it. Well before arriving I knew St. Jude\u2019s mission was to \u201ceradicate cancer for all children everywhere.\u201d And so many people talk about finding a cure to end cancer. \u00a0What is marvelous to me is that as a society, we finally realized that the way to effectively eradicate cancer for <\/span>everyone <\/span><\/i>is to understand and recognize that everyone is different. \u00a0One medicine and one form of treatment is not going to work for every body type, ethnicity, etc. or in every culture. \u00a0It\u2019s amazing that as an organization that is and has been particularly forward focused in the shift away from the commodification and denationalization of treatment. When we care about <\/span>people <\/span><\/i>that is when change happens. \u00a0To be working for an organization that understands that at such a deep level and works to promote relationships on every level even down to the way the hospital is designed is inspiring. <\/span><\/p>\n

I learned all of this about the organization from being there for one week, so I cannot wait to see what I learn in the coming weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So much of what St. Jude does and is is centered around relationships. \u00a0The day this became the most apparent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[76609,76607,76611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leaderfollower-relationships","category-organizational-culture","category-theories-in-action"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}