Page 176 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ARE GREAT LISTENERS

“It was a major chore of his to get the allocations done before the end
of his term, so I got very involved in it. Secretary Andrus was determined
to do the right thing as trustee of the Native American lands,” Northern
explained. “He listened to these three competing interests, all of which had
strong claims to the water. Certainly at that time the municipal and the
agricultural interests were much more powerful politically than the Native
American interests. The easy way would have been to not push for ground-
water reform and to make large allocations to the cities and to the farmers
and give less to the politically powerless Native American interests. But that’s
not the direction the secretary took. After listening to all the arguments,
he upped the allocations to the Native Americans. In Arizona there was a
sense that the recommendations favored the Native Americans more than
they should have, but it was important to Secretary Andrus that we do the
right thing anyway, as the trustee of the Native American lands.”
Every week Andrus would host staff meetings that began at 8 a.m.
During the winter, before the assistant secretaries, undersecretaries, and
key staff people arrived, Andrus would come in early to start a cozy fire in
the fireplace. The group would gather around it, and Andrus would start the
meeting by asking each person to speak out and tell him his or her concerns,
ideas, triumphs—whatever they wanted to share.
“I knew that he might have a different opinion about what those
assistant secretaries were saying, but he always listened with respect and
conducted himself at all times like the Secretary of the Interior should,”
Northern said. “He developed an atmosphere in which everyone could
speak out with the assurance that he would listen, and that made him
extremely effective. I took his lessons to heart and have used them many
times since returning to Louisville, Kentucky, after my Fellowship. They
were especially helpful to me when I worked on a complex project to merge
two large health care organizations in Louisville: the Jewish Hospital and
the largest Catholic hospital system in the state, Caritas Health Care. It
was a fascinating and challenging venture to merge those two organizations
with significantly different cultures, but we were able to put together what
is now known as the Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s Health Care System.
There’s no doubt many of the lessons I learned during my White House
Fellows year helped me rise to that challenge.” Because of his community
involvement in projects such as the health care organization merger,
Northern was named Louisville’s Community Leader of the Year in 2007.

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