{"id":19561,"date":"2014-03-14T15:15:30","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T19:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=19561"},"modified":"2014-09-26T16:23:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T20:23:07","slug":"leadership-tips-acquired-as-the-ceo-of-retirement-communities-with-multi-million-dollar-budgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2014\/leadership-tips-acquired-as-the-ceo-of-retirement-communities-with-multi-million-dollar-budgets\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership tips acquired as the CEO of retirement communities with multi-million-dollar budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raised on a family farm five miles west of what was then Eastern Mennonite College. Attended Rosedale Bible Institute for a year. Entered EMC to do pre-med<\/a>. Went to Japan for his junior year. Returned and switched to history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And ended up spending almost all of his professional life at the helm of retirement communities and nursing homes.<\/p>\n

The life of Bernie Bowman \u201972 is a testimony to the way a solid liberal arts education can be a springboard to almost anything.<\/p>\n

At EMU recently as a Suter Science Seminar speaker, Bowman titled his talk \u201cForty Years Post-EMU: Reflections on an Unexpected Career.\u201d<\/p>\n

That career basically turned out to be \u201cleadership.\u201d Bowman took his leadership journey within the world of senior living. His last 14 years of full-time leadership were as President\/CEO of Asbury, Inc<\/a>., overseeing six retirement communities affiliated with the United Methodist Church in east Tennessee and southwest Virginia.<\/p>\n

At age 66, eight years after stepping down as CEO, Bowman continues to work part-time at Asbury, focused on strategic planning and projects rather than operational matters. He and his wife Carol, class of \u201972, live in Maryville, Tenn.<\/p>\n

Bowman spoke of the epiphany of learning that \u201can individual working alone is severely limited in terms of potential outcomes,\u201d while one who gathers and coordinates the efforts of many toward a common goal will see that \u201cgreater things are possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

A key Bowman lesson regarding growth as a leader: \u201cBeg, borrow and steal from leadership journeys of others, those still practicing and those from eons past.\u201d One of his all-time favorite books is Robert Greenleaf\u2019s Servant Leadership<\/em> (republished as a 25th anniversary edition in 2002).<\/p>\n

In all cases and all times, \u201cleadership is not about getting ahead and gaining and keeping power.” Rather, it is about “empowering others to be all they can be.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIf others, in general, are not made more whole over time because of your leadership, then something is amiss.\u201d Bowman said a sign of poor leadership is a feedback style that interferes with a team\u2019s performance, rather than enabling it to be more skillful.<\/p>\n

Ten other leadership tips from Bowman:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Take seriously the adage \u201cknow thyself\u201d and explore \u201cvarious personality discovery exercises.\u201d Bowman found personality assessments especially worth revisiting when his leadership team changed.<\/li>\n
  2. Know that you are being closely watched by others in your organization, especially subordinates, and that you set the tone and establish the culture by which others live and work.<\/li>\n
  3. Solicit feedback, even while realizing that \u201cit is almost impossible for the CEO to get full and unfettered feedback from employees.\u201d Don\u2019t rely entirely on structured survey instruments; sometimes simply walking around and talking to people will draw out better feedback.<\/li>\n
  4. Be conversant regarding the work of employees. \u201cIf those you are leading and managing can feel that you understand their work, your authority will be better received.\u201d Bowman periodically would change places with an employee, or arrange for mutual job shadowing, just to stay abreast of the work of others.<\/li>\n
  5. Study and understand \u201cchange theory,\u201d so that you grasp the importance of \u201cbringing others along with the proposed change in advance of the change itself.\u201d There is always a price to be paid for change, but the price is lower if you do it this way.<\/li>\n
  6. Become sensitive to \u2013 inform yourself about \u2013 cultural differences when you shift work environments. Even a shift from one region of the United States to another can require a different approach to leadership, as Bowman discovered when he shifted from Iowa to an Appalachian region (east Tennessee).<\/li>\n
  7. Work at creating your own leadership style, and know how to adjust it to suit each distinctive group of workers and different work environments. Bowman recommended Management of Organizational Behavior<\/em> by Paul Hersey, Kenneth H. Blanchard and Dewey E. Johnson (10th edition, 2012) for gaining an understanding of an adaptive leadership style. “It is often more effective for the executive to change his or her style to meet the needs of others than to ask and expect employees to adapt to the executive\u2019s style.\u201d This requires having \u201cknowledge of, and experience with, a variety of leadership styles so you can flex with the situation.\u201d<\/li>\n
  8. Think of strategic planning as akin to a river. \u201cIt is always moving and constantly changing.\u201d<\/li>\n
  9. Don\u2019t hesitate to seek out executive coaching for assistance \u201cin learning the requisite attitude, behavior and skills needed to perform\u201d as well as possible. \u201cWe assume other staff need continuing support and training in their roles; why not CEOs?\u201d<\/li>\n
  10. Expect to sometimes fall short or even fail over the course of a long career: \u201cThe fact is, sometimes one can exercise the best of leadership skills and still not be successful.\u201d In such situations, it is time to “let go” and follow an alternate path.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In summary, Bowman advised his listeners to start with \u201ca solid base in theory and concepts,\u201d then live, experience and adapt these in one\u2019s workplace. In so doing, the exercise of leadership will become \u201can act of natural self-expression.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Raised on a family farm five miles west of what was then Eastern Mennonite College. Attended Rosedale Bible Institute for a year. Entered EMC to do pre-med. Went to Japan ... read more about Leadership tips acquired as the CEO of retirement communities with multi-million-dollar budgets<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":19564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,5583,14184,5623,5640,7682],"tags":[6544,16508,10207],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-19561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-campus-community","category-campus-guests","category-special-programs","category-suter-science-center","category-suter-science-seminar","tag-asbury-united-methodist-church","tag-history-department","tag-pre-med"],"yoast_head":"\nLeadership tips acquired as the CEO of retirement communities with multi-million-dollar budgets - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2014\/leadership-tips-acquired-as-the-ceo-of-retirement-communities-with-multi-million-dollar-budgets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leadership tips acquired as the CEO of retirement communities with multi-million-dollar budgets - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Raised on a family farm five miles west of what was then Eastern Mennonite College. 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