On his first day on the job as a chaplain resident in a major hospital, Steve Cuss was touring the facility with his supervisor. As they were finishing the tour, Steve’s pager started buzzing. So did his anxiety.
What Do I Do Now?
His supervisor told him, “That’s the code team. You need to go.”
Someone’s heart had stopped.
And here, verbatim, is full extent of the preparation he was given as a chaplain.
He asked his supervisor, “What do I do now?”
“It will be interesting to find out, won’t it?” was his reply.
Steve though he must be kidding but he was serious. He waited a few seconds and then asked,
“But what if I make a mistake?”
“You are going to make hundreds of them this year.”
On My Own
And with that pep talk he was on his own. A few minutes later he was in the intensive care waiting lounge and everybody was looking at him because they did not know what to do.
Inside the room there were more than a dozen family members, most of them screaming, and four or five doctors and nurses trying to calm them.
One woman was banging her head against the wall in a rhythm while wailing loudly. Another was leaning over a trash can and heaving and vomiting. One person was wildly swinging her arms in the air as if trying to punch the grief away. Some people were groaning, some were screaming at the top of their lungs, and hyperventilating. It was a sheer onslaught of volume and guttural sounds that are indescribable.
The Chaplain Who Didn’t Know
The family’s matriarch had suddenly died on the surgery table from complications and the nurses brought the family into the Death Room to give them the news.
Three minutes later Steve turned up. Within moments all the white coats were gone, leaving Steve alone with the wailing and flailing.
It turns out the white coats had thought to themselves, At least the chaplain is here. He’ll know what to do.
Steve knew they eyes of other families in the lounge were on him. What was he to do?
You may be thinking that his supervisor did a horrible job in preparing Steve. But he knew something Steve didn’t know: no one can prepare you for this. There is no manual, there is no procedure. All you can do is face it, manage yourself, and respond as situations arise.
He realized his mistake was thinking he could control any aspect of the situation.
Takeaways From 22 Years
What Steve’s trainers knew was that if they put a person who was open to learning in a trauma environment for a year and helped that person process how she or he showed up, that person would develop self-awareness and become a powerful pastoral presence in the face of massive grief and anxiety.
Steve filled a book with takeaways from his twenty-two year career in trauma care. He attended more than 250 deaths. He sat with cancer patients, trauma patients, burn victims, and held stillborn babies. 
The concepts in his book do not require formal training or particular personality, they simply require some courage to look under the surface and the desire to break free from chronic patterns and triggers.
We tend to think that leaders burnout because of being overloaded and overwhelmed. We’re puzzled when we reduce a leaders workload without alleviating his or her distress.
My biggest aha moment was a chapter one quote:
“Burnout has less to do with workload and more to do with internal and external leadership anxiety.”
Leaders get anxious when we don’t know what to do. We feel stupid. When we feel stupid, we feel exposed.
We tend to hide our insecurity with certainty and confidence. We speak in absolutes even when we’re not sure just so we can appear to be in charge.
Leadership is vulnerable; it exposes a leader’s blind spot and shadow.
Discoveries
Steve discovered:
that paying attention to what is going on under the surface is an effective spiritual growth tool.
almost all the times he spoke it was to quell his own anxiety, not serve orthers.
when we are tired, under stress, anxious, or feeling threatened, our tendency is to depend on ourselves rather than on God.
effective leadership involves not only self-awareness but group awareness and orther awareness.
if you can learn some family systems theory, you can lead in an entirely different gear than you’re leading in now.
Steve’s book is worth the money and time to read it.
Get your copy on Amazon.
If you’re read the book, please join the conversation below and post a comment. Thank you.
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