Get In The Game

Episode 65:  The Consultant

Trapper:   Major, I’m John McIntyre.  This is Hawkeye Pierce
Borelli:   [shaking hands] Anthony Borelli.  The rank is  
           honorary. I’m here as a civilian medical consultant.
Trapper:   You here to tell us everything you know?
Borelli: Should take about 10 minutes.  I’m looking forward to 
           meeting you at the lectures.
Trapper: We’re not coming.
Borelli:   There are some very fine doctors who’ve come a long way 
           to discuss new surgical techniques
Hawkeye: Major, we’re from a MASH unit three to four miles from 
           the front.
Trapper: You ever been to Korea doctor? [no] You’d love it.  
Hawkeye: I’ll tell you what doc.  You wanna really be useful over 
           here?  Stop hanging out in the cosy locker room in 
           Tokyo.  If you and your pals want to really get in the 
           game, come out to a MADH unit or an aid station.

Hawkeye and Trapper attend a medical conference where they meet a civilian consult.  After challenging him to leave the comfort of Tokyo, the consultant visits the 4077th and teaches the surgeons how to do an arterial transplant.

I must confess that I have a love hate relationship with consultants.  On the one hand, I have worked in roles where I have benefitted greatly from the wisdom of professionals and practitioners in their respective fields.  On the other hand, I have sat in training sessions with consultants who have lectured with knowledge divorced from actual experience.  The consultants who have the most credibility, in my estimation, and who have brought the most value to my leadership are those who have taught from applied knowledge rather than theoretical knowledge.  When knowledge and experience converge there is a powerful synergy of success and failure that provides a grounded platform for learning.  When I can look into the eyes of a consultant and know that they too have been in the game and have emerged out of the other side with well-informed insights, I am ready and eager to learn!

Paralysed By Failure

Episode 61:  Mad Dogs And Servicemen

Frank:     That man is a psycho and for some perverted reason these two want to play games with him.

Hawkeye:    We are just following Sid Freedman’s advice.

Trapper:    You get a soldier who has hysterical paralysis and you treat him as though he is really paralysed and he’ll become sick just to rationalise the guilt of leaving his buddies at the front.

Hawkeye:    Sid feels if you take a patient like that back to a nice clean hospital it just deepens the guilt.  You send him home and it sets it in concrete. 

Trapper:    Yeah, he has been treating his patients as close to the front as possible with the idea that they will return to their unit.

Hawkeye:    Otherwise, they get sent stateside and one moment’s failure on the battlefield becomes a lifetime disability.

A GI is brought in by ambulance suffering from hysterical paralysis. Hawkeye attempts to treat him with a new method being used by Psychiatrist Sidney Freedman, against the protests of Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan who question his condition.

I am sure most of us understand what it means ‘to be paralysed by fear’; to be so terrified of something, real or perceived, that you are unable to move.  Imagine being paralysed by failure; to be crippled by your mistakes to the point where you can no longer function.  This is a critical condition for any leader because failure comes with the territory! Identifying “failure as an indispensable, irreplaceable part of learning and growth,” John Ortberg stresses “failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.”  So, you can choose to allow failure to paralyse you or propel you towards new discoveries.  Don’t allow a moment of failure become a lifetime of disability.