Christine was my manager for 12 years. In the year 2000, she contacted me in my previous job inviting me to be part of a group setting up a new employment service to help people experiencing mental health conditions. We started working together at Workways some 18 months later: it was a role she created especially for me. In the years that followed I got to know someone who saw potential in everyone. She was totally dedicated to her staff both professionally and personally. I am not alone in the fact that we worked together, laughed together and cried together. I am not alone in the fact that without her I would not being working in such a innovative, dedicated and supportive team. Without her, I would not have found my vocation. Without her, there would not have been Mindful Employer, developing as it did from a small local idea in to an UK-wide and international initiative. Without her, I would not have got an MSc. Without her, I would not have been appointed an MBE.
A month after she took early retirement in 2014, Christine was diagnosed with cancer. A couple of years later she rendered me speechless by asking if I would take her funeral. The greatest honour there is. To accompany someone and those who love them on that final journey. Just over two weeks ago Christine died. And today I took her funeral.
Christine demonstrated many of those attributes of leadership that I considered in the previous blog. She led from within. She accepted questions, doubts and mistakes. She listened, taught, affirmed and, yes, corrected – you always knew where you stood with Christine. She did lots of things we never knew about and equipped people to do even more. Christine was in it for others. It was an honour to have known her.
By her own admission, Christine was an atheist. As mentioned last time, Christians don’t have the monopoly on good attributes and good works and what I, and many others, saw and received from her was both humbling and honouring.
In the New Testament there are two letters written by the apostle Peter. In the first one he advocates that we are to ‘honour everyone’ (1 Peter 2:17) and quoting from the Old Testament book of Proverbs, ‘to clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”’ (1 Peter 5:5; Proverbs 3:34).
We’ll explore the attributes of honouring others and humility in some posts in the New Year. But for the moment as John Baldoni put it, ‘Humility is an approach to life that says, “I don’t have all the answers and I want your contribution.”’
That was Christine.