By Donna M. Bergman

February 11, 2027

A crisis call from my mother revealed a lesson I carried into leadership: solutions rarely work until people feel heard, perspectives are understood, and everyone shares a clear view of where they are and where they are going.

The buzz on my hip. The caller ID. Arizona was calling in the middle of a workday. This was never good. The calls had become so frequent that my colleagues knew what they meant before I had a chance to announce that I needed to answer.

We called them “crisis calls.”

It was exactly what I expected. A crisis needed intervention, and that day’s call was no different. My mom was having a rough day, and I was needed to bring peace to an otherwise chaotic moment a thousand miles away.

She was at home and convinced my father was holding her hostage. He had taken her keys away and reported her to the police, so they were now on “his side.” She needed me to come get her. I was the only one she trusted, the only one she thought could help. Unfortunately, she had no idea I was three states away.

She was genuinely frightened. This is important. She didn’t say she was scared. She was scared. Anyone who has been authentically terrified knows the difference. All I wanted in that moment was to hug her as she had hugged me when I wasa little girl.

Sadness came next. She did not understand why this was happening. How could the man she had loved for so long betray her like this? What had happened to him? How could he not remember what she meant to him? That was the horrible irony in all of this. She was slowly slipping away and projecting the memory loss onto my father. He was the one slipping away, not her. If only he could remember, he would trust her with the keys. She would always come back to him. She loved him. He just needed to remember.

I could picture my dad hearing only her side of the call. He would be sad because he knew she was slipping further away. He would be frustrated that he could not fix this. His heart would be breaking, one piece at a time, because he could notgive her what she desperately wanted. He had devoted his life to making her happy, and he was stuck.

I had approached the call as a problem to solve. My mother needed me to understand the reality she was experiencing before any solution could reach her. Without that shared starting point, even the most logical answer was useless.

Aha Moments 

These irrational periods were intense. Conversations took a long time and I was impatient. I was a busy hospital executive and did not understand how to navigate these long, illogical conversations. I was accustomed to a fast-paced environment where problems arrived quickly, and I believed solutions needed to come just as quickly.

My career had been built on solutions and dementia changed my perspective. Success is not dependent on point solutions; success is dependent on alignment.

Alignment did not require my father, my mother, and me to agree about the facts. It required me to understand each person’s starting point and identify an outcome we could pursue together.

Alignment starts with a shared picture of what is happening today. Everyone has a different vantage point, and those perspectives are unlikely to be the same. My mother, my father, and I each saw the situation differently. Different isn’t wrong. Different is just different.

Alignment also requires a shared view of success. It may be long-term success or, in the case of my mom, simply what will help us get through the next 10 minutes or the next hour. Agreeing on what success looks like is essential.

There’s Always a Lesson

Listen. Sounds simple, but the truth is many of us say we are listening but, in reality, we are plotting our rebuttal. Prior to dementia, I would have proudly said I was an “active listener.” It was what I was supposed to be, and I believed it to be true.

Dementia tested that belief and I failed quickly. I was listening to words but was missing what wasn’t being said. I was not listening for alignment. Are we starting this conversation on the same page? Do we have a shared vision of where we are going and what success looks like?

For my mom, the answer was clear. No solutions would work until I understood her fear and her sadness. I didn’t need to agree with her or justify her feelings, but I had to understand them. I had to understand how she got there. Simply explaining to her that she should not be frightened or sad would not work.

Leadership is no different. When employees share their confusion, leaders do not tell them they should not be confused. They provide clarity. Leaders acknowledge the gap, own it with humility, and close it with the missing information.

Dementia taught me new ways to listen, and those lessons apply directly to leadership.

Seeing What Is Possible

When you shift from “How do I solve this as quickly as possible?” to asking better questions, leadership changes.

·      Do we have a shared understanding of where we are today?

·      Does everyone impacted understand why we need to do something different?

·      Do we all share a vision of success?

Alignment does not require everyone to experience the situation in the same way. It requires the humility to recognize different realities, the curiosity to understand them, and the clarity to establish where we are going together.

That is the difference between managing a task and leading people.

Helping People See What Is Possible.