Leadership Training Transforms Horizon House

With 550 residents and 300 employees, CHHSM member Horizon House leans heavily on its phone and fax lines. When its telecommunications system failed a few years ago, the downtown Seattle continuing care retirement community faced a serious crisis.

“Virtually everyone was affected,” says Bob Anderson, chief executive officer. “In that situation, organizations often focus on who is to blame, and people become fearful and fragmented.” But because about 30 Horizon House managers and supervisors had gone through extensive leadership training together, they were able to solve the problem as a team.

The crisis tested the principles the managers had learned over the past four years as part of a unique leadership development program held monthly at Horizon House. The private, nonprofit corporation implemented the program in 2007 as it prepared to reposition itself in the face of increasing competition and higher customer expectations. Horizon House leaders hoped to improve employee-supervisor relationships, increase productivity and enrich both the professional and personal lives of their team members.

Gloria Riggers, director of human resources, chaired a small group that pinpointed goals and tailored a program to suit Horizon House’s diverse workforce.

“We’ve got people from all different walks of life,” she says. “We have all ages, from early 20s to late 60s; from the executive level to people who have only a high school diploma.”

The resulting program encompassed leadership trends emerging in the senior living field.

“Our core purpose and expertise is in creating community and a deep sense of hospitality,” says Anderson. Guided by Pat Hughes of Trillium Leadership Consulting, Horizon House leaders learned to approach their mission by creating “Gracious Space” – a concept Hughes articulated in a book by that name.

“Gracious Space has four principles,” explains Anderson. “The first is the setting in which you’re providing service. You want that to be gracious in every sense of the word. The second has to do with the spirit. This is when we create genuine, authentic and personal connectedness with whomever we’re there to serve or serve with. The third is inviting the stranger, not just accepting different points of view but actually going to look for them. And the fourth is learning in public, being willing to say, ‘I don’t know, but I’m willing to learn with you.’”

Developing a common language and a joint stock of problem-solving strategies paid off when the Horizon House communication system failed.

“If we hadn’t had the leadership training, and the experience of working across department boundaries, we wouldn’t have had as good an outcome,” says Anderson.

The community has made the leadership program, initially set to last only 18 months, permanent, and has widened its impact in several ways. Says Riggers, “At the end of every leadership-development team meeting, we have a practice of asking, ‘What out of our learning today can we take to our departments or our line staff?’ We have also involved our residents and our board of trustees in the vocabulary and principles of Gracious Space. It’s now woven into the culture of life and work at Horizon House.”

During the last few years, Riggers and Anderson have shared the details of their program with Aging Services of Washington and other organizations, and even with their competitors in Seattle.

“We started this as a program to train and develop leaders,” says Anderson. “And it’s now widening into every aspect of what we do.”

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