integrity

Did you know that the most trusted profession is nursing? No surprises there. Nurses are the patients’ advocates. Patients know who’s watching their backs. Watching out for the patient, standing up for the patient, protecting the patient – this is our primary role. And that requires integrity above all else. You have the strength of integrity.

The whole world trusts nurses. But the question is, “Do you trust yourself to succeed beyond where you are today?” Do you have the integrity to act on what you really want to do with your nursing career? When I decided to start my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, nurses did not own businesses. I had to have the integrity to trust myself and that yes, I could succeed as a legal nurse consultant.

And, do you trust the people who you spend your life and time with? If you want to become a legal nurse consultant or grow your CLNC^® business, surround yourself with family, friends and attorney-clients whom you trust and who treat you with integrity. When you do, you will easily achieve your CLNC^® dreams and desires. I had to ignore the naysayers. Their fears did not have to become my fears.

Nurses at our CLNC^® Certification Seminars always comment on what a great staff I have at Vickie Milazzo Institute. They say, “I’ve never seen a company that has so many positive people.” When I left hospital nursing, I intentionally set out to create a culture that did not include gossiping, whining and complaining. I created our mission to be about the customer. That’s the culture of integrity here at the Institute.

As you build your CLNC^® business, do so with intention and create a culture that supports your highest integrity by choosing to surround yourself with people who share and support your vision.

Never tolerate people or groups who are intentionally gossipy, mean or hurtful to you or anyone else. If you find yourself in an environment that’s putting you down, don’t put up with it. Don’t let rotten apples sour your fire and vision.

Likewise, it’s important to know that if you participate in gossiping, whining or complaining, it kills not only your fire, but also your opportunities for career advancement and growing your legal nurse consulting business. I promise you, the people who matter do notice unprofessional behavior.

The more successful we are in our careers, the more we participate in life, the more we face decisions that challenge our integrity. That’s why I love the Buddhist proverb that says, “Even the smallest act should not be underestimated, for even tiny flakes of snow falling one atop another can blanket the tallest mountain in pure whiteness.”

Success Is Inside!

Once a year I drag Tom to a health spa in the desert for a week (he calls it the “bunny ranch” because of the predominance of salads, veggies and other healthy “rabbit” food on the menu). The spa I like has a great medical department along with its other amenities (massage, yoga, hiking, etc.). I go to get a medical check-up, nutritional evaluations and a fitness assessment with the goal of reigniting my commitment to wellness.

We try to eat pretty cleanly. Lots of healthy soups and two different versions of a killer roasted chicken (one with butter and garlic and one without) are examples of what we eat at home. I have to eat clean for half of the year because the other half of the year, I’m on the road for business or for pleasure. Out in the wild, just like in the hospital, it’s hard to keep to a healthy diet – especially with so many tasty items on the menu (most of them either fried or served with sour cream). I’ve learned to develop will power but it’s still hard passing up the bad for the good.

Nutritional integrity is like our own integrity. I always tell Certified Legal Nurse Consultants that integrity means always doing the right thing even when nobody is looking. Sure, when Tom isn’t around I could sneak a piece of southern fried chicken, a bowl of Haagen-Daas dulce de leche or some other tasty, but unhealthy treat. (I could probably do it with him because I know he’d gladly share it with me!) But the point is, making a decision to eat healthy means deciding to do so more often than not.

But let’s go back to the bunny ranch for a minute. The spa proclaims to be dedicated to healthy eating. They ban alcohol (even healthy red wine) from the premises, give the protein, carb, calorie and fat content of every item at every meal, but to me, they “cop out” in three areas. First, while they have cold herbal teas available (it’s necessary to stay hydrated in the desert), they also have lots of artificial sweeteners at every drink station. Second, they serve a lot of breads, French toast and pancakes at breakfast, sandwich choices at lunch and rolls at dinner. Third, there are ice cream, chocolate chip cookies and other desserts (all lovingly described down to the last gram of fat) at every meal.

I expect this blog to get a lot of dissenting comments, but to me the bunny ranch is copping out. My personal belief (and research backs me up) is that sugar is bad for us and Americans eat too much of it. Instead of helping to move bunny ranch survivors off of sweet drinks, they’re just shifting them to an alternative form of sweetness. In other words, enabling them (Sure it’s okay to eat Splenda^® – it’s sort of natural.).

I like a good dessert as much as the next person. I also know that there are other choices for dessert than ice cream (even if low calorie) or cookies or low-fat cheese cake. One of the women at the pool told me, “I love the deserts here – they’re so small compared to home and you can try two or three different ones!” When she goes home, her sweets habit has been reinforced – not altered. Why not shift her paradigm to consider fresh fruit as a dessert alternative to something sugary? I’m not anti-dessert but I’d rather spend my calories on something tastier than sugar and train other people to make healthy choices.

Before I come off like a total food-Nazi, this recent experience got me thinking about how easy it is for legal nurse consultants to cop out on your attorney-clients. Do you ever find yourself tempering your opinions of the medical or nursing care because you don’t want to give your attorney-client an opinion he doesn’t want to hear? Are you trying to “go along to get along?” Have you ever agreed with an attorney’s position just because you were afraid to take a stand? Have you said, “I’ll have to research that and get back with you” when you already know they’re wrong?

If you have, you’re not offering the full critical value that the attorney-client is paying you for. As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you bring a wealth of experience and ability to a case and you have to be willing to take a stand and offer your own thoughts – not a reflection of someone else’s thoughts. One of my employees is called “the other voice.” She’s not afraid to take a stand, even when she’s wrong. As big of a pain in the butt as she can be, I know she’s thought through the issues pretty thoroughly and is offering her true opinion. I’d rather have her than any number of “yes-men” or “yes-women” around me.

You may need to be a bit diplomatic but in the long run, you’ll be appreciated for giving your full critical value. The truth may not always set you free and it may not always be appreciated, but you have to be willing to do what’s right – even if someone is looking.

See you at the bunny ranch and until then, stay off the sugar!

Success Is Inside!

If you’ve ever doubted doing what’s right not what’s easy, doubt no more.

A recent article in BusinessWeek reported that ethical companies and companies that have a higher purpose than just making money are the ones that are strongest and last the longest. As business owners we set the tone for the entire company. We should expect integrity not only of ourselves, but also from everyone who touches our CLNC^® business in any way – employees, legal nurse consulting subcontractors, expert witnesses, attorneys and vendors.

If someone acts less than ethical it’s best to disassociate. Over my 27 years in business I’ve had a remarkable success rate, but I have had to discontinue a few professional relationships with people who failed to act with integrity. Sometimes it’s hard to disassociate because it means losing a highly skilled professional, or a valued resource, but let’s face it – people judge us by who we hang with.

In your legal nurse consulting business you will encounter situations where ethical questions arise. When you do, you’ll have to look to your inner voice and decide which side of the fence you’ll sit on. You can’t sit on top of the ethical fence, it’s either one side or the other.

There are any number of ways for doing business and any number of ways for making money. Some are quick and easy and some are hard. In my experience the ethical way is not the easiest, but does give you the highest payoff in terms of personal satisfaction and authentic success. Integrity is a success formula that brings your attorney-clients and their referrals coming back to you year after year.

One of the reasons I offer my risk-free guarantee for the CLNC^® Certification Program is because I believe so strongly in it. My integrity values require that we stand behind our products and programs and our CLNC^® consultants stand behind us in return. Our relationship with our CLNC^® students grows stronger after the sale because every Vickie Milazzo Institute staffer also embraces these values.

BusinessWeek reported that companies “whose moral compass points to true north” are less likely to fail than are those without a good ethical base.

On what foundation is your legal nurse consulting practice built? Which way does your moral compass point? I hope we’ll be able to spot polar bears together on our way north!

Success Is Inside!

I found myself standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz contemplating how I arrived there. My father’s family is Sicilian – 100%. Picture a 13-year-old boy holding his uncle’s hand, gazing at the Statue of Liberty from the deck of a passenger liner in the early 1900s and that’s Papa Milazzo, my grandfather. My family name, Milazzo, comes from a village in Sicily. My grandparents knew each other as children before leaving Sicily and lucky, against all odds, managed to find each other and marry in the U.S.

My mother was 100% Louisiana. She grew up in Tickfaw and met my dad in New Orleans. Dad had just returned from fighting the Japanese at places like Angaur and Peleliu in the Pacific during World War II – fattened up by the Army to a wholesome 125 pounds. She immediately married him and soon here I was (along with my twin brother and older sister).

Tom’s family has a completely different background. His father’s parents are Polish, both coming from the Krakow area – about an hour north of Oscwiezm, the Polish name for Auschwitz. Tom and I both have vivid memories of our grandparents speaking in Polish or Italian when they didn’t want the grandkids to understand them. Tom’s mother’s side is a little more complicated – and the reason we were here. Tom’s maternal grandfather was Scottish (right down to the tartan). His grandmother was middle-European Jewish. In the 1930s when this zaftig woman married the Scotsman, out of her faith and against her family’s wishes, her family simply said a Kaddish (prayer for the dead) and started setting one less chair at the seder table on Passover. Sixty years later only two members of her family would speak to her. (Aren’t family grudges stupid?) One of those two was Tom’s Great-Aunt Fannie and his Great-Uncle Otto.

Tom remembers that Otto still had the tattooed numbers on his arm from Auschwitz. He’d been collected from his home, transported, numbered and then, luckily, transferred to a work camp. Fannie found Otto there and she managed to bribe his way out. Somehow the two worked their way through unfriendly, Nazi-occupied Europe and to the U.S. Many others from the family weren’t so lucky and never saw the outside of the iron-gate with the “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes one free) motto outside Auschwitz again.

So what does a gas chamber and the Holocaust have to do with legal nurse consulting? It may seem like a stretch, but it simply comes down to living with integrity. The other day I was mentoring a legal nurse consultant who faced a difficult choice. An attorney-client who gave her a substantial amount of business gave her an ultimatum: stop working with certain competing attorneys or risk losing his business. If she gave in to his demand, she would keep his business – but at the cost of losing her integrity. After all, if she gave into that demand, what would his next demand be?

Integrity-based decisions are not always easy. After standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz and in the women’s barracks at the adjacent camp of Birkenau, I’ve seen what can happen when a person’s integrity is broken. If you think about it, all the things we treasure, our family, our possessions, our success, our dignity and our individuality can all be stripped from us. Standing in such a horrific place, I realized how easily we can lose everything – everything except our personal integrity.

If you’ve ever read Viktor Frankl or talked with a Holocaust survivor, you know that each day in the midst of unimaginable cruelty, the Holocaust victims had to decide how to treat others and handle themselves with integrity. Without integrity, even living through those conditions would not guarantee surviving the memories afterward. I couldn’t help wondering how my own integrity would hold out in that situation.

The choices we make determine whether we live a free life or a life imprisoned, and I’m not talking about a physical jail cell. No one would voluntarily imprison herself and be her own warden, yet every time we breach integrity we sentence ourselves to a mental jail. This all came to mind while speaking with this nurse who, to me, had a much simpler and easier choice than anyone ever faced in a concentration camp.

Ironically, the very thought that “work makes one free” was what was troubling this legal nurse consultant. She simply needed to make a choice to keep or break her integrity. I couldn’t make her decision for her, but did encourage her to honor her integrity. When I hung up the phone she was still undecided and still troubled.

About a month later I received a call from her. She made the choice to be true to herself and to what she wanted for her CLNC^® business. She was now happier, relaxed and successful on her own terms.

Temptations abound in not only the business world, but also in our personal lives. No matter how complex a decision appears on the surface, when stripped down to basics, I tell people it’s simple: do what’s right, not what’s easy or most appealing. Remember, no matter what choices you make in your life – they should all be integrity-based. Integrity has the final say in whether we will rise or decline, be whole or broken. When uncompromising integrity is our guide, then our personal and CLNC^® success is authentic.

Here’s to your authentic CLNC^® success.

Success Is Inside!