Vibes

“I know ‘vibe’ is kind of a nonspecific term, but I think about people’s vibes all the time,” he said.

“Sometimes you come into a room and it’s just off. Sometimes you can be working with a person for a whole morning and you don’t even realize their vibe is bad until something happens and they blow up.

“A person’s vibe has a butterfly effect. This morning, I assigned one of my team members to be my substitute charge nurse, which he’s not used to doing, and I was worried he was going to protest. He just looked at the schedule, saw the assignment, and got to work. It was such a relief. The day’s going so much smoother than it could have for everyone, because I don’t have to devote my brainpower to accommodating resentment over that assignment.”

Vibes were a significant force in successful communication, he said. “You need to communicate differently with someone depending on their vibe. And believe me, all of the fires I have to put out are because of bad communication.”

Listener Poet Frankie Abralind

Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital

January 2020

To look at someone’s face

(They sweating cuz they’re drowning?)

It’s hard to gauge their space

(Unless, of course, they’re frowning)

Communication wins and loses

More than people think:

Each joke, each arching eyebrow,

Each high-five hand, each wink—

The vibes that you are part of

In others, me, in you

Make ripples, make tsunamis

Throughout everything we do

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