On Management - Bedside and Lakeside | Teachers College Columbia University

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On Management - Bedside and Lakeside

Two new books by Elaine La Monica Rigolosi, Professor of Education and Director of TC’s Executive Program in Nursing, could not seem more different. Unlock Your Cage (CreateSpace, 2013) is an allegorical fable in which a lake-dwelling family consults a Great Wizard to figure out why their lily pad seems smaller. Management and Leadership in Nursing and Health Care: An Experiential Approach (Springer, 2013) is a practical guide to organizational effectiveness that applies theories from business, organizational psychology, health care, law and education administration. 

Yet both books exhort readers to take control, set goals and be the leaders of their own world. Or as Rigolosi writes in Unlock Your Cage, “You put on the eyeglasses that frame what you see.”

Rigolosi herself has worn many lenses. A practicing attorney, she holds degrees in human relations and counseling, and medical and surgical nursing administration. She consults for health care organizations and other businesses and formerly chaired TC’s Department of Organization
and Leadership. 

Management and Leadership cites thinkers as diverse as the psychologist Abraham Maslow and the management consultant Peter Drucker, and offers tips as specific as “keep the coffeepot going” and as broad as an injunction to communicate in “an open, mature and direct way… that allows others to learn about one’s feelings and identity while enhancing self-esteem.” 

Yet a single line in Rigolosi’s shorter book succinctly sums up her outlook: “I have the power to become whatever I want to be. I alone am responsible!” —Joe Levine



Published Friday, Dec. 7, 2012

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