I do my fair share of venting. OK, sometimes I even go on a rant. I have lots of great horror stories. Unbelievable team members, the Project from You-Know-Where, and the day my computer crashed and I lost 6 hours of data entry. I love swapping these stories, and playing “Can you top this?” To listen to me tell it, my career as a healthcare Black Belt has been rife with disaster the entire time I’ve been in this position.

But every now and again some very good things happen – the memories sneak up on me, when I’m not expecting it.

· The two team members who started out fighting like cats and dogs – each came to me and said they wanted to leave the team if the other person was going to stay – and who ended up respecting each other and telling me, “I never realized how hard the other person’s job really was, and how well she does it.”

· The Green Belt who quickly became a partner in our quest for improvement.

· The nurse who said, “You’ll never get the doctors to change their behavior” and confessed at the end of the project that she had changed her opinion about just what was and wasn’t possible.

· The team member I really didn’t like, but who ended up teaching me more about myself than I wanted to know – and I became a better Black Belt for it. (Hard as that is to confess.)

When we get together with our fellow Belts, maybe it’s a good idea to bring out the positive stories as well as the negative ones. Got any great – good – stories to share with us?