This document should accompany the slide show "vivien thomas ppt". The group project entailed giving a biography of someone that used the Relational Leadership theory, knowingly or unknowingly, in accomplishing their goals. This theory of leadership & teamwork did not exist during Thomas' time, but it is very possible his relationship with Alfred Blalock may have been among the many studied to develop the theory.

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Louis Wischnewsky / Angelina Fratzke
Byron Marsh / Ana Zarate
Couns 135
Vincent
December 15, 2010
Biography of Leadership: Vivien Thomas
Here's the situation. You live in the deep south where race relations are sometimes still tense.
You are a twenty-two year old southern belle. You've just celebrated your third anniversary with
your husband. He now has a very labor intensive job working lots of overtime but he's an army
special forces veteran. You have a two year old child. Your first-born and your husband of three
years have just moved into a new house. It's a good time, but it's also touch and go as your
husband recovers from what he saw during war while working harder than he should have to.
Life is Great
One day, you're precious son takes a little long to wake up. When he does wake up, he's very
pale. He's not running a fever. He doesn't feel sick. As the morning progresses, something you
could never imagine begins to happen – you're little boy begins to turn bluish.
When you call your obstetrician, he gives you another doctor to call, a pediatric cardiologist. The

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pediatric cardiologist responds with a simple, but chilling statement: “Get him to the children's
hospital as soon as possible: you're son is dying.
According to the National Institute of Health, a study by the Pediatric Heart Disease Clinical
Research Network says that approximately 32,000 children a year are born with some sort of
heart defect. While much of this can be predicted by hereditary traits, congenital heart disease is
still very much unpredictable. If you're not open to race relations, that presents an enormous
problem for you.
Today we're going to learn about a little known pioneer in the medical field that was also nearly a
century ahead of modern leadership theory and demonstrated that saving lives required
Relational Team work, not racial biases.
Vivien Thomas was an African-American born in 1910 in Tennessee and lived until 1985.

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Having a common purpose that was greater than either man, Vivien Thomas looked beyond the
discomforts of the position he had with his mentor, Dr. Alfred Blalock.
Though he was technically subordinate to Dr. Blalock, Thomas was so included in the team that
others working with them could not tell who was actually in charge.
While neither Thomas nor Blalock liked nor appreciated the paradigm that did not allow black
surgeons, both men followed the rules determined to remain ethical in all their work.
Blalock might have empowered Thomas to be an equal in their work and lab, but Thomas
embraced and took that empowerment with equal determination.
To remain ethical in their goals, Thomas and Blalock developed a process that achieved their
goal beyond their broad imaginations.
Vivien Thomas was born in 1910 in Tennessee where, fifty years earlier, he would have been a
slave. His father was a carpenter and after high school, Vivien also worked as a carpenter.
Because the Great Depression had arrived, however, he quickly found himself doing odd jobs
working with his hands. Some believe it was this background of using his hands often for
intricate wood work that gave his hands the skills he would use in his life's work. After losing his
savings he had planned to use to go to school, Thomas eventually answered a help wanted call at
a lab at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Alfred Blalock, in interviewing Thomas, was questioned
about his decision to hire a 19 year old black man that had no formal medical experience at all.
Blalock liked Thomas' professional demeanor. Not even Blalock expected his decision to hire
Thomas would literally change the world.
Blalock made it clear to everyone that knew him, including Thomas, that he wanted to break as
many medical paradigms as possible. Thomas initially just wanted to break the paradigm of not
allowing blacks in the operating room. Blalock at first was insistent that Thomas simply follow
Blalock's instructions in the lab while Blalock was in the classroom teaching. However, Thomas
took this opportunity to begin book-learning everything he could about medicine. This lead to

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both men quickly realizing that, more than wanting to break paradigms, they both wanted to save
lives. This lead to Blalock using his status to find work at universities that would accommodate
Thomas. None would fully accommodate Thomas or Blalock, but Thomas grasped that Blalock
was doing the best he could. And, as Blalock eventually explained to Thomas, they could either
make strides in medical research or strides in race relations. They chose, as their purpose, the
greater cause: saving lives.
The decision to enter new frontiers in the medical field was mutual. By the point that Thomas
grew uneasy with the reality that he was not getting credit, and thus income and status, for the
achievements the two men were making, he and Blalock had become close friends. During the
first, experimental surgery to fix a congenital defect in a young girl, Blalock broke the paradigm
of not allowing blacks into the operating rooms of Johns Hopkins University. He insisted he
would not begin the surgery until Thomas was at his side. Blalock went on to insist his friend and
colleague be at his side for the first 100 experimental congenital heart defect surgeries. In fact,
Blalock would tell anyone that stood next to him, “That spot is for Vivien only.” During their
relationship, Thomas accepted that he would never get a PHD. However, he allowed Blalock to
take credit for their successes. Blalock was the scientist that came up with new ideas and
questioned medical paradigms, and Thomas was the scientist that found ways to make them
work.

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The relationship these men had was determined to excel in ethics. Their friendship and work
together lasted from 1930 to 1964 when Dr. Blalock passed away. Both being from the south and
working in the south, they both knew the social standards of their day. It was pointed out that in
the lab they could work, drink, and be merry together. Outside the lab, though, it was unethical
for professional whites and blacks to intermingle. That was the social standard of the time. Sadly,
these two men maintained that ethical standard, even though it is clear it was something that
bothered both of them. As we mentioned earlier, they had a very high goal in mind. That goal
was to save lives and they left fixing the social injustice of segregation to others.
Their relationship relied on empowering each other and taking power. Because Alfred Blalock
had allowed Thomas to work freely, as an equal in the lab, both men accomplished the great
things they achieved together. Because Thomas did not let his status as a black man keep him
from taking the power, the initiative to work freely in the lab, both men have changed the world.
By now, it should be apparent these men had a clearly defined process that worked beautifully.
Blalock was not without actual participation in Thomas' accomplishments. Blalock was
considered the thinker in the relationship. He was the one that would ask, for example, what
would happen if we put a stint in this place? Thomas was a thinker, too, but his part of the
process involved finding ways to make Blalock's ideas work. Another part of the relationship
was that Blalock would find the forum to do the work and was responsible for maintaining that

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forum Thomas was responsible for giving Blalock, and thus Johns Hopkins University (and later
Harvard University), a reason to maintain that forum.
As a result of this relationship, millions of lives around the world have been saved and changed.
Dr. Denton Cooley once admired Vivien Thomas by noting that Thomas was decades ahead of
his time in surgical cardiology. However, we can see today that he was a century ahead of his
time in leadership, setting a solid and easy to recognize example of Relational Leadership Theory
in practice.
Today we learned about the life of Dr. Thomas. We see that he shared a common purpose of
saving lives. He was inclusive and was included in all the work he did. In spite of the great pain
he and Blalock felt, they maintained the ethical standard of the day. The relationship succeeded
because both men empowered each other. As a result, we see a clearly defined process that, if
achievable in the mid-1900's, can certainly be mimicked today.
Vivien Thomas's life and work gives us unquestionable proof that racial diversity works. His life
goes beyond that, though. He inspires us to look beyond ourselves and consider the lives of tens
of thousands of people born in this country each year … and millions of people worldwide.
The good news for that young mother we mentioned earlier? Well, the good news is that the
pediatric cardiologist she called happened to be a former student of Blalock and Thomas. Not
only was the cardiologist a student, but so was the surgeon.

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Alfred Blalock & Vivien Thomas
1910- 1985