More than 30 years ago, Richard Winter left a well-established company to pursue his own business from the ground up, founding Garden View Care Centers.
The risk was to give up a position with a well established company in order to pursue my own business from its initial inception,” he said. “I thought this opportunity would be not only challenging but would create a new way to care for the elderly.”
Garden View Care Centers is a skilled nursing facility, offering 24-hour care under the direction of a physician. Today it has three locations in Chesterfield, Valley Park and O’Fallon, offering nursing, memory care, dementia care and rehabilitation therapy. Care is provided by trained individuals, including registered nurses as well as physical, speech and occupational therapists.
Like other nursing homes, Garden View faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. As his team explained, Winter pivoted, restructured and adjusted his leadership and ideas to ensure his communities continued to thrive, and the care at Garden View remained exemplary.
Despite the staffing crisis in the industry, Garden View maintains employee longevity due to Winter’s “continued appreciation and support,” said his team. Among Garden View’s three communities, several employees have worked for the organization for 10, 20 or even 30+ years.
“Successful leaders are people who rally others to come together and do something that no one person could do on their own. They understand and celebrate people’s strengths. And they’re builders – knowing that developing other leaders is central to an organization’s future success,” he said.
Winter has always known that this business is ever-changing. However, he has learned in the past year that so are people. People, workers, clients and different generations — we all learn, grow and change.
“As any good leader would do, he adjusts his leadership and teaching styles to meet the needs of others,” said his nominator. “He is also very aware that he cannot be everywhere and do everything. Therefore, he works hard to ensure that he puts other good leaders in place. He spends a significant amount of time with his management teams to share his knowledge and help mold and grow our future leaders. Richard is an advocate for not only the residents of Garden View but also his team.”
Winter says bringing people together is one of the things he enjoys most about leadership.
“I love solving problems, but most importantly, I love bringing people together to do it. And as a leader, I focus on starting with the why and bringing diverse perspectives and experience to the table to gather and analyze the data, and to create and refine effective solutions,” he said. “In the end, we come up with something none of us could do on our own — we solve the problem.”
