Sunday Night With John: Toilet Bowl Leaders

Toilet Bowl Leaders

John Paul Derryberry 

I do not live by very many rules. Too many times, I have attempted to live by strict guidelines only to see how they were somehow holding me back. Four rules govern my life.  Of those four laws, three are open to change. But, I will go to the grave with one principle: if your leader isn't willing to clean a toilet in your workplace, you do not have a leader. You have a person who wants to be in charge. I hate people who want to be in charge. Bad leaders gunk up the system. They say cliche things like, "I stand on the shoulders of giants," or my least favorite, "everyone has to realize we are here for the mission." 

Most people I know would love to be in charge. Heck, everyone has uttered these words at some time in their lives, "If I was running this place..." The problem with too many leaders is they think that having climbed the company ladder makes them exempt from the tasks they always felt were beneath their skill set. You know the type, the ones who put the dirty work off on someone else. They are conveniently absent from the scheduled crappy task work day. They put in for every job promotion that comes their way so they can stop working Sundays, stop having to deal with kids behavior, or not finish whatever mundane task that is due and shift it onto someone else. 

I gained my best leadership skills when I watched my boss get punched in the face in an inpatient mental health unit and then stick around to help. She said, "well, if I'm asking you to risk being knocked out, I better do the same". I saw true leadership when my college coach ran the suicides with us when we complained it was too much. I saw leadership when I worked with dependent adults and my supervisor assisted me with showering a man who had had an accident. Finally, I saw leadership when an executive director, after helping create the funding source for a brand new multi-million dollar building, grabbed the plunger when the toilet clogged. Being that close to poop and pee is not fun. It's never what you signed up for. But, it's part of the job that may be the most important task a leader can do, the dirty work. 

Leadership is about remembering and demonstrating that you know how to do the dirty work. It's about revealing through action that the highest ranked employee in the room is above no task. It's about understanding and showing that, if a job has to be done to be successful, then it gets done. Nothing, not even cleaning poop off a dirty toilet, should stand in our way. Most important, it's about showing that, as a leader, I'm one of you, not above you. It's about respecting the fact that people will follow you to better results if you place yourself among them. All the leadership skill-building activities and conferences in the world cannot teach that.

You either never forget what it was like as the new staff member with the least worthy tasks and carry that with you. Or, you forget it or think it's beneath you. If you want a better, more inclusive world, take as  a role model the person who wiped away the tears of an abused teen after she hit them over the head with her heavy backpack. Listen to the executive who has just hugged an unwashed homeless person. Promote people willing to scrub away poop and pee no matter what their salary.  Follow people who are eager to make a toilet clean enough to eat off of no matter their what status, then we might begin to finally solve our problems.