If You Pick Up Your Team's Trash, I Want To Meet You

Good Practice? Or Virtue Signaling? I Don't Really Care

???Welcome To Together UP!

Curated insights shared with you to lead, build better teams, and do the little things that make a huge impact on performance.

I am a leadership and team development coach who believes that teams outlast and outperform when built from the bottom up.

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The goal is to inspire. No matter what type of team you lead or what type of team you are on.

Now onto Edition #12!?A Day later than normal, thanks for waiting!

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Hall of Fame Basketball Coach John Wooden

Founder of McDonald’s Ray Kroc

Mike Krzyzewski

Tom Coughlin

Champion Basketball Coach Billy Donovan

The leaders of the All-Blacks rugby team (New Zealand)

Bill Tierney (The GOAT)

All champions and legends.

They all pick up the trash and clean up small messes of their teams.

Daniel Coyle, the author of?The Culture Code?(recommended)?described shared this and described it as having a “muscular humility”, or?a mindset of seeking simple ways to serve the group.

They send a larger signal, that?we are all in this together.

Let’s break it down, what does this simple act of cleaning up the trash signal?

Respect.

• Someone has to clean up that garbage. By doing it, you are removing that task for that person - a sign that you appreciate and respect them.
• Leaving a place cleaner than when you found it is a sign that you respect the venue you are in and the people who work there.

Humility

• No job is too small for you.
• You are not bigger or better, despite any level of success.

Little Things Matter

• Paying attention to little details builds on itself.

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A while back I was coaching a tournament for my son’s club lacrosse team. The tournaments are weekend-long events that require an immense amount of planning, large staff, a lot of logistics, and yes, ultimately has to be cleaned up and put back to how they found the 12-field venue.

No small feat despite all of the grumblings of those who call these “money grabs”.

Games are back-to-back-to-back all day long, requiring teams to shimmy off of the field quickly and evacuate their bench so the next team can come on and remain on schedule.

After one of our games, there was an outsized amount of plastic water bottles strewn about on our bench area.

Now I knew at the time that we had not been the main culprit, as it was largely the accumulation of a couple of teams over a couple of games that had caused the build-up.

So I casually cleaned up the bottles and the garbage, walking back n forth to the designated steel garbage can located at the midfield scorer’s table tent - the drum close enough to be visible, but not close enough for a slam-dunk by a 14 yr old kid who emptied his water bottle mid-way through the 3rd quarter in the heat of the battle.

One of the tournament administrators at the tent - an older gentlemen gave me the exact response he should have given me - “Ya know you should have the kids do that”.

I don’t disagree with him for a moment.?

However, these acts are often intentional. What do they give us?

1. It cleaned up the mess so someone else wouldn’t have to. These tournaments are a lot, and we get a lot out of being able to participate in them. If I can help those who manage it even a little bit, then that’s a good thing.
2. If I tell the kids to do it, it becomes a chore and one that they may look to do only if asked. If they see me quietly doing it, they are more likely to join me in earnest, and model the same behavior on repeat.
3. I was representing the program that I was coaching. Who knows, maybe that small act builds benefit of the doubt in those around us.
4. Maybe the gentlemen who made the comment shares what he saw with others and as a result there is 1% more respect for the club we are representing. Maybe if there is a tough decision down the road about our club, each and ever small way we carry ourselves contributes to the decision being made more rationally because at the very least, we respect others, so we may be treated with respect.
5. I could learn who joined me from my team. I’m not interested in the “gotcha.” I’m not interested in who doesn’t join me, as I know the age group. However, as a coach who seeks small datapoints to build the whole picture on who each kid is and too seeks to develop benefit of the doubt in those I lead, I am very interested in?who does.

After all, I learned a long time ago from my own legendary coach Bill Tierney to do such things as clean up the garbage; leave the place cleaner than you found it, and do the little things.

Like the above, he modeled for us, and the behavior stuck.

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?Is This Virtue Signaling?

I struggle with this term (a lot) and where it can fit into all of “the stuff” that I talk about and work with groups on.

Virtual signaling seems to only come up in a derogatory manner.

But, aren’t acts demonstrating high morals or good character, or excellence a…. dare I say…good thing?

Virtue: oxford languages definition

1. a particular moral excellence.

2. : a beneficial quality or power of a thing

Virtuous:

Definition and similar:

I won’t dare bring religion into this, but for the sake of the conversation, in?biblical terms, the?Nine great virtues?of Christ are: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such virtues, there is no law. " Galatians 5: 22-23

So. Isn’t signaling to be virtuous a good thing?

If it is inauthentic I suppose.

But I come at it from a standpoint of trying to instill goodness, good habits, respect, and thoughtfulness in others so that the individuals on teams can instill it into their fiber.

Put more simply, if there are little ways to increase the awareness and likelihood that people treat each other with respect, it can solve for many the flaw and remove toxicity.

So if this is virtue signaling then I am guilty as charged.

I just hope others receive the signal!

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?What Is Your Equivalent?

What acts are you doing that you hope will signal respect to others?

Are they intentional in the hopes that people on whatever “team” you’re on come and join you?

What is your equivalent?

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?Where To From Here?

Three things you can start doing today to put these ideas to work.

As with each of the concepts we talk through, I like to think that starting small and simple starts to compound.

(And somehow a Starbucks or a Dunkin Donuts seems to find its way into places where much of this “stuff” ‘can be practiced in small ways…)

1. Ummmm. Pick up the trash!?

This doesn’t have to be hard folks! Yes you can do little things like pick up the trash at your office, or on your bench, or in your locker room or your golf club, or your tennis court, or at the gas station, or you can clean up the area around the garbage at your Starbucks or Dunkin’ or Chipotle.

Chances are good that someone will see you. if they do, maybe they do it themselves the next time they’re there or they do it at their next stop. And if not, the place is cleaner and someone’s job jut got easier for a moment.

Maybe they’re having a really bad day and when they go over to their least favorite part of their day, they find it cleaner than ever and their day brightens.

Sorry, I caught myself Virtue Signaling again!

2. Identify your own equivalent.

The team you lead, or the team you’re on. What would be the equivalent of something small that would signal to the team that no job is too small for you?

Do that tomorrow. Start small.

3. Pickup a small conversational nugget that would otherwise have been discarded.

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

Want to make a meaningful connection with someone? Pick up a small nugget that they drop in a conversation - about their kid, their brother, somewhere they’re going, a place they’re going to dinner.

Log it in your brain. Ask them about it a week later - text or email or in person, it doesn’t matter.

Making them feel seen and heard is servant leadership and it fits exactly in this bucket of things you can do to show respect for individuals and leading by example.

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