The reason I was digging in the dirt and doing other things, too, was that I was participating in a mission trip to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom last summer, helping a family shore up their home following devastating flood damage the year before. The plan was to partially excavate the dirt basement, grade it, install new support, and prep it for subsequent volunteer teams to pour a concrete floor to drain toward a sump pump.
The project was managed by a couple who have dedicated their professional lives to person-to-person disaster recovery, so it was guaranteed that we could learn much from them simply by being there and doing the week’s work. Servant leadership. Beyond that there were three major concepts that were reinforced for me there in the hard packed dirt, omnipresent rocks, and low beams in that basement.
First – and a cardinal point – is that leaders lead from the point of their own expertise and the desire to build expertise in others. When I saw Tim, our project manager and foreperson, bending and cutting rebar to reinforce the concrete that would be poured for new support footings I asked him if I could learn how to do that. I’m a geek like that; I just want to learn new stuff. He, being the leader he is, said, “Well, I needed to teach somebody, so come on over.” He taught me to measure, cut, bend, and tie rebar, and really to design for particular footings and applications. This was on day two and I spent the rest of the week doing it, getting better and better.
Second is that work and talent should flow like water by the path of least resistance to where they are needed and best applied. Leaders know this. By day two, everyone on the team had specialized, pitching in on everything, but focusing on what drew them into rewarding productivity. People want to do good work and do it well and find fulfillment in work that counts. With authoritative guidance based on experience and realistic goals in mind, a natural leader sees these motivations and makes sure that the paths of least resistance are cleared.
Third, compelling work inspires hard work well done. Truly, we were very blessed to be doing work that helped other people secure their home, and they could not get it done without the help of multiple teams ranged over the summer. There are so many people I’ve known who feel their volunteer gigs are their most fulfilling work.
It would seem that not everyone in the world gets to do work that has a compelling purpose, but I contend that there is no work that is trivial and it’s a privilege of leadership to help people see the larger context of our tasks, their purpose and their products. It’s my hope as an HR professional to help people find what is compelling in their work, and that can be as fundamental as tasks well done.
Natural leaders embody the value of the work they lead, foster talent, and make way for fulfilling, productive work, and it can be a great pleasure to work with them. Let’s strive to foster servant leadership wherever our work takes us, for profit or not.
