Be Your Own Saviour Series: On Teammates (Your Tribe)
A great deal of your time will be spent at work, and having to engage with people that you may consider to be outside of your close group. You can use this time to build valuable skills of empathy and gratitude so that you can ensure the success of your team. You will also learn how to become a more effective leader.
“What injures the hive, injures the bee.” — Marcus Aurelius
The description of “Teammates” isn’t reserved for those who coach or play a sport. You can view most of the people around you as your teammates. The company that succeeds is the one that can foster a culture and environment of growth through teaching, learning, health, empathy, and gratitude.
The false ideal is the leader who stands above all else.
In reality, the leader can be anyone, at any given point. We all have the power to make leader-like choices at any given moment.
It takes communication, assertiveness, and often times you maybe serving from the shadows. If you ever feel like you are looking up or down, opposed to left or right, you are need of a change in order or perspective. It’s about depth, not width.
Can you uplift those around you and hold them to a higher standard through your actions?
Asking that guiding question, “Does this behaviour better myself, or those around me?” will allow you take make more meaningful choices with the greater good of the team in your mind.
On Practical, Physical, Consistent Communication Style
When you are constantly engaged in your working environment, putting your best efforts forward not for yourself, but for the team as a whole, everything flows and great work can be produced.
Don’t go to work with your own agenda and impose it upon others. Try to collect and engage with everyone else’s, even if just briefly so you can see the bigger picture.
Engage with teammates constantly. Learn, observe, and insert yourself into every meaningful moment.
To be an effective team, all members must be constantly communicating. Democratically taking turns, with enthusiasm and energy. Use verbal and nonverbal forms of communication like eye contact, gestures, body language, contact. A constant stream of chatter that is practical, physical, and consistent.
On Thankless Jobs in Shadows
“Just change the (damn) garbage.” — David Keefe, aka Dad
I don’t know what it was about this that stuck with me when my dad said it. Maybe it was because of the leftovers pouring off the top of the trash onto the floor due to my laziness.
I always come back to this thought, and its simplicity is what makes this so easy to grasp. You’re never going to escape the dirty work. And if you do, you aren’t working to your full potential.
Being resourceful, and efficient means your hands are going to have to get dirty.
Sometimes the most important work you do is the work that nobody sees. The hundreds of paintings created before the one that sells. The countless words and sentences formed until the book is finally made. The thousands of hours of hidden practice until the world sees you perform.
When you pour your time and energy into a project, it’s a helpful reminder that you need to do it for yourself. Its by realizing that the big things get accomplished by the relentless, detailed, focus on the small things.
By taking pride in what most people will consider grunt work — the work beneath them — you understand that it’s this work that builds character, and work ethic.
It’s your business to care. It’s about not letting anyone have to clean up your own messes.
From scrubbing, sweeping, and cleaning, to researching, examining, and creating — nothing is too small for you. It’s all within your grasp, and every task positively builds upon the previous.
Now and then you might get some recognition, but most of the time you won’t. You’re okay with this because you know that in the end this is how a legacy is built.
And what to do once your goal has finally been accomplished? It’s time to put in a new garbage bag and start sweeping all over again.
“Nobody lines the extra mile…champions do extra.” — James Kerr
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