A few years ago, I heard Roger Anthony speak. His words changed my life and the picture that I had of myself. When he finished speaking I was too afraid to go talk to him. I left the room and was mingling in the lobby of the hotel where the conference was being held.

I looked up and I saw him as he was preparing to get on the elevator. He happened to catch my eye from across the room. To my amazement, he crossed the room to introduce himself to me. We spoke for a few minutes and he asked what I was doing. I explained our business and how I did training, consulting and coaching. Then I said, “Someday I’d love to be a speaker like you.” He looked at me and he said “It sounds like you already are, but, you haven’t claimed it yet.”

I believe that as leaders our role is to help our teams see the gifts that they have inside them – the unique greatness that is lurking there within us all just waiting for encouragement to come out. I think that as a leader that is our ultimate purpose. Yes, we have jobs to get done and deadlines to meet and profits to manage. However, helping our teams uncover their own greatness helps us achieve those things.

That process begins with helping them understand the value of their contribution; helping them finding the meaning. I don’t care how menial or small the job may seem – we can always find meaning in it.

Growing up, my family raised rabbits which were kept in cages and all of the rabbit “droppings” would simply fall to the dirt floor of the building. Now, obviously, someone had to be responsible for keeping the floor clean. For a period of my life, I was that someone.
My job was to clean out the manure on a weekly basis. What better way to spend a Saturday than shoveling manure? Some people go to baseball games or play soccer or go to the beach, but, no, I shoveled manure.

One hot summer day, as I was shoveling the manure, I couldn’t help but ponder the obvious question: why was this my job? Why was this not the job of, let’s say, my little sister. I began thinking about it. On an intellectual level, I understood that the job had to be done. The simple truth is that someone had to shovel and remove the manure. It might have been a simple truth but it was not very motivating. While I wasn’t searching for the meaning of life amidst the manure, I was looking for purpose. As I pondered it, I realized that if the manure wasn’t removed things could get pretty nasty and some pretty bad diseases might sweep through the building and kill the rabbits. Which is when it occurred to me that I wasn’t a manure shoveler, but that I was, in fact, a Rabbit Health Care Practitioner. When I looked at it that way, it was no wonder that my parents trusted me with this job. It was far too important to trust with my little sister.

Does your team understand why what they are doing is valuable? Do they know that it is valued by you? Do they know how it fits in the bigger picture?

Being personally accountable to the outcome and being proud of our contributions causes us to do more than is necessary. One summer we experienced a long, brutal heat wave. People were losing their livestock at an alarming rate. I had to take care of my rabbits.

In the oppressive heat of the afternoon – when it was most dangerous for the animals – I would fill the rabbits’ ceramic watering crocks with ice cubes. The rabbits would curl themselves around the crocks and would stay cooler. No one told me to do this (although when my Dad learned what I was doing he did think it was ingenious). I didn’t lose a single rabbit.

If I saw my job simply as a “manure shoveler” would I have taken that effort? Or did I take the effort because I understood and took pride in the larger contribution that I was making? How do your employees see their role in your organization? How can you help them discover the true value of their contribution?

Copyright © 2008 Bobbi Kahler. All Rights Reserved.