The best leaders take the shittiest jobs

In my first ever paid job as a fifteen year old I worked landscaping for a small fruits and vegetable farm and grocery store. In my first week on the job I went to the back employee area to find the owner on his hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom. I reacted in surprise. Shouldn’t he be able to pay someone else to do this job? Surely, it’s beneath him. Seeing my reaction, he turned to me and jokingly said, “The best leaders will take the shittiest jobs,” and while he was making a nice little pun, he really meant what he said.

You would often find him taking the chores that no one else on the team wanted giving the more exciting work to his employees. It made each of the people feel important and love their jobs more. The tenure for employees there was so much longer than it probably should because he both endeared people to him and made their jobs better by taking on the work that no one wanted.

It’s a philosophy that I’ve taken with me in my work ever since. Early on in my professional career, I volunteered for the tasks that no one else wanted to do or felt like those jobs were beneath them. Seemingly boring client project. Yup. HTML email design. Sure. Refactor a spaghetti mess of CSS? Sign me up.

Now, as a manager, I try to take on the tasks that no one else wants to do. If no one is volunteering for it, but it’s important to do, it’s the best thing to take on. My job is to set others up for their best work, so I don’t mind what the task is as long as it achieves that goal. I also look for people who don’t mind taking the design work that isn’t in the spotlight. Who are the people designing settings? Who’s supporting Design Ops cleaning up our organization’s Figma? Those are the folks I want on my team.