What cleaning bathrooms taught me about leadership

It’s funny to think about now, the number of jobs that I have had where I had to clean toilets. Some of them restaurant jobs, some of them cleaning jobs, some of them housekeeping jobs. And if you asked me if I even enjoyed doing this, I 100% would have told you that I don’t like cleaning. Until I had the opportunity to clean them for free, and it completely changed my perspective.

I’ve had the opportunity for a couple of summers now to volunteer at a wellness and meditation retreat center. While tasks sometimes varied from gardening, to cooking, I once again found myself in the position of cleaning toilets, and feeling rather frustrated about the whole situation. You see at this point in my life I had acquired a yoga teacher training degree, had a BA in psychology, and studied half a dozen other methods for healing people, yet here I was wasting my talents, cleaning these toilets.

That’s the funny thing about working at a meditation retreat center. I was given endless opportunities to observe my own thoughts, and recognize how my ego was, once again, trying to take me on a journey. Only this time, the journey was “I’m too good for this, I’m wasting my talents,” and “this is a waste of my time.” After a while however, I was able to slow down and see how this opportunity was actually very beneficial for me.

You see, I want to be a great leader, and while I’m still in a state of learning, and growing into what the looks like for me. I am also humble enough to be grateful for any and every experience that will help me become the great leader I know myself to be. As I’ve discovered, great leaders are crafted not just from their abilities to lead people, but also from their willingness to do the grunt work. From my experience, workers who see that their boss is willing to get down and dirty, are more willing to also work hard, especially when that boss is also willing to doing the tasks no one else wants to do. It gives a greater sense of being a part of a team. All for one and one for all, so they say.

At first when I was doing this tasks, of once again, cleaning toilets, I noticed how much resistance my ego was giving me, but once I was able to push past that resistance I was able to see that, that in itself is a gift. There will always be things in life that I don’t want to do, maybe because I think I’m too good for it, maybe because it’s boring, but the real gift is being given a menial task, and still finding a way to make it fun, and to take pride in that work. Doing this specific task helped me to push past that resistance, that I will undoubtedly be faced in any position of leadership. There will always be tasks that I don’t want to do, and won’t always be able to delegate, but the real gift is being able to enter a state of mind where I no longer focus on how much I don’t want to do it, and instead am able to see the value in the task.

By stepping in and doing something I wouldn’t normally want to do, (in this case, a task I deemed myself overqualified for) it allows me the opportunity to set the bar, and determine the standard I want. While I could also easily walk in, see what I want done and tell someone else to do it, by taking the time to do it myself, I am able to recognize just how important this job is, and develop a new level of appreciation for it being done well, especially when I’m not the person that has to do it. It is so easy to take things for granted sometimes, but it is important to remember the hard work and care that go into achieving that standard.

Cleaning these bathrooms helped me to see how valuable the finer details are, and that people really do notice and appreciate these pieces. If I go into a job with the frame of mind that I just want to get this over with, I won’t learn nearly as much as if I take pride in my work and make it a piece of art. I don’t know how many comments I received that summer about how much people appreciated how clean the bathrooms were, and that they really noticed the effort that was put in. I was astonished because I’d never received so much gratitude for such a simple task before. I was even able to make it fun, adding in a simple touch of flowers or folding the toilet paper roll. People notice when care is taken, and it sends a message about the grander values of an establishment.

From the big picture to the tiny details, becoming a great leader is a lot easier when you can see things from the other persons perspective. At this particular center, the focus was around wellness, and healing the body with food. If you’ve ever done any kind of a cleanse before, you might know what I mean when I say things can get a little messy. I won’t go into the details, but I want to say that seeing what people were willing to go through for their health really gave me a new respect for these guests. I know cleansing out the body can be a challenge. I myself have experienced this state of vulnerability that not much else has matched before, and I know that facing challenges with food and eating habits takes a lot of courage and strength. Cleaning the bathrooms of these people helped me to recognize just how much I honored and appreciated their efforts to participate in this transformation. This experience helped me to see that everyone is human, and we are all going through things. Sometimes people would be very nit picky about how they wanted the cleaning done, and while I could have focused on how annoying that experience was, it was easier just to take a step back, be humble, and honour them for their courage to walk this path towards greater health. At the end of the day I wasn’t wearing their shoes, and I didn’t know the history that brought them there, I could only see their dedication to change their situation, and it was truly inspirational.

I got to have some very interesting conversations with people that summer, all from cleaning bathrooms. It was only when I really let go of the story that “I am too good for this,” that I was really able to see the value in the situation. That I was able to take pride in my work and connect with people. Doing so helped me to really feel gratitude for my own life, because you really never know what someone else is going through until you slow down and talk to them. When it really comes down to it, being of service in any way is a gift. Sometimes I get to serve in ways that I’m really excited about, and other times I get to serve in ways that aren’t so exciting, but when I get to see how people are impacted, it is clear to me what a gift any service really is. To me, being a leader doesn’t mean only doing the things that I want to do. There is value in every aspect of an organization, and it’s very important to put things into perspective, learn the details of what people really care about, and what they are really going through. It’s something you’ll remember for the rest of your life, and so will they.