Be Little To Be Great

Hey team. All right, so here we are, and I do have a quote for you today. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A great man is willing to be little.”

So what does that mean? Let’s unpack that for a second. A great man is willing to be little. And today, on Mondays, we always discuss things wrapped around our core values, like humility. Not being afraid to pick up trash happens to be one of our core values. Humility.

So, a great man willing to be little—what that means to me is that it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. I think many times we want the credit so badly, we want the input of our lives to be recognized by others, that we’re willing to sink others’ good ideas so that ours can be the one that gets used, or we take credit from those below us.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve experienced being in a situation where I had a good idea. It was put down by some, and then next thing I know, somebody else is jumping up, producing my idea, and taking all the credit for it. Getting recognition. And I know how that feels. I imagine there are people sitting here right now on our team listening to this and going, “Yeah, I know what that’s like too, Chad. I feel you.”

However, I hope that’s not something you’ve experienced here. I believe that great leadership is about giving others the credit. If something great happens, even if you had an idea about it, many times it’s the people around you that make it happen. So I look at it from the standpoint that wow, my team is great. They are amazing. They accomplished X, Y, or Z.

I’ll give you an example. A few years ago, Caid I think was a part of this. I know Greg was. Caid’s father, when Frank was here, and a couple others. Maybe Sean even was a part of this too now that I think about it. This was a few years back. I walked in to do a tour. This would have been around 2018 or something like that, I think, at a homeless shelter area. Actually, a homeless encampment. It’s not really a shelter when you don’t have much built.

It was a place where they had a shower, and they took a porta-potty. It didn’t have the toilet area anymore, just the walls. And they mounted a propane heater unit for heating the water on the back of it. So it was like a camp shower, and it was broken.

I don’t know about any of you, but I know what it feels like to go days or even a couple of weeks without a shower. In the Marine Corps, there were times that happened. And boy, I tell you what, you don’t feel so great. You stink. There’s nothing like a really nice, warm, hot shower after being in the field, in the mud, in the dirt for weeks on end.

I realized that a group of individuals could really use a shower. And if they could heat their water, how nice would that be? So I went out and did some research. I’ll make a long story short: we found and bought a camp shower. Greg had a lot of ideas wrapped around that, and he ended up coming up with a solution because the other one broke from being exposed to the elements 24/7—rain, heat, sunshine, snow, sleet, freezing rain, all those things. Greg got the idea, I think it was him or someone on the team, to build a housing unit around it.

So while I had the idea and desire to do something, when I submitted and gave the shower heating unit, with its little house wrapped around it and everything, I gave all the credit to our team. I’m not saying that makes me a great man. I’m just pointing out that it’s not about me getting the credit. It’s not about saying, “Hey, I did this for you.” I didn’t do anything except have an idea.

The people that put in the long hours, the work, the dedication, the buying of the lumber, the researching and purchasing of the unit, they get all the credit. Because they really did most of the work. Who cares if I had a good idea? Doesn’t matter. My idea wouldn’t amount to anything if somebody else didn’t put feet to the fire and make something happen. Actually walk out the vision, the dream, the goal, the idea that I had.

That’s what I love about our team. I think we have many leaders who are like this. It’s not about who gets the credit. The end result, leadership’s goal, is to inspire and influence others to rise up and do great things. And then they should get the credit.

Great men, great women, they’re okay with being little. It’s okay for me to say, “Hey, our team did this for you.” Telling a client, “Our team, yes, we have great team members.”

If you’ve ever heard me speak, if you’ve ever been around me talking to a prospective client, somebody that we don’t have yet, you will hear me talk about you. The great men and women that we have here every day of the week. Because it’s not about me; it’s about you. You’re doing the work. You’re getting it done.

We just recently had a client that we did some part-time work for. I talked to them and shared over the phone how proud I am of my team, my dispatchers, the leaders, and the officers who are sacrificing their time and working for them. I am so proud of them. It’s not about me. Yes, the request came to me. I happen to be the Vice President. Big deal. Who cares?

The important thing is that the team rallied around to make it happen. People like Sonja, people like Ivesha, people like Enos. People like Shawn, people like Carrie. They’re the heroes, not me.

So as you’re going through the rest of this week, I want you to think about our core value of humility. Recognize that it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. A great man or a great woman is willing to be little.

That’s what makes you great.

All right. God bless you. Be valuable. Nothing less will do. You know that I love you. God loves you. We’ll see you next week.