Things got a bit mucky yesterday.
My CrossFit gym participates in our local community's annual Rake Up day, where people in the community volunteer to go rake up leaves and clean up yards for persons who cannot, for whatever reason, clean their yard after the fall leaves have dropped. It's the third year I have participated, and we did the most raking we have done thus far- 5 houses! It's fun to get outside and just rake up leaves, and know you are helping someone out.
The cookies aren't bad, either. Someone ALWAYS makes cookies!
For our first house, they had a small front yard that was pretty quickly finished, and I moved into the back yard to work on the much bigger piles there. There were a couple of small trees that had dropped massive piles of leaves, and we worked together to fill 4 bags of leaves to be collected later by the city for composting. In one corner, we found a stuffed lamb (apparently the dog had hidden it behind the tree), several balls, and after raking up a huge pile of leaves from under the tree, we noticed the bird bath, next to the tree.
To say it was mucky was an understatement. It was mossy, dirty, and filled with leaves that had sunk into the icky, mossy water. I was thinking it was a breeding ground for all kinds of things, some of which should have been killed off by the frost and others that could grow over the winter. One of my co-rakers wanted to know what we should do with it- after all, we were there to clean up leaves and it was decidedly leafy.
My suggestions was to leave it alone. I was getting squicked out just looking at it, and I didn't want to stick my hands in that mess- it was much too dirty! And that wasn't our job, was it? I felt awful saying that, but the muck in the bird bath was pretty gross.
But my other co-raker pulled on her waterproof gloves, pulled a leaf bag over, and began to pull leaves out and dump them in the bag. She pulled out long, green pieces of moss and dirty water with them, and with only a few passes had completely cleaned out the bath. I was horrified and pleased all at once, and I felt strangely guilty. Because on some level, I thought we should do it, but I was scared of the mess of it.
It struck me that this is a problem in my own leadership. I don't want to deal with the icky, dirty pieces. I'd much rather stick my head in the sand and ignore it. I knew that before, but watching my friend yesterday brought it home in a way I hadn't thought of before. I thought I knew what that fear felt like, but it turns out I didn't, not wholly. There is another aspect I hadn't recognized, that sick, squicky, "I don't want to deal with the mess" feeling of fear.
Now I have another area in which I need to grow as a leader.
Tuesday is coming up fast! On Tuesday, we are tackling fear in leadership in our first-ever Topics in Leadership seminar. I'd love to see you there! You can register and get more information here.
I'm going to go clean up something dirty now. :)
Sarah
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