When leadership lessons come from unlikely places.

by Dr. Chris Jones

April 12, 2023

I have two sons that are both playing baseball this year. My youngest just turned five, and this will be his first attempt at organized sports. My oldest has been playing for a few years, but this will be his first year in kid-pitch. I wanted to get more involved with their teams, so I decided to try my hand at coaching. I've always loved playing sports, but coaching is not something I have a great deal of experience in. As fate would have it, I am the head coach of my oldest son's team and the assistant coach of my youngest son's team. I've been attending coaching meetings, communicating with parents, learning about new coaching applications for smartphones, gathering equipment, setting up rosters, and a great many other tasks that I seemingly took for granted when I was just a spectator.

While there are many leadership lessons one can garner from coaching little league, this post isn't about little league, baseball, or coaching at all. It's about one person taking the initiative and igniting several others to do the same to accomplish a goal.

The weekend before this particular event, we had yet another coaches’ meeting about rules, regulations, various protocols, and they also handed out the rosters for the season. The meeting closed with a reminder that the coach's fieldwork day was the following Saturday. The purpose of this day was to clean up the fields and hang some banners from the community business sponsors of the league. Most importantly, the goal was to clear out the irrigation ditches that help to prevent water from settling on the field. If you don't already know, when water settles on the baseball field, games are canceled.

Saturday came, and, as Murphy’s law would have it, it was pouring down rain. It was also a little on the colder side. It’s April in East Tennessee, so it could snow one day and be 75 degrees and sunny the next. I arrived at the field much like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Vacation when they arrived at Wally World, only to find no cars in the vast parking lot. I double-checked my emails and texts to ensure I had the right day and to see if I missed any communication about the cancellation. Yes, I had the right day. No, there was no communication about a cancellation. It’s a volunteer organization, so it’s hard to expect a whole lot, but it was a little frustrating having planned some of my time off for this event only to find out it wasn't happening and no one said anything about it.

After waiting a few minutes, I noticed a car pulling up. A gentleman parked and began walking up to the equipment room on top of the hill. I got out and met him when he returned to his car to see if he had any more information. He was looking for uniforms and clearly not there for the fieldwork day. At this point, I had given up and was pretty much ready to go grab some breakfast and call it a day. My schedule is hectic throughout the week, so any makeup days would likely be out of the question for me, and the season's first games were quickly approaching. As I was walking back to my car, a gentleman pulled up next to me and asked the same question I had been wondering the whole time: “What's the deal." I told him we were the only ones that apparently showed up, and that was pretty much all the information I could provide.

Now, state of mind is important in this story. It’s vital to note that before speaking with this person, I was walking back to my car, envisioning the exquisite Hardee's bacon egg and cheese biscuit I was about to enjoy before I journeyed back home, possibly a chicken biscuit as well. He and I spoke briefly about the weather and the dreary conditions, further validating my disregard for the field work and transitioning to a mouth-watering breakfast. However, just before our conversation was inevitably about to culminate, he uttered a few words that drastically changed the outcome of the day.

“Hell, I’m already here. I’ll grab a shovel.” I knew that if he was willing to put in the work, I would be the biggest horse's-a** by allowing him to do it alone. After all, it was just him and I at the time. Though begrudgingly and undeniably unmotivated, my reply was: “What the heck. Let’s do it.” Now, he was smart and brought his own shovel. My subconscious failed me that day or perhaps convinced me that digging ditches caveman style would be way cooler. Regardless, I hadn’t played in the dirt for several decades, so this was a good opportunity to rectify that.

I worked my way over to the trench and began clearing out mud, roots, sticks, weeds; you name it. Luckily, the ground was still pretty cold, and it was raining, so my hands froze to almost the point of being unable to feel them. As it turns out, gloves are also important during fieldwork days. After a few minutes of clearing the irrigation ditches Peppa Pig style, three other coaches arrived and joined us. Our crew had now grown to five, still way smaller than the anticipated number, but the few of us worked diligently to clean up those ballfields. We accomplished quite a bit in the few hours we were there. The ditches encompassing several baseball diamonds were cleared, along with some overhanging shrubs and trees.

Here's the leadership application to this story. Had the gentleman who said, “I’ll grab a shovel,” not been there and taken the initiative, those ditches would still be full of mud, leaves, and debris. The water would not flow away from the fields, and several games would inevitably be canceled due to poor field conditions. Could they have just rescheduled and done it another day? Sure; however, judging by the number of people that were and were not there that day, I’m not certain much would have been accomplished.

The spark that this person ignited cascaded to all who were there, motivating others to pitch in and get the job done. Even in poor conditions, the seemingly insignificant act of being the first to say, “I’ll grab a shovel,” quite possibly impacted the entire baseball season for a few hundred kids.

As leaders, it’s easy to want to master the art of delegation and use that as your own personal continuous improvement project. If you really want to be effective, grab a shovel. I’m not saying you need to go out and do the work yourself, but work alongside your teams. Get out there with them, support them, and encourage them. Be the one that grabs their shovel on a rainy day so that others will follow and, more importantly, will want to follow. Whether it’s because you have inspired them or they don’t want to look like a horse's a** and be the only one not pitching in is irrelevant. You accomplished your objective, and you did it as a team. That’s what matters.