Post by Andrew Black

As a leader, are you willing to take out the garbage? I've worked with Dan Parks for about 17 years, and his answer to that question is one of the things I admire most about him. At Gatestone in 2010is, we'd expanded the office, and 150 new workstations which meant we had cardboard boxes stacked 20 feet tall down a back hallway. Dan had been our EVP for about 30 days. He decided to come in himself on a Saturday and handle it. He showed up with his wife and his two kids in tow — and a few of us (even the IT guy) spent the afternoon hauling boxes down to the trash compactor. He was EVP and had only been in the seat for a month. And here he was on a weekend taking out the garbage. I knew two things after that day. The first was that I would trust this person. He wasn’t going to ask me to do something that he wouldn't do himself. The second was that this is the only standard worth running a team on. I'm not going to ask anybody to work late, or work a weekend, or do something I haven't done with them. That Saturday is still part of how I think about leading a team.