Chapter 3: Lessons Learnt From Loading The Dishwasher
Dishwasher Diaries: Human characteristics & tips on building rapport
Welcome back again!
In these stories I have dubbed the ‘Dishwasher Diaries’ I am going to cover managerial approaches through life experiences I have had with individuals loading the dishwasher, breakdown their advantages and disadvantages as well as give you some tips on how to deal with them.
If you missed my previous article on ‘The Surface Cleaner’ approach, you can read it here:
Contents:
🔶 How did I come across this approach?
🔶 Who is ‘The Conscientious Creeper’?
🔶 What are the advantages & disadvantages of this personality trait?
🔶 How do you effectively coach them?
Chapter 3: The Conscientious Creeper
10 years ago I lived in Amsterdam. Why? I’m sure you could guess some of my motivations. I was in my early 20’s and honestly, it was a crazy time. I won’t go into too many of the details here, but suffice it to say that it was a pretty unhealthy lifestyle.
Before I moved, I was working in London as a door-to-door salesman for a marketing company that ran campaign drives for charities. In the UK it is known as ‘chugging’ which is a combination of the words ‘charity’ & ‘mugging’ (if you haven’t heard that word before, it means ‘robbing someone in a public place’). It is a difficult job in my opinion, but it taught me a lot of what I know today about the human race.
For example, how those with nothing, give everything. Why? Because they know how to survive with very little and are not strangers to getting or giving a helping hand to others. While those that live in houses behind pearly gates, donate 1% of their salary to a bunch of charities selected for them by their bank. Making their lives about conserving and compounding their wealth.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not intended to inspire a ‘Fuck the rich’ mentality, what rich people do is very smart. But the fact remains.
Anyway, I’m getting off track…
One day after about 4 months ‘chugging’, I was sat with a friend in a pub implementing some much needed Dutch courage before we started knocking on doors. He was telling me about a friend he had in Amsterdam and that we should just book one-way flights and leave. We laughed for a bit and continued downing our drinks, that was until he turned round his laptop, showed me the ticket he just bought and said “Your turn”. I looked at him bewildered for a second, we only had about £80 each at the time and the flight was £40.
Why not? I thought. I had always wanted to travel, hated my job and right then was as good a time as any.
During the 3 years I stayed, I bounced around a few different styles of accommodation, from homeless living in a park, to a great little flat opposite the famous André Hazes statue in De Pijp. But the one I would like to share with you today was a shared house with 4 other guys just off Leidseplein square. For anyone who doesn’t know Amsterdam so well, this is where you can find some of the most popular late night bars & clubs like The Sugar Factory, Melkweg, The Waterhole and many more.
My space in the house wasn’t really a room, it was about a quarter of a room which just about fit my blow up single bed and nothing else, shared with a guy called Charlie. At this point, I was still living out of a rucksack that contained everything I owned.
Everyone in the house worked at night, pub crawl guides & bar staff. The house was pretty chaotic. We had parties regularly, the place was tidy, but I couldn’t say it was really clean. However, each morning when I came down for breakfast, the dishwasher had been on and there were clean cutlery and plates. “Woah”, I always thought. “Who did this?”, it certainly wasn’t me.
But how was it possible? We were all regularly getting home between 4-6 am. I was typically eating any leftover food I could find or trying to cook some monster mash of edible ingredients that I found in the fridge and thinking ‘I’ll clean this up tomorrow when I wake up’, but never had to…
This was how I came across ‘The Conscientious Creeper’. It is an approach that you can find in quiet, but very hard-working people who tend to shy away from any form of conflict and see it as ‘not worth the effort’ to try and change others to do things in their way.
In almost every job I have done, there has always been a person who shared these traits. They were almost always one of the most knowledgeable people on the team and unsurprisingly have been in the role for a long period of time.
In a work environment:
They are the person you go to when all other solutions have failed and they will almost always invest their time to be able to present a solution.
They solve problems and fix issues without anyone noticing.
They almost never boast or brag about their work and often prefer it to go unnoticed.
What is powerful here is that they tend to be extremely well informed about the given task and do not need positive reinforcement. It is ‘normal’ to do things to their full potential. They also have a ‘nonchalant’ attitude to being liked by others but internally they need to be good at something to feel confident.
The downside of course is that they tend not to make great team players, are very individualistic in how they do things, tend not to share opportunities to learn with others and can also be quite reluctant to change.
Personally, I have found that these people tend to easily burnout. They end up taking too much on and become the ‘easy option’ for others who can abuse their good will. More often than not, you need to give them guidance on how to delegate tasks and how to help others learn, rather than just doing everything themselves. Their fear tends to stem from spoiling relationships they have within the team.
Coaching someone to do this is a shift in mindset and approach. Here are some steps you can take to help them make this transition:
Emphasize the importance of delegating: Explain why it's important to delegate tasks and responsibilities, and how it can help build the skills and confidence of those around them.
Model delegation: Demonstrate the delegation process by sharing your own experiences and approaches to delegating tasks and responsibilities.
Encourage them to give clear instructions: Help them develop clear and concise instructions for problems they are usually solving, and encourage them to communicate expectations clearly and consistently.
Provide support and feedback: Be a supportive and provide constructive feedback to help them continuously improve their delegation and leadership skills.
Remember, coaching is about helping individuals reach their goals, and in this case, it's about guiding them towards becoming an effective leader for others. By helping them develop the skills and mindset they need to do this effectively, you can help them achieve their goals and build strong, effective teams in the future.
But back to Amsterdam…
I actually only found out who the mysterious dishwasher was AFTER I moved out of the house. We had met for a few beers in a place called Coco’s on Rembrandt square to catch up and see how everyone was doing. While we were reminiscing, I mentioned about the dishwasher scenario and joked about having not washed a single thing in the time I had stayed.
We all laughed, but out of the corner of my eye I could see that Charlie was staring at me. He walked over and said “I was always cleaning up after everyone man, it was so fucking annoying. Sometimes I thought you guys assumed we had a cleaner or something”. To be honest, I had never even stopped to think about it. With everything going on I had completely overlooked his effort & kindness.
Lesson learned.
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Don’t just take things for granted. Think about what goes on behind the scenes. In your favorite bars & restaurants, workplaces and even activities that you partake in. There are teams of people who make all of those function, and they each individually play a very important role.
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In the next chapter, I am going to tell you a story from Thailand. About a man who was a true Entrepreneur. He had identified a problem, and had the solution, although it was not the most hygienic approach…
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Great story, J0nga, and I can definitely see a little of that "Conscientious Creeper" in me, especially from my later years in the classroom when everyone always came to me for help/advice, etc.
Glad to have subbed your news letter and look forward to reading more, my friend!