T-Shirts and Leadership

Are you a leader? I’m writing this today to tell you that you are a leader and my hope is that at the end of this post, if you don’t already consider yourself one, is that you’ll believe why you are one. 

We see these instances on TV or social media that we would call a leader someone who would give like $10M to a school, or write a bunch of hit songs, or invent a revolutionary technology. The problem with seeing these wonderful accomplishments as the only examples of leadership is that we create a situation where leadership is something that is beyond our capabilities. In fact, I’ve been using the phrase “make the world a better place” but without context it also puts leadership beyond our grasp.

We take this title of being a leader and have made it into something we might achieve in the future, aren’t deserving of the title, or worse – that being a leader is meant for someone else and someone else only. I feel it. I’ve also spent a decent chunk of my life not believing I’m a leader. I’ve started to write more blog posts and stuck the hashtag of leadership on them. I don’t feel humble doing it and it’s this impostor syndrome creeping in that says, what in the world do I know about any of this stuff and who cares what I have to say? 

When we only celebrate the astounding accomplishments that almost no one can do, we lose sight of the “in the moment” things we do everyday that makes a leader.

I’ve been really lucky over the last 20 years to work with fantastic teammates and to get to know some especially amazing people who have helped me redefine leadership. 

When I had announced earlier this month that I was transitioning my leadership at ZERO, there was a woman who reached out to me and said she remembered when I met her about five years ago. She said she had intended to go to the ZERO - The End of Prostate Cancer Run/Walk in Hartford but nearly did not. Tragically, her husband had passed away from prostate cancer less than a month before and he had planned on attending with her. Next to meeting patients at these events, connecting with family members who have lost someone is one of the favorite parts of my job because I can’t wait to connect them with others who are feeling how they do and are right where they are in the journey. It the connection forges an extended family.

Anyway, she had told me that she was so grief-filled and scared about showing up at the event that she burst into tears right before coming to the walk. And her kids were amazing – They said, mom we don’t have to go but if you want to go we’ll be by your side every moment and if at any point you want to leave, we’ll leave. 

I’m a t-shirt guy. I’ve always been. I love a unique t-shirt! So, I was at the walk that day and it was one of those summer days where it feels like you’re standing on the surface of the sun - even standing in the shade. By 8 a.m., I had already sweat through my ZERO shirt and had to change. 

With her family at her side, she had come inside the baseball stadium where we were hosting the walk and understandably, she had decided to just pick up the packet with the race shirts and quietly leave but she saw me at the ZERO table; wearing one of her team’s walk t-shirts she had sent me the week before; giving high-fives to people. She told me she knew she needed to stay. She told me it was where she was supposed to be, and “being part of the prostate cancer cause seemed like home”. 

It’s really quite special to think that maybe I had an impact on how someone lives their life after such a loss as devastating as losing their life partner that a woman would reach out through the pain of recalling such a moment five years later to tell me “you’ve been an important person in my life in a time I needed it”. 

I clearly remember seeing her and talking to her and her family but I don’t remember wearing the shirt. How many of us have had a time where someone was metaphorically wearing your t-shirt and then not even really remember wearing it? A time where someone did something or said something that changed the way you felt? 

Here’s the big nucleus of it all – we have all had those special moments but it takes real courage and vulnerability to tell someone that they created one for us. That was her. A leader. Finding the moment to tell someone they meant something to them.

If you’ve been reading this and thinking you’re not a leader, you are one but just haven’t been told lately. 

We need to let go of the idea that leadership is about having a lot of money or fancy titles, or changing the world in one fell swoop. Making the world a better place or being a leader is really about how many times we can wear that t-shirt for someone and even more brave and perhaps even more impactful – tell someone else we’re grateful they did it for us.