That’s Not My Job
The Amplified Impact Podcast
November 26th, 2023
This episode is for everyone looking to progress in their job or business. I learned a tough lesson…saying “That’s not my job” hurt my career growth.
It’s more than just missing out on promotions. When we shirk responsibility, we limit our growth and impact.
I realized this in my own business when I refused tasks that needed attention. The team’s morale suffered.
If you truly want to grow in your job or business, you’ve got to be willing to roll up your sleeves and pitch in wherever needed.
Not for praise, but because it’s the right thing to do.
When you consistently show up and go beyond what’s expected, it pays off in more ways than one.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Be willing to do any job at any given moment.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
All right, so today’s message goes out to anybody who is working a W Two. And you want to you want to progress. You want to move up in the world. You want to continue working on the product that is you, and you want to develop your skills. You want to go further in that corporate America environment, or maybe someday you just want to build your own business and you’re out there acquiring the skills and the experience right now to be able to do that later. Then again, maybe you’re a founder. Maybe you already have the business and you have people working underneath you. This advice is for anybody who is looking to progress inside of their job.
Anthony Vicino:
The thing that held me back the most and the reason I really struggled to ever work for anybody else and to get the recognition that I felt like I deserved while holding down a W Two was this idea that I wasn’t going to go above and beyond what I was paid to do. I wasn’t going to do more than the bare necessities, the job description. And if you want to go far in life, the words you have to eliminate from your vocabulary is, that’s not my job. That’s not my job. I’ve heard that so many times over my life because I’ve said that so many times. That’s not my job. And not only is that problematic in the sense that you’re never going to get the promotion, you’re never going to impress your boss, you’re never going to move up. More so than that, the damage that that phrase does is it abdicates accountability and responsibility to somebody else and says, that’s not my department.
Anthony Vicino:
That’s not on me, that’s on somebody else, and they need to pull their weight. And the reason that’s so problematic, I think, is because if you look at you as the product of the work that you do, right? Like, not the money that you’re making in your job, but you the person that you’re becoming, the skills you’re acquiring, the beliefs that you’re reinforcing, the traits you’re developing, you are the product of the work that you do. When you say things like, that’s not my job. That’s not my department. You are saying that there is something outside of you that you are not responsible for, that somebody else on the team has to pull their weight. And that you’re not going to go above and beyond and be the type of person who sees opportunity to help, to be useful, and then pitches in. And I think a lot about the book Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger, which I read a little bit ago, and I did a podcast on it a couple weeks ago. The book is called Be Useful seven Tools for a Useful Life or something like that.
Anthony Vicino:
And I think at its core, the goal of living a life of utility and just being valuable in some meaningful way to society, to the people around you, to the community that you get to surround yourself with. I think that’s one of the highest ideals that we can strive for. And when you say things like, that’s not my job, then you’re definitely looking at it as a me versus them, me versus this other thing. And I’m not going to put in more of me for that until that puts in more for me. That’s like the mindset that it’s almost like a transactional tip for that. And that was where I was for so long of my life. And honestly, it’s ingrained in a part of me that I still default to to this day. I don’t fall to the mindset naturally that everything around me is my responsibility, my accountability, and that I need to pitch in and be useful wherever and it is applicable.
Anthony Vicino:
And I noticed this in my own self. In the world of my businesses where I have teams running things, sometimes I still find myself not pitching in in a way that would be useful because I go, that’s not my job. And I don’t want to handicap the team by becoming the crutch that they lean on in that. But if I’m being really truthful, that’s what I tell myself. But if I’m being really truthful, a lot of times it’s just I don’t want to do the job. I don’t want to do that thing. And that’s bitten me in the butt in the past in one of my businesses. Early on, I realized one of the quickest ways to demoralize your team is to ask them to do things that you yourself are not willing to do.
Anthony Vicino:
And that’s not to say like, for instance, go clean the toilets, right? That’s a really nasty example, but toilets got to get cleaned. And at escape climbing, it was a bunch of dudes working there. I think in the shipping department, we maybe had three, four ladies and then the rest of the building, all 15 people or so were dudes. And so the dude’s bathroom got really wrecked every single day, it seemed like. And it became a problem because I believe that you can tell how much a business cares about the little things based on how much they care about their bathroom. I think if you go and you visit a company and you go into their bathroom and it’s nasty, you got a pretty good indication of how they run everything. If you go in there and it’s pristine and it’s like cared for, you get a pretty good sense that they care for things, even the small nasty things. And so we made it a very high priority that we wanted to have great bathrooms.
Anthony Vicino:
And the only way that we could do that to get everybody to take accountability and pitch in to make sure it didn’t just get destroyed throughout the day, was we cycled through every single day a different person was responsible for cleaning it. It’s a different person on the team. So it didn’t fall to the custodian staff, to the maintenance team. It was different person every day. That way you could get a hands on experience of like, oh, if everybody else on the team is just destroying this thing, then you get to feel that, right? So collaboratively everybody starts to take care of it. And at first we had some pushback from people who were like, that’s not my job. And I was like, if you ever say that to me again, if I ever hear those words again, it will be the last words you say at this particular workforce because there is no that’s your job and this is not your job. And we wrote this into our contracts in a very specific way, which is that you have to be willing to pitch in in any department at any time.
Anthony Vicino:
So we made people’s employment contingent on the fact that they needed to be willing to do any job at any given moment. Because when you’re scrappy in your startup, people have to pitch in sometimes in departments that aren’t their primary department. And that worked really well for us, getting people over that hump of owning the results of the business and owning the fact that this was their home and everybody wanted to take care of it and see it thrive and do well. Because when it thrived and did well, then they get to thrive and do well as well. All rising tides lift all boats and so this idea that it’s not my job is words that I used to say and I regret it. I regret ever thinking that way. And I think if you want to really progress in your W two or in your business, you really want to rally the troops behind you, you have to be willing to do any job at any point. And when you do that, when you do that without asking, when you do it without accolades or anything like that, making a big deal about it, you just pitch in.
Anthony Vicino:
You start helping and doing the jobs that need to get done because they need to get done. People take notice. You start to rise through the ranks as a leader and people will notice and they’ll reward that. And if they don’t, then maybe it’s time to find a different job. But generally, in my experience, at least, when you go above and beyond and you make that part of your behavioral pattern and it’s not just a one off thing that you do because you expect to get accolades and special treatment, but it’s just you consistently show up and do the work and go above and beyond. It pays dividends in the end. Not just because somebody else is going to externally reward you, but because it’s the type of person that you are becoming, the type of person who goes and does the job that’s needed. So hope that brings some value.
Anthony Vicino:
Guys and gals, I’ll see you tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.
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