Managing a team is like gardening… April 14, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Leadership, Performance Management, Talent Management.trackback
If you have read my profile, you will have learned I am a Brit now living in the somewhat cooler climate of Ontario, Canada. Here we are just beginning to welcome the signs of spring but we are still groaning under the occasional flurry of the white stuff (hard to believe in April!). Yet I have faith that the warmer weather is just around the corner. Spring is sprung, even if it doesn’t know yet!
At this time of new beginnings, the perky iris’s in my front yard remind me that sometimes growing conditions are everything. For a plant to perform its best it needs the basics – water, air, warmth/sunshine, and soil – plus the ideal position. Some plants like shade, some full sun. Some are hardy, some not so much. All are a delight and accomplish different things in their lifespan.
Gardeners use their knowledge of plants, growing conditions and their available resources to ensure each plant achieves its optimum performance. If something doesn’t grow well or isn’t thriving, they may move the plant, try adding nutrients to the soil or in some way alter the growing environment to suit the plant. In the worse case they may decide that the plant and the conditions are not well matched and may offer the specimen to another gardening friend. What they will never do is blame the plant for not being able to grow in their backyard. If a plant is not thriving it is the role of the gardener to find out how to help it flourish or provide it with an opportunity to establish elsewhere.
I believe this to be true of managers and their reports as well. I believe in the inherent greatness in everyone. To borrow words from Rosa Say’s excellent blog Managing with Aloha greatness is ’sometimes deeply buried or dormant, asleep, nervous, afraid and in hiding, or even lazy and unexercised’ but it is the manager’s job to balance the conditions to enable each individual’s talents to shine through.
Just as in the garden, one approach will not suit all. Some people will want to be showered with feedback, while others will want to be left alone for the most part, guided only if they veer off track. Some people will want to be permanently in the spotlight while others will prefer a periodical but quiet acknowledgement of their contributions. Some are charismatic and flamboyant, others are more subtle and elegant. Like every garden, there will be some that don’t thrive in the conditions, in which case you could help them to transplant. The occasional weed (which is really just a flower misplaced) can be selectively removed.
Treat your team as you would your garden and you will soon have an abundant display of passion and talent. And if you’ve never gardened, perhaps you should try it. It gives a whole new appreciation to diversity.
That’s a great analogy.
Unfortunately a great many will see and still not act on it. I know many managers who take better care of their garden, their horses, their boats, their … then they ever do of their employees. But it’s the employees that makes them successful – not the hobbies.
It is a sad truth you speak, Frank.
Two thoughts come to mind:
On the one hand perhaps managers who care more about their material belongings than the people they are responsible for shouldn’t be managers?
Then again, if we believe that most people are well intended and capable of more if shown the way, then perhaps these managers need help to make the connection. If we understand what drives them to devote time, energy and resources to their outside interests and encourage them to apply that spark to their working team, then perhaps the change will come.
Any thoughts on what we could do to help people make the leap from reading an idea to acting on it?
[...] The Impassioned Workforce: Managing a team is like gardening… “To borrow words from Rosa Say’s excellent blog Managing with Aloha greatness is ’sometimes deeply buried or dormant, asleep, nervous, afraid and in hiding, or even lazy and unexercised’ but it is the manager’s job to balance the conditions to enable each individual’s talents to shine through.” [...]
[...] to fit the market, and you implement that understanding in the workplace. As a post on The Impassioned Workforce argues: “Gardeners use their knowledge of plants, growing conditions and their available [...]