Leadership is Gardening
Our schema for leaders is heroes. They’re cape-wearers and chessmasters who command and wield power, winning by being smarter, better, faster, stronger (all the “-ers”). Traditional, hierarchical, command-based leadership has the apparent allure of controlled, highly productive results.
But the most effective leaders I know are more like gardeners. They’re constantly tending the garden that their teams and people are planted in.
Fertilizing here with encouragement and advice.
Pruning there with feedback and hard conversations.
Watering with new hills to take and opportunities to grow.
Picking weeds by addressing the barriers to better work.
Whether we’re looking for a flourishing and healthy team, organization, or garden, we can’t bank our success as leaders on our own sheer brilliance. Our world is too complex and faster moving for one person to see all the angles. More directing, command, and control is not the answer.
Instead, let’s tend an environment for growth. Let’s sign up, over and over again, for the humbler work of sore knees and dirty fingernails that leads to a ecosystem where our teammates (and the results they create) can flourish and bear fruit.
Inspired by Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal
