Working with companies who are challenged, I often see people in key positions express leadership in different ways. One of the most impressive and effective ways is when the leader takes responsibility for the running of the place, no matter what came before or who did what.
Think of any organization as a garden and the leader or CEO is the gardener. If one plant threatens the others with a fungus, it is their job to determine if it can be remedied and either attend to it or remove it from the rest of the garden.
This happened in my own literal garden this summer. I had four different varieties of tomatoes and had been joyfully tending them since early May. Placing buckets over their little heads when we unexpectedly got 13 inches of snow, watering, making berms to keep the water around each plant and so on. Then a few weeks ago, my variety called Big Boy got bottom rot. I consulted my brother-in-law, a life long farmer, and he said, too late, nothing can be done now. I had to decide, do I let it stay in the garden? But the tomatoes it was producing were so large, they promised so much, I couldn’t bring myself to rip it out.
A week later, my decision was made. The plant next to it was beginning to show signs of bottom rot too. The plant needed to go. I was sad to see it go, it truly was a Big Boy, but if all its fruit were rotten, what good was it?
As the gardener, it is your job to take responsibility for the flourishing of each plant. You may want to blame the Big Boy or the squirrels or the garden center who sold you the plants, but whatever is was that brought you to this point, it is ultimately your role to own responsibility for what is happening and take action to remedy it.
Blaming or pointing the finger at someone else keeps the garden at risk. Everyone wants to flourish, they want to thrive, but it is the gardener’s job to make sure that all the plants work together and produce what you chose them for. And if they feel the gardener is trustworthy, waters them consistently, tends to their issues timely and appreciates their produce, you have a beautiful, flourishing and bountiful garden.
What kind of gardener are you?
