What Gardening Teaches Us About Leadership

Hi meaningful leader,

I’m so happy you stopped by. I’ve been working on new content for you and it’s funny how the more we create, the more creative ideas start to flow.

So for today I wanted to share a thought I got the other day while I was driving and the whole idea of gardening and leadership became clear in my mind. I know it sounds random, but it’s going to make sense, so don’t fret my friend!

I’m a chronic podcaster, I’m constantly tuned into an episode of a podcast. This can vary from true crime (any Crime Junkie fans here…yay you!) to leadership, entrepreneurship, manufacturing updates and best practices, ghost stories, and creative writing.

The day this idea popped into my head, I was enjoying an episode by one of my favorite long life mentors, John Maxwell. The episode’s title was The Three E’s of Developing Leaders and in it, John pours so much wisdom as usual, but what caught (no pun intended) my attention, was that as one of the Es is Environment, John explains that leadership is more caught than taught. We catch things from our environment faster than we learned them.

So the episode ended and a lightbulb just went on in my head…John has that effect on me. One of my happy hobbies is gardening, I love the patience and care it teaches me and there’s nothing more reassuring and fulfilling for the soul than the work we do with our hands.

When we are growing a garden, we pay attention to the environment in which our plants are in. the goal is to enhance such environment to ensure the plant not only has a fighting chance but is able to thrive and flourish.

But when a plant starts to look unhealthy, whether is due to stagnant growth or yellowing leaves. Maybe there’s no new leaves, or the leaves have dark spots or we find a weird worm crawling around the leaves. Or maybe our plant is not producing flowers of fruits as it should be, based on the season; but regardless of what the issue is, we look outside of the plant for a solution.

We pay attention to the media or dirt, to ensure its the adequate kind for our plant. We maybe look into a fertilizer or some sort of plant food. We check for pests and fumigate the leaves. We look at light exposure, is it enough or too little? Same with the water schedule, is too often, or not enough? We may even prune the plant to promote its growth. We pull any weeds out from around it and in some cases (like mine) we talk to them and praise them to boost their plant-steem (yes, I made this word up). But we never look at the plant and “judge it” for the problem it is experiencing. On the contrary we want to help it. We know for a fact that given the right conditions and treatment, the plant will give us its best.

The same happens in leadership. As John states during this episode’s teaching, leadership is caught more than taught. People thrive in the right environment; where they are surrounded by the right kind of leadership, the one that overflows onto others. People in the right environment, with the right company culture and under the right leadership, have a better fighting chance at becoming great leaders themselves and passing on that same energy and service mindset onto others to catch.

When teams are failing, most likely than not, it is the leader’s failure reflected on them. Our goal as leaders is to build others to that same, or even higher level of excellence, and to build them up with a “pay-it-forward” mindset. We give with open hands and we believe in people, because everyone deserves to be led well.

I hope you found value on today’s article. If you did, please don’t keep it to yourself. Like, share, subscribe, it helps me grow the blog. If you can think of one person that can benefit from this content, forward them the link, it’s easy-peasy and they’ll thank you for it!

Until next week my friend, God bless,

Maria