Tag: leader

Being Intentional about Watering Plants (8-26-20)

Last week was about knowing what you need to grow and develop.  This week is about being intentional about watering plants and giving love, care, and recognition to people.

My wife has flowers planted everywhere outside of our house.  Every day she would spend a few minutes checking on the plants to ensure they were getting enough water.  Sometimes the plants were fine, because it had been raining, so they were receiving all the nourishment they needed.  Sometimes, the plants were a little dry and she’d water them that night to take care of them.  Either way, she always checked in on them to see what they needed.  This pattern has been disrupted lately.  My wife has been in the hospital for the past 3 weeks with surgery and recovery.  With all this going on, I haven’t been doing the best job of checking on the plants, so they aren’t doing as well as they should be doing.  Now you could say I’m busy with other things right now, which is true.  The other truth is that the plants are starting to not do so well, and I need to take care of them. 

Where is this going?  Plants need water to grow, and a parallel to this is that people need care, love, and recognition to feel seen.  Like plants, people won’t always tell you when they need a little nourishment.  It’s up to us to check in on them and give them nourishment.  My wife was great about checking on the plants, and I wasn’t, so they began to die.  In a similar way, if we don’t check on each other and give what is needed, people become disengaged and start to wither.  When it comes to people, I always make the assumption that people need a little extra care, love,  and recognition, so I try to give them a little bit of this in every interaction.  Assuming they need this is the safest bet, because it guarantees there is no way to lose.  If the person is already feeling awesome about themselves and I give them an extra word of encouragement, they gain an extra boost in their step.  If the person is having a tough time, then my words of encouragement can be the water they desperately need.

Now you could say it’s difficult to give people the care, love, recognition, and support they need.  This is true.  You could also say, it’s easy not to do those things because you are so busy.  This is also true.  The other truth is that if it is your team, you are responsible for helping your team grow.  If you don’t give them the support they need, they will wither until you begin taking care of them again.

The challenge: How intentional are you about ensuring your team gets the “water” they need? 

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Translating, Building Context, and Pokémon (4-29-15)

Last week we talked about the need to translate initiatives and ideas for the individuals that you are leading and influencing.  This week, we will dig a little deeper into that concept by looking at how translation is difficult because everyone is always building their own context.

A few years ago I performed a poem called “Who Protects the Pocket Monsters?”  The phrase “pocket monster” is kind of an English translation of the word Pokémon.  Pokémon are those creatures that you catch with the pokeballs and then you make them battle each other.  The poem talks about capturing Pokémon and having them fight against each other.  If you want to hear the poem, take 2 minutes and listen to the attachment.

You might be wondering why I’m sharing a story about a Pokémon poem.  It’s because something really interesting happened after I performed the poem.  People kept coming up to me after the poem to tell what they thought the poem meant.  No one had the same answer, and no one mentioned Pokémon.  Some people told me the poem was about protecting endangered animals.  One guy told me it was about the cruelty of the whaling industry.  Some folks told me it was a poem that exposed the horrors of war.  Others told me it was a social commentary about Mike Vick and dog fighting.  Some talked about how the poem was about reflecting the violence we broadcast in our society.  The emcee of the event actually told the crowd that he thought the poem was about people’s souls being crushed by corporate America.

The thing is that they were all right in some degree.  Everyone in that room had been building context their entire lives, so when they all heard the same poem they heard different messages.  In this case, the fact that they all took away different messages didn’t matter, because I just wanted them all to connect to the poem.  However, imagine how bad it would have been if I would have needed the crowd to take away the same message.

This made me think of translating as a leader.  One of the biggest barriers to leading and keeping people on the same page is that everyone is always creating their own context.  Their context causes them to view messages in ways unique to them.  For example, Sue believes that change is a good thing and Darlene thinks change is scary.  These attitudes will color anything a leader says about change.  The challenge then becomes not only translating the message you want to communicate, but always restating and reframing the context to keep everyone on the same page.

When you communicate how often are you building context before you have a dialogue or share your message?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry