The Nature of Leadership and Career

read time 5 minutes

The Nature of Leadership and Career is a weekly newsletter where I provide 1 illustration and ~3 ideas to help you connect to your career, leadership, or work journey in a more natural way.

Today at a glance

• Community Announcement

  - August meetups - Thriving Through Career Transitions - Women’s Community

• Illustration of the week

  - Do you know how to re-pot your team members?

• The Nature of the Leadership

  - Plant Rehab - Impact vs Effort

  - Why don’t we re-pot people into an environment where they can thrive?

  - Skill vs Will matrix

  - 2 steps to help employees find their roots and thrive

📢Community Announcement

Last month I launched Thriving through career transitions for Women** In Technology and Sustainability.

We already have had some wonderful women from all around the world join!

This is a supportive space where you can:

• find solace, guidance

• boost your confidence

• continuously expand your knowledge

• connect and a network of like-minded ladies / non-binaries who share similar experiences.

📅 August 21 will be our second EU + US timezone roundtable!

*Non-binary individuals are also welcome. If you are from a different sector and are interested in joining, feel free to send me a message.

Illustration of the Week

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The Nature of Leadership

I keep replaying a recent conversation I had with one of my closest friends who is an amazing female People leader in technology.

We were talking about the many times in our careers when we have seen ourselves and others change roles, teams, or companies where we were withering to somewhere where we bloomed.  

My friend talked about one of the best leaders she ever had during her time at the streaming service Hulu (now acquired by Disney).

He was a strong believer in “repotting” people into different environments where they can thrive.

💡 This seems intuitive.

 ❓ So why doesn’t it happen as often as it should?

Let’s consider the actual repotting of plants / keeping them alive.

If you are a regular reader, you will know that keeping plants alive is becoming a theme.

When we see that our plants are not thriving, we:

• know (we over or under-watered them) why but we can’t be bothered re-potting them;

• make some effort to find out why e.g. use one of those pH/water gauges to measure what’s happening and make a few changes.  But the plant still withers; or

• we make no effort and blame it on the plant's inherent nature e.g. Orchids are notoriously difficult to grow.

If you are a plant genius or enthusiast, you generally.

• take more time to diagnose why the plant is withering; and

•  use one or more deeper-level interventions to enable the plant to thrive:

  a) changing the pressures; exposure to light or temperature

  b) changing the soil in the same pot; or

  c) completely re-pot the plant into a new environment.

• ask friends / other gardeners for help.

Why don’t we re-pot people into an environment where they can thrive?

The deeper-level interventions take more time and effort. They also yield better outcomes for you and the plant.

Unfortunately, it’s too common and easy to toss out the plant. Get a new one and hope things will be different this time.

This is also true for employees that are struggling to plant their roots.

We don’t re-pot them as often as we should, due to the time and effort it takes as leaders.

It is a two-way responsibility between leader and employee to experiment with the conditions to thrive.

Here are two steps to help employees find their roots and thrive.

2 steps to help employees find their roots and thrive

Step One: Diagnose the root cause. 

How do you go about figuring out why the employee is not thriving?

Understand the skill vs will matrix which is based on the Situational leadership model Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard.

• The employees that are struggling to “take root” are in the bottom two quadrants.

• These employees take a lot more effort.

• The low skill, low will category is often at biggest risk of being the plant that gets tossed out as “bad hires” and “poor performers”

• The high skill, low will employees are often labeled “difficult”. And yes they can be.

• Use this model to think through the observed data points of your employee’s behavior and outputs to see where they fit:

  • Do you think the employee is in the right soil (your team/company);

  • or do they just need some fertilizer (training or self-belief);

  • or will changing to different temperatures (e.g. different projects or skills utilized) could make all the difference?

Step Two: Cultivate the peak conditions …together!

• Have a conversation with each employee (including the top two quadrants, they also need support albeit to lesser extent) and ask them what conditions they need to thrive first. Let them come up with a solution to how they think they might get there.

• Then offer your perception of the situation, and what behaviors or outcomes you require from the employee within a reasonable time frame. If you have solutions the employee hasn’t already come up with propose them.  

• Come to a joint approach. This might be a mixture of surface-level solutions e.g. more water (time and coaching from you) and deeper-level solutions (e.g. changing into a different project, team, or company.

• If conversations a leaning toward your employee and you think a re-pot to a new organization might be best. Make sure you get advice from your HR team as this can be a delicate employee relations topic.

Sounds like a lot of effort?

It is. That is a privilege and the responsibility of a leader.

In my opinion, it is also the unwritten psychological contract between leader and employee;

In the end trust in the wisdom of Voltaire or Spiderman’s uncle:

Let’s continue the conversation

• 🤝 If you need help in your leadership or career transition journey

• Send feedback on todays issue.

Catch up on recent issues of The Nature of Leadership + Career

• Amplify or Unravel? The 3 types of leaders shaping your leadership

• How your scarcity mindset impacts your decision making and empathy + 3 ways to override it

• 3 career X-factors that most generalists ignore

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