Lead like a gardener

How is being a leader like being a gardener?

No, this isn't the start of a cheesy corporate Christmas cracker joke. It's a genuine question that speaks to the core of the relational practice of leadership.

If your team was a garden, what kind of garden would it be? A flourishing oasis of calm and harmony? An overgrown thicket in which it is hard to find a pathway through? A tidy yard where everything has its place? A barren patch of earth where nothing has grown for a long time? A wildflower meadow where individuality can be expressed? Different gardens have their strengths to meet the needs of the season.

When we think relationally, there are a lot of parallels between being a leader and being a gardener. Both are complex tasks that require adaptability and attunement to a broader context. Here we use this metaphor to highlight ways that healthcare leaders can nurture and cultivate healthy teams that are empowered to grow, develop and reach their full potential.

Healthcare leaders can nurture and cultivate healthy teams that are empowered to grow, develop and reach their full potential

Relational leadership involves...

1. Creating conditions.

Gardeners do not grow plants: plants grow themselves. A gardener provides and shapes a nurturing environment and creates conditions that enable and allow plants to do their own growth. Leadership is the same: we do not develop a team, we create the conditions that enable and empower people to do their own development.

2. Understanding the context.

A gardener cannot control the weather - they must respond to the wider - unchosen - context, by forecasting, preparing, protecting where necessary and taking opportunities where possible. Slowly, in small ways, the garden can then start to impact on the local climate. As leaders, too, we cannot choose the broader organisational culture in which we lead. But can we understand the context and then adjust our approach accordingly, in the knowledge that this will have positive (albeit small) implications for that broader culture?

3. Compassionate wisdom and some tough decisions.

Gardening is not only about watching beautiful flowers grow, year after year. To allow a garden to flourish often requires removal and destruction. Sometimes, you have to prune hard or chop down a plant you really love. Sometimes, you have to step into the briar patch and allow yourself to get stung. Sometimes you just need to dig and move boring things from one place to another. Leadership, too, involves making courageous choices for what is right for the team, rather than short cuts to what is easy or comfortable.

4. Attention to the space between.

The interactions between plants are key to a healthy garden. If you plant tomatoes, it is a good idea to mix in some marigolds, as it keeps some of the predatory bugs away. And borage, as it attracts helpful pollinating insects. This is called "companion planting" and has a parallel in leadership, too. Who in your team works well with whom? What companions and combinations of co-workers can you facilitate that will discourage harmful patterns and encourage helpful ones?

5. Seeking the potential in people.

In the words of Grandpa Pig, "a weed is a cheeky plant growing in the wrong spot." There are many examples in gardening where the definition of "weed" is in the eye of the beholder. In a different context - planted in the right spot - a weed can become the star of the show. Leaders are often faced with colleagues who are viewed as disruptive in the team. Can we help those people to find their niche - their "right spot"? This then becomes a question of unrealised potential rather than of being a "disruptive colleague."

6. Approaching areas of resistance.

When faced with a patch of garden that will not grow, you can fertilise it, water it, dig it over, re-turf or replant it until you are red in the face. Or you can screen it off so no-one can see. But until you stop and understand why this ground is barren, and what it needs, it will continue to resist your attempts to fix it. As a leader, can you approach areas of resistance in your team with a genuinely open curiosity to understand? What do those pockets of resistance tell you about what's going on, what the team cares about, and what they need?

7. Valuing diversity and difference

Generally speaking, gardeners try to avoid cultivating monoculture (i.e. only growing one species of plant or crop). Monoculture in a garden reduces genetic diversity which increases the risk of disease and environmentally triggered catastrophe. A healthy garden has high biodiversity: lots of different kinds of plants growing alongside and together. A relational leader will attend not only to the individuals and their strengths and skills but also the pattern of how the team works together as a collective. Keeping the vitality of difference in a team (different people, ideas, practices) allows it to adapt flexibly when there are changes in the environment.

8. Slowing down

While "speed gardening" is apparently a real thing, gardeners are more often known for their slow pace, their patience and their ability to find time for a cup of tea. Gardening "at pace" risks cutting through roots, crushing new growth and doing yourself an injury. Leadership benefits from slowing down, too. This allows you to approach rapidly developing and fast paced scenarios with patience, containment and a level head for thinking with.

9. Understanding and getting to know

Neither gardeners nor leaders can do any of this before first taking time to get to know and understand the individuals, patterns, and peculiarities of their patch. And this is not a single-use skill, it is an understanding that needs to be continually updated and shaped over the seasons.

We would love to hear from you. Does this metaphor fit for you and your approach to leadership? Are there other ways that you lead like a gardener?

Thanks for reading.