Leadership Thursday:
Don't Cover the Weeds with Dirt - A Story
The hard reality is, not everyone is going to be a fit on your team and what you are trying to do, no matter how much nurturing you do. Their behavior and/or performance level is going to always be sub par for some reason. Do you accept it, or do you do something about it? Leaders who deeply care about those they lead choose the latter. They do something about it because they care about doing what is best for the employee first as well doing what is best for the team, organization and company. And sometimes, the most difficult thing to do, is the right thing to do for everyone. There are times you are going to have to fix the problem at the toughest of tough root levels.
Every summer for many years my boys have had the difficult chore of pulling weeds in the berry garden. If you know anything about berry gardens you understand that it requires you to sit in the hot sun (or cool early morning - my sons never figured this one out) weeding inside and around the bushes and being extra careful so as not to be pricked by one of the many abundant thorns. Well, long story short, they hate this chore. So one particular hot summer afternoon they had a "brilliant" idea. Instead of pulling the weeds from their roots, they would just simply throw as much dirt as they could over them.
The next day as I went out to water the garden, the weeds that they had thrown dirt over had magically popped up and appeared all over the garden again. They learned a lesson that day, you can't simply throw dirt over a weed and expect it to solve your problems. Likewise, leaders can't ignore and wish away poor behavior and/or performance. The weeds will always be there. The same problems will continue to resurface over and over again. You must care enough about those you lead to do the difficult thing and get a hold of the root which could require moving people over or off, instead of up.
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