Weeding is an important control method practiced in gardening. The removal of weeds is useful and necessary because these unwanted plants compete with other plants for space, water and nutrients. Weeding should be done in the early stages as the plants are smaller and easier to remove.
Besides helping to get a healthier crop, weeding has some other advantages.
- It positively impacts the micro-climate in the soil under the plants.
- Sun and wind can penetrate deeper in a weeded crop and reduce the humidity.
- This can help control pest populations and prevent some diseases.
- Weeding loosens the soil, so water can infiltrate more rapidly and roots of the cultivated plants can develop in a better way.
- It just makes more space and room for growth of the plants overall.
So what can we learn about people management and leadership from this seemingly mundane, tedious and sometimes backbreaking task?
Pulling out weeds in the garden has many similarities to managing the exit of an employee.
Whilst firing someone or being fired is never easy emotionally or mentally it can have a liberating effect on the individual themselves as well as the teams, setting them free from the burden of the current workplace. Much like freeing your plants from the constrictions and rampant, choking growth of weeds not tended to.
When someone who is a source of drama or a drag on performance is relieved of their position, a dark cloud over the organization lifts. The atmosphere gets better. People are happier to come to work. Overall performance improves. Or maybe not. A dark cloud then lies over the organisation creating fear and anxiety alongside the concern “Am I next?”.
More often than not, most teams know someone is not going to make it long before action is taken. This is why there is often the comment that they are surprised the dismissal took so long. When it finally occurs, there is a collective sigh of relief or sometimes simply a nod of agreement and “I told you so.” Beware though. Such reactions might be rise for concern as to the status of your organisational and team health. They might indicate that also bias could be at play as well or at least give rise to concern. However in the case of weeds, just as in the case with employees, they do serve a purpose and can be beneficial if they have a clear purpose and the environment is right. Replanting the tree is a thousand times better than ripping it out.
As gardeners and lovers of nature, greenness, animals, diversity and all things to the like, we must learn to look at weeds as plants albeit employees as human beings differently. Bear in mind that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What we consider to be a weed is very subjective. One person’s weed might be another person’s food, flower, or medicine. Take the dandelion for example. It’s considered a weed by some, a beautiful wild flower or a medicinal herb by others – I love picking dandelions and putting them in my salad. Dandelion greens are an excellent source of vitamin A, folate, vitamin K, and vitamin C (in its raw form), and a good source of calcium and potassium. So why not make space for them in your garden?
And so it is in life, perception is king. “Oh the places you’ll go….You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go” if you’d just open your mind to different experiences and see life as a journey as Dr. Seuss rightfully points out in his book of the same name.
How do you see yourself?
Are people’s perceptions of you and your perceptions of them limiting your potential or development – of themselves, the team, the organisation? Changing the way you look at things could also be a form of weeding that does not involve simply extracting but more effectively repurposing. That is the single biggest lesson to be learned when practicing the fine art of weeding. What do you need to repurpose in your life?
Like employees, weeds are only considered “bad” because of how we interact with them and relate back to them. They grow where they aren’t sown, where we don’t want them. Weeds like human beings are often winningly competitive, peskily persistent and willfully disobedient. Much like some of those staff members that we label as performance or culture fit issues. The proverbial bad apple that ruins the barrel.
But, they are not all bad. In nature, there are no “weeds” as there are no “low performers” or “bad hires.” They are plants and human beings. Neutral. A weed is a plant. An employee is first a human. All plants – and in this regard – all people have their uniques skils and abilities that make them special, certain roles and experience levels of varying degrees that they each bring to the table AND if we can start to see the good in them, perhaps they’ll be welcomed additions or at least visitors, to our ‘gardens’ that we can benefit from and when times comes and need be, part mutually in good stead allowing for space for something new to take hold.
“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them,” as A.A. Milne once said. Be kind and gentle above all to yourself and others!
