When I was a kid, I was watching my mother slashing a mango tree. With toddler utmost curiosity I asked her what the intention of her activity, was she mad at the tree? She replied that she intend to make the mango tree even more productive, to produce more fruits than ever before… And the next day she found most of the plants in her garden were slashed away, torn apart, and devastated in pieces. As she knew who we the prime suspect of such vandalism, she patiently told me that not all trees deserve equal treatment to grow bigger, to produce more, or to flourish better. Every plant must have specific handling, there are typical plant that require no extra attention yet it grow and fruitful, yet other plants need to be fertilized, clear its surrounding weeds in periodical basis, and watered timely. The difference in treatment to each plant doesn’t show injustice among them, but it is justice in each perspective, and the individual imbalance will create a perfect harmony and a colorful garden.
Reflecting the childhood memory into the idea of people development today is as similar to be a gardener, the era of standardization is over, and the era of customization have begun. Every individual requires customized treatment to grow and be productive. Leadership is not a subject to be excluded, it is as inclusive as any customization David Smith mentioned in his book The Workforce of One (I haven’t finished it yet, but that’s the main idea in general)
All the perfection should come to an end somehow, yet again we should not seek for perfection, we seek for balance and harmony, If a plant decided to die, it’s not all the gardener’s faults, maybe it was just the weather, or the soil, or the undetected insect, or whatever. A leader most definitely can’t make everybody happy, but the gardener should’ve know better, sometimes it is not the work that make people leave, or even salary, or God knows what else. A survey hold by one of the HR consulting firms shows that 89% of the Fortune 100 companies’ attrition rate caused by the boss who just don’t advocate, who set aside recognition, who blames all the time, who shows disrespect, and more list to come. What the root cause of them? Is they just being evil? I don’t think so. It was all the pressure and time constraints by deadlines, we forgot who make the work for us, not even a thank. We literally forget that there are people around us that make everything happens, we forgot to motivate, to say please beforehand, to say thanks afterwards, and all the thing that doesn’t seems significant, yet it does.
How do we handle this? How to even understand what’s our colleague’s motivation driver? I say it simple, try to spare an hour or two with them just to discuss about their concerns at least twice a month (in a lunch or anything), to share ideas how things should’ve done better, and giving feedback to one another. When companies start doing this, the performance and satisfaction index is skyrocketing. It may not solve everything, but at least we are more engaged to each other. The most engaged company delivers the highest performance (sounds familiar with the credo?)
The basic premise of leadership is that leaders don’t create more followers, they create more leaders…
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