Tomato Head

It is springtime!  Many of us might grow tomatoes, which are botanically a fruit but considered a vegetable for culinary purposes.  How does this relate to leadership?

Go with me on this for a moment...  Your employees share the following attributes with tomato plants. They are:

1. Attractive (at least they were during the hiring process) because of their excitement to be alive and grow in your organization.
2. Healthy when they are "good fruit" who positively contribute "vitamins" and "fiber" that strengthen others.
3. Fuel to grow your organization.
4. Limited in their ability to grow and provide value without structure, care and nurturing. 
5. Rotten to your company culture when your care for them is inconsistent and/or limited.

Consider a tomato plant that is growing within a tomato cage, a metal structure that is specifically designed to help it grow to its full potential.

Without the cage the plant grows without focus and some of its fruit rots on the ground.  While your people may be growing as they work for you, are they truly developing the skills that best support your organization?  Their activity level may be impressive, but without focus it has limited value.

The LEADERSHIP Essentials we teach help you become a great gardener.  Our leadership systems are comparable to a well-designed tomato cage to help people fully develop their talents and apply them to collectively build an organization that positively impacts the lives of others.

Do not mistake activity for accomplishment.  Your people need you to to be the leader you were designed to be.  Help your tomatoes thrive.  Move beyond assumptions to intentional, 3strands LEADERSHIP

P.S.  My thanks to Bill Hybels for his mention of a tomato cage recently.  it reminded me of the many hours I spent with my grandfather working in his garden that was overflowing with tomato plants.

BE a 3STRANDS LEADER

Systematic Leadership;  inspiring others in Meaningful Work;  and consistently expressing Sincere Gratitude to people around you.

Meeting Ideas

I suggest the following for conversation with your leadership team: 

1. Hire:  Is our hiring process clearly defined in-writing?  Are we consistently following the process when adding new people to our team?  What parts of the process are we not following consistently - do we need to be more diligent in these areas, or drop these activities from our hiring process?
2. Manage:  What structure do we have in place to manage our employees so we are providing them with focus, support, accountability, and the tools they need to succeed?  Do we have a strategic plan for each employee success?  Does each employee have clear, measurable goals?  Does each employee have written behavioral expectations, and the opportunity to express what they want from their boss to be successful?  What is our process for helping our people focus on what is most important instead of getting caught up in the tyranny of the urgent each day?
3. Develop:  What specific activities are happening to develop the natural strengths of our employees?  What is the accountability in this process?  How are they encouraged?  How is their progress recorded?  Is our process to develop our people exciting them, increasing our ability to improve client relationships, and building a stronger bottom line for our organization?  How?  If not, what are we going to do about it?
4. Retain:  What intentional activities are we doing to make certain we retain our best people?  How consistently do we do these things?  Do we have people on our team who have been with our organization for a while and we need to reignite their passion?  How much would it hurt to lose our top 5-10 people?  Specifically what are we doing to make certain we retain those people, separate of just throwing money at them?

As you can guess, I can go on for quite some time in this area...

Let me know how it goes.