Telling your workers to be more engaged just won’t work. Leadership is about putting mechanisms in place that will encourage their progress.
BY FAISAL HOQUE | August 14, 2014
The farmer is in the business of growing plants, the physician that of curing patients, the teacher that of educating students. But the very grammar of those clauses betrays a misunderstanding.
The farmer does not grow the plant, the plant does; the physician does not make the patient healthier, the patient grows healthier; and the teacher cannot command the student to learn, that growth must happen within the student.
Instead, what these noble professions do is arrange the circumstances for the beings they are taking care of so that they may flourish.
You cannot tell a flower to grow, but you can help it to do so. The farmer is mindful of the seasons and plants seeds when most suited; the physician studies a patient’s case history and integrates treatment into that larger narrative; the teacher tailors her lessons to the lives of her students, allowing the material to be as relatable as possible.
We can add leaders to that list of helpers.
The people we work with are not so unlike the plants the farmer grows–we can’t simply tell them to grow.
The growing happens within them, and for people to want to work rather than having to work is actually a matter of managing progress, not people.
Read the full article @FastCompany.
[Image: Flickr user Joshua Mayer]
