Follow or Lead? A Lesson from a Garden

There comes a point in the career of most professionals are ready to move from an individual contributor (follower) to a coach, mentor, or manager of others (leader). It never happens all at once and sometimes the signs can be missed. When the signs are missed for too long, you risk losing a valuable member of the team because you weren't ready for the change.

So what are the signs that someone is ready to make the transition to become a leader? That's not so easy to define and can vary from person to person. Some of the more obvious positive signs are someone wanting to take on more responsibility or to take the lead on a project. Others involve the person speaking up more in meeting and proposing ideas or solutions instead of waiting to be handed an assignment.

There can be negative signs that can pop up when a current manager or leader fails to see their employee's hunger for growth. If the budding leader is shut down or shut out, they may withdraw from the conversation, stop proposing ideas, and let their engagement falter. They stop caring because they perceive a lack of care.

This is where the waters get dangerous. Quality of work suffers and the rebuffed employee will start looking elsewhere for validation and a chance to grow.

Think about it this way: I use to have a garden where I grew herbs and flowers. I had a beautiful sage plant that got overlooked because it was tucked away behind a rosemary bush. It tried to grow in the space which was now too small for it to flourish in and started to wither. It wasn't until the sage plant was moved to a new herb bed that it came into its own and produced so many fragrant leaves that I had to give most of them away.

Think on that...