I’m still reading Michael Polllan’s book “Second nature: a gardener’s education”. This time I want to talk about his description of the garden world’s plants hierarchy. At the top stand the very civilized plants such as the rose and at the bottom are the weeds, attempting to take over. Where plants fall in this chain [...]

Tags: disengaged employees, employee engagement, Karen Schmidt, Organisational culture

Whether you are talking about a garden or a workplace there are some things you definitely don’t want to see. They are the signs that something is seriously wrong and that action needs to be taken immediately. Here are my top 5: dead plants . . . people who turn up physically but not mentally [...]

Tags: disengaged employees, Employee morale, Karen Schmidt, Leadership and management, Leadership skills, Organisational culture, www.letsgrow.com.au

One of the regular columnists in “Gardening Australia magazine” is Michael McCoy and in a recent edition his article on being ruthless started like this … “Managing a garden is like coaching a diversely skilled footy team, or chairing a committee made up of widely different personalities. In both cases there are assertive, pushy characters, [...]

Tags: Change management, difficult conversations, disengaged employees, Fierce conversations, Leadership and management

One of my jobs recently at www.nscf.org.au was to cut the diseased leaves off the tomato plants so that the problem didn’t spread and affect the fruit crop. I was then instructed to put those pieces in the bin, not the compost pile, so that the disease would not be spread elsewhere. Once I was [...]

Tags: disengaged employees, Fierce leadership, inconsistent leadership, managing poor performers