People and Their Vegetable Factor
My mom was an amazing woman with many talents. However, one talent she lacked was being a good cook. She was a delicious baker who made the best caramel rolls you can imagine, but when it came to cooking, she was average at best. Part of her lack of skill stemmed from her WWII rationing experiences, which served her well when it came to feeding six children on a small budget but which left much to be desired in the realm of taste.
As I was thinking of her cooking the other day, I made a connection between the vegetables I grew up on and people’s communication and team effectiveness. I realized we all have a vegetable factor.
“What the heck is a vegetable factor?” you ask. The vegetable factor has to do with how we’ve been prepared for interacting with others. Some of us have had experts pour their knowledge into us, and as a result, we’re more palatable and pleasing to others. Others of us have not been invested in the same way. As a result, our communication and teamwork may be adequate, as opposed to superb.
The Vegetable Factor
Let me share a bit more about my mom’s vegetable cooking and complete the comparison for us. I remember soggy brussel sprouts and mushy canned peas, and a sad looking leaf with red veins that tasted as yummy as it sounds. Each of these vegetables had been poorly prepared, some of our lack of knowledge, some out of the necessities wrought by money and time.
On the flip side, I’ve been to restaurants where the delectableness of the vegetable before you is enthralling, a perfect blend of texture and spice. What’s the difference between the veggies I grew up on and the gourmet experience? Knowledge, skill level and practice.
For the expert vegetable chef (I’m guessing there’s such a job), there’s an understanding of method and timing for how the vegetable should be cooked. There’s a sense of what seasonings bring out the best flavor. The experts likely learned all of this from someone else, then applied and practiced that skill until it became second nature.
In The Work Place
The same is true of our communication and team effectiveness. Some of us have had others who taught us the skills we need to communicate well. Some of us have practiced these skills until they’ve become second nature. Most of us experiment with seasoning our words so they are easier to swallow. However, not all of us have learned these skills.
Others in our lives have had limited exposure to the skills necessary to communicate well or to be an effective team player. They function like mushy canned peas because that’s the environment they’ve learned in and they don’t even know there’s a world of fresh, flavorful conversations out there.
What We Can Do
What can we do when we are or we run into people whose vegetable factor has been limited by a lack of knowledge, skill, and practice?
If you are a team leader, you can invest in those people., spend time with those folks. Help them to figure out how their words can be more seasoned with graciousness. This is not a one-time lesson, but a series of conversations about how their conversational flavor changes. A conversation about how the team works together, and the ways they can improve their impact on the full team.
If you are a friend or a colleague with little formal influence, you can model what you have learned. It’s amazing how much people watch us and learn from us, even when we aren’t formally sharing knowledge or skills. It’s how they see us try a phrase, then retry using a different tactic. This helps them pick up on the skills that have tempered our flavorful effectiveness.
The Kids Are Watching
When Grace and Kyle were little, I took them to the local pool. One of the lifeguards told a bunch of kids to stop doing something for their safety. I went up and thanked him for doing that. The lifeguard was surprised at the encouraging words and told me how much he appreciated my being kind to him. In his experience, many parents would tell him off rather than respect his authority at the pool.
Later, Grace said, “Wow, when you are nice to people, they really respond positively”. In that small moment, I realized she was watching everything I said. The people on your teams and in your social groups, are watching how you interact with others. Modeling conversations seasoned with the right amount of sweet and sour is far more impactful than we realize.
We all have a vegetable factor – a level of knowledge and skill that shows our expertise at creating conversations. This expertise serves as amazing main dishes for our teams to devour. For some of us, we need to spend time learning more about where to learn those skills. For others of us, we need to share our expertise.
Either way, none of us want to be the brussel sprouts or the mushy canned peas of the team. The good news, we get to decide how to prepare our conversational dishes. Until next week – Bon Appetit!
Bonus: For those of you wondering if there is a way to make Brussel sprouts taste delicious, here’s a recipe form the NY Times Cooking that is a favorite at my house.
Keynote speaker, trainer, and consultant, Sarah Gibson, helps organizations leverage the power of communication, teamwork, and diversity to improve engagement and transform teams. To buy her book or inquire about her speaking programs, please visit www.sarahjgibson.com.
