The Right Turf for Healthy Team Growth
Last week I wrote about the danger of dandelions in our yards and on our teams. In our teams, dandelions are unresolved conflicts that appear innocuous, but which spread quickly when left alone. Last week we focused on dealing with the dandelions that pop up so they don’t spread, but there’s a larger issue at hand with our yards and our teams – the turf.
When the turf isn’t properly handled in our organizations, or our yards, we create the right environment and growing conditions for unproductive conflict. Last week I told you our neighbors snicker at my relentless pursuit of the dandelions in our yard. I’d tried lots of solutions – special dandelion removal tools, weed and feed, inexpensive lawn services who promised their quick spray would destroy all growing weeds, and even threatening my children for even thinking of blowing dandelion seeds around and making wishes.
Ultimately my desire for a lovely, plush lawn brought us to Berryman Lawn and Landscape (shameless plug here for Berryman – they rock!). Bryan Berryman came out and walked us through what we really needed to do to get rid of dandelions, creeping Charlie, and giant clover patches. His solution – create the right condition for healthy grass to grow, then nurture the heck out of it.
This involved aerating the lawn and over seeding the lawn, along with regular maintenance and weed and feed. Two years into this process, our grass is lovely! We have the occasional dandelion, but it’s a far cry from where it started. It’s the lawn we’ve always wanted. The kind you can run through barefooted and where it’s lush, green blades invite you to enjoy the outdoors with it.
How does this apply to our work teams? It’s the same principle. In order to create an environment where unhealthy conflict is chocked off, we need to focus on creating an excellent growing environment for healthy team behaviors.
What are some things we can do to create healthy turf in our organizations?
- Aerate: Focus on creating breathing space for employees. Sometimes our work turf is so compacted with busy projects and timelines, we have no mental space to expand our roots and explore what happens in different sections of soil within the company. Sometimes you have to forcefully till out space for mental expansion.
- Over Seed: We have to invest a lot of positive things into our organizational soil. We need to over seed with praise and recognition. We need to overcommunicate and offer opportunities for feedback. When we over seed and invest extravagantly in the people of our organization, we’ll see bare patches disappear, and we’ll have consistent ground coverage that resists unproductive conflict and unhealthy behaviors.
- Weed and Feed: Not only do you need to prepare the surface and then invest in your team, you need routine maintenance. Weed and feed your organization with teambuilding, professional development and routine culture checks.
We can often do these things on our own as an organization, but if you find the roots of unproductive conflict still present, in spite of the work you are doing, you may need to call in an expert, like we did with our lawn.
If you’re like me, you want to be all-sufficient and save some money by doing it yourself or bringing in the least expensive solution, but the reality is, I needed a lawn expert and I paid just a bit more for far better results than I had ever gotten on my own. In the long run, I paid more to try and fix things on my own than if I’d invested in an expert to start.
As a company, you’d probably like to do this on your own, too, but may need someone outside the organization to help you identify the right, most effective steps. Find the right expert for your needs. If your needs are in the realm of unhealthy conflict or if you need help with teambuilding or building healthy cultures, I’d love to have a conversation with you (shameless plug 2). Check out our Learning Catalog for specifics.
Whatever next step you take, think about what you can be doing today to create an environment and turf where your team and organization flourish. We all want to love our work, and that takes intentionality and persistence to create a turf where everyone will grow healthy and strong.
