Leadership Lessons Learned in the Garden

Always Growing shows us gardens are full of leadership and life lessons.

This post contains affiliate links.  Author Jones Loflin provided me with a copy of his new book, Always Growing, in exchange for my honest review.

I met author Jones Loflin in 2014 when he was the keynote speaker for University of Illinois Extension’s annual conference for professional staff. I heard him speak a couple of times during the conference, and I loved what I was hearing. I even took notes. And I typed them up. If you know me, you know that means his information was really resonating with me.

What was it that caught my attention so profoundly?

1. He talked about how no one can do it all– one of the themes in his book Juggling Elephants. At that point, I was the mom to a 1-year old son and seriously suffering the effects of keeping all the proverbial “plates spinning” in my full-time Extension educator work and my full-time work as a mom and wife at home. Somewhere along the line, I could feel myself slipping away, lost in the chaos. I had thoughts like “if only I were more organized,” “if only I got up earlier,” “if only I stayed up later”– then I would “get it all done” running through my head on an endless loop. Jones saying that we all have mental and emotional limits and we can’t “do it all” finally somehow gave me permission to work on shutting down those “if only” thoughts.
2. During one session I listened to Jones talk about navigating change using a gardening analogy. As a gardener, of course this struck a chord with me. It made so much sense. Of course we need to prioritize. And channel resources by pruning away unnecessary activities. But I thought to myself, “he’s talking to a room full of Extension people”– all “experts” at burning the proverbial candle at both ends and in the middle. Poster children for not being able to say no. Always adding one more thing to our plates.

At the end of that conference, Jones asked for our feedback on little cards scattered around the room. I’m not usually one to fill out such cards, but that day, for whatever reason,  I did.  I loved all of what Jones had said to us. But I felt pretty helpless to implement it. I told Jones how I felt.

I was completely taken off guard when Jones responded to my feedback. I never expected that.

In the months that followed, Jones and I talked periodically about the challenges I mentioned in my feedback. I came to immensely value Jones’ insight as an objective set of eyes. He told me he was working on a book about leadership with a gardening theme, and that he’d like me to read it and give a review.

I was a little surprised that he still wanted me to review his book about leadership even when I had quit my Extension job after a lot of deliberation and soul-searching. My first thought was “I’m not a leader anymore. I gave that up when I left my job with Extension.”

Boy was I wrong.

Jones is an excellent storyteller and continues that tradition in Always Growing. He interweaves so many valuable concepts in the story of David, newly promoted to a leadership position at Trendex, managing a division destined to be cut unless it can show drastic improvements in performance. David is afraid he may be in over his head, and while he was looking for some shifts in his career direction,  he’s unsure of his leadership capabilities for this new life chapter.

David finds comfort in the fact that his sister Kelly, owner of a successful commercial fruit and vegetable operation, lives near his new workplace and he can see her often. It’s funny that initially he doesn’t seem to think his sister, whose business is one of the largest commercial produce operations in the region, knows anything about leadership– or at least HIS leadership problems.

But aren’t we all like David sometimes? We get so entrenched in our own situation; it can be hard to shift focus and see that others may have valuable insights to offer.

David visits his sister Kelly periodically– partly at first to escape the leadership challenges in his position at Trendex. He finds that day-to-day operations of Kelly’s greenhouse and farm offer analogies he can apply to what seems like an impossible workplace situation.

We meet all the typical workplace inhabitants on David’s team: the newbie, the veteran, the cynical employee resistant to change. As the story unfolded, I could identify many similar workplace situations I had experienced over the years.

Jones’  created so many memorable analogies about leadership woven through David’s story tied to gardening tasks: growing, cultivating, pruning, and harvesting. The more I read, the more my reflection turned from workplace leadership experiences to myself, my outlook and approach to life.

I realized I was all wrong to think I wasn’t a leader anymore since I left my full-time job. I certainly have a leadership role to play as a wife and mother, plus as a citizen of my community. But maybe most importantly, ultimately I’m the leader of my life. Realizing that, letting it sink in, made me look at this book with completely different eyes.

This book is full of excellent analogies– my absolute favorite analogy happened to be the very first one:

“You are always a gardener. What grows–

and how it grows– is up to you”.

Always Growing is a quick read that will leave you looking at leadership, life and your garden with new eyes. Pick up your copy today. You will not be disappointed.

If you liked this post, please subscribe to Grounded and Growing today and receive your copy of “15 Tips to Become a '15 Minute Gardener'” so you can spend less time working ON your garden and more time enjoying being IN your garden.! It’s absolutely free. When you join the Grounded and Growing community, you’ll finally take the garden off your “To-Do” list and allow yourself time to enjoy your garden and savor the peace and serenity there. I tell subscribers about new posts as soon as I hit ‘publish’ and send weekly-ish updates on what’s going on in my garden– good, bad AND ugly.

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