Working The Dirt

I think a couple of my favorite ingredients in a work environment are generosity and patience.

A former supervisor of mine would laugh at the patience part, since I once charged into a new position and laid a regime of record-keeping on top of my department that had all the effect of tossing anchors to swimmers.

Maybe it had something to do with the tiny plants that I decided to put in my office years ago to prove that I could, in fact, raise a living thing. Faithful semi-weekly watering has yielded deep green sprouts that color my office and bloom three times their original size. Meanwhile, I've been more accepting of life's gradual and inevitable change. Sprouts can shoot in random directions, and ideas can flower or wilt. If the soil is fertile with trust, and generosity is steadily applied, then in time the right answer for the team reveals itself. I can try to stretch the leaves faster than they're meant to grow and shred them in the process, I can twist them in a different direction and choke them off. And though I still slip into that destructive mode too often, the best results have come from waiting for the harvest.