{"id":4174,"date":"2019-05-18T19:03:23","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T02:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knowyourteam.com\/blog\/?p=4174"},"modified":"2025-02-13T20:18:13","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T04:18:13","slug":"pruning-what-great-managers-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canopy.is\/blog\/2019\/05\/18\/pruning-what-great-managers-do\/","title":{"rendered":"What great managers do: Prune"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Being a great manager and English gardening have more in common than you might imagine. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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If you want to improve your leadership skills, there no shortage of analogies that have been made about great managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A great manager is a \u201ccoach,\u201d a \u201ccaptain of a ship,\u201d or even a \u201chuman shield.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I heard a more unlikely comparison about leadership made on our podcast, The Heartbeat<\/a>, when I interviewed<\/a> David Cancel<\/a>, CEO of Drift. He told me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI kind of think about most of this stuff as English gardening. If you want an English garden most of the work is actually the pruning and the taking care of. It\u2019s not the planting, it\u2019s not the plant selection. It\u2019s this constant pruning. The day that you stop pruning is the day that the garden is full of weeds and overrun.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I found this to be a brilliant analogy on several levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, pruning is a small, seemingly minor activity. You\u2019re not making big, sweeping moves of planting new shrubs or replanting a whole tree. This is also true of good leadership. We often believe great managers must take broad, bold actions. Strong decisions, rousing speeches, uncharted direction. But that\u2019s not really what leadership is. It\u2019s is not lavish, nor massive. It\u2019s small, incremental action that engenders real progress in the long run. True leadership is genuinely saying \u201cthank you\u201d when a team member does a favor for you or asking \u201cHow could\u2019ve our last one-on-one meeting<\/a> been better?\u201d before you meet with a direct report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, when you prune, you clip away the dead leaves or diseased areas of a garden to encourage healthy growth. A great manager does this, as well. They focus on removing frustrating blockers for their team\u200a\u2014\u200abe it changing an unrealistic deadline, or deciding to fire a rude customer. They figure out what parts of the team are in decay or lacking in resources. Great managers focus on paring back and then getting out of their team\u2019s way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pruning is also done periodically<\/em>, only when the season is fitting. If you prune all the time and you can accidentally over prune a plant and deprive it of nutrients. Leadership is similar. Harvard Business Review published research<\/a> revealed how managers who are \u201cconstantly coaching\u201d overwhelm their team and exhaust them. After studying 7,300 managers, they discovered \u201cemployees coached by Always-on Managers performed worse than those coached by the other types.\u201d Constant coaching, like constant pruning, is a bad thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, at the same time, fail to prune consistently<\/em> over time, and, as David mentioned, your entire garden will be overrun. Weeds sprouting, stems rotting. As a manager, you must be mindful of this. You can\u2019t expect that a single one-on-one meeting<\/a> with your direct report, once a year, will be sufficient for understanding their thoughts on what could be better about the team. A regular, steady cadence of communication\u200a\u2014\u200aespecially for one-on-one meetings<\/a>\u200a\u2014\u200ais critical if you\u2019re to feel connected to your team as a leader. In both leadership and English gardening, \u201cone and done\u201d doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, David, for making this analogy. Who knew pruning English gardens could be a source of inspiration for us as leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For a deeper dive, be sure to check out our \u201cHow to Run Effective One-on-One Meetings<\/a>\u201d module in Canopy. The first few lessons are free \u2013 as are hundreds of daily tips. Try\u00a0Canopy<\/a><\/em>\u00a0for free, yourself, today.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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