As I am immersed in team coaching, exploring what allows a team to flourish, and how to bring about systemic change, I keep thinking about my experience in my community garden.
Back in April, seven of us were sitting in a circle in the sun with a cup of tea. We were talking about our brand new gardening group, feeling each other out. Paul said, “Oh, look at the weeds on the path! Let’s get the caretakers to clear them.” I have my own, personal vision for this garden. And in this vision, weeds are wildflowers and pioneer plants, but I did not say anything. I thought to myself, “Don’t voice too many opinions. I can bring this up again later.”
Brilliant, we’re all on the same page!
Further on in that conversation, we all agreed to go organic, some of us proposed the no dig gardening technique, and all of us voted against pesticides. First mission accomplished. That was easy! Or was it?
I thought the weed topic had sorted itself out nicely, and I didn’t bring it up again later. Alas, “later” arrived unexpectedly last week. After watering the plants in the polytunnel, Paul shared a photo in the group chat, accompanied by a 🫣 to display his dismay. In the photo: Burnt ground along the paths. The caretakers had used weedkiller right next to our raised beds where we want to grow organically, and they had apparently dumped some of it on a bit of a slope at the edge of our garden. A perfect slope for a buzzing wildflower oasis. And now it’s dead soil. Only the sturdy weeds survived
Miscommunication happens in teams – all the time. I am already learning many lessons while our accidental group of gardeners gets up and running. Here are two of my takeaways.
1. Aligning around shared goals and norms is key, but not enough…
It’s important to align not just on the surface – we want to grow organically – but to also spell out what that means to everyone on the team.
For example: No pesticide anywhere near our beds, and putting up with snails, focusing on creating healthy compost. No fertilizer, but instead feeding the soil organic matter continuously, so that the soil can feed the plants and respond well to both heavy rain and dry spells.
Alignment entails spelling out the norms, the way we want to work together. And we need to get a clear YES from everyone! On the road to alignment, we need to make space and deal respectfully with different perspectives and goals. Alignment is only possible when all voices are heard and people really feel the YES.
2. … if you forget that the team is embedded in a larger ecosystem
We’ve already started the alignment process in our weekly tea break conversations. We just haven’t had the more formal meeting to hear everyone out and come to a shared understanding and agreement. But everyone agreed that we did not want weed killer in our garden.
Yet the caretakers and the community centre people cannot read our minds, nor were they part of our meetings. Hence they had no way of knowing what we meant by “Take care of the weeds.” They just took care of them!
Teams need to be aware of their stakeholders and what they need from the team, and vice versa.
I could get worked up about the pesticide, and a part of me really wants to, because when things don’t go our way, it is easiest to blame others or beat up ourselves. But failure of any kind really invites us to take a closer look at our team’s weaknesses, be that a lack of common vision or goals, a lack of a good process for decision making and communicating, or something else.
