Watering - It’s as simple as clean, clear and fresh communication

[Jason Stevens]

Effective Communication = Effective Watering

 

Effective communication is essential for any manager to get right just like the effective watering of a plant is essential for any great gardener. Plants can’t live without water and people can’t work or grow without communication - it’s as simple as that.

 

You may think that communicating with plants is a bit wacky or an impossible task because our little green friends can’t speak. Remember that communication is a two-way process and not just about you giving stuff out. There has to be dialogue between you and your plants for there to be effective communication. So you have to listen to what your plants are saying just as much as they have to listen to you.

 

Plants give a lot away without saying anything. In fact they probably communicate far more effectively than most humans regarding how they are feeling and how they are getting on. They provide tell tale signs which are given away freely. People are pretty much the same, they’ll probably tell you more by what they don’t say or don’t do rather than what they do say or do do!

A lot of managers don’t notice that a plant needs more communication (or watering) until it’s too late and then in a panic saturate the plant with water and make things even worse by giving it too much. A good manager finds out how and when the plant likes to be watered and in what amounts. It’s not unusual for plants to have individual watering (or communication) needs.

 

 

Some people are quite hardy though and will give you the impression and signs that everything is okay. There are no physical signs from the plant of a problem with your watering technique or the amount you are watering but then they let it be known by bearing bitter or small fruit in the way of objectives or results at the end. It’s as if they stored all that disappointment up from the lack of communication.  The simple tip is to stay on top of the watering no matter how tiring or tedious those daily team briefs, 1:1’s, performance reviews etc are. For your plants they are vital and necessary for health and vitality and will prevent any nasty surprises later on.

 

Types of watering / communication

 

Spray - Refreshing and perks up a plant – short and quick communication that is to the point and has a short term impact – like giving feedback, praise and recognition or asking your staff for ideas and opinions.

 

Watering Can – Focused communication that targets the individual plant and can be controlled to give just the right amount of information. This is like a powerful and meaningful 1:1 discussion with great dialogue and getting someone to talk you through an objective or project. 

 

Hose – Soaks a large number of plants in one go but may give some plants more communication than they need and other plants not enough – this is like sending an email that is more like a broadcast than a specific piece of relevant information – a good to know that may need some follow-up to check general understanding and responses.

 

Sprinkler - Saturates all plants and wastes water – probably gives too much information or information that is not relevant to the people concerned – this is like a lot of corporate communication. For example emails sent to the whole organisation, company magazines and most of the stuff put on company notice boards. If it’s critical communication then don’t do it this way – a nice to know but not critical to every plant.

 

Water features – Communication that  has no impact on any of the plants. It totally misses the mark. It might look and sound great but the attitude of your plants is “whatever” or ”why bother”.

 

Ther are some more great tips on how to perk up your communication style in the Blog "Free Cuttings"

 

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