Good morning from a snowy London, Ontario. Winter has descended on this part of the world. I’m here doing some work with an organization heading into a dramatic change; a merger.

One of the interesting parts of such dramatic change is what the late William Bridges called the ‘transition’, that is the psychological response to the change. This response is fluid and sits on  continua between anger/sadness/frustration and excitement/relief/happiness. My place on the continua can move from hour to hour and day to day. And when I’m within a group, those psychological responses can be influenced by how others around me are feeling; we are after all empathetic creatures.

I’ve had a few conversations this week with people sharing stories of where one person has been the catalyst for a group to gain confidence, excitement and see the possibilities of a change, and where another person has influenced a group in exactly the opposite direction! And the catalysts were not all managers and leaders, rather they are often people with ‘informal’ leadership roles in the group. Interestingly, I think that if I asked you to think of who in your group would be a catalyst in either direction, you would be able to identify both people almost without hesitation. What do you think?

I recall speaking at a regional credit union conference some years ago and saying that ‘one of the great things about working in the credit union system is how good we are to our people. And one of the most frustrating things about working in the credit union system is how good we are to our people!’ There and in loads of other businesses, we do not hold each other accountable for our behaviours. My friend Paul Alofs in his book “Passion Capital” warns readers about the “weeds”, and I like his metaphor. I’d like to build on it, suggesting that leadership is like gardening, you need to do some weeding to ensure that the weeds are not taking too much of the nutrients from the flowers you’re actually trying to grow. The big challenge is when you let the weeds grow for too long; the best weeding is done early on. To try and remove a weed after 20 years of service is going to potentially damage that part of the garden, and might in fact prove physically very demanding.

I know of one organization that gardens very well in this sense. They know that their values and corporate culture are an important differentiator in the market. They invest about two weeks in ‘on-boarding’ their new hires, and at the end of the two weeks, one of the senior team, if not the CEO, meet with the new group and invite them to join the organization. After the two weeks, they suggest, the individuals should have a pretty good idea about whether they’d ‘fit.’ If an individual realizes it would not be a fit, the organization obviously pays them for the two weeks, and gives them $500 more as a thank you, and to give them a little support as they look for a different job!   No harm, no foul. A potential weed is removed from the garden quickly and early, and the flower seedlings are given some more space to grow safely.

In the midst of our changing economies and environments, we have a responsibility to tend the gardens we are stewards for, giving nutrients and strength to the flowers and  as early as possible, doing some weeding. And if you feel yourself being influenced by a weed, or even turning into one yourself, as yourself, if this really where I want to be?