Feeling The Burn?

Photo courtesy of inus12345 via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

"I don't believe anyone should ignore all the fires around you and stand pat and not worry about getting singed" - Rick Santelli

I grew up in a household with all girls. I understand girls. As a parent to 4 boys I have been in for quite a few shocks.  Boys have an irresistible and insatiable thirst for fire. They love blowing things up and lighting anything on fire. They get a thrill out of launching objects out of homemade cannons. The bigger the flames, the more their eyes glaze over in excitement.  Not surprisingly my husband is just as fascinated by fire as the boys….

We live on rich farmland that was once home to green fleshy alfalfa. Over the years the alfalfa has slowly been overrun by grasses and weeds. Coupled with that, I continue to add to my garden and went through a fad of planting a huge swath of ornamental grasses. Ornamental grasses are easy care plants with so many varieties, sizes, and colors available for every planting zone. I love how they whisper in the wind and the wildlife enjoys their shelter. They do have one big drawback. They are a pain to cut down in the spring and it takes me days to do so. Enter fire.

 For years my husband would burn down my grasses which is quick, easy, and it is a healthy way to get rid of dead debris. The grasses come back stronger and look better, not to mention that it is easier to mulch around them! In the process he also burned branches of my pine trees, started our shed on fire, and torched plants that didn’t appreciate it much. He also conducted a planned burning of our field one February and the neighbors freaked out and called the fire department. I stayed inside and hid. He welcomed our new neighbors by burning a part of the field that leaped out of control. Luckily the new neighbor had a bulldozer and stamped the fire out.

Aside from my resin birdbath that “somehow” melted, the burn holes in some of my garden art, and mysterious items being shot out of tubes, my son decided to help me out last week and burn down my 30 grasses to get rid of the debris. What he forgot was the fact that fire is hot and I now have 5 somewhat crispy conifers in my conifer garden. No comment on my response to that! He meant well but fire burns and jumps up too easy!

Fire can be a friend to your landscape – if controlled

·         Prairies and woods alike can become congested and overgrown with scrub. Fire quickly clears debris so that the sun can reach the underlying plants and new growth bounces up from the ground.

·         Burning an area is an effective way to save your back from hours of cutting and lifting if done carefully (i.e. no teenage boys allowed to lead the project).

·         Fire can effectively kill invasive weeds or plants not native to an area. Local flora may be adapted to fire/heat survival whereas that weed from Japan will permanently melt.

·         My grass garden is a large charred patch but guess what? I can now easily control any weed growth or Poison Ivy that rears up because it has no place to hide!

·         Fire is a wicked enemy to a variety of plant diseases and even harmful insects that may prey gardens and woodlands.

·         Controlled forest fires encourage diverse plants and new ecosystems.

·         Fires are Mother Nature’s way of giving life. A variety of seeds need flames or smoke in order to germinate. They may wait 20 years before they have a chance to spring to life after a fire.

·         As with anything that decomposes in the soil, scientists are finding that fires and even smoke actually nourish the soil and build nutrients.

·         Research shows that in some cases fire and smoke actually help plants develop into stronger species.

Certainly I’m not suggesting that you run out and burn your landscape down. However, be mindful that in some cases it is beneficial.  Fire really gets us all moving but it needs to be purposeful. Fires don’t have to be destructive and it’s all in how you handle it! How fire benefits living things

“Really, most of us just focus on what’s in front of us. We’re too busy putting out the fires of everyday life” – Aidan Quinn

Man has relied on fire for survival for millions of years and we all know the benefits and perils of what it can do. Aside from being a toy for boys, fire gets our attention and we all hop when it flares. I had a job a few years ago where every day was a fire drill and that’s all our team did - fight fires or stomp down flare ups. Fires planned our day and guided our decisions. We were jumping from problem to problem without ever lending a permanent solution to any of them. The team had a hard time moving forward and no one “owned” anything because we were all jumping around. We had no time to plan or strategize projects or where we were ultimately heading. It was a stressful environment to work in and we literally, well, burned out.

Fighting constant fires is exhausting and takes a toll. Ask anyone who fights wildfires for weeks on end. Processes are amiss, solutions aren’t implemented, strategic planning blows away in the wind, and mistakes flourish. You may have unwittingly become a “firefighter” without realizing and you need to stomp out the flames immediately.

Are there fires in your midst?

·         There is no focus or no attention to detail because the smoke is too thick.

·         Your days are spent addressing issues as they hit the fan rather than preventing problems.

·         You can only patch things so much before you need to replace the whole system.

·         The alarms are always ringing and there is no time to implement systems to stop the flames.

·         Sloppy mistakes are made. Details are missed. People blame each other.

·         Productivity and team morale goes down into ashes.

·         Empowerment vanishes like smoke and no one feels accountable for fear of another fire.

·         The ashes left over are tough to sift through to rebuild what once was.

·         There are more problems than people and everything continues to smolder around you.

Fire is definitely our friend and our foe. It gives life but is also destructive. It stops us from moving forward or it propels us to react. In the end, it’s up to us how we react and we use the fire around us. How did you handle your last fire?

Are You a Knower or Learner Leader?

"A landscaper works in a landscape; a gardener works in a garden" - Helen Yoest

Sometimes when people learn that I am an avid gardener they assume that I am a landscaper too. One or two friends have willingly said that I can come over and “re-do” their landscape. It’s been suggested that I go into landscape design with all of my “experience”. Um. No thanks! Some of us gardeners are somewhat snobby, myself included. I’m not a landscaper and in a general sense there is a notable difference between a landscaper and a gardener.

If you look around in pleasant weather you quickly notice that landscapers are a dime a dozen zooming all over tending plots in their pickup trucks. They have varying degrees of education and knowledge all over the board. Landscapers take the ideas of landscape designers and implement (obviously there are exceptions) the plans. They tend to be concerned with aesthetics and look at a project as a whole and what is, not what can be. Their focus is usually on installing hardscapes and tending to existing plantings. Landscapers are more knowledgeable in their practice, not the dreamers and visionaries that gardeners are.

Obviously I am somewhat biased however, gardeners are focused on visualizing what can be and carrying out a dream. We focus on the health and well being of plants including diagnosing plant diseases. We continually grow our knowledge of gardening including new plant varieties, soil consistency, pests, and propagation techniques. A gardener has to be a learner because there are always new plant varieties arriving and new techniques to try. Gardeners have a passion for the soil and a drive to learn.  Often, our gardens are our babies.

I am a lifelong learner.  I love to read and learn about a variety of things I may never need to use. That doesn’t stop me. I just finished a book right up my alley – Out of the Question – How Curious Leaders Win in just a few hours. I was hooked. Authors Parsons and Milham assert that there are two types of leaders, Knowers and Learners.  Most of us are somewhat in the middle of being a Knower or Learner however; we tend to lean towards one style or the other. To be effective leaders we need to learn our personal style, perhaps make some adjustments, and grow others.

Below is a visual of the Knower leader and the Learner leader. Which one are you and who do you want to work for?

Knower	Learner
Directs and micromanages	Open and creative
Tells and justifies position	Discovers and guides
Closed to input and is rigid	Dwells on possibilities and finds solutions
Tells and relies on history/facts	Inquiry based leader and values input
Your grandpa’s leadership style	Healthy ego and outlook
Title and education focused	Orchestrates and connects
Covers up errors	Leaders we admire not your Grandpa

It’s pretty obvious that Knowers are the leaders of yesterday. Our leaders need to be Learners as do you. Out of the Question offers guidance, tools, and stories about Learner leadership. These will inspire and urge you to learn in order to be a Learner leader. A key leadership skill shared is learning to think before you speak and pause. Reflect and learn before you move forward to engage others. Along with pausing, sound leaders ask questions and are open to ideas. Moreover, effective leaders re-calibrate and establish habits of mindfulness and adapt an “observer’s view” of people and situations.

One of my favorite chapters addressed activating the Learner mindset. Before you can lead others to become Learner leaders you must first activate yourself. This chapter exemplifies what leadership means to me and what I strive to bring to the table. Here’s how you can activate your learner mindset:

1     Challenge your assumptions on a regular basis

2     Bring in fresh eyes. Welcome outside people and new ideas.

3     Involve groups. Your ideas are not the best. Harvest ideas from others.

4     Be open to answers. Don’t assume you know it all. You aren’t a Knower leader!

Parsons and Milham offer pivotal ideas on how to lead Knowers and Learners. There are facets to both. Bringing Knowers around means learning what drives them and how to lead them to learning. Leading Learners is easier however; they may need guidance bringing their enthusiasm and ideas to fruition. Parsons and Milham offer advice on how to have productive meaningful discussions with our Knowers and Learners and what pitfalls can happen. It’s one feat to bring people around to a new way of leading however, it may be an uphill battle to keep them engaged and on the lifelong Learner leadership path.

Out of the Question – How Curious Leaders Win is a gem that you have to pick up. You will be inspired to work at transforming your own leadership skills and those around you. It’s a story about changing mindsets and empowering others. Start your learning today to grow into being a Learner leader. Knower leaders just don’t cut it anymore!

Are You A Lightning Bolt?

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work" - Mark Twain

Picture courtesy of  MRHSfan via Compfight.com One of my favorite things about summer is the spectacular thunderstorms that roll in off Lake Michigan where I live. There’s nothing like the slow approaching sound of thunder, the darkening thick clouds drifting in, the warm breezes picking up momentum, a smell in the air, and the lightning.  I love to watch Mother Nature’s symphony in the heat of the summer. Every element of a good storm plays their part with the lightning often being the conductor – in more ways than one. After a strong storm passes through and all is calm, have you ever noticed how healthy and green everything looks in the garden? The air smells fresh and cool. Raindrops glisten like tiny diamonds off plant leaves. If you think that everything looks greener and fresh, it does. You can thank the lightning from the storm for leaving a gift in your garden – nitrogen. As destructive as lightning can be, it has some magical qualities. Lightning works with rain to clear up the atmosphere of dust, pollen, and other pollutants. A lightning bolt can be 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit releasing up to a billion volts of electricity! All this power produces 100 million tons of nitrogen compounds a year worldwide. The valuable Nitrogen that lightning produces is like a power drink to your garden. Nitrogen is the key nutrient that gives plants their rich green color and leafy growth. It needs to be continually renewed for plants to use it. Nitrogen is like a giant fertilizing machine. planetseed.com. Nitrogen is all around us in the atmosphere but it’s not in a form that plants can readily use. In order to green up and grow plants need Nitrogen at the soil surface or in the dirt in order to take up Nitrogen to grow. This is where lightning comes in.  Our atmosphere is about 79% Nitrogen. When we get a strong storm the lightning provides energy that converts the atmospheric Nitrogen into Nitrogen Oxide which just happens to be the prime ingredient in fertilizer. Once this takes place, the Nitrogen is in a form that plants can absorb and use it to green up and flourish. As with any fertilizer this isn’t an instantaneous process after a lightning storm. The plants still need to draw up the nitrogen from the soil, but the rain does immediately help perk things up.www.myproductivebackyard.wordpress Next time the storms come rolling in be thankful for the rain but hope for some strong bright lightning bolts of thunder – your plants will love being struck by lightning! “I seem to be some sort of lightning rod. I really irritate people, you know? I really do. “– Howard Stern There is no question regarding the power of a single lightning bolt in a turbulent stormy sky.  It has the power to inconvenience, destroy, and yes, even kick start plant growth. As bright and powerful lightning is, it can also be very silent. We know that lightning travels through the atmosphere turning nitrogen into usable Nitrogen Oxide which our landscapes gobble up producing green growth. We don’t see the process, but it’s there and it delivers a punch of growth. Guess what? Every team has a lightning bolt as well. Is it you? Team dynamics can really impact productivity and success. Most of us have been catapulted into teams where there is a disconnect or lack of partnering and focus. Some of my experiences still make me cringe to this day. Often the key to changing the negativity and dysfunction of a group is a lightning bolt. The lightning bolt that I am referring to is that one person on a team that has that special “something”. This person is a catalyst for new ideas, change, building consensus, and jump starting people into action. Although we see lightning bolts as dramatic and bold, that’s not always the case with the lightning bolt on your team. Often they are the quietest, steadiest, yet energetic person in the room. Look around you today at work and ask yourself who electrifies your group and has the ability to jump start change. Is it you? The key drivers of a lightning bolt ·         He or she is the go to person on the team. This person has the knowledge, skills, and guts to jump in and contribute. ·         Not only does a lightning bolt know what others don’t, he jumps on problems and even has a sense where they will pop up. They can smell a problem a mile away. ·         Lightning knows exactly where to strike and is drawn to particular things. Those bolts on your team are equally as decisive and easily make key decisions. Decisiveness is powerful. ·         Are you flexible and open to change? In a storm it’s critical to have the ability to change direction on a dime and go in another direction. ·         The sky is a big place. So must the view be of a kick starter on your team. The ability to see the big picture is critical to leading teams. ·         Lightning is full of electrical charge. To be a lightning bolt, you must be positive. ·         Lightning bolts know how to get people moving and challenge them. They strike to bring out the best in others. ·         They are disruptors. They bring creativity and innovation which can intimidate some people. ·         Key players have the courage to strike and learn from their mistakes. ·         Lightning bolts have strong intellectual firepower - they know when to use it. ·         They have the courage to show their passion in everything that they do. Next time you are caught in a strong storm at work, peer through the clouds and look for the lightning bolt of energy in the room. Is it you?