From the course: Productive Leadership
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Communicate with directness and kindness
From the course: Productive Leadership
Communicate with directness and kindness
- Sometimes leaders need to correct behavior. When productive leaders make those corrections, they are gardeners rather than lumberjacks. I'll explain what I mean. A lumberjack makes broad sweeping strokes with their ax. They cut trees down to the ground. Gardeners, on the other hand, make cuts with the attitude of pruning or shaping, or helping the plant develop. Leaders who garden, rather than chop down forests, are more productive. One time, I was working with a leader who was behaving like a lumberjack. When I was coaching him, he started talking about a problem with some team members. He had used phrases that I never heard him use before, like I blasted that employee, or they were making stupid mistakes, and he repeated those phrases several times. As I helped him work through it, he realized how he was operating more like a lumberjack, acting like that wasn't how he wanted to lead, so I gave him three tools you…
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