Growing the Seed of Potential

Thoughts from a beach in Goa.

I’ve just received yet another email to help an athlete with a mental struggle they’re having in their sport. 

This is not a dissimilar to requests from the corporate space. 

‘We are having difficulty retaining good talent, and sometimes finding good talent. We are needing help to increase capability to match the speed of growth, manage uncertainty, support metal well-being, etc.’ 

Employers and employees, like athletes, are currently reporting increased and different questions, anxieties, and challenges.

This is often ascribed to the Covid hangover, work from home, advancing automation, an economic down-turn and the current so-called “great resignation”. 

Not that all people are resigning, some remain in the workplace but are silently resigned. They work in a disengaged, unmotivated, and apathetic mode - delivering output around a basic pass mark, passing time while they earn much-needed money and wait for something better.  

The mental struggles that athletes are battling, the talent-retention and acquisition struggles employers are navigating, and the disengagement demon’s employees are facing, are very often not the problem. They are symptoms.

Risking overgeneralization, the deeper cause is often the environment in which they are being asked to operate. 

For a seed to grow to its fullest potential, it needs to be planted in fertile soil, amongst other plant varieties with which it can naturally cohabitate, and it needs the right amount of nurturing. It needs water, fertilizer and sunlight for optimal growth.

The seed of human potential is not much different. We need a healthy environment – meaning a healthy team or organizational culture - and the right nurturing to flourish. 

There is no secret in how to nurture talent and to remove many of the unnecessary obstacles to performance. Here’s a reminder of what works,

1. healthy, caring, people-oriented leadership - leadership that cares for people
2. acknowledgment, candid and caring feedback
3. opportunities to learn, grow and contribute 
4. experiencing psychologically safety
5. offering a sense of purpose or meaning
6. and other things that we already know

These conditions for growth and engagement are not very difficult. 

The starting point is viewing people as people - and as being important. In a genuine way, not as lip-service. Not unconsciously viewing them as resources to be used purely in pursuit of the shareholders agenda. 

Conversely the root cause of the problems mentioned above is an unconducive environment characterized by:

-       narcissistic leaders who lead in pursuit of their own agenda

⁃       micromanagement and excessive criticism 

⁃       lack of acknowledgment, caring and empathy

⁃      excessive results-orientation or a win-at-all-costs mindset

What I’ve shared is nothing new, or even very clever. Yet these basic problems are exceptionally pervasive. 

Have we become so obsessed with the current digital, scientific, and measure-to-control mindset that we’ve taken our eye off the age-old but important aspect of treating athletes and employees as people first?

Are you:

• recruiting the right people?
• treating them as people first?
• asking about their lives, their dreams, fears, and their family?
• being skillful in creating an engaging, psychologically safe and fertile learning environment
• focusing at least as much on people as you do on systems, strategies and measurable outcomes?

Fertile people-oriented teams and organizations already know that everyone has a natural motivational flow. And that the right environment sees good performance flows naturally, without having to beat it out of people with performance management tools or the proverbial stick.

It all starts with the deep-seated brief that people are important.