Have You Held the Nozzles?

The air is muggy and heavy on the patio this morning. I am taking a few extra minutes to enjoy my coffee as I walk through our backyard landscape. Some of the flowers are in full bloom and everything is lush and green thanks to the irrigation system one of our close friends installed for us. As I watched a bumblebee collect pollen, I thought back to a discussion about leadership I had last night with our irrigation expert friend.

Last night we had a cookout with our closest friends, since my son and I will be at Philmont the last two weeks of this month. As is typical, our conversations covered a lot of territory: school boards, upcoming wedding celebrations, work, and many other topics.

When the conversation moved to me, I shared about some of my recent writings and podcast discussions on leadership, specifically on how hard it is for many of us to sit back and let people do the things we asked them to complete. As I spoke, my irrigation expert friend, Irrigator Dude, had a twinkle in his eye. I knew he had something good to share, and I was not disappointed when I asked for his input.

Irrigator Dude employs a lot of young people, teens and twenty-somethings. It is easy to blame them for having worse work habits than those of us with more experience, but they haven't yet had the life experience to become better workers. Some of his workers are great, others good, and the work culls out the bad.

Irrigator Dude shared two events he recently experienced with his team.

First, a team of two was sent to finish backfilling a project, an easy job for someone with a strong back. As they were about to finish, they went back to measure the nozzles to ensure none were covered, and found a gap in the system. With a kick of a pile of dirt, they found a buried flag where a nozzle had yet to be installed. With a trip to the truck and a couple of shovels of dirt, they installed the nozzle and finished the project.

Now, Irrigator Dude and his superintendents would have found the missing nozzle without having to walk and measure. They have the "feel" of a system; their spidey senses would tingle and lead them to the missing nozzle. The two youngsters didn't have that yet, but they fixed the problem once they found it. No calls to the bosses. No sitting and waiting for someone to fix it. Just a little initiative to fix the problem, because of the environment built by Irrigator Dude.

The bigger story for me was about Ethan and Joe (fictitious names). Apparently there was a project that was all but done except for placing a couple of nozzles and adjusting spray patterns. A team had worked on the project to get it to the driveway; Ethan and Joe just had to turn the car into the garage and finish the trip.

During the morning planning meeting, Ethan and Joe were told to finish the project. When they heard this, they both loudly shared that neither one had adjusted nozzles before.

Irrigator Dude questioned them.

"Have you watched me and others?"

"Have you held the nozzles and looked at them?"

Irrigator Dude said, go finish the project.

As Irrigator Dude was sharing these questions, I realized these and similar questions are what a leader should ask instead of taking over the project or adding passive-aggressive comments about worker incompetence.

Later in the morning, the phone buzzed in Irrigator Dude's work shorts. When he put it to his ear, he had to immediately pull it away because Ethan and Joe were loudly shouting how they'd figured it out and had the project finished.

As Irrigator Dude was telling the story, much more dramatically and better than I am, you could see the way he knew those young men could do the job. All the discussion about how they saved him time, and allowed him to do other more valuable projects, was ancillary.

You see, Irrigator Dude is a leader, nay a facilitator. He's been around the yard enough to know what needs to happen, but more importantly, he knows his team and facilitates to get things done.

I've been on a leadership kick with my writings lately; there's a simple reason: our world lacks leaders. We have no lack of people in leadership positions; we have a lack of people who thrive and deserve to lead people.

How can you earn the title of Leader in your daily life, like Irrigator Dude?