By Peter F. Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea on learning from Mother Nature. Reading time: 2:57

What can leaders learn from Mother Nature in developing an effective leadership environment.

Let’s first visit Mother Nature’s glaciers in Alaska. The ice isn’t white. It’s blue, a turquoise blue. The glaciers are so densely packed that the oxygen in the ice chemically behaves more like nitrogen.

Are your employees turning blue?
Are they packed in too close to each
other either on the factory floor or in the office?

Now let’s take a look at birds: Eagles, condors and albatrosses build their nests high in trees or cliffs or mountain tops. They must take off downhill in order to fly.

Are your eagles —high performing workers—
forced to build their homes too close to the ground?

A sparrow hawk is full-grown and flying in 26 days. That’s because all birds of prey have to grow up fast especially in cold weather. They must be big enough to hunt before the winter arrives.

Are your employees languishing
in too warm a space to really race?

Now let’s take a walk in the woods: The sassafras tree is but a shrub on the hills in northern New England but the same trees grow 100 feet high a couple of hundred miles to the south.

Are you planting your employees in the
right atmosphere to help your company grow and prosper?

A maple tree at the edge of a pasture will be shorter and more rounded than a maple tree in the thick of the woods, deep in the forest, where it would have grown tall and straight to reach up toward the sunlight in competition with other trees for the same sunlight.

Are your employees planted in a space for
future growth or are they being left out in a pasture?

A bald cypress tree grows best in water. The baobab tree of Africa needs a dry habitat. And a willow needs a cold climate.

Have you planted the right employees
in the right spaces for optimum performance?

The rainforest grows at twice the rate as trees in the temperate zone.

Are you watering your employees
with the proper nutrients of salary and benefits?

Fish are found near bridges because the bridge spans the narrowest portion of a bay or a river where the current flows best, making it easier for the fish to breathe—to swill water through their gulls. The bridge also provides shade and attracts lots of plankton.

Are you building enough bridges
for your employees to win the space race?

The Mediterranean is a landlocked sea with only one fresh water river feeding it. The high concentration of salt in the sea coupled with its confining landlocked space make the Mediterranean the bluest sea on earth.

Are you confining your employee efforts
in a special space that preserves
their essence and prevents their dilution?

An ex calvary office discovered that horses would stay in formation if they galloped in a tight circle and he founded the first trick horse-riding circus act. Phillip Astely placed rings on the circus floor in 1763 to assure their circular gallop.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Leverage Mother Nature to keep your
leadership thinking in mint condition.

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