Creating A Greenhouse At Work
Resilience Task 6
The catalyst for growth of the client is the intense reaching out by the practitioner in the one-way caring relationship. Skovolt, 116.
I love a beautiful garden. I live in the city in a 125-year-old house, which sits on what we lovingly call a postage-stamp sized yard. The front yard is all garden. Just this spring, we converted the last patch of grass – the boulevard – to garden.
A beautiful garden is a lot of work. If I’m being honest, I would have liked to have simply gone and bought a bunch of plants, plopped them into the boulevard, called it a day, and hoped for the best. But I know the output would be in line with the input: marginal. Instead, my husband and I covered the grass with a tarp for about a month to kill the grass, then we dug up the grass and some of the depleted soil beneath it (did you know the earth is losing soil every year?), we bought manure and mixed it in with the soil, and created a garden bed that will give the plants we chose the best chance for growth. When we weren’t laboring in the garden bed, we were researching plants. What combination of plants will give us 3-season color? What colors will work together well? And of course we took into consideration the amount of sun and water each plant needs, and their size. It was a lot to think about, plan, and execute. And of course, there’s the watering, weeding, and feeding after the last plant is placed in its new home. The work is never done, and it is a labor of love. Yet I know this labor will produce a much more beautiful garden for years to come than what we would have otherwise enjoyed had we just plopped some plants into the grass haphazardly.
As we continue our resilience series this summer, creating a greenhouse at work is the sixth task Dr. Skovholt suggests for becoming a resilient practitioner (or leader). Greenhouses, like garden beds that are tended well, create environments ideal for growth. Practitioners in the helping professions need work environments that are positive and supportive so that we can serve others well. Maslach & Leiter (1997) identify the following elements in a positive work environment:
Trust and respect between peers
Appropriately playful, fun, and supportive atmosphere; a sense of community
Place for all to develop professionally
Choices/control
Sustainable workload
Recognition and reward
Fair performance standards
Meaningful work
Finally, Skovholt adds a space for reflection as a key element of a positive workplace. We all need a place where we can process all that’s happening for us in our workday. He offers that rich, positive clinical supervision (or reflective pastoral supervision that LeaderWise provides!) is part of the greenhouse work.
If you’re a leader in an organization, how might you rate your work environment against this list? What might you do to make it just a bit more positive and supportive? If you’re a staff member, you might feel as though you don’t have much control over your work environment. And yet, we all have some agency. How do you rate your work environment? What would you change? What’s one small step you could take to affect that change?
When you happen upon a beautiful garden, remember that it’s only there because it’s tended well. And may that be a reminder that your work environment also needs to be tended with love and care.
May these long summer days for you be filled with serenity, grace, and beauty.
