John P. Strelecky

When you start the process of growing a thriving group of fruit producing papaya trees, you take hundreds of papaya seeds, and you plant them in a bucket full of fertile ground.  Not the bad soil, but the good stuff, the stuff that's full of nutrients and vitamins.  And every few days after you've planted the seeds, you water the soil, because you know that with nourishment, some of those little seeds will eventually sprout. 

You don't step on the seeds, belittle the seeds, or treat them poorly.  You don't smash the dirt they're in.  You give them every opportunity, because you want them to sprout, to grow, to become strong papaya trees that bear fruit. 

In a few weeks, low and behold you start to see sprouts.  Your efforts are paying off.  Partly it's because of what you've done, partly it's because of what you haven't done that would have been detrimental to the seeds, and partly it's because of the pure potential that lives within every seed, regardless of what you do. 

A few weeks go by and you look at your bucket and realize that the sprouts have actually become plants.  There are lots of them, dozens, maybe even a hundred, all slowly growing into papaya trees.  At this point, they are all still about the same size, just a couple of inches tall.

Over the next couple of weeks, you begin to notice something.  It seems that some of the plants are beginning to grow faster than the others.  When you look closely, you realize that what's happening is the plants are starting to compete with each other for light and water.  The ones with slightly larger leaves are not only receiving the most sun and nourishment, but they are also keeping those things from the other plants close to them.  And as they do that, it appears that they are growing faster.

Left alone, something interesting happens.  The plants will grow to a certain size, perhaps a foot and a half to two feet tall for the larger ones.  Along the way, about a quarter of the smaller plants, the ones who couldn't get sun and now can't compete for water because they don't have the same lengthy root structure as the others, will die.  And if nothing is done at that point- the remaining plants will stop growing. 

See, within the bucket there is limited space to expand, and the plants somehow know this.  So they stop growing taller.  Over time a few will develop larger leaves than the others and dominate the sun, and because of that, most of the other plants will slowly succumb.    

So at the end of all your efforts, you have a small group of undersized papaya plants and no fruit to show for it.

But with just a little effort, and a few different decisions along the way, that end result can be dramatically different.  For example, if when the plants are about a foot high and still growing, you don't leave them all in one bucket, but instead take four or five at a time and put them in new buckets, what you find is that they all keep growing.  Their growth doesn't stop, like when they are all in one bucket.  Sure it happens that the occasional papaya plant doesn't make it for one reason or another, but in general, they all keep growing. 

Now this takes a little work, doesn't it?  You have to take the time to provide each of those little groups of plants with a new bucket, and with fresh, nutrient rich soil.  But when you do that, they keep growing, and so you get closer to your goal of fruit producing papaya trees.

After another month has gone by, you look at your twenty or so buckets of papaya plants, and you see that each bucket doesn't have little plants anymore.  Instead, those plants have become little trees.  They aren't full grown yet, but they aren't just little plants anymore either.  Most of them are now about two and a half to three feet high, and you can tell that once again, they are starting to compete with each other.  Left alone, one tree in each bucket will begin to dominate and the others will eventually stop growing, or succumb.

And so you take each of those little trees in the buckets and you plant them in the ground.  They're outside the security of their little buckets, but they now have access to all that the earth has to offer.  Their roots can grow as deep as they want.  Their leaves can grow big and broad because there is unlimited access to the sun, and they can grow tall. 

Now there is an interesting thing that happens when you plant these three foot papaya trees.  If you plant them all by themselves, totally off on their own, they will grow big and tall, and have broad leaves, but they will never produce fruit.  However, if you plant a few of them together, not so close that they block each other, but within a few feet, they will pollinate each other, shade each other depending on the angle of the sun, drop rain from their own leaves on to the leaves of their neighbor when it rains, and because of all of that, they will produce fruit- lots of fruit. 

When they are planted that way, they no longer compete.  They exist in a state of synergy.  Their presence is an asset to each other's success, not a detriment.  And the result of all your efforts is not just a few non-fruit producing stunted papaya trees like it might have been.  But instead, you have a grove of papaya trees.  Dozens upon dozens of them, all producing fruit.  Fruit which eventually will create seeds which will grow into even more papaya trees.

A few years ago, I was asked to host a leadership summit.  Executives from companies all over the world came to share ideas, to learn from each other.  And I recall one session in particular that I was hosting.  In that session, a Senior Vice President from a huge entertainment company, a company that everyone in this room would know if I said their name, shared with the group that what he did as a leader to promote successful results was that he encouraged competition among his people.  He felt that the competition made them grow and made them work harder.  This was a man who had 20 direct reports, all vice presidents and directors, and who in total had probably two thousand people under him.

When we took a break, I introduced myself to one of that Senior V.P.'s direct reports, a V.P. who had been quiet during most of our morning session.  I asked him what he thought of the leadership summit, and then I asked him what he thought of his leader's comments.  He told me the reality was- the competitive environment created by the Senior V.P. was terrible. 

Executives kept critical information from each other so that they could make their individual results better.  Good employees weren't being promoted, because the promotions would mean they would transfer into another person's area and the executives saw that as a competitive disadvantage.  Not only would they lose a good employee, but their competitor would gain one- one who had tremendous knowledge that they would share with their new team.  He said that since they were such a dominant player in their industry they had no one to fight, so they fought against themselves.

The Senior V.P. was leaving all his papaya plants in one little bucket.  He was creating competition, not growing a grove of fruit producing papaya trees.

I watched what happened with that company and stayed in contact with the V.P.  Within two years, many of the best people jumped ship and went to a growing competitor across town.  Within two years after that, the market dominance the company had enjoyed was eroding quickly, and the V.P. himself left.  When I talked with him, and asked why he had decided to leave now, he told me that despite all the signs, the culture hadn't changed.  People were still competing with each other.  Only now, they were competing to see who could blame someone else for the growth of the competitor, or who could capitalize on the fact that one of their peers was taking a hit, and could because of that make themselves appear that much better.

Our people are like papaya seeds.  The question we need to ask ourselves as leaders is- what are we trying to create?  If we want to create a grove of strong, productive leaders that not only produce fruit, but who in the process create new leaders of their own, then we need to nurture them.  We need to give them opportunities rich with potential, not barren dessert.  We need to make sure we create an environment where they are growing, not one that stunts their growth through internal competition.  We need to give them space to expand, not restrict them so that their enthusiasm withers and dies.  And when the time is right, we need to take them out of the bucket where they grew up, and give them the chance to grow on their own.

However, when that time comes, we don't put them out somewhere in isolation, out in a vacuum.  We do it in the way that best generates fruit- by providing them with an environment where they and other leaders pollinate each other, protect each other, water each other.  We do it in a way where they can work together to fulfill their true full potential. 

As leaders, those are the things we need to do for our people.  Because those are the things- that make great leaders great.

The above article is an excerpt from The Big Five for Life- Leadership's Greatest Secret.