By Victoria Buckenham, Founder, VB & Associates
In a busy work setting that involves key leaders, the question of what makes up the DNA of a perfect manager is a common one. But I believe there is no such thing.
Team leaders have a lot of plates to spin, and it can feel overwhelming at times. The very best leaders I have witnessed over the years are those that take the time to build the best environment for their team. They create a culture that allows employees to flourish in their own way, much like a gardener nurturing their landscape.
And the more I look at the leaders who genuinely move the needle, the more convinced I am that the metaphor that fits them best is not the General, or the Captain, or the Hero. It is the Gardener. Let me explain why.
A gardener does not manufacture growth. You cannot pull a plant taller. What a gardener does is create the conditions in which growth becomes almost inevitable: the right soil, the right light, water, space, and the discipline to cut back what needs cutting back. A good gardener also understands that different plants flourish in different ways. You don’t demand that everything in the bed grows identically. You learn what each one needs and you tend accordingly.
For me, that is the definition of ‘perfect’. Not a single, one-size-fits all approach imposed on everyone, but someone who cultivates the environment so a range of people can grow into their best work. And when I look at what that takes in practice it comes down to five things that strong leaders work on repeatedly.
1. Trust and Empowerment: The Soil
Nothing grows in poor soil, and nothing grows in a team without trust. Trust is the foundation everything else is built on. It’s what lets you hand over real responsibility rather than the appearance of it, and for me, empowerment is simply trust made visible. The leaders who get this right resist the urge to hold everything close. They give individuals room to make decisions, and crucially, room to make mistakes.
2. Feedback That Lands: Light and Water
Plants need feeding to grow, and so do people. There is a difference between feedback people hear, and feedback people act on. In my experience, leaders give plenty of the first kind and far too little of the second. Feedback that lands is specific, it is timely, and it is given because you believe in someone’s capacity to be better, not because you need to be right. Done well it is one of the most generous things a leader can offer. Done badly, or not at all, and people simply stop growing.
3. Communication and Listening: Knowing Your Garden
You cannot tend to what you don’t understand. Almost every leader believes they communicate well, but often what they usually mean is that they’re good at delegating and being heard. What can often be left out is focusing on listening. Real listening is not waiting for your turn to speak. It is the work of understanding what is actually happening in your team, what people are worried about and what they are not saying. The leaders who do this know their garden intimately and it shows in how precisely they can help.
4. Mentoring: The Habit That Multiplies
Mentoring is the kind of leadership investment that pays back long after you have moved on. Once you have planted this into one person, they pass it on and so it continues. It is important to differentiate a mentoring and management dialogue. A management dialogue involves what will be delivered, but mentoring looks at who you are becoming. The leaders who make time for it are quietly building the next generation, and doing it in a way no training programme alone ever could.
5. Difficult Conversations: The Pruning
Here is where the gardening metaphor really works in my mind, because gardening is not always about being gentle. Sometimes you have to prune plants and cut them right back and it can look brutal in the moment. The difficult conversation, the honest naming of a problem, the standard held when it would be easier to let it slide, is the work that separates good leaders from great ones. Care without honesty is not kindness. Leaders need to be warm and unflinching at the same time. Their teams trust them more for it.
Leadership Takeaway
There is no perfect leader, but a good one will build the environment where people flourish and grow. After all, employees are the most important asset for any business, and for them to thrive they need to feel engaged and happy, not just ‘managed’.
It’s easy as a leader to become set in our ways, which is why it’s worth investing time in your own growth, not just your team’s, whether that’s regular reflection, a mentor of your own, or the outside perspective an executive coach can bring.
By taking small and consistent steps to ensure leadership is healthy in your business, you’re protecting your workforce for the future. Using our tips above, ask yourself what you can do this month to make even a tiny step change. The strongest organisations don’t leave great leadership to chance – they invest in it.
