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Eliminating Weeds from Your Departmental Garden 121

grow and thus require more of your patience in order to fulfi ll
their potential. Not giving them that stunts their growth.

Now that you know how to identify them, you’re ready to learn
how to keep weeds from taking root in your department. This is
the topic of the next section.

Prevent Weeds from Taking Root

Just as gardens have weeds that impact their foundation, produc-
tion, and yield, so do organizations. Organizational weeds, however,

adversely affect profits, morale, and productivity in your depart-
ment. As a manager within your organization, you have the power
to prevent weeds from infi ltrating your turf. That’s a power you
must exercise in order to fulfi ll your mission of creating a profi table,
productive department staffed by people with positive attitudes.
Of course, weeds, by their very nature, crop up uninvited and
without warning. But you can prevent them from taking root and
proliferating by creating a problem-solving approach to disagree-
ments and differences of opinion. Learning how to do this will be
well worth your time and effort. Below are some responses that
will help you “kill the weeds.” These are general approaches used
to disengage the emotion and should be customized for your spe-
cifi c situations.

• Respond to any weed statement with, “I am sorry you feel
that way” or “Thank you for sharing” or “I did not see it
that way.”
• Respond to any weed behavior with a statement of fact:
“That is not how we do things here” or questions like “I am
not sure how that contributes to our goals and objectives.
Can you explain?”