If we were to look at our occupations and careers as our business and marketplace garden, how would we go about our day tending to it? Are your tasks connected to the overall goal of nurturing your career garden? When you think of your network of career creators, try to remember that every person is a unique creation and needs to be cared for in a unique way.

It might be sort of comical to think of them that way, but each co-worker on your team or career colleague needs to be watered and cared for with their own personal set of instructions.

First, I care about all of my team (now remote + dispersed) and my network of career creators because I believe God cares about them. He does his own cultivating; the big pruning that ultimately creates the beauty everyone is destined to walk in. 

What’s your role in your career garden? Like a good gardener, do you press in to see the interconnectedness of what you do through your job responsibilities? Do you affect the work landscape toward others with your words, non-verbal behavior and support (or lack thereof)?

Let’s explore 7 important considerations to effectively communicate and nurture your career landscape:

1.     As a career gardener, you affect other professionals’ output and their collaborative work primarily by your mere existence. Take a moment to increase your awareness of how you much your presence impacts the success team communication and collaboration.

2.     It’s essential how you choose to tend your career garden. Keep an eye on the seeds of encouragement (or negativity) you sow because those kernels will determine the yielded fruit you ultimately bring into the work circle.

3.     Some members of your team are seedlings. They are still taking in extra nourishment from a diverse arena of office mentors and leadership. They need particular care to understand the verbal and non-verbal communicative details that make a company garden thrive and perform successfully.

4.     The fragile reality of workplace culture and etiquette is almost invisible to the naked eye but very powerful in how your company garden grows. Here, those seedlings are learning the good and challenging aspects of being interconnected in a garden of unique creations. 

5.     And there are the trees... yes, like a great big oak tree with lots of moss (I’m from the south!) holding a heavy presence in the garden. Some communicate their strong presence from the inward confidence and tacit knowledge they’ve earned having been trained from the "ground" up. These career creators have their next step readily rooted and available at their seasoned fingertips. 

6.     Let’s not forget the tall trees in the career garden that demand acknowledgement.  They tower over others with long verbose conversations. Pretentious entitlement causes their interactions to prohibit an open and inspiring garden because frankly they can't see the forest.

7.     You need rainmakers that rightly know how to steer a conversation or develop a fruitful work relationship. You can become that rainmaker. You are called to nurture and nourish the seedlings with elements such as good values and discretion in your workplace. Having the wisdom to know how much constant watering and food seedling need, you can communicate without micromanaging team members. Rainmakers recognize the distinct difference between controlling and mentoring team members.  

You must do your part in the career garden to plant and grow whatever professional time you have with clear and effective communication. Feed others with an overarching understanding that you want your career garden to always be fed well with courtesy, respect, humility and most of all peace and passion. Use your occupational role as an expression of gratitude for the privilege to share your labor with other unique creations in the garden of your career landscape.

More than ever, this is the season to have an eclectic mix in your garden.. all five generations need watering right now. How are you caring for your career garden? Do you need watering? Are you expressing actions to transform your garden?

Let’s dig in! How's your garden growing? Live a Fruitful Life Today!

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