Debbie Laskey's Blog: SPRING LEADERSHIP SERIES 2025

Last year, I launched a Spring Leadership Series to think about leadership in nontraditional ways. As 2024 continued, I presented additional ways to think about leadership during my Olympics Leadership Series and Holiday Leadership Series. With a new year upon us, I've invited 25 thought leaders to share their responses to five questions relating to team-building, reading, and leadership. My #SpringLeadershipSeries2025 began the first day of Spring and continues through June 20th, the first day of Summer.

Before we begin, I'd like to applaud two special individuals for providing the inspiration for this series. First, big applause goes to Erika Andersen, a leadership expert and author who I've had the pleasure of knowing for nearly 15 years, and she's appeared on my blog 12 times since 2011 - today marks her 13th appearance! She wrote an article for Forbes entitled, "How Springtime Can Make Us Better Leaders," and that article serves as the core of the series as its first question. Second, I also applaud Joseph Lalonde, a leadership expert and author of a book called REEL LEADERSHIP, for planting the seeds for last year's Spring Leadership Series on my blog. After I read Joe's book, I started looking at movies as well as works of fiction, TV shows, and TV characters with "leadership-tinted glasses."

For today's post, I'd like to introduce Erika Andersen. She is the founding partner of Proteus, where she and her colleagues support leaders at all levels to get ready and stay ready to meet the future. Erika advises senior executives and also shares her insights through her books, speaking engagements, and social media. In addition to her latest book, Change from the Inside Out, she is the author of four previous best-selling books: Be Bad First, Leading So People Will Follow, Being Strategic, and Growing Great Employees. Erika is also a popular leadership blogger at Forbes.com, and the creator and host of the Proteus Leader Show podcast.

QUESTION: You wrote an article for Forbes entitled, "How Springtime Can Make Us Better Leaders," and compared gardening to management and leadership. What was the background for the article, and how would you update it today?

ERIKA ANDERSEN: I started using gardening as a metaphor for people management many years ago – primarily for the reason I cite in the article, which is that just as gardeners can't "make plants grow," managers can't "make their people grow." In management, as in gardening, all you can do is choose a plant/person that's a good fit for your garden/team/organization, and provide the circumstances that are most likely to support their growth.

Because I found it such a useful and accurate metaphor, I also used it throughout my first book, Growing Great Employees, the "frame story" of which is my helping a friend learn to be a better gardener...and where, after a few garden-based paragraphs at the beginning of each chapter, I offer and teach a metaphorically related skill. Some of those metaphors showed up in this article, as well: listening as preparing the soil and giving corrective feedback as pruning.

I have to say, after not having re-read this article for a number of years, I wouldn't really change anything! I still find that we humans tend to get new energy and want to start new efforts and enterprises in the springtime – and I still think that gardening provides great metaphors for people management.

SHARE THIS: Gardening provides great metaphors for people management. ~@ErikaAndersen #SpringLeadershipSeries2025 #DebbieLaskeysBlog

QUESTION: What was the most recent example of inspiring leadership that made an impact on you?

ERIKA ANDERSEN: I read a wonderful article recently (in Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson) that quoted Angus King, the independent senator from Maine, giving a speech in the senate chambers, pushing back against the unconstitutional actions of the current president and his unelected followers. I found it valiant, true and inspiring.

Here's the final paragraph:

"At a prior time of crisis, Abraham Lincoln defined the stakes for each of us, 'Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress, and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. Now is the time to establish a redline — the Constitution itself.'"

QUESTION: What is your favorite team-building activity, and why?

ERIKA ANDERSEN: Over decades of working with many senior teams, primarily in the US, I found that, quite often, the ones that had the hardest time collaborating and working together were those where there was little or no personal connection – or those where some of the members were connected and others weren't.

So it became a habit for me, when I was working with a team – especially one that was newly-formed, or had many new members, or where some people knew each other and others did not – to encourage the boss to schedule a dinner together, and very specifically to have dinner in a place that was quiet enough for them to converse, and at a table big enough for everyone to sit together.

When the team was all together, I'd start by saying some version of "The purpose of this meal is to have great food and get to know each other outside of work. So, I'd encourage you to strike up a conversation with at least one teammate that you don't know well." Then, partway through the meal (usually either between the appetizers and the main course, or after the main course), I'd have everyone get up and move to a new seat – and ask them to, if they could, sit next to someone new to them.

These dinners often happened the evening between a two-day session, and the group would invariably have a higher degree of comfort and interaction the following day – more laughter, more listening to each other, usually easier resolution of disagreements.

I think – especially now that so many more of our professional interactions are virtual than previously – it's all too easy to over-balance toward task and transaction, and forget that we human beings are, at heart, tribal and relational. I've found this is true even of people who are introverts or who don't place a lot of value on relationships; we've spent a hundred thousand years learning to build relationships so that we could live well together, and no matter who we are, it's core to how we operate.

QUESTION: Which book is on the top of your to-be-read pile, and why?

ERIKA ANDERSEN: It's a book called Nosotros, Los Rivero. It was written by a woman named Dolores Medio, an unknown writer at the time who rocketed into literary renown in 1952 when this book won the Premio Nadal, the preeminent Spanish literary prize. It's primarily autobiographical, based on her life growing up in Oviedo (the city where we live in Spain) in the 1920's.

To be accurate, it's on my "being read" pile. I take it out and read a few pages at a time, both because the writing is more complex and layered than other things I'm reading in Spanish, so it goes more slowly, but also because it's so rich with history and meaning that I like to pause and reflect on what I've read.

I'm reading it for lots of reasons: to better understand Oviedo and its history (I'm, quite frankly, in love with this city); to improve my Spanish; because I want to read important Spanish authors in their native language to better understand the culture and mindset of our adopted land; and because it's lovely.

QUESTION: In the past year, has a TV show, film, or work of fiction stood out as a result of its emphasis on leadership?

ERIKA ANDERSEN: We've been watching a really good show on Apple TV called Silo – we just finished the second season, and now I'm sad that we're going to have to wait who knows how long for the third! The show has great leaders, mediocre leaders, and truly awful leaders, and all the depictions are both entertaining and deep.

The main character – a woman named Juliette Nichols, played by actress Rebecca Ferguson – is a wonderfully complex character who is shoved (by circumstances way beyond her control) into various positions of leadership. Her most abiding characteristic is that she is unable to turn away from difficult challenges that she is capable of addressing – and where she may be the only person who has that capability.

That kind of moral courage is in short supply and is a key component, in my mind, of good leadership. I was coaching a CEO once who used to avoid doing necessary but uncomfortable things by distracting himself with things he liked doing or fancied himself good at – but that others could do. I told him I thought that good leaders – and especially good CEO's – "Only do what only they can do." That seems to be Juliette Nichols' credo in Silo. Check it out.

My gratitude to Erika for sharing her leadership insights and for being a part of my #SpringLeadershipSeries2025. Did these questions open your eyes to think about leadership in nontraditional ways? That was the hope!

Image Credit: Pixabay via Wordswag.

Read Erika's inspiring article, "How Springtime Can Make Us Better Leaders"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2015/05/14/how-springtime-can-make-us-better-leaders/

Read the entire article Erika referenced in her response to my second question:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-7-2024-144

Learn more about Dolores Medio:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Medio

And good news for Erika, Apple TV+ renewed "Silo" for seasons three and four:

https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2024/12/apple-tv-renews-hit-world-building-drama-silo-for-seasons-three-and-four/

Read Erika's previous appearances here on my blog:

HOLIDAY LEADERSHIP SERIES – Featuring Erika Andersen (November 2024)

https://www.debbielaskeysblog.com/2024/11/holiday-leadership-series-featuring.html