Maximizing Interiorscape Employee Potential

“We have a dilemma.” That’s how one of my employees, just ten days into managing her first direct report ever, started the conversation. The issue was some concern about the work her new employee—who had also been with the company for just ten days—had submitted. It wasn’t that there was a lack of employee potential, but rather the work done was a bit different from what we typically do.

Much to my manager’s credit, she wanted to give feedback but was concerned about how the new employee would receive it. Should she encourage the initiative, enthusiasm, and willingness to take action of the new employee by accepting the work as is? Or should she uphold our company’s quality standards by offering corrections?

Managers across all industries, including plantscaping, face this challenge at some point. How can you increase employee potential and engagement while delivering constructive criticism? Those who pick one approach over the other usually end up with a mediocre team prone to expensive employee turnover. Yet, taking a middle-of-the-road stance prevents the realization of either objective. The key is taking decisive action—ensuring employees remain engaged while consistently producing great work.

Developing Interiorscape Employee Potential Through Ongoing Training

A lack of effective training is the main reason employees don’t perform to standards. Training isn’t a one-time event, but rather must be ongoing. The best organizations and teams in the interiorscape industry realize that there must be continuous learning from trainers who can add new value.

My first-time manager recognized this issue immediately. She told me that while she had trained her new employee on how to complete the work, she had planned to discuss quality and specifics in the coming days. This explains why the work didn’t meet expectations. If the training had been more comprehensive upfront, the team could have avoided the dilemma altogether.

Building Trust to Strengthen Teamwork and Engagement

The type of critical feedback that managers often want to deliver is never an issue when there is implicit trust. People care deeply about the intentions of those who give them feedback, and these intentions become known from competence, consistency, and character demonstrated throughout a working relationship. To build trust with plant technicians, leaders must engage in frequent and transparent conversations that back up consistency between values, intentions, and outcomes.

For my first-time manager, I could deliver feedback via text with no negative engagement ramifications because there is a high level of trust built over years of working together. But her situation was different—after just ten days, it was impossible to have that same level of confidence in a new employee. As a result, the issue became a genuine dilemma, and successfully navigating the conversation required care and expertise.

Balancing Time Constraints Without Limiting Interiorscape Employee Growth

Unfortunately, the demand of most workers today is to do more work in less time. For managers in the interiorscape business, finding time to adequately train plant technicians while meeting all of their other daily obligations is no easy task. However, expecting production too soon can lead to greater issues, and most managers realize—often when it’s too late—that by failing to slow down, they lose employee engagement and limit employee potential forever.

Because of our new employee’s eagerness to get started, my first-time manager gave her the green light. But if she had allowed more time for the project, the new employee could have first submitted a draft, followed by a scheduled check-in meeting to provide the necessary feedback. With clearer expectations and fewer time constraints, she would not have landed in the predicament.

Creating a Workplace Culture for Success

In the end, my first-time manager successfully achieved both employee engagement and high-quality work—a testament to her sharp intuition and the genuine care she has for both the company and her direct report. But this result was only possible with significant effort and time because the manager’s dilemma is never an easy one to navigate. Most importantly, she learned a valuable lesson that will help her plan for the training, time, and trust needed to avoid these situations in the future.

As a plantscape professional, investing time and effort into building trust with your employees is essential when navigating delicate conversations. Coupled with the right training approach, this foundation makes it possible to create a high-performing team of engaged plant technicians who consistently uphold quality standards in the interiorscape industry.