GROW Theory with Jeff McManus Part 1 (of 2)
“I like cultivating people. I love to see people grow. And so when I can grow people who grow great plants, that to me is the cultivation secret right there.”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM Jeff McManus
Jeff McManus grows things. As the Director of Landscape Services at the University of Mississippi, he grows plants....he grows people....he grows ideas. Taking his grounds staff, affectionately known as "weeders", and developing them into "leaders" has been a joyous challenge that reaped acres of rewards in the form of national recognition by the Princeton Review, PGMS, Newsweek and every faculty, staff, student and visitor who has walked onto the Ole Miss Campus. Building on that momentum, Jeff has designed a professional development plan for his Weeders called Landscape University - a replicable training program that promotes the individual's innate ability to GROW. Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science in Landscape and Ornamental Horticulture from Auburn University and is a PGMS Certified Grounds manager, and Certified Arborist. Jeff has spoken at Caterpillar Inc, the Biltmore Estates, Leadercast, SRAPPA, Trent Lott Leadership Institute as well as the SEC Ole Miss Athletics. He has also worked with Memphis University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Georgia and private firms in developing their own training programs.
on being a chief cultivation officer
“Cultivating Officer is like it sounds, you go out and cultivate. You get prepared. And so in my work, I get to do a little of everything. I get to cultivate plants. I grow plants, I have a beautiful college campus that I work on. So I'm growing nature. But what I really like is cultivating, I like cultivating people. I love to see people grow. And so when I can grow people who grow great plants, that to me is the cultivation secret right there. That's the trick. That's the magic inside of me that really just lights my fire is watching people come alive, and love what they do. And then they end up working harder, they work longer, and they did it. They enjoy what they do. So that's what a cultivating officer is for me.”
the 4 characteristics
“Everything we do is selling and so I had to sell myself. I was an outsider coming in, I had to build the trust. One of the most admired qualities of leadership in a leader is them being honest. And so I had to be honest, I couldn't say things that I didn't mean. So one of the things I would say is let's be the best of the best. Now, I didn't always know what that meant. But I was sincere. And so we'd figured out as we went, and I just kept saying it.. nobody laughed, nobody questioned me, I kept saying it. We went to the grove, the tree limbs would be way down and hitting people in the heads. There would be trees that were problematic and just not addressed. There were no tree rings, there were no defined areas. It wasn't good looking grass.
And so it's like how can we get the quality up? But I think one of the things that helped our crews more than anything is I would take them to another university, and show them what other campuses are doing. I had to broaden our vision of what we could do. Because a lot of our team had never really been out of the area. So they hadn't seen a whole lot. So we loaded up our leadership team, go to universities… we'd spend four or five days on the road.
And it was an investment in time. It was an investment in money. But one of the best things we did is take them to this one college campus. And when we got there, the grass clippings were all over the sidewalk. It was a mess. The grass was high. It was all rolled up and cuttings were everywhere. When we got in the van to leave that campus, I asked what was your first impression? And they mentioned all those things they saw.
So just getting people to see that bigger picture talking about wanting to be one of the top in the industry was critical. There's four characteristics that I really tried to do. I tried to be honest, I tried to be inspiring by showing them those type of things. I tried to be forward-looking like where are we going? But then the last one is I had to know what I was talking about. I had to be competent. So that that even though the small part is knowing the technical part, I had to know a little that as well. So those little four points have really helped me in the leadership turnaround here at Ole Miss.”
GROW
“Yeah, so that to me, I use the acronym grow. And it helps me when I'm trying to get results. We're all judged on results, so we all need to get the results. So the G is growing a great team. I've got to get that team to play in there. And that greatness in there. And then that are now we're talking about our as we're Raising the results, how do we raise the results with what we already have? And then we take the O, and we look at ways that we can create offense opportunities. So how do we create it so that we're proactive, and then the W is we're looking for the winning attitudes.
Now, we do that in a lot of ways. But the simple way is if we jump back into the G, growing great teams, I've got to as the leader take on the role of creating the vision of where we're going, and then I've got to help lead by example. There's just no better way. It doesn't mean I have to be out there doing all the work. Actually, that's very unproductive depending on how big the company is, but I need to be willing to get my hands dirty, I need to be available, I need to be accessible. And if I think that I live in the ivory tower, and that nobody can talk to me because I have the degree, I'm the smartest person, I'm the boss…then it just doesn't work. So the great teams as being approachable setting the vision for us as being one of the best of the best in the college world and being one of the unique campuses in that way.
But then we have to look at how do we raise results and how do we raise the results in the right way? How do we raise the results by getting people to buy in? So we, we have this unique approach, where we just allow people to be a part of the process. Now, here's the key. And this is this is sort of a seminar that I do, but I helped frame it for our staff as the leader. So let's say we're gonna go out and do some simple mowing today. So I want our staff to mow it at a very high quality, I want to raise the results. So I frame it. Okay, guys, we're going out on the mowers, what do we want the quality to look like? So now I framed it in. I'm wanting them to talk about quality only. And then they'll talk about that, and we'll come up with our standards, we'll write those down. We don't want to scalp the grass, we want to cut it at the same height as our weed eaters. We want to not go in and spin the tires around. So we talk a lot about quality. Well, as they're saying those things, I'm writing them down or somebody is writing them down. And that becomes part of our process. Then we teach that process to our new people, and we review it, but guess whose process it is? Remember, we're raising results. We're raising buy-in. Now it's ours. And so what I learned is in raising results, I have to share ownership. And the way I do it is I frame it, and I raise it, and I give them the ownership. So that's been that's been like our secret weapon to where we can do more with less. No, don't tell anybody - but that's our secret weapon.”
Now, the O, the O is offense, right? Offenses for opportunities. So what we have done is create leadership programs. Instead of our staff coming in and saying “hey, I need a raise”, they can go through a program and show their initiative. They're growing their leadership skills. We call that the landscape champion program.
The last one is the winning attitude. This is something I learned 10 years ago. I needed to change who my team was listening to in their head. We all have self talk. So I started taking one hour a month and exposing our team to good motivational speakers and good listening. But then letting them dialogue, sort of me facilitating questions, getting them to talk, letting them hear themselves talk about leadership…that has been very transformational to our staff, because they have seen where they have the deeper beliefs, but they never vocalize them. So now they're vocalizing those, and it's built a stronger culture, a better teamwork. So that's, that's sort of a nutshell of what I teach and how I try to run these teams to get that ownership and that results that we need. And the great thing about it is, it allows me to have more free time, it allows me to not have to carry the burdens all on my shoulders, because now everybody's part of the team.”
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