What Seeds Are You Planting? Nurturing Gratitude

© Martha Wooding-Young, The Resilient Executive, LLC. The humble seed potato weighing in at just over an ounce and a half, Heartwood Farm.

Ah, the humble seed potato. Not much to look at, about the size of an egg. Saved from the last of the potato harvests and kept dry and dark and around 50 degrees, these little gems will hang out all fall and winter and then happily go back in the dirt in the early spring to produce the next year’s crop. Potatoes are so unassuming. Even the purple ones I prefer are still a backdrop, a foil against which the more glamorous elements of the meal are highlighted. Yet they provide fantastic nutrition: not just potassium, but essential elements like copper and B6, Vitamin C and a healthy amount of protein. The purple ones are also packed with antioxidants as well as having a low-glycemic index. 

Don’t we all have teammates like this? They are the quiet ones. Unassuming even. Perhaps it’s the essential admin who keeps everyone on schedule and gets them where they need to be when they need to be there. Maybe it’s the manager who still makes time to listen to the most junior colleagues when they are stressed out or remembers a birthday or a sick relative. Perhaps it’s the quietly funny one who makes teammates laugh and can lighten up the most dire meeting. Like the surprising benefits of a purple potato building our immune system and providing vital nutrients, these quiet teammates form the connective tissue that holds teams and whole organizations together when the going gets rough. They are productive too: just like the seed potato that produces more than 16x its weight in fresh harvest. I am grateful daily for the bounty that comes out of the garden. I express it by weeding and tending my plants. It’s a two-way street. 

How do you express your gratitude for your unsung, quiet but essential teammates?  Speaking gratitude out loud or finding ways to notice and to express it tends and cares for these teammates in ways that will give back 16-fold or more. It costs nothing. Try cultivating gratitude and prepare to be amazed.

© Martha Wooding-Young, The Resilient Executive, LLC. Yield from a single seed potato, Heartwood Farm