Sowing Your Seeds!
How will this book Grow on you?

I have spent many years in Training
and Development, helping, guiding
and supporting managers to transform
themselves into better managers.
I have trained, facilitated, mentored
and coached. I have in some cases
manipulated and bribed people along That was until I linked effective
the way, which definitely is not good
People Management with
practice. But what else can you do
when someone just doesn’t get what effective Gardening
managing people is all about? Management.
There seems to be a strong link (for
me) between a great gardener and a
great manager. So, rather than “sell”
management as a concept and get
bogged down in theoretical
management gobbledygook, I
focused on practical, pragmatic steps
to becoming a more effective
manager, in a fun and light way
without missing or skimming over
powerful messages.
This can be achieved by relating the
skills, knowledge and attitudes of a
great gardener, who nurtures and
grows plants with a great manager
Sowing Your Seeds! who grows and nurtures their people
How will this book Grow on you? / employees to achieve results.

I have never known a more stimulating, engaging and
memorable way to get managers to understand their role and
the impact they have on people to achieve results and business
success. “Ican Grow People ” is a great place to start if you
TM
want to make management a simple theory or process to
understand.
After facilitating the concept of
growing people with managers,
clients, Directors, HR teams and
professional bodies, I soon began
to realise that everyone gets the
gardening v management
metaphor.
This is more than can be said for
a lot of the dowdy, dusty and
boring management books found
on training library bookshelves.
People began to ask me to talk
more about this learning concept
and so I decided to write my own
book.
Ican Grow PeopleTM germinated!

Just “cut and paste” the
metaphor to create your
own Management garden
To be fair, the gardening
metaphor has been around for
years – this is nothing new at all
and a quick internet search will
dig up someone with a view on
how to grow real people like
plants.
However, with "Ican Grow
PeopleTM" you will have a huge
and varied selection of ideas and
approaches to work from.
And, because it is such a creative The metaphor can be
and interesting way to think taken and used as far
about people management you
as your imagination
will come up with some
wonderful ideas and management and energy will allow
concepts of your own too. you to go.

The book is divided into small chunks with plenty of visual
stimulation intended to help your mind wander and give you
space to make sense of things where it needs to. But you won’t
miss out on the important aspects of managing people effectively.
You will cover in various places throughout the book;
Performance Management
Communication
Personality Types
Training and Development
Management Styles
Team Development
Reward and Recognition
Change Management
Recruitment & Selection
Motivation
Setting Objectives
Personal Effectiveness
This book has been designed in a way so as not to give you all the answers but to
feed your imagination on how you or your people and your business /
organisation can make a big difference if you get your hands dirty and get stuck
into some simple steps to growing the ideal people garden.

My advice would be to simply read,
pause, ponder and self-reflect. Put the
words and pictures into context in your
world and then modify and change what
you do and how you do it to bring a This book is dedicated to
part or aspect of your people garden to my family who have
life. supported my weird and
wonderful ideas over the
years. To have such faith in
Throughout the book I have tried to someone, even when you
don’t quite understand what
encourage you to answer questions and they do, I salute you. For
make notes that will help you, or help the times when work has
come first, I thank you for
you to help others in becoming more your patience.
effective.
I would also like to thank
Barry for always believing in
If you would like to immerse yourself my entrepreneurial spirit , or
is it stupidity?
further and get bedded deeper into
the story and philosophy of Ican Also thanks to John for
Grow PeopleTM, then join me or one providing me with the space
to grow my business and be
of my team on the various Ican successful.
Grow People Seminars and Finally, a big thanks to all of
Development Events – visit you who bought this book –
www.icangrowpeople.com for more
details.
Prepare to be Green
Fingered from a
Management perspective! You don’t know how much I
appreciate it, but when we
Enjoy the book! meet, I will buy the Latte’s.