What does keeping bees have to do with effective leadership?

It's October, a month in which I reflect upon my first blog posting written in 2009 following a week-long learning experience at Heifer International Ranch in Perryville, AR, where I experienced the art and craft of beekeeping. This post illustrates my learning about bees' lives, their work, their collective wisdom, and my insights about how we can deepen our leadership effectiveness merely by observing (and emulating) the bees' ways of being. I welcome your own reflections.

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Honeybees fascinate me.

I crossed off one of my “bucket list” items and spent time at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas learning about beekeeping. Everything I knew about bees and beekeeping up to now came strictly from books or documentaries. No hands-on experience. So I heeded the nudge and gave it a try.

Suffice it to say, I’m hooked.

Sue Hubbell tells us in her book, A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them, “The end of one honey season is the start of the next, and autumn is a good time to start with bees…Summer’s end is also the new beginning of a new cycle for bees. It is then that they prepare for the winter ahead, and their preparations, along with the help a beekeeper can give them, determine how good the next season will be.”

I learned a lot that week – how to calm the bees, extract honey, build and repair supers – all good, practical activities. The most impactful for me, though, was what I learned by observing the master beekeeper, Chuck Crimmins, as he compassionately cared for his bees.

It’s noted that bees learn to recognize their beekeeper’s voice and the rhythm of their movements. Bees will react, either aggressively or calmly, depending on what is happening around them. Vibrations unnerve them. They can sense apprehension and smell fear.

Observing Chuck’s quiet, gentle movements was like watching a movie clip in slow motion. Bending to rest his ear on the side of the hive, he listens for the buzzing hum. Are the bees active? Quiet? He slowly removes the hive cover, gently pulling out each frame, holding them up to the sunlight to check the bees’ health, tenderly using his breath to blow them aside to look for the queen. Bees brush and softly land on his arms, fly around him in an improvised dance – he works the bees all the while without gloves! It was inspiring to watch Chuck’s quiet and tender approach; in his role as helper, he held and cared for the space where his bees calmly work their magic.

Reflecting on Hubbell’s words and spending time with Chuck that week had me thinking about leadership and how we leaders can often get it wrong. We think our teams need us more than they actually do. We lean into our position, our expert-ness, our thinking that our way is best. We over-care and overbear, filling voids with our voices and opinions, stomping heavily on ideas outside our own – whatever it is, we can get in the way of possibility and the creative magic that dwells intuitively within our teams.

Beekeeper-like leadership – this is a notion that I’d like to ponder a bit more. What opportunities do we have to lead our teams as a beekeeper tends to their bees? What are the ways where we might lightly step in when needed, gently check in to assess health, and then have confidence that our teams are competent to learn from mistakes, perform, and deliver? As Susan Scott invites us to consider in Fierce Leadership – "rather than holding them accountable, hold them able!” How significant a shift might that make in our collective work?

Honeybees don’t really require our help; they’ve intuitively harvested pollen and nectar, and have produced honey for thousands of years. Perhaps those we lead have an intuitive sense about how to work in ways that we can only imagine if we only make way for their intuition and creativity to take flight.

What are the ways that you've held your teams able? In what ways have you noticed your teams' intuition and creativity take flight?

About Dr. Renee Charney: Drawing from deep experience coaching leaders and teams developing learning and organization effectiveness solutions Dr. Charney's life-work is in service of enriching individuals' and teams' capacities for learning, adapting, and leading. She believes and holds her clients as capable and whole human beings, and is guided with the intention to ignite agency to learn, unlearn, change, and transform. Her way of working facilitates conversations and initiatives that shift mindsets and influence growth. Dr. Charney earned her doctorate in Leadership and Change at Antioch University's Graduate School of Leadership and Change and has presented internationally on topics that include adaptive, individual, and organizational leadership and learning. She has been privileged to contribute to the development of both leaders and teams from around the globe including those from Brazil, Spain, Great Britain, Singapore, India, Canada, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Czech Republic, Australia, South Africa, and the United States.

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