How garden center leaders can build employee ownership and reduce management bottlenecks
One of the biggest patterns I’ve noticed while coaching garden centers is how much pressure owners and managers are carrying right now.
Most leadership teams feel stretched thin. Everyone needs answers from them all day long, decisions keep flowing upward and eventually the business becomes dependent on a few key people for almost everything.
And somewhere along the way, many leaders started blaming the younger generation for the problem.
Honestly, I don’t think we have a generational problem in the garden center — I think we have a leadership problem. To be fair, leadership in this industry isn’t easy right now. Most owners and managers are trying to juggle staffing shortages, rising costs, spring chaos, customer expectations and constant interruptions during the busiest months of the year.
But I do think younger employees are exposing leadership gaps that older generations were simply more willing to tolerate.
Un-Bottlenecking Leadership
Years ago, employees were expected to work hard, figure things out and not ask a ton of questions. Today’s workforce communicates differently. They want more feedback. More clarity. More direction. They want to know what success actually looks like and where they fit into the business.
A lot of leaders see that and immediately think entitlement. I’m not sure that’s always fair. I think it’s forcing businesses to become healthier places to work and exposing areas where leadership systems maybe weren’t as strong as we thought they were.
One of the biggest issues I see inside garden centers is leadership bottlenecks.
Everything flows back through the owner: pricing questions, refund approvals, plant availability, customer complaints, pest and disease questions, and ordering decisions. And after a while, leaders get stuck spending their entire day reacting instead of actually leading.
I remember one client saying to me, “I just wish people would take more ownership around here.”
The team was constantly asking questions. Displays weren’t getting maintained consistently. Staff kept waiting for direction instead of taking initiative.
So I asked him, “Have you actually empowered them to take ownership?”
The answer was no, not intentionally. But over time, the business had slowly trained employees to rely on management for almost every decision. Staff were constantly asking permission because leadership still controlled most of the decision-making.
Giving Ownership to Employees
So we started working through the top questions the team was asking every day and built simple SOPs and training systems around them. Not corporate manuals nobody reads; just practical systems the team could actually use.
We started discussing common customer situations during huddles. We created clearer expectations around decision-making. We gave team leaders authority over certain situations so every small issue didn’t continue flowing upward through management.
For example, if a return was under a certain dollar amount, team leads could make the decision themselves without chasing down ownership every single time.
We did the same thing with merchandising and restocking. Instead of management constantly fixing displays after staff left for the day, certain team members took ownership over specific zones of the store. One person owned indoor tropicals. Another owned perennial presentation and restocking. Another became responsible for end caps and seasonal displays.
And, slowly, things started changing. Staff became more confident, problems got solved faster and management was interrupted less often. People started taking more pride in their spaces because they actually felt trusted to manage them.
I think a lot of leaders want ownership from their teams, but at the same time they unknowingly correct every decision employees make. Eventually people stop taking initiative because they’ve learned it’s safer to wait for approval.
Building a Simpler System
Another client I worked with was dealing with a completely different issue during spring rush.
Mother’s Day weekend and Memorial Day weekend had become so busy that customers were literally being turned away in the parking lot. Checkout lines were backed up. New customers were overwhelmed trying to navigate the garden center, and leadership worried people were leaving frustrated before they even had a chance to enjoy the experience.
What stood out to me was that they had great product and great people already. The problem was bottlenecks. There was no map at the entrance helping customers navigate the space quickly. There wasn’t an express checkout for smaller purchases. The website didn’t help shoppers visualize the layout before arriving. Social media wasn’t helping walk customers through the experience ahead of time so they knew where things were once they got there.
And honestly, this is where a lot of leadership teams get stuck. They’re so buried in daily interruptions that they never have time to solve the operational problems creating those interruptions in the first place.
Leaders can’t focus on the vision of the garden center if they’re constantly getting pulled into the weeds (pun intended).
I saw something similar with another client in their stone yard. The owner was spending an unbelievable amount of time answering pricing questions because vendor pricing kept changing throughout the season. Staff weren’t always confident giving updated pricing, so eventually almost every question flowed back to ownership.
So instead of continuing to answer the same questions over and over, we built a simpler system.
We created a live spreadsheet with updated pricing that could be changed anytime vendors adjusted costs. Then we created both a customer-facing version and a staff-only version. We added QR codes directly in the stone yard so customers could scan the code from their phone and instantly see current pricing themselves.
Now when vendor pricing changes, the spreadsheet gets updated once and everybody immediately has the updated information.
It sounds simple, but these are the kinds of operational bottlenecks that quietly consume leadership teams every single day.
Communication is another big one.
Most managers communicate with every employee the exact same way and then get frustrated when certain people don’t respond well.
At Brands in Blooms, my business partner Jon Morrison is certified in DiSC personality training (dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness), and it’s been one of the most practical leadership tools we’ve used with teams.
Some employees want direct feedback, while some need more encouragement and reassurance. Some thrive when they’re given freedom and others need more clarity and structure before they feel confident.
The best leaders I’ve worked with are usually very aware that not everybody thinks like they do.
I remember one manager telling me they thought a younger employee didn’t care because she barely spoke during meetings. In reality, she was terrified of saying the wrong thing publicly. Once leadership changed how they communicated with her privately, her confidence completely changed.
A lot of the time leaders jump straight to attitude or work ethic when really communication is just breaking down somewhere.
The same thing applies to culture.
I don’t think great workplace culture gets built from posters in the lunchroom or buying pizza during spring rush. Usually it’s smaller things like one-on-one meetings. Checking in with people consistently. Coaching instead of constantly correcting. Allowing employees to make mistakes without embarrassing them in front of the team. Staying calm during stressful weekends when the garden center feels chaotic.
People remember how leaders make them feel during pressure.
One thing I’ve noticed over and over is that a lot of managers got promoted because they were great growers, merchandisers, operators or salespeople. But nobody actually taught them how to lead people.
Leadership is a completely different skillset and honestly, leaders need leadership, too.
That’s a huge part of the work we do at Brands in Blooms. Through one-on-one coaching, peer groups, leadership development and operational strategy, we work with garden centers across North America to help leadership teams communicate better, remove bottlenecks, develop future leaders, and create healthier organizations.
Because eventually every owner runs into the same reality: You can’t build a great business if every decision still depends on you. At some point, the business needs more people confidently making decisions without everything constantly flowing back through ownership.
If you feel stuck constantly answering questions, solving every problem yourself or trying to get your team to take more ownership, those are exactly the kinds of conversations we help leadership teams work through every week.
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