As an executive director in extension, I get the privilege of working with beginning professionals as they take their first foray into education and outreach in our community. It’s fall, and in my association, that means it’s time for annual performance dialogues. This is a reminder for me to check in with my team members about their accomplishments, growth, and insights about the past year. I’m fascinated by how much they accomplish in a year. I love seeing my teammates grow in confidence in their educational skills as they explore the topics and concerns of their stakeholders.
This year, while listening to my team talk about their ideas, successes, misadventures, and challenges, I had a bit of a revelation myself, and an important reminder. Doing extension work is FUN! I get bogged down in the logistics of my own day-to-day work – risk management paperwork, purchase orders, evaluations, and reporting. Paperwork galore! And paperwork, while important, is often not fun. But when you boil it down, our job as extension professionals is to listen when our community has questions and then help them answer them. And there are some amazing questions out there that lead to fascinating conversations and activities. Just this week, my team members worked on these doozies:
- helping hunters donate venison to food banks
- creating opportunities for sheep farmers to get together to grow a market for wool
- recognizing volunteers who make a difference in our community
- supporting communities in conversations about siting solar arrays
And there are always those entertaining questions that make me laugh, and the impacts that make me teary-eyed. Like the neighbor who is upset a local animal control professional ‘stole their skunk,’ the concerned individual with a crumpled baggie full of mystery insects for us to examine that turned out to be… sand, or the touching story of a family that’s now able to have a warm home this winter due to a home energy program. Whether it’s silly, confusing, or sad, I’m so glad my team can be there with our community.
Every day as an extension professional, we get to meet wonderful people. We hear about important issues. And we get the opportunity to use our knowledge to help the very people who live right by us, in our community, find the resources and expertise they need to make a difference. What a fantastic and incredible responsibility that is! We take our hard-earned expertise gained through years of living – schooling, on-the-job training, experience, and research – and share it with others. And our job is to make it easy to digest and enjoyable to experience. As a supervisor, I try to let my team know it’s okay to have fun at events and activities. After all, they picked their topic area for a reason, and if they’re having fun, others will, too! We should feel passionate about our topic areas and excited to share that enthusiasm with others.
So WOW! I am so very impressed by my team, by Extension, by the work that we’re able to do as a network to make life better for so many. Listening to my team’s performance reviews refreshes me and renews my own excitement and purpose in this career we share. And in that wow moment for a supervisor like me, I also realize that my new folks often feel like impostors in their new jobs. They don’t feel like they really own their titles yet – Master Gardeners coordinator, topical expert, program lead, extension educator. They may not see their impacts clearly, or understand why their programs are successful… not yet. But I do. My job is to help them grow and learn, and I love that part of this job. The titles we carry sound so crucial that they bog us down. In the end, our job as an extension professional isn’t to be the be-all and know-it-all, pontificating from a great height on all the wisdom we own to the exclusion of others. Blah blah blah, that would be so dull, and no one would want to attend that community program.
As extension professionals, we don’t know it all, we don’t always hit the mark, but we are here to share, grow, and learn. We are the boots-on-the-ground guides and community companions on the path of learning. We’re side by side with our neighbors, digging into the topics that matter right where we are. When we miss the mark or get it wrong, we own it. We laugh, we look confused, we say, ‘I don’t know, let me get back to you on that one.’ We examine what went awry and try, try again. As long as we share that path to knowledge – high-quality information, connecting our communities with the resources they need, and calling out to the University when we discover a knowledge gap that requires further research… we’re successfully fulfilling the mission that underlies each of our jobs. We’re helping people put knowledge to work.
Anyway, that’s my opinion. For what it’s worth, I’m one of the many extension supporters out there who’re rooting you on. I hope you have a fantastic performance dialogue with your supervisor. You’ve worked hard this year, and you’re going to grow even better at helping others. I’m so proud of you!