In the corporate world, companies pay big bucks for leadership training. Businesses with hundreds or even thousands of employees invest in leadership development for managers who supervise dozens of people. This fascination with leadership has grown into an entire profession for leadership coaches and consultants. While corporate culture clearly values leadership, it remains an elusive concept that can be hard to pin down. Leadership is difficult to define, and even harder to measure. How does this important yet vague idea apply to farm businesses and families?
If you are a farm owner, operator, or manager, you may or may not see yourself as a leader, but the people around you surely do. “As a business owner, not only does your family rely on you – so too, do the families of those who work for you. Each employee has a family. Even if you’re a small business owner with four employees, you’re in essence potentially responsible for an additional ten or fifteen people.”1 The success of your farm business matters, not just to your family and employees, but also to your customers, your suppliers, and your community.
Leadership is about defining success, motivating people, building a strong team, and managing progress towards a future vision.2 An effective leader has strong skills in each of these four areas. Fortunately, leadership skills can be learned and strengthened with practice. Leaders are made, not born. In fact, many of the people we regard as influential leaders today have stories of stunning failures that they experienced earlier in their lives. Good leadership does not always guarantee success, as there are many factors that even a great leader cannot control. However, poor leadership is sure to cause problems for any business.
The purpose of this column is to explore ideas around effective leadership, and practical ways that farm owners and operators can put those ideas to use. Improving leadership on the farm will not only increase the odds of success for your business, but also improve the chances that you, your family, and your employees will enjoy yourselves along the way.
Additional Reading
1 Gleeson, B. (November 9, 2016). 10 Unique Perspectives on What Makes a Great Leader. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com
2 Mind Tools. What is leadership? Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com