A Recap of This Summit Session
At the PA Dairy Summit in February, Josh Keefer of North Group Consultants gave tips for generational leadership and ways to work together to embrace both youth and wisdom. Click here to access the slides from his presentation to share with your dairy team!
Highlights from his session:
- Throw away your assumptions about people. “We’ve known these people since they were little, and we may think we know what motivates them. The problem is, as people mature and gain experience, they start to change. If we treat them as who they were, we’ll keep them in a box and we’ll communicate with them in a way that never lets them outside of that box. If you’re the adult in that situation talking to a young, emerging leader who is a family member, you will either take the lid off the box or keep it on.”
- Focus on integrity and character. “In most settings, we look at experience first. Have you ever milked this many cows before? Are you familiar with this equipment? But that should be the last thing. We should not compromise on character. You can help to shape and mold their character, but you can’t teach it. Lack of character can be a huge downfall inside a small business.”
Articulate your goals and vision with family. “It can be terribly deflating, especially in a family business, when someone exits and we realize we never achieved what they were hoping we would do. That’s really deflating for the person you worked alongside for 25 years who never knew what they could contribute to make that dream a reality.”
Additional Tips on Where to Start
Talking about the future can be scary, especially for family businesses. To navigate conversations about the future, Keefer shared some advice on how to address tough questions:
- What if you don’t know what the future holds? “I promise they don’t think you’re some kind of fortune teller. They know the future is uncertain. They just want to know what you’d like the future to look like. They just want to know what you think.”
- What if it was a bad year? “Most of the time, all of your employees and family knew. You can’t hide it and they probably assumed it was way worse than what you would have told them. If you had a bad year, so what? We all have bad years. Talk about it. If you don’t want to give exact dollars, that’s okay but don’t use that as an excuse to not talk about it.”
What if I don’t have all the answers to their questions right now? “What they want to know is that you’re thinking and talking about these things. You don’t have to have the answers. Just make sure you open the conversation, understand what’s in their head, and allow them to see what’s inside your head. Open and honest conversation can help prevent fractured relationships.”
Save the Date for Next Year
The 2023 PA Dairy Summit will be held on February 8-9, 2023 at the Penn Stater in State College, PA.
We’ll update www.padairysummit.org with details as they are confirmed. We hope to see you there!
Sign Up for Event Updates
Want to listen back to your favorite keynote sessions from the 2022 Pennsylvania Dairy Summit? The recordings from each keynote session are now available in podcast format! Listen at your convenience and consider sharing them with your dairy farm team.
Click here to listen to the podcast recordings on your phone or computer. They are also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music if you search “PA Dairy Summit.”
If you want to share slides from your favorite sessions with your dairy team, the Summit app is available for six months. All presentations are uploaded there. Simply click on the Schedule, then click on the session you attended that you liked, and the presentation will be listed at the bottom of the session listing.
You can also view the presentations on the Summit website for easy downloading. Click here to view the program webpage. Scroll to the session you attended and click on the slides that are linked there.
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