3 Leadership Lessons We Learned Scaling a Microgreens Farm for Chefs

If you want to build a high-performing farm team, focusing on how plants are grown isn't enough. It's an easy trap for farmers to only care about the products they grow. This can be especially true if you start a farm because of a love of growing food. For us, at the core of our farm is our people. Without them, we wouldn't have a farm. When we built our very first team we learned quickly that providing leadership was going to be an important thing if we wanted our team succeed. In the past, Nicholas and I have worked enough different jobs to know what traits we liked and didn't like in a leader. We've made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot since our first team. To me, leading a team is not telling them what to do, or asking when tasks will get done. It's about creating an environment where your team is aligned to a future vision, providing guidance, and supporting team members with personal professional goals. You might ask why do all these things? What's the point? Leadership to me really is the foundation required to build a high performing team. More importantly, it's a magic ingredient to keep your team happy and fulfilled. Without it, you risk the team feeling disconnected and unhappy.

3 Leadership lessons we learned last year

Sharing a future vision helps the team strive for a common goal

We shared early and often what our future plans were for the farm to make it clear to every team member that the work they do is important and has a greater purpose. We'd share our 1 year, 5 year and 10 year plan with our team so they can understand how the work they are doing today is moving the team towards a bigger goal. Without it, it's common for the team to fall into a 'so what' or 'what's the point' attitude. It's important for us that they know every single person on the team plays an important role on the team.

Provide guidance for all farm tasks and procedures to create alignment

What we learned pretty quickly when training the team on farm tasks that what seems obvious someone else likely will do it a completely different way than you. Everyone's brain solves a problem differently. There is a million ways to get something done. If we want the team to be aligned in how we grow our product, we needed to provide basic instructions so everyone on the team had a common understanding of how we plant, grow, water and harvest. This helped improve teamwork because everyone had the same understanding of how to do the farm tasks. It meant everyone can do all the tasks at the farm so they can swap shifts if needed. Ultimately as a leader, you can ensure the team is doing the process that provides the best quality food every week. No task at the farm is too small to think it doesn't need instructions. Legendary basketball coach Coach Wooden famously taught all the players how to tie there shoes. While some laughed at the idea, Coach Wooden wasn't leaving it up to chance at a buzzer beating moment to someone's shoe accidentally coming off. No task is too simple. Inspired by Wooden, we even provide guidance on how to wrap a hose or write labels.

Focus on your team's individual goals

As a leader, if you take the time to get to know every team member individually, it gives you the opportunity to align their own goals with the needs of the business. Farming is demanding so it's really easy to lose focus and only prioritize what the farm's needs as a business. It's important that we don't lose sight of our team. Find opportunities to align interest with the farm's business priorities. For example, at our farm if a team member has goals of becoming a master grower, we align them to owning the projects of testing and running trials of new varieties. If we have a team member curious about social media, we get them helping with that. We believe as a leader, it is our responsibility to help our team members grow professionally in their career. It's not just about what they can offer you. A strong leader will be able to provide growth opportunities that will help them succeed in their own professional career. Do this and you will have motivated people aligned to what the farm needs.

There's a lot of elements that are required to create a happy andhigh performing farm team. We've made our fair share of mistakes. But with leadership as a focus, we were able to focus on the vision, provide guidance and set up individual professional goals last year. It helped the team feel happier, excited about their work and boosted morale at the farm. None of that would have been possible without focusing on leadership.