Federated Farmers: Leadership is all about people

Taranaki Dairy farmers Matt and Tracey Honeysett pictured with Federated Farmers national president Dr William Rolleston after receiving the Federation's leadership award at Auckland's Sky City earlier this year.

Six months ago Tracey and I were fortunate to win the Federated Farmers Leadership Award at the NZ Dairy Industry Awards national final in Auckland.

Surprised to have won this award at a regional level we were stunned when credited with the 2015 national award.

As I stood this morning on our AI stand looking at our cows' tail paint for signs of heat I quickly concluded that John Key would not have time to do this for four hours every few days.

Barack Obama would get far too bored and I'm not sure if Her Majesty could cope with the aroma. Leaders obviously come in many different forms and we are testament to this.

We are not leaders that have the need to be controlling, display power or generate fear -- that's our dog's job.

Leadership is not just about policies and processes; for us it's about people, our team of staff, our business partners and our community.

As leaders we need to identify our team's strengths and interests and work with these for efficient results, but also give support to others who may need help finishing a job in a timely manner.

We endeavour to lead by example; we are not yet JK who has the ability of only focusing on policy and governance. You will find us up at 3am with the cows, working late covering the silage stack or getting stuck in with those jobs no one really likes doing.

We have been fortunate to lead some great teams in our career to date, and what a real buzz it is when members of these teams move into leadership roles, often the result of job change or career progression.

These guys are not then forgotten but offering advice and mentoring is an important part of continuing to grow them. We currently attempt to give good advice to three farm managers who have previously worked for us (attempt).

Leadership for us is being able to develop leadership capability.

Working alongside our team, listening and providing an example goes a long way to creating a healthy environment.

The policies we have created hopefully help everyone to work together to achieve a successful and enjoyable workplace that is also profitable for our business partners.

Having gone on about what we do and what we don't do, we do understand the importance of 'macro leaders' such as JK, Obama and Feds to that extent.

Our job is not to take on all the problems of the world but to leave some for the afore mentioned. I'm happy with them reading the fine print of TPPA, while they are probably happy leaving us to shovel out the effluent sump.