Support when you need it

Hilarious and relatable - those were the flavour of support conversations

I had many hilarious, relatable conversations about farming and the challenges of aiming for anti-fragile, which my farm is not right now.

The ground hogs continue to be a menace - no lettuce, Swiss chard, even some of the peppers are being taken down. It’s a year like no other I’ve faced on this land and it’s been hard. On top of the fact that my farm hand, C, has been away almost 3 weeks. A year I had hoped to be utterly transformative with his help started strong and we’ve hit a real dip since he’s been gone.

I wrote last week about the emotional toll for me.

Here’s what’s required: self awareness, resilience and the plan to becoming anti-fragile (as well as some important conversations on that path).

Self awareness is where I’ve been and where you must start.

How are you really? What’s the story you’re telling yourself and what meaning do you make of it?

I had been telling myself everything was now at risk - the leadership programs I wanted to run on the farm, the crops we were actually growing, the Michelin restaurants I’d be breaking promises to. My joy.

And underneath the list, the real story: I was failing. I might not make enough money this year. I couldn’t depend on anyone but myself, because I’d only be let down again anyway.

How awful.

None of it was true. But I was very committed to it.

My clients were sharing that their teams get in similar ruts when decisions get changed from higher up seemingly too frequently and without reason. They feel like they’ll never get on top of things, they have no agency so what’s the point anyway, and it takes the whole team’s morale down. My client was trying to figure out how to lift their spirits and doing all the work to do so.

Resilience is a practice and it must be deliberate, starting with self awareness then - support to process the ‘hard heart’ of it all. Landing on shifting your state of being (mind, heart and soul), processing what’s going on until you land on clarity and an action plan you can see.

For me, support took the form of several hilarious conversations. One was with Antonio - a wonderful salt-of-the-earth human who runs an operation similar to mine. Another was with Sarah, my former farm hand and now a good friend I don’t get to see much, though these catch-ups are gold (she’s pregnant, as it turns out - so, so happy for her and her family).

Sarah was the one that made me laugh out loud. She and I are very similar personality types. We have the same terrible stress reliever, she and I, the one we reach for at our absolute worst: salt and vinegar chips. The worst.

She offered that she’s always super proud of herself for not succumbing to the potato chip version of herself too often. Me too - this is a rare version of myself I generally only see once in a few years, thank g-d.

Laughing at myself and with others helped change my state.

Then, talking with Antonio about what we’d learned - that our farms are fragile; when our key farm hand is gone, we cannot keep up alone. That’s big.

My client learned he cannot hold the load for the whole team - he can’t be their emotional support and lead. They must build greater resilience as a team and individually. All the time and energy he was putting into each person to ‘keep them sane’ was making him less so.

There is a beautiful coaching adage - People are Naturally Resourceful, Capable and Whole. We need to remember this as leaders, about our teams and ourselves.

My client can see he needs to build a more team-oriented, supportive environment so he’s not the one for each person—instead they become the ones for each other. It’s the only way he can scale.

So, get the support you need, laugh if you can, play with perspectives and the meaning you’re giving the situation until you find a clear, actionable plan.

Now I can see the beginning of a plan—and a conversation. When Chett returns, I’ll be on clear ground: my emotions processed, clarity about what’s mine and what the system needs to become anti-fragile. Which means I can have an effective conversation with him—not the one I wanted to have three weeks ago, with all the blame laid at his feet. That version might have felt good in the moment. It also wouldn’t have been fair, or true.

The fair conversation is the harder one. That’s next week.