Welcome to my series called “Lessons from the Farm”. You can read the other posts here.
Just a little background: I grew up working on my Dad’s farm. As I’ve grown older and spent more time away, there are few leadership principles I have realized along the way.
When I got into high school, my dad started raising more cattle. Part of raising cattle is moving them from one place to another. Over the years, we moved countless herds.
A lesson I had to quickly learn was to find the balance between knowing the destination and not getting stuck on having to stay on one single path. Map quest will not map out a path for a cattle drive.
When moving cattle you have to know your destination and push the herd in the general direction, understanding sometimes you’re not going to move in a straight line.
The same is true in leadership. Knowing our destination is vitally important, but we have to be careful about being completely tied to the path we’ve laid out. If we are unwilling or unable to adjust to the unexpected detours or slight course alterations, we become too rigid and no one wants to follow us.
Learning how to lead includes learning how to accommodate the unexpected and use the forward momentum to move toward the destination.
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