Page 92 - strategicfactbook

Advanced Leadership Goal Team
Summary and Recommendations
2. Offer external leadership program/experience scholarships for members. There are many fantastic leadership programs offered by organizations, associations and universities across the nation and beyond. Instead of recreating the wheel, let’s provide resources for members to access these opportunities not currently offered through MFB. The goal team recommends a scholarship fund could be structured like the internal MFB charitable matching program and administered on a first-come, first-served basis by an internal standing team. The scholarships should include some minimum guidelines and criteria as well as application requirements. Attached, find recommended draft guidelines for this offering. Some recommended programs include Michigan Political Leadership Program, Leadership Michigan, the Executive Program for Agricultural Producers (TX) and industry-specific leadership programs that meet our minimum guidelines/criteria (ie. Syngenta LAIB, etc.)
3. Provide additional, structured leadership development training to our state board of directors on
an annual/semi-annual basis. As leadership development is a primary function of our mission, we believe
it’s imperative we continue developing our leaders at the highest level in an intentional, structured way. We should create a culture of continuous growth and prioritize leadership development for our state board of directors by providing training such as interacting with media, executing their roles and responsibilities with excellence, understanding their financial, fiduciary and confidentiality responsibilities, exercising and teaching organizational discipline, providing support and accountability to county boards, building awareness of personal strengths, leadership and behavior styles, working with others’ strengths, leadership and behavior styles, etc.
4. Research, identify and invest in survey software for use in all MFB programs and events, to provide a consistent way to collect and analyze member feedback, automate and reduce staff time and provide better data for evaluation. This will provide baseline data for big picture programmatic decisions and future leadership development direction.
5. After further evaluation of Great Lakes Leadership Academy (GLLA) offerings and programming, and if the changes from the GLLA Strategic Planning sessions are implemented in the Leadership Advancement Program (LAP), we recommend MFB continue to support GLLA by:
a. Providing financial support, as discussed and determined by the MFB board of directors
b. Promoting GLLA and targeting and actively recruiting farmer leaders for LAP
c. Promoting, providing financial scholarship for and actively targeting and recruiting farmer leaders for the Emerging Leaders Program
We also recommend MFB management identify the lead MFB staff to work with GLLA, our staff and our CFB’s in achieving the bullets above.
6. Create a ProFILE+ program for leaders over the age of 35. As we continue to utilize ProFILE as a qualifier for participating in additional MFB leadership opportunities, we need to provide a chance for more tenured members to participate. We suggest the program nominations, selection, execution and curriculum mirror the original ProFILE program, but begin in odd years. Two staff members, in cooperation with the existing ProFILE staff leads, would lead this program to ensure consistency and integration with other MFB programs.
7. Build on survey/focus group work with members over the age of 35 to better determine what leadership development skills they are interested in honing and how they would like MFB to play a role. Considering the ever-changing agricultural landscape, we recommend gathering feedback from a select group of 35+ year-old members on Tuesday morning of State Annual Meeting to solidify this demographic’s needs and preferences, digging into and updating the data we’ve already gathered. In winter/spring of 2021, we suggest
a smaller group of these stakeholders gather for a day or two in person to review all survey, focus group and State Annual Meeting feedback, evaluate current MFB offerings and provide additional MFB leadership vision recommendations.
8. Create a training library of leadership development resources for staff use and eventual member-facing delivery opportunities through the Learning Management System (LMS). This will include consistent, generic, MFB-wide training modules for topics like new county board training, effective meetings, parliamentary procedure and interpreting balance sheets as well as program-specific modules for policy development, consumer conversations, social media, etc.
9. Consider offering “peer groups” as a new option in MFB’s leadership inventory going forward. After thorough peer group fact-finding and interviews, we need additional direction from members on the following variables before launching a pilot: geographic considerations, MFB-specific or participation in another state/