Within the quiet moments of life, before the inevitable storms hit, lies a golden opportunity to fortify your family’s resilience. It’s during these calm days we can build a strong and united front, ensuring that when challenges arise, we are ready to face them together. Let’s explore practical ways to strengthen your family’s bond and prepare for whatever life brings your way.
“Resiliency” means “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change.” It is an ability we can work on. Here are some considerations to build this ability for you and as an example to your family and/or team.
Communication
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Even though this ability may sound complicated or new, we can start with simple steps that help us become aware of how we were taught to communicate.
Let’s experiment: when was the last time you had a conversation with your spouse, children or coworker about a childhood memory or about another important memory of their youth? If you have had one, great.
You may not remember the last time you had a conversation like this. When working with family, we can easily fill the family time with discussions about the farm operation. Certainly, we want and need to talk about the farm operation — though these conversations do not always need to occur at birthday celebrations or at dinner. Operational conversations should be held as much as possible in designated spaces during specific times — and physically where you can write down tasks on a whiteboard or make notes for the team to be accountable for the tasks they need to complete.
By creating specific times for operational meetings, you can save space to celebrate and communicate about other important aspects of life beyond the farm and become more intentional in the process. This intentional approach will enable you to create spaces that foster more profound understanding and connection among the family and farm team. Though we might think we know each other because we are family, I’m convinced that as humans, we change and grow throughout our lives. Cohesion means being aware of each other without assuming we know each other.
I invite you to choose a lovely afternoon to invite your farm team to enjoy a light snack or s’mores around a bonfire or fireplace and ask them to share their favourite childhood game or memory. These conversations build connection as they transmit the message “I care about you and the things that are meaningful to you” and “I can trust you while I am sharing this story with you.” This is highly important, as good communication skills start with being able to listen to someone else’s story and really care about what they are sharing. Remember: we listen to understand, not to respond.
Trust
This is an important one. A good friend and colleague, Sidney Morgan, created a helpful framework called the “Four Pillars of Trust.” This framework breaks down the complex concept of trust into four distinct pillars: one of those is the pillar of respect.
Morgan explains respect as the union of “re,” meaning “again,” and “spect” meaning “spectacles,” which translates as “to see again through different spectacles.”
This means that trust develops when we cultivate the ability to see things from different perspectives. It means I acknowledge that when I share my thoughts and opinions, I do so from a limited point of view.
I invite you to do an experiment. Tomorrow, pause your response for a minute when in conversation with your spouse, mom or dad, or daughter or son, and ask, “Could you explain more why you think that way?” Also, if you are about to give advice or comment, stop and ask, “Would you like to hear my point of view here?”
Habits
These refer to the actions and thoughts we repeat constantly — and we repeat them so much through the years that they become invisible to us. We assume things should be that way, and then, when the habits we practice no longer serve us, they become blinders that limit our awareness and alertness to what happens in our surroundings.
This invites us to embark on the journey of becoming self-aware, which means sitting down with ourselves and reflecting healthily on the habits we have while leading or engaging with our family. When things feel calm or you have a moment’s break, you can take a couple of hours early in the morning, afternoon or evening to reflect on the ways you make decisions at the farm, or the quality of the relationships you have with your family, or on strategies to start a conversation on strategic topics such as farm transition.
I encourage you to develop skills that enhance your flexibility, awareness and ability to observe with depth. Families that work together and strengthen their relationships will build resilience in how they respond to various challenges each day.
