Managing People: Skill-building for Supervisors and Crew Leaders

(Para Español, haga click aquí.)

Get the best out of your farm team in 2019!

Managing people is a skill that can be learned, much like operating equipment or growing crops. Farmers often expect themselves or their employees to learn such skills on their own, but most of us are not born with people management skills and benefit from coaching. Labor is one of your farm’s biggest expenses and greatest assets – how well are you managing it?

Join us for this two-part workshop series to build your leadership, communication, and people management skills. Presenters Richard Stup and Ethan Grundberg of Cornell bring extensive combined experience in agricultural workforce management. Spanish/English interpreting will be available upon request. Participants may attend one or both workshops; all participants are encouraged to stay for dinner and networking from 5-5:30pm.

Please register (below) by Friday, April 19th. Cost is $15 to attend both workshops, or $10 to attend one workshop, and a $5 discount is available for additional attendees from the same farm. Scholarships are also available if financial support is needed to enable farm employees to attend. Contact Kristen at 413-665-7100 x12 to let us know if you are interested in a scholarship, to request Spanish/English interpreting, or with any other questions.

Workshop 1, 2-5pm: Leading and motivating employees
This session will help you identify the skills needed to be a great supervisor of people, and begin to develop and apply these skills on your farm. You will learn strategies for effective leadership and communication, assessing performance problems, supervising a multicultural or multilingual staff, and strengthening employees’ motivation and commitment to the farm.

Dinner for all attendees: 5-5:30pm

Workshop 2, 5:30-8:30pm: Managing performance and training
One of the biggest challenges of being a supervisor is effectively communicating performance expectations to employees and ensuring that those expectations are carried out. This session will delve more deeply into effective strategies for training employees, setting clear expectations, and providing feedback to get the best out of your staff.

Register here (or by emailing Kristen):

Workshop presenters:

Richard Stup, Director of the Cornell University Ag Workforce Development Program, focuses on human resource management, enhancing employee engagement, regulatory compliance, and leadership development at the farm level. Prior to joining Cornell University, Richard Stup founded Ag Workforce Development, a firm focused on improving individual and team performance through organization development and technology solutions. Earlier in his career, Richard was an Extension specialist with Penn State University, where he led the Dairy Alliance team and developed award-winning educational programming in human resource management. He earned his doctorate from Penn State in the field of Workforce Education and Development, including innovative research into the effects of human resource management on farm employee organizational commitment.

Ethan Grundberg works as Cornell Cooperative Extension Vegetable Specialist in the Hudson Valley. Before coming to Cornell, Ethan worked as farm manager at Allandale Farm, a 40-acre diversified vegetable farm in eastern Massachusetts with a multicultural and multilingual staff. Prior to that, he studied Latin American History at the University of Iowa and earned his Master’s in agroecology and vegetable production at the University of California, Davis. He then managed the university’s research fields, providing instruction in safe equipment use to student employees, before returning east to work for as technical assistance and incubator farm coordinator for the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project. Other experiences that have informed his work include positions supporting community gardens in New York City and working in the northern coffee-growing region of Nicaragua, where he honed his Spanish.