Great coaches lie awake at night thinking about how to make you a better board member. A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see so that you can be who you always knew you could be. An important part of the coach’s skill and service is to never wait to give feedback – a great coach coaches in the moment.
A good future may depend – not on minimising consumer capitalism – but on radically extending its reach and depth. This was an undercurrent at Bayer’s Future of Farming Dialogue held in Cologne in October. (I attended representing Nuffield International*.)
I sense an air of defensiveness in the food animal sector. It seems that many in the sector feel they are under persistent attack as purveyors of all sorts of doom; animal welfare breaches, water pollution, anti-microbial resistance, climate change and so on…
The common denominator among those who leave a lasting legacy is devotion to a cause greater than themselves; doing work they felt called to do. Rich or poor, famous or obscure they all had a mission to fulfill or a problem to be solved. To be legacy minded means that your calling and your job must line up.