In the vein of thinking about personal examples of great leadership another wonderful and inspiring story came from the same clinic from my friend Helle in Denmark.....
She has kindly written it for us here..... (thank you Helle!)
My Old Boss….
In 2002 I had the privilege to start working for ”my old Boss” in the top end of Denmark… at that time I was 25 years old, and needed a year’s work to finish my apprenticeship as a dairy farmer. My Old Boss was 54 at the time, and going to the job interview was the beginning of an ongoing relation based on genuine friendship, acknowledgement, and deep respect going both ways. I was the ”girly-type” girl in farming (I thought) - I was really good with all sorts of animals, and because of that I hadn’t really had the chance to drive any machinery outside the stables with my former bosses.
Feeling obliged to tell the truth, I was only 10 minutes into my job interview when I promised him that I was the best card on the hand with his beautiful Red Danish dairy cows, and I could drive the machinery needed to do this, but NOT very handy with field machinery… not that I wouldn’t give it a go, but just pretty confident that he could chase up better people for these assignments. He just nodded his head and started asking me all sorts of other questions.
I got the job, and a month later I had my first day at work. The Old Boss’s place had 80 Red Danish dairy Cows and about 80 ha. This was a suitable size for one apprentice and the boss. A couple of hours into my first day, again I started feeling obliged to tell the truth - this time that I suffered really badly from Arachnophobia. This is often confused with people just being scared of spiders - but I was terrified, from several bad experiences in school etc, so it was very important to me to work on this - but also working in a cow stable is not the best spot for phobias of this sort!
I grabbed the bull by the horns and decided to tell him…I spent the next two hours working out how! I finally came across it about lunchtime, feeling pretty darn childish I tried to make the most of it, and to my complete surprise once again he just nodded his head (Danes from the north often talk slow) and after a short brake he just looked at me and said: “Well that’s understandable- I’ll make you a deal, I’m shit scared of mice - how about you do the ”Micey” jobs, and I do the ”Spidery” jobs??” That solved that one, and from that day on my old boss would sweep down cobwebs, and check for spiders at my tiniest suggestion….. and I carried old bags out- and checked for mice….and fairdinkum –I once saw him pull on a rain suit in the stable - and ALSO watched him jump out of it ever so elegantly when a mouse dropped out of one leg!! Time went by and spring came, with all the paddock work that needs to be done. I was driving tractors and big front end loaders in the stable and felt right at home doing it, but dreaded the suspicion that I might get set with paddock work. Here he took me by surprise - one day he came up to me and in the most normal tone he said; Helle I’ve hooked the Mulcher on the Ferguson tractor, do you think you can take it to the front paddock and have a go at mulching that paddock?
Now - what’s the answer to a question like that?? I was completely surprised to hear myself answer a big clear “Yeah I can do that!” Thinking back this question did not have “No” as an option….he was merely asking me to TRY- That was the least I could do! My old boss just had that way about him, he would always ask if I could “Give It A Go”, and of course I could! Through that year I was mulching, plowing, pulling tree stumps, loading big bales of straw, driving huge big straw trailers around the sharpest corners, and reversing them all the way back to be unloaded. For this bloke I would give it a go anytime!
It didn’t take long before he started having me do the hard stuff - like padding down the fresh grass for silage - with big front end loaders, working very precisely with putting down concrete blocks for the road around the stable and so on. He would simply come up and ask me If I could give it a go, and then he did not hesitate to let me know that now he was actually asking me this because I could do the job better than him!
On the other hand, this boss also admitted when he was wrong. I remember one day when I had a black heifer that got sick. She had just calved one or two days before, and starting having vaginal discharge, but very smelly. I told my boss that I separated her from the rest of the cows, and that my gut feeling was that she needed treatment (not all do). He didn’t agree with me, and besides it was out of phone hours at the vet. During the day she got a bit worse- the smell got heaps worse, and I talked to him again - and again he did not agree. Heaps of cows get this and its easily treated, and not very aggressive. He reckoned that she could wait until the morning. Just about an hour later she got really bad, started laying down and uneasy, so I went to my boss and put my foot down and said to him that she needed the vet today if he wanted her to live till tomorrow. He called the vet but NOT overly convinced - until the vet came, and concluded that this was an unusually aggressive vaginal discharge after calving, and that the heifer wouldn’t have lasted until the next day!
Now I wasn’t there, but was passing when they were doing the examinations and the talk. As I passed my old boss stopped me, looked at the vet, and said; Well then I have my apprentice to thank for this - she has been saying what you just said, all day!
So what’s the sum of all this cow talk?
I have had the privilege to work for one great personality, that showed me only opportunities, and kept me safe from any defeats I couldn’t handle. By accepting my spider issue, he had me brushing down cobwebs at the end of the year. By merely asking for The Try - he had me succeeding at great tasks, and developing from ”no good ”, to ”confident and knowing ”. By acknowledging his own mistakes, and giving me credits when it was mine to claim, he showed me respect.
My old boss is a bloke to whom I owe a lot more than he will ever admit too. I’m very proud to consider him my friend, and have close contact with him and his family still. He was splendid at developing exactly what I thought to be my weak spots, and he always went about it in the softest way without any fuss. He took part in shitty jobs, and he listened intensely to my suggestions….he never lost his temper, had a mountain of patience….but if you ask me Would he put his foot down? The answer is Yes! He never had too, but not one single moment did I ever doubt that he would….he just didn’t need to - and to that there is a great difference!
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