Cooperative Extension Publications

Key Activities

Coach selection. Key competencies of coaches:

• Listen: Exemplary listening skills
• Clarify: Asks follow-up and probing questions
• Synthesize: Ability to bring various issues, feelings and needs together
• Reflect: Fluent in reflective language that reinforces farmers’ voices/needs
• Model: Efficient, on-point, kind, curious, reflective
• Teach: Introduce and practice communication (interpersonal) tools and strategies

Preparation of coaches.

• Coach orientation and team building
  • Learn about each team member’s skills and offerings
  • Learn about each team member’s challenges/growing edges
  • Learn about each team member’s life and work
  • Skill building: Based on assets identified above, individual coaches (or the whole team) might attend a workshop, discuss a paper, article or book to gain more skills in a particular subject area
  • Discuss as a team the various pertinent modalities: mediation, teaching, modeling, support, providing resources, coaching, referrals.

• Decide on a working definition of “coach” for this program (see key competencies above)
• Discuss as a team how the coaches will:
  • plan
  • collaborate
  • communicate
  • offer feedback
  • handle conflict

Farmer Recruitment. Our project used these (not exhaustive) efforts, all of which were effective:

• Offer 1-3 hour communication workshops and recruit participants who were interested in a deeper dive into this work
• Promote coaching through list-servs and existing service provider networks
• Direct referrals from the Maine Beginning Farmer Resource Network network of service providers

Coach-to-Farmer Matching. We considered:

• Conflict of interests between coaches and farmers (e.g. same markets, towns, or industries)
• Farmers’ goals
• Coaches’ experience
• Geographic location of farmer and coach(es)

Logistics.

• One coach makes all scheduling calls/emails based on a shared online document that had all coaches’ availability
• Download and familiarize coaching team with Zoom (or other videoconference) platform
• Scout meeting places should farmers prefer to meet off-site
• Acquire flipcharts, markers
• Develop farmer intake form
• Request that farmer complete intake form by mail, email or phone
• Preliminary prep amongst coaches (review intake forms, finalize Session 1 (S1) agendas)
• Prepare notebooks for each farm family with resources
  • How to design an agenda
  • Roles on the farm
  • Decision making
  • Basic communication handouts
  • More as decided by coaching team
• Schedule S1 with each farm
• Send out pre-work to farmers
  • Strength/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Challenges (SWOC – Self Assessment) Document (done individually, not shared until S1)
  • Time Management & The Eisenhower Box
  • Send out S1 Agenda 5-7 days before S1