ILEAD Meeting One Recap

“Be Who You are and Be that Well.”

   This quote above is from St Francis De Sales, and was referenced by Pam Johnson, former National Corn Growers Association President, during the first ILEAD Team 8 Meeting. On November 17^th & 18^th, Twenty-four members of this team gathered in Johnston for their first meeting together.  The team is a diverse group representing farmers, industry professionals, and academia.

   Our time together got started with a great message from “Gus” Gustafson and an exercise how we envisioned our own retirement party. What did we want people to say about us? Who would be there? Gus did a great job of explaining the model of servant leadership. If we have a commitment to the growth of others, we can truly accomplish great things. We were then able to dig into our Personal Goals for our time on ILEAD over the next two years.

   One of the important tools we will use over our time is the DISC assessment. DISC is a personality assessment that is used to help us to better understand each other’s behavioral differences. After just a few questions, we all could all see where we stood on the scale. This is important to understand our own personality, but also helps us work with others on our team.

   On Friday, we were able to learn more about the history on the Iowa Corn Growers Association with a panel of distinguished leaders. The panel included the following influencers; Glen Moeller, Pam Johnson, Keith Hora, and Ron Swanson. The panelists have all had a profound impact on the direction of ICGA and were able to share stories from their time serving. One of the common themes from the group was that, “as you get more involved, life starts to open up for you.”

   The History of Iowa Corn Panel really put things in perspective for our group. For me, it came full circle with the first exercise of the meeting when we envisioned our retirement party. How do we want to be remembered? What does it mean to be a servant leader? How will we make an impact for Iowa’s Corn Growers? The next two years will be a great opportunity for us to shape how we will make an impact on the agricultural industry