“Soft” issues derail farm transfers

Passing on the farm can be a painful, conflict-ridden process. That’s where farm family coaches can help.

by Lorraine Stevenson
Farmer's Independent Weekly Staff

Elaine Froese helps Manitoba farm families get started on discussions that lead to successful farm transfers. In her words — she helps people start paying attention to “that bull in the room nobody wants to talk about.”

Financial planners, lawyers, and farm advisors see it all the time; a grudge or conflict in a farm family that keeps discussion about who’s getting the farm off limits, or tentative discussions about it brought to a painful halt.

These are the so-called “soft issues” in farm transfer planning — the highly emotional matters within families no one wants to talk about. But farm family advisors say these are the most fundamental issues if farm successions are to proceed at all.

That’s where there’s an emerging role for a new type of farm family advisor — the farm family coach. In Manitoba, Boissevain farmer Elaine Froese has begun helping Manitoba farm families with those matters, literally “coaching” family discussions as a hired facilitator. Farm family coach is a trademarked title Froese has chosen to describe her work,when brought in by farm families, to help them begin and carry on conversations they’re otherwise reluctant to start and carry on.

“I’m there to help families look at their muck and their ruts and get unstuck,” she said, in a recent interview at the Manitoba Farm Women’s conference.

Such facilitators fill a gap other farm advisors working on financial and legal matters find they’re frequently at a loss to deal with. A member of the Canadian Association of Farm Advisors (CAFA) and a professional home economist (PhE), Froese’s credentials to work in this capacity come from training she’s recently acquired at the California-based Hudson Institute, accredited with the International Coaching Federation. The only farmer among the trainees, Froese began her studies last year, graduating with a certificate as a certified Hudson Institute coach after a year of intense training which included a practicum coaching farm families and individuals.

Froese also brings several years experience as a mediator and counsellor, speaker and writer,work for which she has recently been recognized by awards like the Dr. Edith Rowles Simpson Award from the Canadian Home Economics Association.

But it’s being a farmer that makes her best suited for this type of work, says Froese. She and her husband Wes farm near Boissevain, where they run a certified seed business.“I have experienced the succession and transfer planning in my own family that I’m in, and also my family of origin,” she said.“It’s because of my life’s experiences that I feel I’m wired to help families this way.”

As a farm family coach, Froese emphasizes that her role, unlike other professionals advising on financial or legal matters, is to get communication started in families, then keep it from getting derailed by conflict. It is families reluctant to raise specific issues for fear they lead to conflict who hire her for help. They may have heard of her services themselves, or have been referred by farm advisors. Either way, they’re usually stuck on an issue and can’t move forward, she says.

“In farm families, the family issues and the business issues are intertwined. My job as a coach is to very gently take those threads in the family circle, work with those, and understand what’s happening in the business circle, then help the family be really clear about what the family’s issues are, and how they’re impacting on the business.”

If families contact her, Froese first arranges an initial meeting with them.“If they want me as a farm family coach,we’ll first chat on the phone and find out why they want my services as a coach.We find out what their expectations are.Then we’ll set up a discovery meeting.At the discovery meeting, I will lay out the process.”

That process, she stresses, will involve talking about some very tough issues, such as who is getting the farm, and why, and what’s in the transfer for the other family members. Families who hire Froese arrange a contract with her for an agreed time and at a negotiated price. For that period of time, they have access to her through a series of family meetings, as well by phone and e-mail.

Froese says families with a major point of conflict often contact her. Money is a big motivator. One common source of conflict is the amount that the farm is worth for a child to pay to the parents,” she says. She’s able to help with that by having initial, separate meetings with both the retiring parents and the couple wanting to take over.“I’ve then brought them together to have a discussion and at that family meeting they have come to an agreement.”

Another area she’s been called in to help with is where farm families are changing their business plan or structure, such as brothers deciding not to continue to farm together, or their children deciding not to do so.At its most basic level, family coaching helps all persons involved face change, and get through it, she said.“I’m the person called in if there’s a stuck point. I’ll say, ’OK, what do we have to look at here? What are the undiscussables that we need to talk about?’”

That can be a whole range of things, she said.“It might just be the fact that Dad is having a hard time letting go, and doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Froese stresses that this is not therapy, however. If, during initial meetings with a family, very serious personal matters are disclosed, she refers the family to other professionals. “Counselling is about recovery. Coaching is about discovery. I am helping the family discover practical ways to move forward.”

In as many as 80 per cent of cases where family businesses do not move to the next generation, the problem is attributable to family dynamics, according to John Fast, a leading Canadian expert on family business and executive director of the Centre for Family Business in Waterloo, Ontario. Earlier this year, Fast spoke to a Canadian Association of Farm Advisors farm advisors in Winnipeg emphasizing that the critical factor for successful intergenerational transfer is how well and how much members talk to each other.