Building and maintaining strong relationships key to good leadership

HortNZ Leadership scholar Aimee Lister applied for the programme because she is keen to extend her career beyond management.

“There is a lot of difference between leadership and management,” says Aimee, one of 16 selected for the 2025 HortNZ programme.

“I really wanted to push myself, make sure I wasn’t siloed in management and learn more about the wider industry, particularly about governance.

“The programme is excellent, so well put together and well run. It was valuable to hear about practical leadership styles and skills from the many speakers.

“For me, it was also really important to understand about how I currently approach being a leader and what I need to work on and the skills I have but am not putting into use.”

Like many people forging careers in the sector, Aimee, aged 34, who works as a technical services manager for AgFirst in Motueka, grew up in a mostly urban setting, in Auckland.

“We did move to a lifestyle block when I was 13 but after high school, I decided to do a ‘gap year’ which went on for quite a while and I worked at various things, including hospitality.

Then, in 2013 I decided to do something different and applied for a one-year cadetship with Constellation Brands in Hawke’s Bay.”

One year extended to three working for the company before Aimee headed off on her OE to California where she volunteered on small farms.

“That was very cool and switched me to the horticulture side of things. I came back and went to the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) and completed my certificate and then diploma in horticulture.

“Then I joined T&G in Hawke’s Bay for three years, moving into pipfruit, working a lot in people management, including with Recognised Seasonal Employer teams. I moved to Motueka in 2020 to be closer to family and because there’s similar climate and industry here.”

Aimee says she enjoys the variety of her role.

“I do a range of stuff, which suits me because I like to be across many different things, that’s how my brain works.

“That includes planning for client services, doing leaf testing, soil testing and fruit sizing, running R&D trials, working with field tech’ staff and writing reports. It is a very technical services focus for our growers.

“I’m also looking at how the technology is working, like the crop load scanning cameras that look up and down the rows to map what the crops are doing.

“Many people think of horticulture as being physical and working outside but there are so many different paths in this industry and so many options – you see that once you get your foot in the door.

“That was really reflected in the leadership course. Everyone, speakers and other scholars, had incredibly different stories about the paths they had taken.”

Aimee and her fellow cohort undertook the programme in two phases over nine weeks between August and October.

This included a five-day residential stint in Auckland and a further three days in Wellington.

The programme focuses on building an increased confidence to take the lead and influence into the future and a greater understanding of what leadership is really all about.

It supports development of ‘ready to use’ leadership and business skills such as communication, teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving and a wider perspective around how to address industry issues now and into the future.

Participants work to develop a personal plan for how they intend to go forward in their leadership career.

“Everyone got on so well,” says Aimee. “The cohort was such a good and diverse mix of people from different backgrounds, different parts of the sector and different points in their careers. That created very good conversations and feedback and points of view, which was very cool.

“I really enjoyed hearing from the speakers about their pathway and how they began in the sector and how they got to where they are.

“I definitely gained a lot of understanding of other parts of the horticulture industry beyond pipfruit and also a broader view of the communication and collaboration between sectors in the industry.

“That was a key part of the learning, that collaboration is so important, especially as we move into the technology space and with so many things going on, like changes to the Resource Management Act. It reinforced for me the importance of working together, sharing information and not staying in silos.

“The trip to Wellington was eye-opening in terms of the work that goes on behind the scenes. I had never given much thought to how Parliament is run but we went to Question Time and that provoked a lot of discussion for us.”

Aimee also really appreciated the honesty from speakers and fellow scholars about the personal challenges they faced.

“Lots of people talked about feelings of imposter syndrome. It was really good to hear that from them at different points of their career, even leaders of industry who are high up in their field, who talked about having dealt with that in the past, or even now, and how they overcome that.

“Not many people talk about sometimes feeling that you are not good enough in your role, so it was really positive to have people talking about it so openly.”

Aimee says she also completed the programme with a renewed recognition of the value of building and maintaining strong networks.

“Only two of our cohort were from Nelson – and we hadn’t met before. It was great to reconnect with people from Hawke’s Bay and connect with others from around the country too.

“There were so many things I took away from the programme but that was one of the biggest ones. The importance of keeping up those relationships – keep communicating and keep talking about what is going on in the industry.”