Agribusiness Leadership provides the necessary tools to unveil the fundamental principles of
Empowered Leaders that Trust themselves and the relationships they lead and leaders who are curious to discover who they are and who they lead.
I was reading about a train derailment in Saskatchewan recently.
When something like that happens, people look for one big failure. One mistake. One thing to blame.
But it’s rarely just one thing.
Derailments usually come down to three factors:
And the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like leadership.
Because when communication breaks down on a team, it’s not random.
It’s predictable.
Every train depends on the track being solid and aligned.
If the track is off—even slightly—it doesn’t matter how good the train is. It’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong.
As a leader, that track is you.
How you start your day matters more than most people think. If you’re rushed, distracted, or already carrying frustration into the day, you’re laying unstable ground for every conversation that follows.
You don’t need hours of silence or some perfect routine.
But you do need a moment to get grounded. To get clear. To decide how you’re going to show up.
Because your team doesn’t experience your intentions.
They experience your presence.
Speed matters.
Most communication breakdowns don’t happen because of what was said.
They happen because of how fast it was said.
A quick reaction—cutting someone off, snapping back, shutting a conversation down—that’s usually not leadership. That’s pressure showing up.
There’s a small window in those moments where you can pause, listen, and respond with intention instead of reacting.
It might only be a few seconds.
But that pause is where trust is built.
Or lost.
Poorly maintained equipment doesn’t fail all at once.
It wears down over time—until one day it gives out.
The same is true for leaders.
If you’re constantly frustrated, carrying stress from one situation to the next, or showing up emotionally charged, your communication reflects it whether you realize it or not.
And your team feels it.
You can’t build a steady, accountable team if you’re inconsistent in how you show up.
Leadership is always more caught than taught.
Your team will mirror your tone, your reactions, and your level of ownership far more than they’ll follow your instructions.
This is where I tie this back to a framework I use with leaders: BeHave.
Because most leaders don’t have a communication problem.
They have a gap between how they want to lead and how they actually show up in the moment.
You might say you value:
But if you’re reacting quickly, showing frustration, or not fully listening, your behavior doesn’t match that.
And when there’s a gap, people don’t follow what you say.
They follow what you show.
That gap is where communication breaks down.
And it’s also where blame usually shows up—blaming the team, the situation, or the pressure.
But if you look at it honestly, it comes back to alignment.
How you Be and how you Behave have to match.
Or the whole thing starts to drift.
If communication feels off on your team, don’t start by fixing your team.
Start here:
Because communication doesn’t break down by accident.
It follows the leader.
This is the work most leaders avoid because it’s not about tactics.
It’s about ownership.
Slowing down enough to notice your patterns.
Getting honest about how you show up under pressure.
And making small, consistent adjustments that your team can actually feel.
Not in theory.
In real conversations. On real job sites. In real moments that matter.
That’s where trust is built.
And that’s where leadership actually changes.
