Learn to be a leader in your own field

November and December offer a chance in agriculture to regroup and plan. We are living and working in a world where the pace of change is extremely fast because of sustainability, climate, Brexit and other challenges.

We have to further adapt to ensure our health and that of those around us is protected since last March. Whether our business is farming or agri-business, small learnings and changes will help us through these challenges.

Macra Agricultural Skillnet has a huge offering of opportunities to train and upskill over the coming weeks and months. They range from bite-size information sessions to longer courses and series of webinars.

Today we focus on the short courses available.

Let’s Talk Dairy

The ‘Let’s Talk Dairy’ weekly webinar hosted by Staurt Childs, Teagasc, on four different Thursdays, will focus on making your farm an attractive place to work for yourself and for others.

Stuart will be joined by Nollaig Heffernan, a consultant who specialises in this area, and Marion Beecher of Teagasc, both of whom are passionate about and experienced in the people aspect of farming. While the webinar is targeted at dairy farmers, the content is applicable to many workplaces.

Resilient Mind Training

There are often times when we find ourselves stunned by a challenge, a comment, an event and more so in recent times. Building our mechanisms to cope with ordinary situations and challenges will directly affect our productivity, both personal and business.

Macra’s two-part Resilient Mind Training may not initially strike people as priority upskilling, but comes highly recommended.

Presentation skills

We all have to present something at some stage in our lives; it may be an idea to our employer, a proposition to a neighboring farmer, the results of a task or study in work.

The success of getting our point across can have a lot of implications, so assessing our presenting and learning how to do it better could have a massive return for the time invested in doing some training.

Influencing skills

Whether we are working with others on a farm or in work, dealing with a contractor or selling a product, knowing how to get the best out of others is a key skill which we can develop.

Macra’s short course on influencing skills will cover our interactions with people and look at tools and ideas to help.

Change Management workshop

The pace of change in some of our personal, farming and other work situations is faster than ever, but also perhaps slower than it will ever be.

Macra’s Change Management workshop is designed to give an insight to improving your skills in planning and implementing change successfully.

Personality Profiling for Emerging Leaders in Agriculture

Some of the earlier short courses focused on building our skills to work with others. One other element of working successfully is being aware of ourselves and how we work and interact with others.

Personality Profiling for Emerging Leaders in Agriculture is a two-day course where participants will examine their own personality and styles, discovering how best to take advantage of their own strengths and those of their colleagues.

Hoofcare workshop

Macra’s training offering has changed too and it is now offering its one-day Hoofcare workshop online. The next online Hoofcare workshop covering lameness and mobility is on November 11.

Macra only has a small number of vital courses offered face to face under the strictest of guidelines. Places that are deemed essential are available for DIY AI, Ultrasound Scanning for Bovines and Professional Hoofcare.

Self-paced online courses

Macra is also offering some self-paced online courses including Handling of Livestock, Tractor Driving and Machinery Maintenance, Manual Handling for Farming and First Aid for Farming. There is also on offer a course in ‘Feed Regulations and HACCP for Animal Feed Manufacturing’.

Booking

Training is part funded and available to all working in the wider agricultural industry. Macra offers members’ rate to Macra members and employees or members of its associate members. This includes current members of the Agricultural Science Association (ASA), which Macra has partnered with on a number of programmes.

Booking and further information is through: macra.ie/skillnet; or Macra can be contacted with any queries by calling: 086-0822038.