Vickie Maris has been involved with many different teams along her career path while also running a small farm where she has raised and trained Connemara ponies. She now shows llamas in halter, hiking, and performance. From agricultural PR and marketing, to designing and delivering distance education programs, to leading award-winning teams in the College of Engineering at Purdue University, Vickie shares ideas for facilitating successful project teams and successfully leading and nurturing your staff. The ideas descend from the merging of her corporate, academic, and farming worlds. Through discussions, photos, video vignettes of the livestock in action, and anecdotes directly from the farm, the right side of your brain will be hopping with ideas and tools for encouraging your teams, valuing the diversity of team members, and fostering the growth of the projects in which they participate. Come away from this session with ideas for: - Nurturing healthy team environments - Recognizing and valuing the diversity of roles and skill sets of team members - Getting your team unstuck and back on a productive path - Capitalizing on the variety of assets brought to the table by the varied generations in the workforce today - Recognizing and rewarding your teams

1. Leadership Lessons
Learned from Livestock
A workshop for business professionals
Vickie J. Maris, MS Ed
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
Helping people run fit businesses
and lead fit lives

3. Instructor
Vickie Maris has been showing ponies and horses since age 4. She started
training at age 9 and has shown her nationally-recognized Connemaras around
the US for 25 years. Her stallion, Kerrymor Madison, was honored with the An
Tostal Hall of Fame Trophy from the American Connemara Pony Society in 2002
for Outstanding Performance Stallion.
In more recent years she has raised and shown French Angora rabbits and
performance llamas.
In her work life, she is an entrepreneur running Heartsong Fit, an online
business in which Vickie creates and disseminates content in the form of
ebooks, online courses and groups, webinars, teleseminars and a podcast to
help people run fit businesses and lead fit lives.
She also holds a certification from Purdue University as a Lean Six Sigma Black
Belt and is director of graduate programs in the Weldon School of Biomedical
Engineering at Purdue. Her degrees – a B.S. in agricultural communications and
an M.S. Ed. in learning design and technology (online course design for adult
learners) – are both from Purdue.

4. Partnering with a team member on an obstacle
course to better learn one another’s
personalities and strengths.

5. The years of training and showing Savannah helped me to recognize other skills she
had that later we deployed in her work as a therapy animal. This allowed her to
continue “working on my team” well after her laminitis had curtailed her show
career.

6. Pairing (or Grouping) Your Team Members

7. I provide the 4-H kids guidance at the beginning, but let the group
sort themselves out into the partnerships that have the best
potential for the 4-H project. In the previous slide, you can see from
the postures of children and llamas, and the expressions on their
faces, that it’s a happy group. It turned into a productive group that
placed well in classes throughout the season.
We use this technique in the Medical Science Training Program in
which Purdue Biomedical Engineering partners with the IU School of
Medicine. Our students in this program are earning their MD and a
PhD in Biomedical Engineering. They start with two years of medical
school before they transition to Purdue for four years of the PhD
program. During the first two years of medical school, they spend
the summer months rotating through the research labs of the
biomedical engineers at Purdue, so the students and the
mentors/researchers, can determine the best fit for each student,
mentor, lab and project.

8. Team members recognize your voice and respond. Do
they anticipate your nurturing presence or do they
have a sense of dread and shrink away?
When you’re asking a team member to take on
something new, do you provide them with the
appropriate training? Do you set them up for
successes?

9. Importance of Knowing Everyone By Name

10. Healthy Team Environment
Diverse Roles of Team Members
Getting Your Team Unstuck
Recognizing and Rewarding Teams
Multiple Generations in the Workforce

11. In the book, Drive, by Daniel H. Pink (author of A Whole
New Mind) the importance of beginning with a diverse
team is discussed.
While a 6-horse hitch of draft horses may appear to be
evenly matched in their style and looks. The pairs actually
represent the diversity mentioned above.
Pink suggests that we set up a Type I organization with
diverse teams. Harvard’s Teresa Amabile advises in Pink’s
book, “Set up work groups so that people will stimulate
each other and learn from each other, so that they’re not
homogeneous in terms of their backgrounds and training.
You want people who can really cross-fertilize each other’s
ideas.

12. Photo used with permission of Jim Greenman
Historic Prophetstown Plow Days
Battle Ground, IN
Ray Powell, New
Castle, Kentucky,
speaks to his
team of Belgian
pulling horses
with the
gentleness of a
violin teacher on
the first day of
lessons with a 6-
year-old.
“They’ll get to
where they trust
me, and they’ll
pull harder for
me than they
will for anybody
else.”

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTM-EzD4pgg
Team of Belgians pulling a milk truck out of a snowy predicament
Feb 21, 2011
Ottawa, Pennsylvania

14. http://youtu.be/cq5dd7JLk1s
Team of Percherons pulling a stranded auto from the ditch, 2007
Backbone Cross Country Ski Farm and Organic Food Farm, Garrett County Maryland

15. A note about the previous slide: When the team
owner was asked if one horse could have done the
job, his response was, “Probably one could have
done it, especially if it was Molly. However they pull
better in a team, drawing on each other’s power
and motivation, and under slippery conditions no
sense in pushing it.”

17. Are you listening to the members of your team for their insights about your
project and the places to “rest?”
Something else we can pick up from llama behavior in a pack string is their
constant communication. Llamas hum as a way to stay connected. In a long line
of pack llamas, the llamas in the back will not always have visual line of sight with
the llamas in the front of the string. In order to know where they all are, the
llamas hum to each other.
Are your team members located in different geographic locations? Do they have a
medium for communicating with each other to “alert one another of danger” or
to simply keep each other informed about things like valuable spots for resources
or opportunities for strengthening relationships with customers or developing
prospects into customers?”
Or do you not allow your team to communicate in a medium that works best? Do
you have only your leaders in a room for a discussion with no input from your
middle-string packers or the person that best wraps up the project?

18. Inspire Employees
– HBR study – for every 1% increase in employee
satisfaction and loyalty – there is a ½% to 4% increase
in customer loyalty
– “Your job is to inspire employees and to get them to
help you create a workplace where everyone feels
valued, appreciated, noticed and safe. If you can do
that, and add in some fun, you’ll have a place where
no employee will want to leave and every customer
will want to rush back.” Drew McLellan

19. Blog post that goes into more detail about the costs of employee turnover:
http://bit.ly/CostOfEmployeeTurnover
Excerpt from the above Zane Benefits (April 2013) blog post:
• Turnover seems to vary by wage and role of employee. For example, a CAP
study found average costs to replace an employee are:
• 16% of annual salary for high-turnover, low-paying jobs (earning under
$30,000 a year). For example, the cost to replace a $10/hour retail employee
would be $3,328.
• 20% of annual salary for mid-range positions (earning $30,000 to $50,000 a
year). For example, the cost to replace a $40k manager would be $8,000.
• Up to 213% of annual salary for highly educated executive positions. For
example, the cost to replace a $100k CEO is $213,000.
Employee retention tips mentioned in article linked above:
• Benchmark your employee retention rate
• Use proven retention strategies, not guesswork
• Don't assume employees are happy (create a high-feedback environment)
• Conduct exit interviews

20. Do you have your team
members in a habitat
where they are happy?
Do you have two “male
bettas” in the same tank?

21. Have you hired someone to be
the plecostomus on your team
but are you expecting him or her
to function in the same way as
the rest of your team members?

22. Pay attention to the
communication styles of
your team members and
respond accordingly.
The Kitchen Aquarium

23. Do you have a team member whose role requires
solitude or an open, clear vision of the task at hand?
Are you providing that work environment so that he
can do his job or do you have him locked in a cage?

24. Madison and one of my llamas, Velvet, make a cameo appearance in my podcast,
Heartsong Fit With Vickie Maris. Episode 10. http://heartsongfit.com/10
Unlikely Teammates
There are times when it is far better to let your team members self-select into their roles for
your project. http://youtu.be/Tz_xahxVMXs

25. Letting Your Team
Members Self-Select
in Roles

26. Checking in with your team
http://youtu.be/BRkfuldgMXk

27. “The leader of a team should act like a cell
membrane around a cell. You maintain an outline
around your team but the shape is going to
morph into many different shapes as your team
stretches towards new ideas and builds capacity.”

28. Keeping your climbing skills sharp!

29. Are you providing a “dirt hill” for your team?

30. Are you protecting your team from hazards!

31. Dawn’s Jeremiah McLane

32. Dawn’s
Jeremiah McLane
Do you have your
team members’
backs? Are you
looking out for
possible dangers
or situations that
would slow them
down or derail
their efforts?

34. Are you challenging your team members adequately? Are you
rewarding them for their efforts with personal, financial and
professional rewards? Do you set them up with new roles on
more challenging teams? Have you given thought to succession
planning?

35. Are you leading your team
in a way that would cause
them to not think twice
about saving your life (or
your business)?

36. Healthy Team Environment
Getting
Your Team
Unstuck
Diverse Roles of Team Members
Recognizing and Rewarding Teams
Pairing or
Grouping
Team
Members
Multiple Generations in the Workforce

37. Leadership Lessons Learned From Livestock
Here’s how you can reach me:
My Website: http://bit.ly/LeadershipLessonsOnHeartsongFit
My Social Media First Steps Ebook (available soon): http://bit.ly/1stStepsEbook
My Heartsong Fit Podcast in iTunes: http://bit.ly/HFPodcast
Instagram: http://instagram.com/vickiemaris
Pinterest Business Account: http://bit.ly/HeartsongFitPinterest
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/vickiemarisfitness
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vickiemaris
Google+ Business Page: https://plus.google.com/+heartsongfit
Google+ Personal Page: https://plus.google.com/+vickiemaris
Slideshare: http://bit.ly/VJMSlideShare
LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/LinkedInVickie
Email: clientcare@heartsongfit.com or vjmaris@purdue.edu