This week, I had the opportunity to attend the Graduate Institute of Cooperative Leadership at the University of Missouri. CHS was among 22 agricultural cooperatives at the institute. Working for CHS, the largest agricultural cooperative, has taught me many things over the past two years. Due to my back-office role in enterprise technology, I only had basic knowledge of the history, purpose, and challenge of the cooperative business model. Spending a week with colleagues from cooperatives around the world, academic researchers, and cooperative CEOs gave me plenty of insight.

Rather than summarize for you my learnings, I thought I’d take a broader approach. Many of my readers don’t work at an agricultural cooperative, but there are basic leadership principles that agricultural cooperatives deal with, that everyone deals with at some level.

I won’t go into detail about the complexities of the cooperative business model, but for context, I will summarize the main concepts: (1) Cooperatives are farmer-owned, while traditional companies are investor-owned. (2) Cooperatives are farmer-controlled at the board of directors, while traditional companies have corporate boards made up of other business leaders. (3) Farmers are the primary customer of the cooperative, with all profits returned to them in proportion to their transactions. There are variations and complexities around those concepts, but those are the basics, for the purpose of this article.

Here are the lessons that I think apply to everyone, co-op or not:

Cooperatives Are for Defense

Why do agricultural cooperatives exist in the first place? Farmers on their own are in a weak position to advocate for their interests. They can get abused by suppliers gouging them for the seed, fertilizer, and energy they need to grow their crop. They can also get manipulated into taking a lower price for their produce than what is fair. Cooperatives form to collectively bargain for supplies and collectively provide fair access to markets.

Just like cooperatives, leaders are uniquely positioned to defend those who lack power. Who in your circle of influence is being victimized? Your employees? Your customers? Your community? Use your leadership influence to speak for those that don’t have a voice. Average people see injustice and do nothing. Leaders take action and initiate change.

Cooperatives Are Diverse

Cooperatives may start-off as a unified group of farmers in the same region, same size, same age, and same interests, but over time that diverges. As cooperatives mature and expand, their memberships become increasingly diverse. Diversity isn’t a bad thing. It’s just hard to deal with.

Cooperative leaders need to be masters at vision, purpose, communication, collaboration, and consensus-building. They need to listen, respond, and adapt. This is no time for command and control. This is all about the farmers, and farmers don’t like being told what to do. Cooperative leaders respect that, and act according to what is best for the entire cooperative.

While non-cooperative leaders aren’t forced to lead that way, isn’t that a great way to lead? What if you hang up the command-and-control tactics and employ servant leadership with your team? What if you surround yourself with diversity of thought and get multiple perspectives on issues before you make a decision? It isn’t faster. But if you are in it for the long haul, this is the way to go.

Cooperatives Know Their Purpose

When you are farmer-owned, farmer-controlled, and farmer-used, it’s clearly all about the farmer. Aside from the diversity challenges noted, cooperatives lack the split loyalty that traditional corporations deal with when trying to serve the needs of the customers and the needs of the investors.  In cooperatives, these are one-in-the-same.

As leaders, we often try to make everyone happy. We don’t want to disappoint, so we do our best to serve everyone with everything they need as much as possible. Inevitably, the people we serve want different things. At this point, it’s critically important to anchor to purpose. The world will distract us. As leaders, we need to focus on our singular overriding purpose and deliver on that every day.

Cooperatives Adapt to Survive

My cooperative, CHS, has been around for 88 years. I spent the past week with some cooperatives that were over 100 years old. The average investor-owned company only lasts 17 years. How do cooperatives stay in the game so long? It’s not by staying the same. Cooperatives adapt quickly to changing consumer habits, global markets, agricultural practices, farmer demographics, and agricultural technologies. They completely reinvent themselves at times to stay relevant to member needs and the marketplace.

When you examine your leadership style, how adaptable are you? Are you able to honestly identify what practices are no longer working? Can you observe trends in the marketplace and not only adjust yourself, but bring your team along for the journey? Can you lead change by reinventing your organization from within?

Those are my leadership lessons from agricultural cooperatives. Working for farmers is fun. There’s a social-good that comes from serving the rural community and returning all of the proceeds back into that community. At CHS, we feed the world. While I could have written more about the particulars of cooperatives and the challenges within that structure, I wanted to deliver something for everyone. I hope these lessons can translate into your day job, whether you work for farmers or not.