More than three decades of counselling families gives Lynn Sykes the right to speak home truths when it comes to succession planning for farmers.

Now retired from the business, but still able to share her experience, the registered midwife, nurse and family counsellor addressed a succession planning seminar at Beef 2024.

She told the crowd of nearly 80 people: “I’ve built a career asking two questions: Asking older people what’s in their will and asking young people what they would do in relation to the business if they got divorced. And really, I built 30 years of work on those two questions.”

The wife of an agronomist she said: “It’s really important to understand that when you come to the point of succession, everyone feels vulnerable,” she said.

“Often people who work in agriculture live in isolation and they are incrediby focussed on what they do for a living” she said. “It’s an enormous part of their self-esteem. And if you take that away from them or even if they give it away, it leaves them very vulnerable.

“And the generation that’s coming through feels incredibly vulnerable, especially if they can’t get anyone to talk about succession, or they can’t get anything moving, or the process has stopped.”

She continued: “My experience of working in this part of the state and with beef producers generally is that they are often very task-focussed. And I particularly want to say that if you are a person who is task-focussed, if you’re an ‘action person’, I can tell you that succession will be harder for you because retirement is harder.

“If you think your whole identity is tied up with what you do for a living, it’s probaby good to look at that  for it will be one of the huge barriers to succession planning.  These people are unlikely to make a good transition to retirement and can make succession planning problematic.”

Multi-generational farming enterprises present unique challenges, she said.  “One of the enormous difficulties that these familiies face is their ability to communicate in an effective way about tricky subjects. It’s very limited, particularly in agriculture”

And it’s not just about running the farm. “I was astounded how mothers-in-law criticised the way their daughters-in-law pegged their washing on the line. I tell you, a lot of people care about how peg the washing on the line,” she said.

“One of the things I would encourage you to examine – if you’re young – is your own family history. The first place you need to look at is – what happened with their parents? I believe that is one of the biggest influencing factors.

“The next influencing factor is self-esteem because one of the things that deteriorates as you get older is your own self-esteem.

“The stakes are high. No one really wants to be marginalised from their family. No one – initially at least – sets out to hurt the family. But succession so often does exactly that. I’ve seen older people crushed by it and younger people crushed by it.

“When you’re dealing with a group of emotional people, it’s tough and there’s no one-size-fits-all.

“And it can’t happen quickly. The only way it can happen quickly is if someone’s dead or there’s some other tragedy where action needs to happen quickly.“

One particular group that Lynn is encountering are angry widows left to organise farm succession issues.

She warned:  “These women have been left with sorting out something they’ve been asking to be sorted out for 20 years. Even the most accommodating lady, compliant women, they’re an angry bunch. If there’s any connection to the Afterlife and you’re an older man who has backed away from doing this, she’s going to be throwing pins in your picture when you’re not here any more.“

‘A journey of learning’

More than 20 years ago Kacie and Ardie Lord,from Richmond Queensland undertook a five-day workshop with Lynn. They returned to the seminar to share what they had learned – and what was the outcome.

From Lynn they learned to hold structured family meetings to discuss the goals of each family member and what was happening in the business.

“It actually set the agenda of this is how we communicate when there is something that needs to be discussed in the family. We don’t do – as happened in my family – when there was a drama, Telstra was the only one who benefitted. And by the time it had gone around the entire family, the story was completely different. So, that meeting was gold for us and we still have those meetings to this day.

And another powerful thing is that all the conversations in the family stay with the person involved  not at the person involved and that’s also been gold.”

Ardie added: “But we’re stil evolving. Over the last five-10 years we’ve made more changes to where we want to be. It’s a journey of learning.”

The result? Their son is running Lord Pastoral, while their daughters are following their separate careers, one running an events management company, the other working on a tech start-up.