Getting out of your comfort zone

By Scott Hollister
TOCA Board Chair

In December, I had the opportunity to attend a unique educational event for golf course superintendents presented by one of TOCA’s loyal sponsors, Syngenta. The three-day event was unique because it didn’t cover the territory you might expect it would cover. There was no agronomy, no talk of turf diseases or Syngenta reps pushing the latest fungicides or pesticides.

Instead, the 26 superintendents from across the country came together in Winston-Salem, N.C., to talk business, to absorb advanced, executive-level education presented by staff from Wake Forest University’s School of Business. They were there to take deep dives into areas such as financial management, negotiating and leadership.

The curriculum covered topics that most wouldn’t normally associate with turfgrass managers and their desired professional development goals. Yet, almost to a man, the superintendents I spoke with told me that’s exactly why they wanted to take part in these proceedings. Being forced out of their comfort zone in this way made this event — now in its eighth year — extremely attractive to them. And they weren’t alone — in all, more than 90 superintendents applied for the 26 open slots in this year’s class.

As I sat through these sessions, I thought about TOCA’s own premier professional-development event, our Annual Meeting, set for May 2-4, 2017 at the Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, Fla. I’ve played a small role in the planning of this event, and I can tell you that as we worked to identify potential topics for the sessions in Tampa, we did our best to look for the new, the different, the unique — topics that would take you out of your own professional comfort zone.

Ours is a diverse membership with diverse professional needs. We have editors and publishers of trade publications. We have public relations practitioners. We have marketers, video production experts, social media specialists. Trying to identify areas of study that appeal equally to each of those groups is, in a word, challenging.

But I believe that TOCA has done a good job of identifying topics for its annual meeting that will hold common interest for all of us, regardless of job title, and improve our professional skills and abilities. And we’ve tried to put spins on those topics so we’re not hearing the same old message, that we’re expanding into new territories and we’re being pushed out of our comfort zones like the superintendents who attended Syngenta’s business event.

This year, the annual meeting will feature sessions on second-generation social media use by business, agencies, publications and end users. It will explore tips and tricks to help improve your technical writing skills. And it will offer an in-depth look at crisis communications and how to guide your organization or your clients through those stormy waters.

Stepping out of your comfort zone can be an unsettling experience. But the superintendents who took that leap in December learned just how valuable that exercise can ultimately be. I hope many of you will experience the same thing at TOCA’s Annual Meeting, and I look forward to seeing you all in Tampa.