Your managers know horticulture. Do they know how to manage people?
A four-day leadership intensive for farm managers, heads of department and supervisors — held in Naivasha, not Nairobi.
The gap nobody trains for
In horticulture, people are promoted into management because they are good at horticulture. They know the crop, the greenhouse, the grading shed. Almost none of them are ever taught how to manage people.
Then we put them in charge of forty, or a hundred, or four hundred staff — and the results of the whole farm start to depend on a skill nobody gave them.
It shows up in familiar places. Decisions that should be settled on the floor arrive on the GM's desk. Supervisors who are excellent workers but cannot hold a difficult conversation. Rework, absenteeism and grievances that trace back to how a team is led rather than how it is resourced. A management layer that executes but does not own.
This programme is built for that layer.
Why we are bringing it to Naivasha
We have run this programme in Nairobi. Farm managers told us the same thing every time: the content was not the obstacle, the logistics were.
No travel, no accommodation
Held in Naivasha. Your people sleep at home and are back on the farm the same evening. The cost of sending someone drops sharply without the fee changing.
Nobody away overnight
This is a 365-day business. Four days is the entire in-person commitment — the seven coaching weeks that follow happen around the working day, not instead of it.
Managers from neighbouring farms in the same room
This turns out to be a large part of the value. Participants consistently tell us that comparing situations with managers from other operations — people facing the same season, the same labour market, the same audits — changed more than any single session did.
What actually changes
Our Kenyan cohorts are evaluated twice: once by participants, and once by the manager who sent them. The second one is the number that matters to a business.
What participants said
0/5
Overall rating of the four-day intensive0%
Would recommend it to a colleague in a similar role0/5
“Better equipped to develop my people, not just manage their tasks”0/5
“More ready to take initiative without waiting for instructions”What the managers who sent them said
In our structured supervisor reports, sponsors are asked what changed in the person they sent, and what it was worth to them. One managing director, reporting on a senior manager he had sent:
Better interaction with colleagues. He gets better cooperation and feedback, and the team are more welcoming of his input. More focused on results.— Managing Director, Kenyan breeding operation
3–5 hrs
Of the sponsor's own time freed up each week
Far Fewer
Decisions escalated upwards that the participant now handles
The same sponsor went on to hand the participant responsibility for sales and customer liaison — work he would not have given him before the programme.
The program, in short
Four days in Naivasha, 8am–4pm. Self-awareness and personal vision; communication and feedback; collaboration, influence and team dynamics; value creation, ethical leadership and action planning. Experiential throughout — participants work on their own situations, not case studies from somewhere else.
Seven weeks of coaching afterwards. This is where training usually fails and where this programme does its work. Group coaching, peer accountability and one-to-one sessions applied to what the participant is actually dealing with back at the farm.
Participants leave with a personal Leadership Canvas, a 30-day action plan built on their own workplace situations, a certificate of completion, and a network of managers from other operations in the area.
What a Leadership Canvas is, and why the coaching phase matters
Who to send
Production managers, heads of department, technical and post-harvest managers, HR and administration leads, and senior supervisors — anyone whose results depend on getting work done through other people.
Most farms send two or three people. Two works well: they hold each other to the changes afterwards, which is when most training quietly stops mattering.
What it costs
Early Bird Fee
EUR 1000 / KES 155.000
Regular fee
EUR 1250 / KES 195.000
YEP Kenya is a NITA-accredited training provider. Your farm already pays the Industrial Training Levy every month whether you train anyone or not — KES 50 per employee. On a 700-person farm that is around KES 420,000 a year. This is what it is for.
What farm managers ask us
We cannot spare a key person for four days.
Fair, and the most common hesitation we hear. Two things are worth weighing against it: four days is the entire time away, and the point of it is that the person comes back needing less of your attention, not more. Sponsors in our Kenyan cohorts report markedly fewer decisions being escalated to them afterwards. More →
What if we train them and they leave?
We will not pretend the risk is zero. But people rarely leave because they were developed — they leave because of how they are managed day to day, which is exactly what this changes, for the participant and for everyone reporting to them. The programme is anchored in the participant's current role, so the value is created inside your business during the eight weeks, not deferred to a future employer. More →
How is this different from generic leadership training?
Two ways. Before the programme starts we ask you, as the sponsor, what specifically needs to change in the person you are sending — and that shapes what they work on. And the four days are the beginning, not the end: the seven coaching weeks exist because knowledge without application disappears. More →
What do I have to do as their manager?
Identify the changes you want to see at the start, check in regularly during the eight weeks, make space for the learning to be applied, and give us a short structured report at the end. Not heavy, but not nothing — in our experience it is the single biggest factor in whether a participant changes. More →
How to register
- Get in touch. WhatsApp or call Amina, or send an email. A ten-minute conversation is usually enough to tell whether this fits your farm.
- Tell us who you are sending, and why. We ask what you want to see change in that person. It takes a few minutes and it shapes their coaching.
- Register and request the invoice. That holds the place. We do not ask for payment to reserve a seat — registration and an invoice request are enough.
Amina Mustapha
YEP Kenya
If you are not sure whether this is right for your farm, say so — I would rather tell you honestly than sell you a seat.
+254 710 699 389