Discover the HortNZ Leadership Programme developing fruit and vegetable industry leaders through intensive training with over 320 graduates since 2002.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Fri 7th November 2025
The Horticulture New Zealand (HortNZ) Leadership Programme is a nine-week intensive development initiative designed to build leadership capabilities within New Zealand's fruit and vegetable industry. Delivered in partnership with Rural Leaders, the programme has developed over 320 graduates since 2002, creating a pipeline of confident, skilled leaders equipped to navigate industry growth, address sustainability challenges, and seize emerging opportunities.
The programme combines two residential phases—five days in Auckland and three days in Wellington—with practical skill-building in communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Participants hear from experienced industry leaders whilst developing both strategic understanding and immediately applicable leadership capabilities.
Whilst sector-specific in focus, the HortNZ programme demonstrates valuable lessons for industry-based leadership development across sectors: targeted programmes addressing unique industry challenges whilst building transferable leadership competencies create lasting impact impossible through generic training approaches.
Established in 2002, the HortNZ Leadership Programme emerged from recognition that technical horticultural expertise alone proves insufficient for industry leadership. Growing businesses require leaders who can think strategically about market opportunities, navigate regulatory environments, lead sustainable practices, manage complex supply chains, and represent industry interests effectively.
The programme's longevity—over two decades—demonstrates sustained value. Industries don't invest in leadership development initiatives for decades unless they deliver measurable returns. The 320+ graduates testament to programme effectiveness, with many alumni progressing to significant industry leadership roles including product group chairs, company directors, and advocacy positions.
Horticulture New Zealand positions the initiative as future-proofing the industry, developing a pipeline of high-performing leaders with confidence and skills to achieve ambitious sector goals. This forward-looking orientation reflects understanding that leadership capability today determines competitive positioning tomorrow.
The programme targets potential and current leaders in New Zealand's fruit and vegetable industry, with participants primarily, though not exclusively, being growers or their employees, or from organisations closely associated with growing.
This definition deliberately balances specificity with inclusion. Core participants are growers experiencing the industry's operational realities firsthand. However, limiting participation purely to growers would exclude valuable perspectives from advisors, supply chain partners, research organisations, and advocacy bodies whose leadership equally shapes industry outcomes.
Eligibility criteria include:
The "leadership potential" criterion proves critical. The programme develops capabilities rather than merely credentialing existing leaders. Selection identifies individuals demonstrating initiative, strategic thinking, commitment to industry advancement, and capacity to benefit from intensive development.
The nine-week programme balances intensive residential learning with application between phases:
Phase One: Five days (Auckland) Residential immersion creates psychological separation from daily operational pressures, enabling reflective learning impossible during standard work routines. The extended five-day format builds cohort relationships, allows depth impossible in shorter programmes, and creates rhythm alternating between input sessions, discussions, and reflection.
Interim Period: Application and consolidation Between residential phases, participants apply initial learning to real challenges, test concepts, and identify questions for Phase Two. This gap prevents information overload whilst enabling consolidation through practical use.
Phase Two: Three days (Wellington) The Wellington phase deepens learning, addresses questions emerging from application, and focuses on influence and advocacy—appropriately located in New Zealand's capital where industry interfaces with government policy and regulation.
This two-phase structure reflects adult learning principles: spaced repetition over massed practice, immediate application enabling consolidation, and building complexity progressively rather than overwhelming participants initially.
HortNZ demonstrates commitment to accessibility through scholarship support, offering 12 funded positions covering all programme fees and accommodation costs. This investment—substantial for industry organisations—reflects strategic thinking about leadership development as industry infrastructure.
An additional six positions are available at $5,000 +GST plus accommodation, creating mixed-funding model balancing accessibility with participant investment. Self-funded participants often demonstrate particular commitment through personal financial risk, whilst scholarships ensure talented individuals aren't excluded by financial barriers.
The funding model also creates sustainability, enabling programme continuation beyond short-term industry prosperity. Mixed revenue—industry investment plus participant fees—provides stability that purely subsidised programmes often lack long-term.
The programme builds foundational leadership understanding often absent in technically-focused agricultural careers. Content addresses:
What leadership really means beyond popular misconceptions. Leadership isn't personality, charisma, or natural gifts—it's learnable capabilities including influence, strategic thinking, decision-making under uncertainty, and enabling others' success.
Personal leadership style through self-assessment and feedback. Participants discover their default leadership patterns, understand how others experience their leadership, and develop authentic approaches leveraging strengths whilst managing limitations.
Confidence to lead emerges through combination of knowledge, skill practice, and peer support. Many capable individuals hesitate assuming leadership roles from imposter syndrome or uncertainty about capabilities. The programme explicitly builds confidence alongside competence.
Systems thinking lifts perspective from individual farm operations to industry-wide dynamics—market forces, regulatory environments, sustainability challenges, labour issues, and technological change. Effective industry leadership requires understanding these broader patterns.
This foundational work proves essential. Without clear leadership frameworks, individuals struggle to make sense of scattered experiences or develop deliberately. The programme provides mental models enabling ongoing leadership development beyond programme completion.
Communication capabilities receive intensive development, recognising that leadership effectiveness depends heavily on ability to articulate vision, engage stakeholders, and influence without authority.
Training addresses:
Horticulture leaders must influence multiple stakeholders—government policy-makers affecting regulations and trade, retailers determining shelf space and pricing, consumers shaping demand, researchers setting priorities, and fellow growers adopting new practices. Each audience requires communication calibrated appropriately.
The programme provides practice in low-stakes environments before participants face high-stakes situations. Feedback enables refinement impossible when every communication carries real consequences.
The horticulture industry faces complex challenges resisting simple solutions—labour shortages, climate change impacts, market access barriers, biosecurity threats, sustainability expectations, and technological disruption. Strategic problem-solving capabilities prove essential.
Development includes:
Critical thinking training also addresses cognitive biases affecting judgement—confirmation bias, availability heuristic, sunk cost fallacy, and groupthink. Awareness of these patterns improves decision quality by enabling conscious correction.
The agricultural sector historically relied on traditional practices and accumulated wisdom. Whilst valuable, these approaches sometimes resist necessary adaptation. Critical thinking capabilities enable leaders to honour tradition whilst embracing innovation when evidence warrants.
Despite popular images of independent farmers, modern horticulture succeeds through collaboration—grower cooperatives, product groups, supply chain partnerships, research collaborations, and industry advocacy.
The programme develops:
Participants experience intensive collaboration throughout the programme—cohort-based learning creates safe environment for practicing teamwork skills whilst building lasting peer networks valuable beyond programme completion.
Many graduates report that peer connections prove amongst the programme's most valuable outcomes. Industry challenges seem less daunting when you can phone former cohort members for perspective, advice, or collaboration.
Graduates experience measurable benefits:
Enhanced leadership confidence enables participants to step into roles previously seeming beyond capability. Post-programme, graduates chair product groups, join boards, represent industry publicly, and lead organisational change.
Strategic thinking capabilities lift perspective from purely operational concerns to broader industry dynamics, enabling more sophisticated decision-making about farm businesses and industry direction.
Expanded professional networks create relationships across regions, product groups, and organisational types—valuable for problem-solving, collaboration, and career opportunities.
Improved business outcomes emerge as leadership capabilities translate to better decision-making, more effective teams, and enhanced stakeholder relationships. Whilst difficult to quantify precisely, graduates consistently report business improvements attributable to programme learning.
Industry influence opportunities increase as programme completion signals commitment to industry leadership and provides credibility when assuming advocacy or governance roles.
Beyond individual benefits, the programme creates systemic industry capacity:
Succession planning as younger growers develop capabilities preparing them for senior leadership when current leaders retire. Without deliberate development, industries risk leadership voids as experienced leaders exit.
Shared language and frameworks across 320+ graduates create common understanding enabling more effective collaboration and communication when graduates work together in various industry contexts.
Culture of leadership development emerges as programme visibility encourages broader industry commitment to developing people alongside crops.
Improved advocacy and representation as articulate, strategic leaders engage government, media, and consumers more effectively than purely technically-focused spokespeople.
Innovation adoption accelerates when credible leaders embrace new practices and influence peers. Change resistance diminishes when respected fellow growers champion innovation rather than external experts.
The HortNZ programme demonstrates principles applicable beyond horticulture:
Sector-specific programmes often deliver superior value compared to generic leadership training. Whilst general frameworks prove useful, leadership challenges vary significantly across industries. Horticulture leaders face different stakeholder landscapes, regulatory environments, and business dynamics than manufacturing executives or technology entrepreneurs.
Industry-specific development provides:
Investment models combining industry funding and participant contribution create sustainability whilst ensuring accessibility. Pure participant-pay models exclude valuable candidates; pure subsidy models struggle with long-term funding and participant commitment.
Multi-week formats with residential components prove more effective than purely virtual or geographically dispersed approaches. Residential elements build relationships impossible in shorter formats whilst creating psychological separation enabling reflection and learning.
Targeting potential leaders early rather than only developing existing senior leaders creates deeper pipeline and longer-term impact. High-potential identification programmes develop capabilities before promotion rather than hoping people figure out leadership after assuming roles.
The programme's cohort approach delivers specific advantages:
Participants learn from peer experiences and perspectives as much as from facilitators. Diverse cohort members—different product groups, regions, farm sizes, and ages—provide multiple viewpoints enriching learning.
Psychological safety emerges within cohorts, enabling vulnerable exploration of challenges, doubts, and learning edges impossible in more public contexts.
Ongoing mutual support extends beyond programme completion, creating industry networks valuable throughout careers.
Collective leadership development multiplies programme impact—developing sixteen leaders simultaneously creates more industry capability than sequential individual development.
The Horticulture New Zealand Leadership Programme is a nine-week intensive leadership development initiative designed to build capabilities within New Zealand's fruit and vegetable industry. Delivered in two residential phases—five days in Auckland and three days in Wellington—the programme develops communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills whilst building strategic industry understanding. Since 2002, over 320 participants have graduated, creating a pipeline of leaders equipped to navigate industry growth, address sustainability challenges, and effectively represent horticulture interests. The programme targets potential and current leaders including growers, their employees, and closely associated organisations.
Eligibility requires New Zealand citizenship or permanent residency, demonstrated leadership or leadership potential, and willingness to assume responsibility in grower or industry matters. The programme welcomes all age groups, recognising that leadership capacity emerges at various career stages. Participants are primarily growers or their employees, or from organisations closely associated with growing, though the definition remains deliberately inclusive to capture valuable diverse perspectives. Selection criteria emphasise potential rather than existing seniority—the programme develops capabilities rather than merely credentialing established leaders. Applicants must commit to completing both residential phases and the full nine-week programme duration.
HortNZ offers 12 scholarships covering all programme fees and accommodation costs, ensuring financial barriers don't exclude talented potential leaders. This substantial industry investment reflects strategic thinking about leadership development as essential infrastructure. An additional six positions are available at $5,000 +GST plus accommodation for participants not receiving scholarships. This mixed-funding model balances accessibility with sustainability—scholarships ensure inclusive participation whilst participant fees contribute to programme continuation. The investment, whether self-funded or scholarship-supported, delivers measurable returns through enhanced capabilities, expanded networks, increased confidence, and improved career prospects throughout subsequent decades.
The programme runs nine weeks total, delivered in two intensive residential phases separated by an application period. Phase One comprises five days in Auckland, providing concentrated learning and cohort relationship building through psychological separation from daily operational pressures. The interim period enables participants to apply initial learning, test concepts in real contexts, and identify questions for deeper exploration. Phase Two comprises three days in Wellington, deepening understanding, addressing application challenges, and focusing on influence and advocacy appropriately located in New Zealand's capital. This structure reflects adult learning principles—spaced repetition, immediate application enabling consolidation, and progressive complexity building rather than overwhelming participants initially.
Graduates experience enhanced leadership confidence enabling assumption of roles previously seeming beyond capability, strategic thinking capabilities lifting perspective beyond purely operational concerns, expanded professional networks valuable for collaboration and career opportunities, improved business outcomes through better decision-making and stakeholder relationships, and increased industry influence opportunities. Many participants report that peer connections prove amongst the most valuable outcomes—building lasting relationships with fellow leaders across regions and product groups. Programme completion signals commitment to industry leadership and provides credibility when assuming advocacy or governance positions. Beyond individual benefits, graduates contribute to industry-wide capacity through improved representation, innovation adoption, and developing subsequent leadership generations.
Absolutely. The programme demonstrates principles transferable across sectors: industry-specific development often delivers superior value compared to generic training by addressing unique stakeholder landscapes, regulatory environments, and business dynamics; mixed-funding models combining industry investment and participant contribution create sustainability whilst ensuring accessibility; multi-week formats with residential components prove more effective than purely virtual approaches for relationship building and psychological immersion; targeting potential leaders early creates deeper pipeline than only developing existing seniors; and cohort-based learning delivers peer learning, psychological safety, ongoing mutual support, and collective capability building. Industries facing leadership pipeline challenges, struggling to represent interests effectively, or navigating complex transformation could adapt this model to systematic leadership development investment.