Mikko Halkilahti, a farmer from Salo, has developed his leadership skills throughout his life. It has largely been a voluntary role in the national defense organization. On Independence Day, Halkilahti receives thanks for its dedication in the form of the 2nd class Freedom Cross.
Desire to be a good and reliable leader.
That was the main reason for the 51-year-old from Salo Mikko to Halkilahti to join voluntary national defense activities as a young farmer.
After the reserve officers’ school, the volunteer work that started at the local level took the fresh agronomist first to the district level and finally to the position of president of the Finnish Reserve Officers’ Association for the period 2014–2019.
On this Independence Day, Reserve Major Halkilahti will be received by the President of the Republic Sauli Niinistön given by the 2nd class Cross of Freedom as a thank you for the long activity for voluntary national defense.
Thursday Halkilahti, who answered the phone from his home on the farm in Salon Haukkala, is delighted with the badge and says that leading people has always been his characteristic.
“I am a social person and I like to be with people. That’s why I wanted to develop my leadership skills as well, and I have been able to learn and develop that in organizational activities.”
According to Halkilahti, not everyone is a good human leader.
“A person’s personality is always a core issue. I claim that leadership skills come naturally to a person through personality and they can then be further honed and improved. But if a person does not have natural leadership, it is very difficult to believe that he will be able to grow into a top leader by educating himself.”
Defense forces began to use the so-called deep management model in its leadership training at the end of the 1990s. The model emphasizes the management of people instead of things, and the leader’s own lifelong development as a leader is also central to it.
Halkilahti says that during his military service there was no talk of deep management yet. He got to know the model only later through volunteering.
“I feel it is the right way. Feedback and criticism are given in both directions, as management also takes place from the bottom up. The subordinates tell how the leader has succeeded.”
Today’s young people are used to demanding justifications for the orders they receive and they don’t necessarily want to follow things they don’t understand or are not motivated to do without criticism. However, you should be able to follow the leader’s order when the situation is real.
“You have to earn trust among your subordinates. When trust exists, subordinates do not question the order they receive. They feel that the person giving the order has already thought things through so carefully that when the order is given, it is the right one.”
According to Halkilahti, trust can be measured during conscript service, for example, by asking whether your predecessor or neighbor is the kind of person you could go to war with.
“That’s a good question.”
Halkilahti reminds that in order for a leader to be a good leader, he must also be able to be a good subordinate.
“There are countless ladders, but not everyone has to be a leader. It is necessary to understand, as a subordinate or an ordinary person, that someone has to lead in a crisis. Nothing comes of the job if someone doesn’t lead or if the subordinates don’t respect their leader or follow the orders given.”
According to Halkilahti, anyone can test their thinking by thinking about what they would do as a leader in order to get subordinates to move in a crisis situation and do things so that everything would turn out for the best and the situation would be overcome together.
Mikko Halkilahti says that the farm, which has been in the family’s possession for 325 years, obliges him to continue. In addition to farming, he has been able to realize himself in the field of voluntary national defense.
In the year 2019 Halkilahti’s term as chairman of the Finnish Reserve Officers’ Association ended and instead of organizational activities, he devoted himself to the care of the vegetable farm that had been in his family for 325 years.
Wheat, malted barley, rapeseed and oats are grown on the farm’s fields. Alongside farming, Halkilahti runs his wife Eija Halkilahti at his home farm, Salon Haukkala farm, custom party services and a restaurant open every day in the cultural landscape of Rikalanmäki. The restaurant serves local food originating from its own fields.
“In these times of crisis, the value of local food has risen even more. Farming, food production and preparedness are important issues so that in the future there will be bread for every Finn in Finland.”
Halkilahti calls himself a rural person living in a small town, for whom preparedness for crises has come as a rural heritage, perhaps stronger than urban people.
“While in the past we were lulled into believing that we live in a birdhouse in Finland, where water comes from the tap, food from the store and houses stay warm, now we have started to better prepare for crises. I have noticed to my delight that in Finland there is no longer a desire to put one’s head in the bush”, Halkilahti sums up.
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