OK, good evening, everybody, and welcome to the latest, webinar vets practise management webinar. My name's Andy Mee from Veterinary Management Consulting, and this evening, it's my pleasure to introduce you to Jenny Guyatt. She's a former general practise and emergency and critical care vet.
She's also worked as a personal growth coach, a mentor, an entrepreneur. She's spoken for, the BSAVA in regional talks. And she's the founder of Vet Harmony, and that's gonna be the focus of the talk tonight.
She's a personal growth coach, which offers a personal growth coach service for the veterinary profession, and, her website is www.vetharmony.co.uk.
Jenny's a certified HBDI psychometric profiling practitioner, and she'll tell you more about what that means later. And she specialises in guiding people through career crossroads and helping them establish a healthy life balance. I just like to acknowledge the sponsors for this evening, Simply Health, the Saint Francis Group, and A Legal Limited.
And over to you, Jenny. Thank you very much, Andy, and welcome everybody this evening. OK.
Feedback. I think possibly one of the most difficult aspects of life that we all have to navigate as human beings. Now, whether that's at work in our teams, which is the focus for tonight, or whether that's at home with your partner or Christmas with your family.
It doesn't really matter where it's happening or whether you're giving or receiving said feedback. It's pretty much always fraught with emotional risk and something many of us find challenging and some of us avoid at all costs if we possibly can. However, intellectually, I would imagine everyone in this virtual audience tonight is completely aware of how important feedback is at work.
I'm sure most of you will also be familiar with this, the, the well-documented Gallup employee engagement survey, where research has shown these key 12 questions to ask your team to assess their level of engagement based on what gives people in general the most job satisfaction. Now what we can see as we progress up these levels towards the most engaged employees is that the successful giving and receiving of feedback is at the heart of many of these questions. And this top level is where you want to get your employees to because engaged employees work with passion and they feel a profound connection to their practise.
They're open to change and they help move the practise forward. Team members kind of lower down these levels, they're either not engaged and they're just coasting or they're actively disengaged. So they're not just unhappy at work, they're busy acting out their unhappiness.
These people undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish on a daily basis, and I've seen some catastrophic effects of having team members like this on team morale and on the practise owners' sanity. So employee engagement matters. We all know this stuff, and that's not really the focus of tonight's talk.
Why then, is it so darned hard to get the feedback structures like one to ones, appraisals and performance management and the like, working well for everyone? Why do we often feel daunted at the thought of, just the thought of giving feedback to our teams? And for many of us it's because sooner or later we're likely to run into one or all three of these responses pissed off, tearful, or shut down or indifferent.
Is that ringing any bells? And this is because what we're really battling here underneath that textbook approach to setting up feedback systems is our ancient primaeval brain hardwiring. And unless we can fully understand the cause behind the symptoms we experience around feedbacking practises, it will always trip us up, and that's what I want to explore tonight.
So grab a pen and paper if you haven't already. I just want to do a quick poll before we get going on the current state of your feedback systems just so it will help me to kind of gauge the general level of tonight's audience for where you all are with this stuff. So what I want you to do is just add up how many of the following statements are true or frequently true for your practise right now.
So perhaps you've been taught this stuff before on feedback systems, but you've still not consistently got them into place. So maybe you do have an appraisal once in a blue moon, but it's not, not regular, not really happening that regularly. Well, maybe you do have techniques in place.
So you've, you've tried the techniques on feedback, but, and the, and the stretches are there, maybe there's some one to ones happening, regular appraisals, but it's just not working that well. So either management are struggling with it, or the team are just not responding well to it. So the first one is, haven't really got the stretches in place consistently.
Second one is we've got them, but they're not working brilliantly. And then I want you to think about your team meetings. So do they happen separately at the moment?
So the vets have a vets meeting, the nurses have a nurse meeting, etc. And once in a blue moon, you will have a team meeting, but it's a real pain trying to get everyone to come in. And with these separate meetings, they are a bit, tend to be a bit more of a moan fest or a blame session, rather than really productive.
So is that one true for you? Maybe you're exhausted from managing disengaged team members, or perhaps maintaining your own engagement level. So just tot up now, how many of those are true for you.
So basically, if you've currently got really good feedback systems in place around 1 to 1s and appraisals and a practise culture where people are willing to give and receive feedback, then your answer might be zero, to this. But I'd just be interested to know. So, Andy, if we could launch the poll.
Yeah, certainly we'll do that. So again, just to reiterate you, you just So I'm kind of wanting to know how many . How many of the statements are true?
OK, right. So I think, as my understanding of the way this poll works, you have to tick one that's true. Oh, OK, great.
And then we'll, OK, fantastic. It's the way it seems to be working. Brilliant.
. So we still seem to be getting answers coming through, so we'll leave it up a little bit longer. Yeah, that's great. It usually takes a bit, isn't it?
OK, we seem to have plateaued there. So we have, oh no, there we go. Someone was having a swig of wine while they were filling it in.
Yeah, so we've got 12 for the 1st, 13 for the 2nd, 15 for the 3rd, and 16. For the 4th, so I think pretty much everybody's exhausted. Not quite as many of them, but they're holding separate meetings and then pretty even Stephen's on your first two, so.
OK, so pretty much most of the people listening tonight are, are, are experiencing at least one of those statements, is that right? Yes. Yeah, one or more of them.
About 2/3 are experiencing one or more. Yeah. OK, fantastic.
So, that's good. There should be plenty in there for, for everyone tonight. And of those of you that, for the, do you have your feedback system in place, and hopefully there'll still be some useful nuggets that you can, grab and, and instigate as well.
So thanks for that, Andy, that's brilliant. OK. OK.
So some interesting results in there. So tonight, what I want to explore is a hypothesis that the secret to happy engaged teams are leaders who are able to help themselves and the team to understand and tolerate the discomfort around feedback in order to foster a practise culture of growth, togetherness, and inspiration. So I'm gonna cover that in 3 sections to just to make it a bit easier for the listeners.
The first one is the realisation because the first thing we have to do, as I've said, is really get to grips neurobiologically with what's going on for us when we give and receive feedback. The second section I've called the rumble because these are difficult, messy emotional concepts that we have to kind of rumble and tussle with a bit as scientists to see how we can get past the vet profession specific barriers that are in the way. So we'll pull it apart a bit more in this section.
And finally, the revolution is where we'll put it all together into practically applied solutions. So I want you to walk away from tonight with a tool kit of ways that you can revolutionise your existing feedback systems. So without further ado, let's get stuck in.
So to start with, I'm just gonna do a quick review of the extensive body of research conducted by Dr. Brene Brown, who some of you may be familiar with. And for those of you who listened in January's Mind Matters lectures here at the webinar Vets Virtual Congress, then this next sort of 10 minute section is going to be a brief recap.
You'll have heard this bit before on this research, but, my reason for doing that is I just want to get some shared common language for everyone who's listening tonight. So we can understand these topics before I then turn to applying them to the subject of feedback. So bear with me for this next brief section if you've heard it before.
So Brenne started out as a social worker and she had her masters and she was doing her PhD. She was studying connection because after 10 years of social work, she realised that connection is why we're here. It's an irreducible need of all humans.
Basically, in the absence of love and belonging, there is always suffering. And that drive for connection is in our DNA because we're a social species, so we're hardwired to seek connection to others. Now interestingly, when you interview people about concepts like love and belonging and connection, they'll tell you their stories of heartbreak, being excluded and of disconnection.
So about 6 weeks into her research on connection, she kept repeatedly hearing about this unnamed thing that was completely unravelling connection, which when she analysed the interviews in more depth, turned out to be shame. So shame can be described as the fear of disconnection. Is there something in me that if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection or belonging.
It's an intensely painful feeling or experience, and most of us do whatever we can to avoid it. What we do know about it is that it's universal. We all have it.
The only people who don't are those who have no capacity for empathy, so sociopaths, basically. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it, the more you have it. So after Berne had unearthed shame as a major barrier, she looked at what was underpinning shame and found that it was a fear of vulnerability.
So people finding vulnerability excruciating. Vulnerability here is defined as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. And I'll give you some more examples of what that looks like in a second.
However, there's a paradox here because in order for connection to happen we need to show up and let ourselves be fully seen, and that means being willing to be vulnerable at times. Now Brune found this concept scary because she was particularly averse to vulnerability herself, being a research scientist. So she spent the next 6 years studying vulnerability, so she could better understand it.
And one of the most interesting things to become apparent fairly early on, was that the people that she interviewed, and she's got over 200,000 pieces of data now after 13 years of, of research, they could be divided into two groups. Those who had a sense of worthiness, so they felt a strong sense of love and belonging. And those who struggled for their self-worth.
So they were wondering all the time if they were good enough, and I think we see quite a lot of this second group within the vet profession. Only one variable separated these two groups. This first group believed they were worthy of love and belonging.
Simple as that. What keeps us out of connection ultimately is our own fear of not being worthy of loving connection. So she then took all the interviews from that first group and reviewed them again, looking for the themes and the patterns.
She wanted to create a label to identify this group and what she came up with was wholehearted people. So people who were living and loving with their whole hearts. And what she found in the data was that the wholehearted group shared some common characteristics.
They have the courage to be imperfect. They had compassion predominantly with themselves but also with other people. They have connection with others through authenticity.
Now what that means is the, that's the ability to let go of who you feel you should be in order to be who you really are. And finally they fully embraced vulnerability, so they saw those imperfections as the cracks through which the light gets in. Now vulnerability in this group wasn't seen as particularly comfortable, but neither was it seen as absolutely excruciating as it was for that second group.
So it's the willingness to take action or sit with feelings where you can't control or predict the outcome. I think that's particularly hard for most of us vets, cos I don't know about you, but I certainly like to feel in control or like to have that illusion of control where possible. So the data shows something that we all need to get, get our heads around basically, and that's that, yes, vulnerability is at the core of shame, fear, and our struggle for worthiness, worthiness.
However, it's also the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging and love, and we need it to lead fulfilled lives. So let me just take you through the ABCs very briefly, of shame and vulnerability, starting with shame. Now shame can be described as the swampland of our souls, so I definitely don't don't want to keep us here very long.
I just want us to pop our wellies on and have a quick walk through it and know our way around because it's vitally important to understand what shame is and why we have it, because it's going to affect both you and your team as you get to grips with mastering feedback. So, shame drives two big tapes in our heads. When you're about to try something new or do something different, different or difficult, or maybe you've received some feedback on your work or your managing skills.
Shame is that gremlin that pops up in our head and says, you're not good enough. Mm, you didn't get any distinctions at that school, or your marriage isn't what it could be. Or you need to lose two stone.
Well, you did missn dose that case last week, or he thinks I'm terrible at my job. I'm probably gonna get the sack. It's that voice.
And if you manage to talk it out of that one and tell yourself that you know I'm good enough, then the negative inner voice plays the other shame tape of Oo, who do you think you are? And again it tries to make us feel small. So shame can make us feel that we don't have the right to give feedback to others unless we're perfect ourselves.
And it can make us deflect positive feedback away rather than feeling buoyed up and able to accept it. So I think a really important distinction to make here, and one to teach your teams as well, is that and your kids, is that shame is not the same as guilt. Shame is a focus on self, whereas guilt is a focus on behaviour.
So guilt is, I made a mistake. Shame is I am a mistake. That is hugely different.
Guilt is actually a very beneficial adaptation, and it gives us a moral compass and it helps us to fix our mistakes. You know, that ability to hold something up that we've done or failed to do against who we want to be as a person is incredibly adaptive. It's not comfortable, but it's adaptive.
Shame on the other hand, is categorically toxic. When you look at the data, shame is highly, highly correlated with depression, addiction, aggression, bullying, eating disorders, violence, and sadly, suicide, which we see, you know, too far too much of in our profession. Guilt, on the other hand, is actually inversely correlated with these things.
So guilt's useful, shame always destructive, basically. And where you've got a shame prone manager or a shame prone employee, then they are going to struggle emotionally, and they're either going to come out swinging or crumble inside. And it's shame that's usually driving those responses of pissed off, tearful, or shut down that we mentioned earlier on.
So now I want to move to vulnerability and just bust a couple of the big myths that we have around it. Now I think there's one particularly commonly misheld conception that we all have about vulnerability. So when you personally are thinking about doing or saying something vulnerable, what's normally running through your head?
Most likely it's that vulnerability is weakness, right? So, let me give you some examples of vulnerability, defined as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure and just see what you think. So vulnerability is going back into the consult room to tell the family of the dog you've just X-rayed after a car accident that the dog has a totally severed spinal cord.
When they had that dog bred specially for their daughter as a reward for making it through her radiotherapy. It could be initiating physical contact with your partner. It's phoning a friend whose child has just died, when you haven't got a clue what to say.
It's being the only person in the practise to insist that you have 15 minutes to eat your lunch every day in a practise where lunch breaks don't happen. It's telling a prospective new employer at a vet interview that you're just returning to work after time off with depression, hence needing to work part-time to stay healthy. Now when you see other people doing these types of things, do you see that as weakness?
No, of course not. We see it as incredibly brave. Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.
Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness. It's another paradox of vulnerability. It's the first thing I look for in you, but the last thing I want you to see in me.
Unless of course we understand how powerful and important vulnerability is. The second big vulnerability myth is that you can sort of get to opt out of vulnerability if you choose. So people say, I don't do vulnerability.
However, there is no avoiding it if you want to lead a healthy, fulfilling life. Vulnerability happens to us on a daily basis. So if you don't proactively learn to handle it and increase your capacity for experiencing it, then vulnerability does you instead.
And at vets, we, as vets, we have just tonnes of it coming at us. So at work alone, it happens to you probably 20 to 30 times a day. So every time you're in a consult and you recommend best practise that comes at a financial cost, then there's the possibility of the client saying no, with varying degrees of emotional risk attached to that.
So you don't get to escape vulnerability basically. So it's far better to learn how to handle it. So how do most of us tend to cope with all of this?
We clap on the vulnerability armour in an attempt to protect ourselves. We numb those low grade anxious feelings on a daily basis with wine or caffeine or food or being really busy all the time or scrolling mindlessly on social media in the evenings instead of connecting with our partners. We try to perfect as a defensive mechanism.
So this is different to healthy striving. Healthy striving has an internal focus on how can I improve and get better, and it often comes hand in hand with a growth mindset. So people with this way of thinking are are usually quite open to feedback because they see it as the information they need to get better and they believe they can get better.
Perfectionism on the other hand, is externally focused on what other people will think of you if you fail. And it often goes with a fixed mindset that believes our abilities are fixed within a small range. It tells you that if you can just be perfect enough and brilliant enough and never make any mistakes, then somehow you get to avoid the pain of disappointing people and you'll be worthy of love and belonging.
So perfectionists often struggle with feedback because they tend to deflect positive feedback away. And negative feedback is painful because it, it just feeds into the unhelpful beliefs and it tends to fuel further perfectionism. We struggle to truly feel joy or welcome it because we're worried that feeling that happy about anything is inviting disaster or it's just easier not to feel too joyful than to have it taken away if something bad happens.
It's also not possible up here to selectively numb emotion. So when we numb the tough stuff, then our capacity for feeling those higher registers of joy goes along with it. This is also why our standard response to someone saying, you did a great job there is often to deflect that praise away with a dismissive statement.
Rather than let that positive beam of energy sink home and to gratefully accept the positive feedback. Sometimes we have people who smash and grab, so this is where people overshare inappropriately with someone they don't know well enough to be sharing that story with in an attempt to take whatever attention they can get. Now this is about using vulnerability rather than being vulnerable, and the result for the person on the receiving end is normally disconnection.
You know, most of us are quite horrified when that happens. We struggle to feel empathy and we shy away, so it actually keeps us out of connection. And finally, if we become someone who doesn't do vulnerability.
Then we become highly intolerant of it in other people, and we fall prey to cynicism and criticism and cruelty. Criticism is not the same as productive feedback, debate or discussion. It's things like put downs, personal attacks and unsubstantiated claims about our intentions.
So we engage in these behaviours as a mechanism to try and avoid feeling vulnerable, but it comes at a cost. There's a famous quote here that can really help us by Theodore Roosevelt's. People know it as the man in the arena quote, and you might have heard it before.
It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or how the doer of deeds could have done it better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, but when he's in the arena at best he triumphs. And at worst he fails, but if he fails, he does so while daring greatly.
And that to me is what this stuff is all about. It's about daring greatly, and it's about being in the arena. So, the arena we're talking about here tonight is that of giving and receiving feedback in your practise.
So who currently is in the arena with you from your practise and who's up in the stands, not yet feeling brave enough? Perhaps you're still in the stands at the moment, and you need some help to get yourself in the arena with some self-compassion and without using harsh self judgments. Now, an important point, you're not aiming to get everyone in.
Your job as a manager is not to sort out and resolve all the shame issues of every member of your team. It be impossible anyway. It just makes me shudder thinking about it.
It is, however, to lead by example and to help as many of your team as possible to come with you. So that brings us to the end of the realisation section. And now we're moving into the rumble where we pull these ideas apart apart a bit more and look at what might get in the way of us implementing the concepts and how we can get past the obstacles.
So one of the first obstacles is that of scarcity culture. Both in the population at large and also within the vet profession. We live in a culture of scarcity thinking.
The habit of focusing on luck is culturally everywhere. There's never enough of anything. Our first thought on waking in the morning is quite often I didn't get enough sleep.
And then we follow that up with, I don't have enough time. None of us, let's face it, ever feel like we have enough money, and we spend most of the days of our lives complaining about or hearing about not enough. We don't exercise enough.
We don't have enough free time. We don't have enough power at work. We don't have enough weekends.
We're not thin enough, smart enough, lovable enough. And then we go to bed at night with a litany of worries about what we didn't get done that day. Certainly it can feel that way for me a bit sometimes.
Now scarcity thinking like like that doesn't take hold in a culture overnight. However, those elements of scarcity mindset we just saw tend to thrive and take hold in cultures that are prone to shame, as I believe ours is. Now by a shame prone culture, I don't mean that collectively we're ashamed of our identity or anything like that.
It means that there are enough of us within the veterinary profession struggling with the issue of self-worth, that it's shaping our culture, our behaviours and our mental health. There are 3 components that drive and perpetuate scarcity culture, and I think we experience them quite frequently in our practises, and that's shame, comparison and disengagement. Shame, as we'll see in a second, is all too frequently seen in our practises, along with the vulnerability shield that we just talked about of perfectionism.
Now healthy competition can be beneficial, but is there constant comparing and ranking going on at your practise? For example, between who has it toughest between the equine and the small animal vets, or maybe between different practise partners or perhaps competing clinicians. The disengagement is commonly seen when the practises culture makes it hard to take risks or try new things.
Or maybe people feel that there's just no point sharing their ideas and their experiences because it feels like no one's paying attention or listening. Now, in settings defined by these characteristics, do you think it's easy to dare greatly and to be vulnerable? No, definitely not.
So what's the alternative that we can start to work towards? Well, interestingly, when I looked at the literature, the counter approach to living in scarcity is not necessarily abundance. So the opposite to never enough isn't more than you can ever imagine.
It's just enough. Or in other words, wholehearted thinking. Now there are many aspects of wholeheartedness that we don't have time to cover in detail tonight, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness.
So the ability to face uncertainty, exposure and emotional risk, which many of these aspects of wholehearted thinking require. And knowing that yes, I'm imperfect, but I am enough just the way I am. So how can we take this concept into our examination of our own subculture, that of our practises.
Well, the first thing we need to be able to do is recognise and combat shame. So there's some indicators here that we can look for that can help us to diagnose the level to which shame is pervading your practise culture. So, if you notice things like blaming, gossiping, name-calling, harassment, a bit of an extreme one, but it might be there.
These are all behavioural cues that shame has permeated a culture. An even more obvious sign is when shame is actually being used as a management tool. Now this might not be a problem for you in your particular practise, but we don't have to look very far to find evidence that it is happening within the profession.
And now is the time to bring in a zero tolerance policy on these things in your practise, because the covert shame infestation is not a benign event. It's a bit like getting a woodworm infestation in your house. You don't, it's, it's subversive, you might not notice it to start with and then one day the walls start crumbling.
So this is the behaviour in practise online survey. You might have seen it happening. It was floating around about November time last year.
It was set up by vetsurgeon.org and vet nurse.co.uk and it generated nearly 700 responses from veterinary professionals.
677 of those participants reported being on the receiving end within the last year of at least one of 15 types of unpleasant behaviour which ranged from being physically intimidated through to things like being on the receiving end of slide lances. The most frequently reported behaviours were being belittled in front of other staff, being criticised minutely, repeatedly, and seemingly unfairly. Being aware of management or senior staff talking negatively about you behind your back.
And having your your authority undermined to others in practise, maybe by having your instructions countermanded commonly and without consultation. Now these are all classic examples of shame being used as a management tool. But I think a really important point to mention here though is how you respond if you recognise shame happening in your practise, or if you might be starting to get a bit of an uncomfortable feeling that you might have used shame inadvertently as a tool yourself.
Because when we see shame being used in a team, people don't just develop that overnight. Yes, it needs to be addressed immediately, but not, but not by using further shame. Because we learned to use shame in our family of origin and our schooling history from a young age, and from a generation who were much more likely to see it as actually an effective way to manage people, because they didn't have access to the research that we do today.
So, shaming either yourself or your colleagues, if you or they are using shame really isn't helpful. We need to bring a healthy dose of compassion to the situation. However, neither can we sit back and do nothing, because shame can only rise so far in a practise before people have to disengage to protect themselves.
Now, as you're probably gathering by now, a daring greatly culture is a culture of honest, constructive and engaged feedback. So why are we still hearing time and time again that there's still generally a real lack of this type of feedback going on consistently in both directions in many practises. There's this gap between our intellectual understanding of the feedback processes and the actual practical application of them.
And often when feedback is happening in practise, it's generally based around metrics. So what their ATV was, or the number of pet health plan signups or their diagnostic ratios and so on. That's more of an evaluation of their performance really, than genuinely valuable personal feedback.
However, without that feedback, there can be no transformative change. When we don't talk to the people we're leading about their strengths and their opportunities for growth, they begin to question their contributions and our commitment. And disengagement then follows.
Now when you ask people why is there such a lack of feedback, two major issues crop up. We're still not comfortable with hard conversations, most of us, and We don't know how to give and receive that feedback in a way that moves processes and people forward. The good news is that these are very fixable problems.
So if an organisation makes the creation of feedback culture a priority and a practise, rather than just some aspirational value, then it can happen. And I'm gonna show you how in the revolution section. So without further ado, let's move into the revolution and examine what disruptive engagement actually looks like in practise.
So, the disruptive part of the term actually relates to shaking up the old way of doing things. And it came from the financial and technological sectors. So a good example is, how, and I put this definition here because I'd never, when I came across this, I was like, what the flipping neck is Fintech.
So if, like me, you didn't know what that is, it's financial technology. So a good example of a disruptive system is the emergence of online equity crowdfunding platforms like Crowd Cube because these have totally transformed the old rules around investing across the financial sector. Now, for vet practises, vet practises will not solve the complex political, environmental, sociocultural and technological developments coming at us today without creativity, innovation and a culture of learning.
The greatest threat to these three things is disengagement from lack from lack of effective feedback. We need to completely re-examine the idea of engagement, hence calling it disruptive engagement. The other element to the disruptive bit is that feedback thrives in cultures where the aim is not getting comfortable with feedback, but actually normalising the discomfort.
Because the research has made this clear, vulnerability is at the heart of the feedback process. And this is true whether we give, receive or ask for that feedback. And here's the key crux of this whole webinar.
That vulnerability doesn't go away, even if we're trained in offering and getting feedback. However, what experience does give us is the advantage of knowing that we can survive that exposure and uncertainty, and, and more importantly, it's worth the effort. So this simple and honest process of letting people know that discomfort is normal, it's going to happen around here, it's important, and why it's important, reduces the fear, anxiety and shame around it, and it motivates teams to want to dare greatly with you and get in the arena.
So what are the 4 most effective strategies for building shame resilient veterinary practises? So I'll give you the headings and then we'll go through them in detail. So normalising is a key shame resilience strategy.
Leaders and managers can cultivate engagement by helping people to know what to expect. Examining with your team how and where Shane might be functioning within your practise right now. Training everyone on the differences between shame and guilt, I think that should go into parenting classes as well, and teaching them how to give and and yourselves, how to give and receive that feedback in a way that fosters growth and engagement.
And finally, how do we support leaders who are willing to dare greatly and facilitate honest conversations about shame in their practises? So let's take each one of these one by one now and see how they could be practically applied. So how do we go about this normalising process?
Well, like I've done tonight, really, we need to start by getting some shared language within the team on these definitions and topics to give a framework for the discussions. So one idea might be to get the team to watch this webinar maybe as a lunch and learn and then have a group discussion. You could preface it by letting the team know that you want to upgrade and improve the practice's current feedback systems.
You're looking for a feedback structure like this, so the top section up here is where we're learning from and celebrating excellence. So that seems like maybe having a gratitude board or having a meal out and practise awards once a year, that kind of thing. And down the bottom here is your performance management structures.
So what do you do when someone actually breaks the rules? So let's say you have a no mobile phones on reception policy and you've got a receptionist who's flagrantly using a mobile on the reception desk. You're not going to helpfully give her some feedback on that.
You're going to performance manager, although hopefully still without using shame, obviously. So where the main focus is, is actually in this middle section. This is where we want your day to day and regular feedback mechanisms that take the team towards the practises, vision and goals, a shared vision and goals.
But it also takes individuals, towards their own work-related goals, the ones that you will have agreed with them at their appraisal. There is, however, one area to avoid here, and that's, how you start this conversation with the team. So, when I was at Vet Dynamics, I saw practises fall into, to the trap, and sort of coming back from two days of exciting practise management, learning all fired up and calling a practise meeting and saying, Hey guys, I've learned this great thing.
Here it is. We're gonna do it like this from now on. Amount of team engagement?
Mm, same to none. Much better to come back, contact the team and say, Hey guys, I've learned this great new concept. I think it could be really beneficial for us.
Here it is. Let's have a look at it, and then can we discuss it together and see how we might put it into action, and then get the team to design the process with you, way more ownership and engagement. That might be how you're doing things anyway, but it's just an important point, I think, to reiterate.
Now once you've got some shared language, the next thing to do is talk about what they might expect to feel when giving, receiving or asking each other or you for feedback. And this ties in really nicely with the concepts in the chimp paradox for anyone familiar with that book? So let's imagine for a second, an RVN Louise, has recently been promoted to head nurse and she's in her appraisal with the practise manager Jane.
And then Jane gives us some feedback that some of her nursing team find the way she gives instructions is coming over as quite aggressive rather than assertive. Now she's not prepared for this, this feedback is likely to push some of her shame triggers and it's also likely to trip her limbic brain's fight, flight or freeze response. So she might at this point in the conversation, start to get some very physical responses to this.
So flushed face, sweating, dry mouth. For some people it's anger, for others it's tears. And actually, to be fair, we can't always easily actually control that response.
It's very physiological. Now when something hard happens to us, the brain wants one thing above all else. It wants a story to help it understand what's going on.
He wants you to say, oh my God, I thought the team all liked me. They must have been talking about me behind my back. I knew they liked my predecessor much more than me.
Well, Jane's never liked me. I know it was the partner that wanted me in this position rather than her. I'm gonna get the sack.
The brain then goes, OK, yep, got it. Thank you very much for the story. Here's a huge chemical reward that helps you to feel calm again, and now you've got a story you can work off.
The brain gives us that chemical reward, irrespective of the accuracy of the story. It doesn't care. It wants a story that minimises the variables, minimises the uncertainty and gives us a good guy and a bad guy.
The brain doesn't really like, well, there's a big swirl of variables out there and lots of shades of grey. We'd all be dead based on evolution, if our brain only kicked into survival mode once we gave it a balanced, rational, nuanced story with some logic and reason. Our brains naturally have a negativity bias.
In the savannah, our ancestors who survived were not the ones who gave this image the benefit of the doubt, assumed positive intent, and said, Hmm, yeah, maybe that's a beige rock. Our ancestors were the ones who categorically always assumed that is a lion, and so genetically we are working with brains that have a strong negativity bias. We have to help our teams recognise that in situations like that, their chimp brain will create a story, and often it's way off the mark and it's really not very helpful.
This is where we have to practise mindfulness and where having an emotional body system can help. So mindfulness to be aware of the reaction going on inside our bodies and pausing before responding. So that could mean Louise saying to Jane, I need, I need a few minutes to process that.
It feels pretty painful right now, and I need some time to think. And if Jane is an experienced manager, then she might agree to this and say, OK, no, that's fine. I've got loads I can help you with on this.
So can we hook up again this afternoon or tomorrow and we'll talk it through. What can then help with these initial chimp driven black and white irrational stories is actually writing them down, because that helps to bring the higher neocortex back online. And usually the story sounds so ridiculous when it's written down, because it's our like jumping up and down 5 year old, that we can see its inaccuracies, and then we can talk it through with a trusted and wise colleague.
So that's where the, the buddy thing comes in, you know, you can pair people up with people who have got a good level of emotional intelligence and they could go to and talk to them at this point. So yeah, the practising mindfulness. So what that paves the way for is actually a much calmer conversation later on or the next day between Jane and Louise, where Jane is communicating with Louise's human brain again, rather than her chimp brain and where some real progress can be made.
Now Louise probably had no idea she was coming across that way and she wants to get on with her team. And Jane probably has loads of ways that she can help Louise improve her communication style, but they won't get to that hugely beneficial conversation if Jane delivers the feedback in a shame-based way, or if Louise is highly shame prone and struggling with her self-worth and doesn't know how to evaluate and respond to her emotions in the way we've just described. It's teaching people that while positive feedback is lovely and it makes us feel great, it's actually the negative feedback that's equally as valuable in helping us get back on course.
Because we have 3 very common but utterly useless responses to feedback, and that's caving in and giving up, getting mad at the source of feedback, and worst of all probably ignoring the feedback. Now it's easier not to cave in when you remember that feedback is simply data. Any emotional charge we give it comes only from the stories we tell ourselves about that feedback, and we do have more control than we think about those stories.
So think of it instead as correctional guidance, a bit like the automatic pilot on an aeroplane. So the system is constantly telling the plane it's gone too low, too high, too far left, too far right, etc. And the plane just keeps correcting in response to the feedback.
It doesn't suddenly have a massive wobbly in midair and freak out and break down due to the relentless flow of feedback. Nor does it start trying to punch the pilot or ignore the feedback and end up in a totally different destination. Teaching people to change how they feel about negative feedback is a massive step towards cultivating a growth mindset.
Now a start point to that might be to actually rename it improvement opportunities rather than negative feedback because it's just the world telling you how and where you can improve what you're doing. So, next on the list is creating a safe space for people to practise having these types of conversations. So we call this a holding environment.
And this is something I learned from Alan Robinson and the team at Vet Dynamics. So it's more of a psychological space, really, because some practises will have a set meeting room and others might not. So it could be that for these types of conversations, you nip to Costa Coffee down the road, or I've had practises where they want to work on thrashing out the practice's values with their leadership team, where they've done it at the owner's house one evening.
Because if the only place you've got for these talks is the tea room where others might be on a break and floating in and out, that's not private enough to make people feel safe. So think about where that room could be for you. You and the team need to establish some rules around this space or for these types of meetings and you can read some of these on here.
If you have practise values, then those could be a good addition. Or you could actually get the team to brainstorm themselves some rules for how we want to treat each other as colleagues here, and then use those as your rules for the holding environment. And people need to know that when they're in this space, they're not going to be criticised or told they're stupid if they come up with suggestions or comments.
Now it might take some time for the team to get used to this, especially if you're needing to eliminate some shame gremlins or clean up practise culture a bit. And there might be some resistance to engaging first, so you've got to persist. And these conversations need to be regular.
And it doesn't matter if they're clunky and it's a bit difficult to start with because that having them regularly allows that trust to start building. And once engagement does start to build and morale improves, then people will actively welcome them and they'll look forward to them, which is great. So I haven't got time to go through this in detail tonight, but Brene has a really good checklist specific to giving feedback.
There's also a good addition to the rules of the holding environment, and you can download it from direct from her website. So her website is Brene Brown.com and it's in the downloads and guides section.
So another reference bit for you there. So after normalising, the second strategy for building an engaged team is to go on a diagnostic hunt for where shame may be overtly or covertly operating in your practise at the moment. Now one way to get a baseline report on where you're starting from might be to fashion your own anonymously completed questionnaire for everyone in the practise to complete, including the management team.
So if you go to vet surgeon.org and you click on the veterinary jobs bit, and then you look over here on the right hand side, you'll be able to see the link to that behaviour and practise survey. And you can actually download the 13 questions that they use, and you could modify those into a shame audit.
I would suggest maybe renaming it to something a bit more sexy and less threatening, of course, to encourage people to fill it in. And then you could send it out perhaps using SurveyMonkey and just take the temperature of the current level of engagement. If you want to add the positive side of engagement as well, then you could go back to the start of this webinar and include those Gallup employee engagement survey 12 questions.
They're really easy to find on Google. If you get stuck with finding them, give me a shout. So you could add those in to make it a bit more balanced, and then, just, you know, send that out and see what your start point is, where your baseline is.
OK, so our 3rd engagement strategy is teaching the team and yourself how to give and receive feedback in this new way. So the first thing is to encourage a culture where people are willing to ask for feedback. Because most people will not voluntarily give you feedback because it's a vulnerable thing to do, as we've already identified.
You know how tricky it is to even tell someone they've got a great big bogie or spinach in their teeth or whatever. So most of us won't spontaneously risk giving feedback, or we'll do it, but the heart will pump a bit. So, if you want honest and open feedback, you are going to need to ask for it.
And then make it safe for the person to give it to you. In other words, don't shoot the messenger. Conversely, some people actually can't resist giving feedback, and outside of a formal meeting like a 1 to 1, and it's not always appropriate to give someone unsolicited feedback.
The reason being now that is hopefully you can see that in order to receive feedback well and make use of it, we need to be able to work with and manage our primitive fight or flight chimp brain response. So, if you happen to be tired or upset for some other reason that day, you might not actually have the emotional beings for doing that inner work. So the culture that you're working towards is something that looks like this.
So nurse sees new grad vets putting on a cat's bandage and she can see how a technique she knows could really help and says, can I give you a bit of feedback on Tilly's bandage? The vet can then choose to respond in one of two ways. They could say, yeah, sure, fire away.
Or if they've had a really tough euthanasia consult that morning and they're not in the right mood, then the assertive response would actually be, actually, my head's not quite in the right space just now. I'm really busy. Could we, could we touch base about it tomorrow when I've got a bit more time?
Louise would then have to watch her own shame triggers around not feeling rebuffed, but if she could manage that, then both of those two could pick up that feedback conversation again the next day. Now, it will take practise and a few emotional knocks and bruises until people get the hang of it, but it's definitely possible. And just as most people won't voluntarily give you feedback unless you ask, most of us don't want to ask because we're afraid of what we're gonna hear.
However, if you can put yourself in a growth mindset and gradually shift from perfectionism to healthy striving, and it's, this is still a work in progress for me, I'm a recovering perfectionist, then there is nothing to be afraid of. You cannot fix what's not working if you're not aware. And if you take your own self-worth out of the equation by moving towards being more wholehearted, then it actually becomes liberating and motivating to get feedback.
Another good reason is that if you don't ask, you're probably gonna be the only one who's not in on the secret. If there's a major area for improvement, and this especially applies to leaders and managers, you can bet your team would have told each other, their friends, their spouses, their colleagues at neighbouring practises. Yes, they should be telling you, but they might be afraid of your reaction.
And so they're complaining to the wrong person. So to correct this, you need to do two things. Regularly ask for feedback and then respond gratefully, even if you're feeling under the surface a bit bruised and try not to get defensive.
Remember, feedback is a really precious gift. So with with these emotional techniques, it's actually good to prepare and practise. I know it sounds a bit silly.
So you could pre-prepare and practise a response like, thanks for taking the time to tell me that. I really appreciate the feedback and I'll have a think about what you've told me. Now, preparing responses also goes for positive feedback as well.
So I would quite like you to challenge your team to prepare a sentence that they will use for when someone compliments them, that says thank you to the observer, and then adds a further positive statement to back up what that person's just said. So no more dismissing positive feedback allowed. So let's say someone compliments you on how you dealt with a diabetes case, and you could say, thanks.
I went on a CPD course recently, and it's actually been great to have a case to put my new learning into practise with. Instead of saying, oh, no, I'm rubbish or whatever. Because you're teaching them to start nurturing their self-worth by doing this.
And a quite like most people will struggle with this initially, and it really takes practise. But like most things, it's a learned behaviour and it gets easier. One idea for you as a manager to get a veritable gold mine of useful information on your own performance is to send these two questions out to everyone on your team once a quarter, and then look for patterns appearing in the feedback you receive.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the quality of our relationship or me as a manager or your relationship with the management team during the last 3 months? And then for any scores that are less than 10, your next question is, what would it take to make that at 10? I know it might feel uncomfortable to start with, but if we're not willing to ask for feedback and receive it ourselves, then we'll never be good at giving it.
We have to be in the arena with our teams. Having said that, an important point to make here is that while asking for feedback is important, we also have to use our sensibility philtres to be selective about what feedback we let in. The only feedback that's valid is from people we trust who are also in the arena with us and willing to have their own vulnerable conversations and receive feedback themselves.
Anyone still in the stands who's unwilling to engage reciprocally hasn't earned the right to give you feedback. So, a cynical, critical old dinosaur of a partner telling a new grad that they're utterly useless is not feedback that the new grads should let in. And we need to teach them how to be discerning in that way.
And the final point, is this useful little mantra that could be printed out and stuck up on the prep room wall to remind people about the importance of tolerating discomfort for the sake of happy practise. And that's choose discomfort over resentment. So if someone at work is doing something that's driving you mad or not safe or that could be improved, what many of us do is keep our traps shut to avoid the 90 seconds or so of sweaty discomfort that it would take to privately have a conversation with them about it.
And then we resent them for it for the next 6 weeks and we feel frustrated and fed up every time we see it happening and it contributes to that poor generalised team morale. So, make a decision right now to choose discomfort over resentment whenever you're feeling brave enough. I promise you the payoff is worth it.
So our final strategy, just in the last couple of minutes, is to support leaders who are willing to dare greatly in this way. So three things we can do here is reading and further study, psychometric profiling, and setting up a continuous improvement process. Now there isn't time to go into these in detail tonight.
So I'm really just signposting you towards these things as resources to support you in upskilling yourself in this area. So with the reading or the listening, then I can recommend, if you want to find out more about the topics that we've been covering tonight and what's underpinning them, then I can recommend listening to the Power of Vulnerability on Audible by Brene, or the, these two of her books. She's written quite a few books, but these are the most relevant ones to tonight, which is daring greatly and rising strong.
And in terms of psychometric profiling, it's another topic I could spend a whole webinar discussing, and many of you may be familiar with it anyway, and you might have already had it done. I use the HPDI assessment at Vett Harmony because it's highly scientifically validated, and it's based on brain physiology, which I really like. So brain research has revealed that we physically have actually 4 different thinking structures within the brain.
And just like we have hand, foot and eye dominance, we also have brain dominance over which areas we tend to use in preference. And that's formed by a mix of nature and nurture, and it's not fixed, you can change it. But those dominance patterns most frequently seen in vets that are really, really useful for our clinical work in terms of diagnosis and treatment are actually quite different to those needed for mastery of most of tonight's topics.
So getting your profile run and potentially that of your leadership team can have an immense value in understanding how you might need to flex your thinking style in the right direction, or who might be the people in your team who may naturally have an aptitude for this stuff, and that could be those buddies that we mentioned earlier on. And finally, we touched start, about team meetings and how those separate sort of siloed vet nurse reception meetings with once in a blue moon team meetings tend to actually fuel shame, blame, and disconnection. And in my time working at Vet Dynamics showed me that there's, a much better, more effective and collaborative way of running team meetings.
So the final learning resource I want to direct you to is a webinar actually on here. About setting up a continuous improvement process in your practise. So you'll need to troll back a bit.
It's in the archives, and it's called Try That Didn't Work. So definitely go check that out and give that dynamics a ring if you want some guidance on how to set it up effectively. But I've seen this really, really transform communication, accountability, and team meetings within the practises that I've worked with.
OK, so as we draw tonight to a close, then I hope that what you're leaving this session now is with an understanding of what's really getting in the way when it comes to feedback and engagement in your teams. The ability to start teaching yourself and the team the emotional literacy that they need to help improve the culture in your practise. Hopefully now you understand how and why as leaders, we must solicit feedback on our own management techniques as well.
And finally, I hope some of those systems and processes that we've run through tonight are things that you feel that you want to research further on so that you can start that feedback revolution in your practises. So, I hope that's been useful for you. I will stick around now if there's any questions and do my best to, to answer them.
And after this webinar, if, if any of you feel that you would benefit from psychometric profiling or, or with your management team as well, or if you want some help on how to, to take these ideas forward in your practise, or you want me to create a bespoke workshop for you or anything like that, then please do give me an email and get in touch. And I'd like to just quickly thank our sponsors for tonight again, Simply Health, Saint Francis Group, and 8 Legal Limited. So, thank you very much.
Well, thank you, Jenny, for a very thorough, very interesting and entertaining in places, to talk. So, we have got, a couple of questions that have come through already. The first was, and this is more for Lewis, can we put up a link to that webinar, and can you remember, was it a free one, Jenny, or is it part of the which one?
The one I did at Mind Matters. I'm thinking, I'm assuming it, the question came up just as you were talking about that tried that didn't work. Oh, tried that didn't work, so.
It's not a not a free one. I think it's in the it's in the veterinary practise management stream. So if you have access to this stream, you should be able to get it.
OK, brilliant. And, and it's still there. I did check because I've got that image like literally yesterday or the day before, so it's, it's still in the archive.
Great, thanks. If Lewis can put up the link, please, that would be great. A question came through early.
It was when you were recommending people to, maybe you could, they could show your, this webinar to their team. I have to confess I'm not quite sure what they mean. It says the webinar will be useful for the staff, but I think some may not be.
I'm assuming some of the content. Do you have another version? Again, I'm not.
Yeah. OK. So there is another version.
It might be, you know, there's, there's quite a lot of focus, I guess, on the management and leadership here. So, so it might be that some practises might feel, actually, I don't want the team to see all of that. And then, because it might give them almost like a weapon or something, I don't know.
But I, I get what that person is saying. There is a, I did a version of this that explains the shame and vulnerability language, in relation to finding your passion and purpose. And that is one of the free sessions from this January's Mind Matters lectures.
I don't know how that, so that's from this year's virtual congress, Andy, I don't know how long they're going to be available for. Oh, my understanding is they'll be around ad infinitum. Ad infinitum brilliant.
OK. So that's the, so it's called, I think it was called Passion and what, oh gosh, I can't remember now, . Can I go and look at it while I'm, no, I'm sharing a screen with you aren't I?
The surprising truth about Reaching our passion and purpose or something. If you put passion and purpose in the search bar of the webinar vet thing, it'll come up. Well, presuming they search for you as well.
Yeah, that's it. If you search for me, I've only got 3 webinars on here. It's one of those, you'll spot it.
And that one is, yeah, it's only 30 minutes as well, so it actually fits better into a lunch and learn. It doesn't mention any of the management or feedback stuff. It just explains actually in a bit more detail.
The shame and vulnerability stuff and how that relates to the vet profession in general. So yeah, probably actually a better one. Brilliant.
You've got a thank you from Hillary there, and I see Lewis has, put in the chat box, the link to that, tried that didn't work webinar cracking, . I've got a couple of questions for you if you don't mind. You've talked a lot about, perfectionism there.
It's, it's a kind of a direct link between shame and perfectionism? Absolutely, yeah, definitely. So perfectionism is a It's a, it's a huge vulnerability shield.
So, so basically, when, when we have when we have shame triggers, and we feel that sense of, of, you know, when the shame gremlins are talking quite loudly at us and saying, Never good enough, or who do you think you are, then we, one way, one solution that our brain comes up with that is that, OK, well, if I can just be absolutely perfect, then people won't see that, you know, they won't see my failings. They won't see that poor self-image that I have of myself. And so it's almost like an outer layer of It's, it's a protective mechanism driven by shame.
. And when you can when you can start to move away from that, you can shift to healthy striving. So healthy, healthy striving is is is not shame driven. It says that I am enough and it doesn't matter if I fail, if I try, if I try something new and I try something different and it doesn't work, my self worth isn't on the line.
So, for those of us that are more shame prone, and certainly, it's, it's something that I have to work on a lot. I, I have quite a lot of shame triggers for my upbringing and my teenage years, and, and a lot of the typical ones that vets have, you know, I was praised very heavily for being clever and stuff. And then, but to vet school and was in, quote, one of the thick vets.
And so, I've got shame triggers that now with the knowledge that I have that I've run through tonight, I'm really working through them and I'm, as soon as you shine a light on them and you bring them into the conscious awareness, they almost evaporate because you can see that they're not true and your, your cognitive rational brain. Can challenge them and can overcome them. It's when you aren't aware they're there, they operate like a pair of glasses you don't know you've got on your face, and they operate then from your, your primitive limbic system.
So they just trigger emotions and reactions and you don't know it's happening. So yeah, so perfectionism is shame driven for sure. OK, right, thank you for that.
I mean, obviously I'm sure you're aware. Of Eleanor O'Connor's work around perfectionism and that link with sort of mental health problems and suicide. So that was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's, it's an impossible aspiration. So you're setting yourself up to fail. And the thing is, when someone, when a perfectionist does fail, they don't question the process of what was happening or look for ways to make it better.
They just go. I wasn't perfect enough. And they try to be even more perfect, instead of actually looking at what would be being brave enough to look at what would help them improve.
So it just, it just doesn't work. And it's a, it's like a massive 20 tonne shield that we lug around thinking that it's protecting us when actually it's the very thing that's getting in the way of people seeing who we truly are. OK, we've just got, right another question come through from Cameron.
As a new graduate, my boss is forever running to other senior vets, mentioning my mistakes and making critical remarks. Weeks later, I get questioned about these mistakes by other vets, which makes me feel really bothered. I brought this issue up with my boss, yet she continues to do it.
How do I handle this as a new grad? Wow. OK.
So, yeah, that's, that's, that's really, really difficult. As in, I, I feel for you that that's, that's horrible. It shouldn't be happening.
It is shame-based. I would say that, that, that the person, the boss has obviously feels this is an appropriate way to manage people, which it, which it isn't. I think you're doing the right thing by addressing it with them.
And I think what the thing to do is to keep, keep a record. So, When you're bringing this type of thing up, you need specific dated examples, which you might have been doing already, Cameron, but, you know, on this date, I heard from receptionist X that this is what was said. So it's very behavioural focused.
It's not just an opinion or a something subjective that could be queried. It's actual, it's actual data. And keep a track of those.
And just, I mean, I don't know if, I don't know, Cameron, if you've got any regular feedback systems like appraisals or one to ones. I would suspect possibly not. But if you have, you need to keep bringing it up.
And if you don't have those structures, then I would just take it to them again. And ask that just request that if they have any issue with your performance or any, any, any comments at all, that you would really appreciate it if they would speak to you in private and not discuss it in a public forum. And if that's consistently not happening when you've given them some data-based instances, then, I guess long term, it'll be about questioning whether that's the most supportive environment that you could be, you know, continuing your efforts in, because if you've requested a change and that person isn't changing, you could talk about it to someone else.
I don't know if you, I don't know if that's the only boss or if there's any, any other, people, any other partners or practise managers or anything that you could speak to as well. But you're doing the right things, I would just keep doing what you're doing, and if you're getting ignored or if that's not happening, it might be time to question whether that's the most supportive environment for you. Because it's not appropriate and it's just not gonna help your confidence.
OK, right, thank you for that. I mean, I don't know, it's worth pointing out at this, at this stage. I do a lot of work in the NHS and we use a very simple model called the BF model.
If you come across that, so it's, and I'm just thinking it might be appropriate here where Cameron could talk to their boss about the behaviour that she's exhibiting the impact it's having on him, the feeling. That it's provoking and therefore in the future, how he wants things to change. Yeah, great.
I love that. That's yeah, that would be brilliant. It's like the iMessage, isn't it?
Yeah, it's just a nice simple, simple step there. We've had another question. If you have a member of staff with many personal issues and you've raised matters of inaccuracies and they deny them, but you have client complaints about them and are aware the issues are happening, what can you do?
You get some. Yeah, no, that's fine. Can you just read it to me a little bit more, more slowly so I can just get, get the.
If you have a member of staff with many, I'm not personal issues, personnel issues, I beg your pardon. Raise the matters of inaccuracies and they deny them, but you have client complaints about them and are aware of the issues are happening, what can you do? So I guess it's basically somebody's in denial about an issue.
What can you do about it? Yeah, so. I'm guessing that might be that they are having personal issues with other members of the team or speaking inappropriately to clients.
So I think actually you're, you know, very similar, similarly to what you were just saying, it, and what was the final bit? Have they already tried addressing it with them? No, it doesn't say they have.
Yeah, the answer is yes, yes, they have. Yeah. OK, so there is, so again, it's similar to what we said to Cameron.
It's about making sure that you, because this this is a person who is clearly not listening to the feedback. So they might be dropping below that line on my diagram towards performance management. And so, but obviously, we want to be compassionate.
We want to help them as well. If we can, we, you're looking for two ways to help them change their behaviour to start with, and only after time, if that's not happening, then things, things change. But, so again, it's writing down any, any dates, times, and what the specific behaviour was.
And then it's grabbing that person, not waiting. So another thing is, when, when something like that happens, it's dealing with it straight away. So not in public in front of everyone, but that day or the next day, or as soon as you hear about it.
Not waiting 2 or 3 weeks, so deal with it straight away, getting them in and saying this is what's I've heard has happened or seen has happened or what the client is saying has happened. . Let, can I, can I get your, you know, what's your side of the story?
And they will probably come out with a whole load of defensive, well, it's not my fault, or I didn't say that, or whatever, but just let them get it out because you're, you're listening to their chimp now. So let them get the story out, jot down a few notes. And then what the, the, a good way to frame it is around, if you do have practise values, if you do have practise, rules around that type of behaviour or whatever, then, it can be useful to, to sort of help frame that person's behaviour or instance in, you know, cause they can, if they're denying it, you can say, OK, well, that's, that's fine, but clearly, the client was upset or the receptionist was upset or whatever.
So, There's a, you know, there's a, there's a mismatch here. Can you see how that behaviour is getting in the way of this value or, or whatever it is? And even if they're still saying, well, no, I don't.
Then it's about giving clear expectations at that point. So, Hopefully, if you talk it through with them and reflect it back at them, then you can have some discussion and get to a point where hopefully they can start to see how they, how they're impacting. But, but after that section, it's really about giving clear expectations to say, look, in the future.
This is the expectation I have around this, and then. Making sure that you you want to get them to agree, to, to agree to that expectation and, and agree that they will, they will try and do that moving forward. And then the next thing to do is to set a meeting date, so irrespective of, just to set a meeting date, maybe a couple of weeks and following to discuss it again, say, look, we're gonna touch back in with this again.
So they know they're not off the hook and it's not going to get ignored. And then just keep monitoring that. So if two weeks later they haven't upset a client or pissed off a member of the team.
Then you can say, look, when you have that meeting, well, OK, clearly we're getting somewhere in in this instance. So, yeah, it's a little bit similar to your, this thing, but yeah, it's keeping. Dates and times, talking to them about it, getting their side of things, but then not letting them off the hook and giving them a really clear expectation about what you expect from them.
Excellent. Thank you. I think, oh, and thank you from Hillary for that as well.
I noticed, Lewis has put up that second link as well in the chat to your passion and purpose webinar, so if people haven't seen it, that's there too. OK, well, at the moment we don't appear to have any more questions, so, OK, no problem. I'll give them another maybe 10 seconds if anybody has last, last second question they want to ask.
If not, I'd just like to say again, thank you very much, Jenny. That was an excellent presentation. I enjoyed it.
I've enjoyed it. I always enjoy talking to you guys. Yeah, and look forward to hearing another one of yours in the future, hopefully.
OK, well, have a good evening everyone, and thanks for having me. Thanks, Jenny. Cheers now.
Cheers, bye.
