Welcome back everybody, as we start to look towards heading into our penultimate talk of of today's CPD sessions. And this one is a great one, supporting your team's strengths. And I look at, you know, my career and I was the one person in the practise that I worked at that loved dentistry, so I was fortunate that I got allowed and enabled, er and very much empowered to to to pursue that dental interest because nobody.

Else wanted to in the practise, and areas that I perhaps didn't have much of an interest, I was able to pass on to other people, because I knew that they would deliver them significantly better, and I am delighted that we are joined for this session by Caroline Crowe, who, those of you who are here for the introductions this morning will be aware that I referred to as very much to coaching in the veterinary profession, what Edison was to light bulbs. And she really is that good when you come to coach. Caroline is an experienced equine vet and an award-winning high performance coach.

She's a mentor, an international speaker, researcher and lecturer. She has a master's degree in workplace health and wellbeing, and she's a master trainer in disc behavioural profiling and a CPCAB trainer in stress management and well-being, a certified trainer in resilience, a mental health first aider and an honorary lecturer at the University of Liverpool. She has specific expertise in and interest in creating healthy workplace cultures, positive leadership, and is passionate about helping others thrive at work and in their lives.

Caroline was awarded Coach of excellence accreditation and her fellowship of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2020 for her outstanding contribution to the profession. Loving a challenge in 2017 and for some, Hard wiring, difficult to understand reasons, she decided to run 10 marathons in 10 days, but in doing so raised over £100,000 for the Brook charity. And I can personally speak to the fact that her involvement and engagement with the profession has made an, Immeasurable impact on so many individuals, but also the professional as a, as a whole, so I am delighted that she is here to join us and I'm gonna hand you over to her now, er, to look at how we can really play to each other's strengths in practise.

Over to you Caroline. Thanks, Ben. I feel like I've been put on a pedestal.

I hope I don't come crashing down. Now, so I'm just going to share my, share my screen hopefully. What I would like you to do, is there any questions, any specific questions, as Ben said before, put them into the question box, and we will, we'll do that, have a look at those in the panel discussion.

But I would like to, would like to sort of just like ask you lots of questions during the session so we can have it as interactive as possible. I think that's, that's often one way that these, these sessions can work really well as if we were in the room and if we're in the room, if you've seen me speak before, I'll get, I would sort of like to get people involved because otherwise, listening to me for 40 minutes is dull. So, and you're the you're the people who've got the information and you're the ones who know your team.

So, I think using this next 45 minutes just to just pause, actually, and just think about what's working and what's not working. I think it's especially at the moment, where everybody's so busy. And when I'm coaching teams and coaching leaders, and working, working with people, it's one of, and I'm sure you'll probably find know, at the moment for yourselves is that it's just not enough time.

And there's never enough time even pre-COVID, there wasn't enough time. But at the moment, it can feel really hard to, do like, the bigger picture thinking, the sort of more strategic. Work, the, the appraisals, the one on ones, the meetings, the actually what are my team doing rather than we just all got to do, do, do, do.

So hopefully just grab a pen, grab a paper, and just some down some notes because what I want you to take away is some actions. But then my my question at the end of the end of this session for you is going to be what you're gonna start doing, what are you're gonna stop doing, and what you're gonna continue to do. So always thinking about, what action are you're going to take.

Also, why, why I'd like you to get involved and put stuff in the chat is because when I say something, you might take one thing from it. But actually, the person who would virtually be sitting next to you might take something else. And if we can share those reflections, actually we all learn more.

So, we all have greater capacity to take more away from just my, like, one perspective that we will, that we'll all have as we sort of go through the different exercises and just sort of different thought process. So my first couple of questions for you right at the beginning are what are your team good at? So maybe just if you can put that into into the into the chat box, what's what you got, what, what are kind of speaks is good, is it?

What are your team good at? So what are your team good at? Anybody gonna start putting those things in.

So what are your team good at? Animal care, yeah, supporting each other. What else are they good at?

Supporting one another, yeah. Providing them to join this emergency care, the care, the the work with the clients, communication, time management. Yeah.

Multitasking. Yeah, none of us can multitask, unfortunately, but yes, we all try and do it. Where do they trip themselves up?

So, where, where, where did your team trip themselves up? So they're good at, good at communicating, good at working with the animals, good at time management, guarding the care. Where do they, where do they, where do they trip themselves up?

Trying to do too much work, so multitasking, yeah. There's no team at the moment, so, workload, taking on too much responsibility, taking things too personally, taking care of themselves, absolutely, not the pre-planning, not delegating, so feeling like everything is has got to be done by me, got to be done now, not necessarily putting in managing expectations, boundaries, maybe even checking what they need to do, organisation which then feeds into organisation time. Management, rushing, and all these things will lead to mistakes because the reality is we're just people, no matter what letters we have after the name, no matter how much experience we have, we're just people.

So, we will make mistakes, and those will be mistakes in terms of our technical mistakes. So maybe in patient care, maybe, but also often in our, reactions and our emotions as well. So.

Like I wanna be put unnecessary emotions. The reality is we're all emotional beings, we're all people. But we need to make sure that we're in a state where we can manage ourselves and, and high-performing environment, which is something we actually all work in, the high pressures of environment, and that's all really good.

It's making sure that we are managing ourselves, in order to get the best out of ourselves and to, to, to, Fuel and channel the energies and the emotions and the situations and our abilities and our focus so that we all have the right outcome. And that's one where we're coming together, that we're looking after, of course, the animals under our care, but also communicating effectively, that we're doing it in the right way, and that doesn't mean the gold standard way, it just means the right way for the team and it's driving things forward rather than too often actually pulling, pulling things apart. Another question, so you've sort of said like what your team are good at, where they trip themselves up.

How do you know? So how do you know what your teams are good at? How do you know where they're tripping themselves up?

How do you know? How are you monitoring it? How are you mapping it?

Is it just what you see? Is it only, you only sort of seeing it when it's a problem? How?

So your own experience of what yeah, what you're seeing anybody else from conversations, so conversations with who is that conversations with, with, with clients, is it conversation with colleagues, conversations with them? Yeah, so clients. Yeah, with colleagues Team meetings, one on ones, yeah.

Asking for feedback, yeah. So when problems are waiting for the when problems arise. Some of the challenges we have is, is that balance between, sort of firefighting, like reacting to situations and problems and trying to put the structures in place where we have, we are proactively managing, the situation, the environment, the people who are working within them.

By having the meetings, having the stretches, having the feedback, having, making sure we're feeding back good, making sure we're, we're picking up people in a timely manner when, when there is, a challenge or an issue, dealing with it there and then, not allowing it to build, not thinking, oh, I just haven't got time myself, because the problem is that all of you, if you, if you're, if you're leading teams, if you're managing teams. And that's a massive job for you to do. How many of you, have time allocated in your diary?

So if, if you have a management or a leadership role, how many of you, how many of you have time allocated in your diary to focus on like the strategic how to support your team, the, the appraisals, the, the, the day to day. Niggles and performance enhancing things that you need to do. So how, so if you, if you have, if you do have that role and you do have time, put yes in.

If you do have that role but you don't have time allocated, just put no in and just, so just put yes or no. 50/50 at the moment. So yes, no.

Yeah, some of you do. No, no, no. OK.

So for those who have said yes, so that's, that's great, you've got time allocated into the diary. For those of you who said no, it's just recognising, if you don't have time allocated to do it, how are you going to possibly do it effectively? So, so it's just, it's just thinking about what might need to happen.

For those who have said yes, how much time do you have allocated on a weekly basis? So say a weekly basis, you might not have, you might have it, biweekly or so fortnightly, but how much time do you have allocated on a weekly basis just to give other people, an awareness of what they might, what they could book in. So 15 minutes, that's, that's not a lot.

An hour in total, OK. And so for even those who've got to it, is it enough? Do you ever get to the situation?

Do you feel on top of, brilliant, so you, Claire's got regular slots in, so short amounts of time, but regularly, so that's great. Do any of you, or do, sorry, do you, do you feel really on top of what your team are doing, how they're doing it? And that's not micromanaging.

I don't, I absolutely do not be micromanaging, but just you an awareness of what they're focusing on, how they're doing, what, how they're performing, what's working. What's not working? Or do you, feel that, God, like, where did that come from?

I didn't, I didn't see that one coming. Do you, are you having to deal with things, or do you feel like, God, why don't you just tell me that? Like 2 weeks ago, I would have been able to deal with it when it's much smaller?

Because if it's the latter, then again, that's probably one of the signs that maybe not enough time is allocated to The people part. And I know it's really hard when that your clinical load is like it's just a stream of coming, coming, coming, but it's simply about what boundaries and what needs to be put in place to, help you do that. So just things to sort of think about and to start off with them because when we're thinking about building a high performing team.

And looking at your team's strengths, we need to understand, so the, the, the sort of key elements we, we need to think about are understanding yourself. So, who are you as a leader and a manager of them, what are your strengths, where are your areas of weakness, where, what are your areas of growth, what can they rely on you for, how are you dealing with things? How to understand other people.

So, like, who have you got in your team? What are the different person What are the different characteristics, what are the different skill levels? Do you know them as individuals?

And how well do you know them? Do you know what their trigger zones are? Do you know what their, what really, what floats their boat?

Do you, do you know them? Do you understand them? Do you lean into those relationships?

Do you engage with those, or do you just, I haven't got time. Which is a real it's a real, real feeling and it's a real, and it's, and it's reality. So it's again, how, how are we managing with that?

Do you know what your team vision is and values are? And that's not to sound American or too much business speak, and we're just a vet practise. It's, where is your practise going?

And why should I work with you? Why should I work in that practise? What do you value at work?

And making sure that everybody's on the same page, because then you all can go in one direction. Otherwise, if it's an assumption or presumption that, well, it's obvious what we need to do. We need to look after the animals.

Under our care. That's one that's one element of it. There was so much more and actually, we often work with practises where actually you realise that people are just pulling against each other because they're not on the same page and not because of any, Purposeful reason for them actually I'm going to go against what the management are doing, but actually just because too many assumptions and assumptions are, are, are being made and our and it's not everyone hasn't hasn't sort of been brought back to back to focus.

High performing teams really enhance the strengths of really understanding what is working well and what isn't working well as well. What are the drains to the team's resilience and drains to the performance, and what are the trigger zones as well, and then having that regular. Regular space and time for open honest communication, having that, environment and culture of positive feedback, well, no, not positive feedback, feedback.

Constructive feedback, which will obviously be positive and more constructive, or developmental, and, and but also that's that environment where we put everything on the table, so we actually respect each other, but actually behaviours are really important and behaviours breed behaviours and it doesn't matter how much money you bring into the practise, doesn't matter what title you have, what letters you have after your name. Like it, it just, I'm not interested. In it.

I'm, I'm interested in how you behave at work, and do you behave professionally, because it have a massive impact onto the performance and the ability for your team to, to, work with their strengths and develop their strengths and, and be the best version of themselves. And that will also feed on to, on to you as well as, as one of those cogs in that, in that bigger wheel. So this is I just wanted to again just have a, have a little exercise really just to Maybe just, and, and you won't have all the answers now, but maybe you could, I could either write down the questions I'm going to ask, or you could, just to think about afterwards, or you can just maybe take one or two members of your team, or you can take your team as a whole when you, when you sort of work through this.

And, and just thinking about actually how well do you know your team, and, and I believe that from there, and how well do they know you. So, If you think about it and just think about some questions like . If I asked you, what makes your team tick?

Could you answer that? I mean, you don't need to necessarily write this down in the chat, but probably just keep this, you can keep this for yourself and just think, actually, what does make my team tick? What causes them to be concerned?

So what are the things, what are the alarm bells that you know, if that situation's happening, that's, that's going to be sort of red, red rag to a ball with them. That's going to, you know, you're gonna get an emotional response. So what causes them concern?

Why do they work? Because, again, I will work for one particular reason. Somebody else will work for another reason.

It doesn't mean that any person is like, I'm more engaged in my work than the next person, but we all have different reasons of why we work. And then also what do we value about our work. And if you aren't sure, or if you think, well, it's obvious, just ask yourself, is it obvious?

Because some of the people in your practise and your team will be because of the animals. Some would be absolutely, the animals are just not their main main priority. Some would be down to money.

Some would be like doing a good job. Some would would be, trying to do the best that they can do. Some people, some, for some people it would be, about helping others, about, giving back.

Others it would be about being able to focus on something really technical. Others, it will be about the variety that they, that they will see. Others will be about working with people.

So everybody is different. And everybody will need something different from work. It doesn't mean you need to provide it, but you need to know what they get from it.

And also then what do they value at work? What do they value around the visual and ethos around the practise and the culture? What do they value around how you work as a team?

Well, what do they value about how you interact with your clients? What do they value about, how they, how they interact and everyone interacts with the animals and or our care about the, level of medicine and surgery and equipment and because every practise is different. There's varied and it doesn't mean that one practise is better than another.

They're just different. They have different work values. So because if you, again, knowing what you value at work and what your team value at work, it means that you can actually be really clear when you're recruiting people, when you are enhancing and building better teams, you actually really pull out those values.

But if you want to work here, or this is what we really value, we value respect and respect. And again, drilling down with what's respect because respect to me means something. Respect to you might mean something very different.

So what does respect look like in our team? How do we need and want and require people to turn up to work each day? What does professional look like?

And again, have you had those conversations? Often, often actually we haven't had those conversations. But and now is a brilliant time, we're unlocking today, for most people, and various, that means various things, but it's now on this next iteration, so the fact that we will be changing some things or or most people something will be changing, it's actually just we can use these points just touch points just to go actually.

What do we value? Let's actually have a bit of a team meeting. What do we value?

What do we? And you might go, Oh, I haven't got time. But actually making time for some of these things is, will save you time in the future.

Make your life easier. And again, bring your team together to find some commonality and that understanding of self, of others, of working together. Also just knowing that, remember, like, you've got people working in your practise, you are a person, part of, part of you will be being a vet or a vet nurse or a practise manager or a receptionist or whatever role you have.

And your team have, but it's only your job. And yes, it's a really important part of your job, but it's just your job. It doesn't totally define who you are.

So what else do they do outside of work? What else is important to them? Being able to speak to them on a human level is absolutely key to help engagement at work, to feel valued, to feel present, to feel seen.

Rather than just the A cog in a wheel. OK, we're people in, in, in, in all of this. Finding out what impact this situation, the current situation at the moment is happening to them, happening for them.

How is it impacting them? And not in a, in a big emotional way, but actually just understanding, understanding people, leaning into those relationships. Also, do you know how well I know you, or are you a bit of a closed book at work?

And I think it's really quite hard for leaders to think, oh, I can't, I can't be me, but we can be friendly. We can be approachable. We can't be, I think it's really, really hard to be friends when you're a leader, and I think you're going into very, very dodgy territory, territory territory.

I can't say that ground, and, but absolutely being friendly, being approachable, being a human leader is absolutely key. So. How do you like to be given feedback?

Do you ever get any feedback? Or actually, do you not because you're the boss or you're the leader, and actually people are too scared, however approachable you are, you are still the boss, or you are the person that they will look up to, or that they, that you, that you pay their, their, pay their bills. But actually, just actually talking to them on a human level of what's working, what's not working at the moment, But have to tell them all your backstory.

But actually, again, having those human connections, finding something, some commonality to, to, to develop that, build that rapport. And understanding what their triggers are as well. And do you also, the other question is, do you know what makes a good day at work for them?

Because what makes a good day at work for you can be very different to them. But again, understanding what makes a good day at work for each person, each person, what also tips them into that sort of feeling of being overwhelmed. It can be a massive insight for you to understand how you're going to steer your boat, because then it can enable you to be that one step ahead of them.

So that when these challenges and these curve balls keep coming, they will keep coming, you can help them help themselves, not do it for them, but help them help themselves. So it's just thinking about how well do you know your team, how well do they know you, and where are the gaps. And what do you need to find out?

What could you find out? What will you find out, so that you can again, feel better, build together. Ben said, one of the things I do is, and we do a lot of BDS training is, we a master trainer of this behavioural profiling.

So this is a, a behavioural profiling tool to help people understand themselves, help people understand other. And others as well. We use this a lot.

So we use in everything we do. So whether it's teamwork, whether it's leadership training, whether it's one on one coaching, whether it's conflict management, whether it's, resilience training, whether it's, communications, because It is such a good starting point. And that is what it is.

It's a starting point because and it's about how to understand, preferences, preferences of your own style and preferences of other people's style. It also gives teams, because it gives yourself, and then also teams a common language to probably have some difficult conversations. And importantly, also to improve.

Thr awareness. So if you're wanting to build a better team, if you're wanting to focus on your team's strengths and weaknesses, and, and there, so, enhance enhance strengths and overcome the weaknesses, then in order to do that, we need to have a level of self-awareness. In order to develop anything, we need to know what we're starting with.

And this is an incredibly quick. Effective and accurate tool, to enable us to do that. So in 10 minutes, you can understand what makes them tick, what their preferred way of working is, what their preferred communication style, why they do what they do, why, they react in certain ways.

So as I said, we use it with, with everything we do and, and it's, and also to give I said as I said, that common language to people to go, ah. Oh, that's why they do that. Oh, I thought that they were just being an ass or difficult, or whatever, whatever thought might come to somebody's, somebody's mind.

Because I would like to suggest that the majority, and then I'm meaning like 98% of people, if not more, people do not come into work thinking, I'm going to be really difficult today. And yet, their behaviour and your behaviour and my behaviour can come across sometimes as if we've come to work thinking, I'm gonna be really difficult today. So this also gives us a tool to lean in, to be intrigued and interested in people's behaviour rather than irritated and frustrated.

And again, if we're wanting to build better, we need to understand what's happening now and this is, this is the way to do, this is one of the ways to do it, and it's a tool, and it's something that we can then use. So more than happy after this to talk to you more, but I can bore you senseless with, with this because I use it every day because I'm that boring. But it's because it's so, it's so fascinating and so, so useful.

This is also another really nice tool, and anybody who has seen any work with us, probably over the last 2 or 3 years, you will, you'll you'll recognise this site. And it's something we use probably in most presentations, because I think it's just so useful. And I don't make any excuses for that.

It it just, it's something that I will use every day, just to locate for myself, like, where am I at the moment. We will work in a pressurised environment. Whether we're in clinic or or outside of a clinic.

And the world's pressurised, you know, it's just like life is. But how we perform in that and how we manage ourselves, we can really take control of. So when our ourselves are saying, like, it's, it's, it would be really intimidating if you now went to your team members individually or even as a team and went, what makes you tick?

What do you, what causes you concern? What do you do out of outside work? What do you value all that?

Because they're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're very unlikely to get a true picture. But you can again use some tools. So you could use this and you could put this up on the on the whiteboard or you can have a team meeting, send it around.

I'm more than happy to give you a copy of it, . You can laminate it, you can do whatever you want. And just go, look, we all work in a pressurised environment.

We need some pressure to perform. We don't need stress, but we need pressure to perform. And what we want to do is we want to be in that green zone when we're having a good day, when the pressure's on, but it feels good.

We're gaining energy. We are communication's good. We're doing, you know what it's like, it's great.

Just time flies. It's, it's fab having a good day. So.

Ben, for example, what makes having a good day for you? And you can just ask Sarah, what, what, what does, what does a green day look look like for you? And then rather than what caused you stress?

Oh, no, nothing, nothing, I don't, cause that's a, that's a negative word. I don't, I'm never stressed. I'm big and brave and absolutely fine.

Actually, just what, what, what's happening when you go into red? You don't even have to use the word overwhelm. You can just go, How do you know when you're, when you're hitting, when you're moving towards which red?

Because we all do. God, we, we all, we all will hit that. What signs are there?

What do you notice when you're You're doing in green, and what do you notice when you're in red? So get them to be aware of themselves, what behaviours they're doing, but also by doing that, they're communicating to you what the trigger signs. Actually, when I'm in green, I know that I'm being really good at communicating.

Actually, I know go really quiet when I, when I hit over one. Right, oh, alarm bell. When Caroline goes quiet, I need to probably just check in.

So you don't need to be like micromanaging and over their shoulder all the time, but it just gives you that insight. And then on a day to day basis, you can start the day. Where are we at the moment?

So 2 seconds question to the team before we all just go straight into consults and busy, busy, busy. Like, where are we at the moment? Are we starting in grey, green, or red?

And then after 11 o'clock, coming back together, like, again, a minute, where are we at the moment? We've just had a couple of emergencies and are we still in green? Are we, are we dipped into red?

What do we need to do in order to be back in green? What could you do? What will you do?

So again, you, you reflect it back to the team. So the team are focusing on, on what they can do. You're not having to then go and fix it all for them, but again, using that.

And, and, and where, yeah, just where you met, OK, you've, you, you've gone into overwhelm. OK. So what's happening?

OK, what does, what does having good, a good, good day, what does green look like? The things which are tipping you into red, what, what needs to happen to enable them to be green? OK, what could you do?

What do you expect of other people? OK, and then just, just because this is an active process on a day to day basis, we will do this probably a little bit, and or we'll just go and we'll, we'll move because we're all under pressure. Many of us have got lots of stuff going on outside of work as well.

And certainly in this environment at the moment, there's lots of pressures, there's lots of concerns, there's lots of anxieties that are going around in our head. And so we're, we're likely to feel overwhelmed pretty quickly. And, so again, just What are you doing to actively switch off on a day to day basis?

What are you doing to bring yourself back down on the left-hand side of the curb? And that's during the day as well. So, again, those half halts during the day, every 2 hours, having a little, having, if you've got your phone on you, just having a little alarm, just buzz at you and just so that you stop and just go, Right, what's working?

What's not working? Where am I? Am I?

Green, and my red, and my grey? Like, where am I? What am I doing?

How am I doing it? Like, go again. So these are momentary resets during the day to pull back and halfho to check in.

So ideally your team will do this as individuals, but until that, actually doing it as a team. They're stopping, right? It's now 11 o'clock, stop, everybody.

And then at half halt and then go again and again at 1 o'clock and again at 3 o'clock. And you might say I haven't got time to do this, how are we possibly going to do that? What are the consequences if you don't?

And actually are things slipping, are things slipping as you go through the day, because everyone's just gone into, you know, it's like sometimes, when you feel that you're sort of put on that hamster wheel and you're not even in control of how quickly it's spinning, and at the end of the day, you're spat out, and that's will be happening as a team as well sometimes. And you sort of get to the end of the day and it's like. It's like a catastrophe behind you.

And you might have just kept on top of it. But actually, that's when if we're not careful, we will then go home and go, Did I do that? Did I not do that?

Oh my gosh. Oh. And then if we don't switch off, so if your team are not switching off in the end of the day, and that'll be for you as well, then how rested and how recovered are they gonna be?

And where are they actually more likely to come back to work on the next morning? Are they more likely to come back in the, in that, like, left-hand side of the green, or are they already nearly in the overwhelm already? Or even starting in an overwhelm?

So again, it's just this is, this is a good visual tool. I think if we can use visual stuff as well, it's not, I'm not having a direct conversation with you about. What makes a good day and, what causes you stress, and, and it can feel quite, intense.

It's just like, oh, look at this. Talk to me about this. And, and so just get them to describe what they're, what they think about, about that as a, as a, as a tool.

Because that will really help you manage expectations. And I think that's really key. Oh, my, my diagram's got a bit.

Bit dodge. So. Remember the, the myths, that the, the, oh God, what I'm trying to say, the gap between expectation and reality is going to cause frustration.

And the quickest way to frustrations because of mis mismatching expectations is making assumptions and presumptions. So thinking about each and every one of your team, and this is a nice exercise to do. So you do your little circle and you put yourself in the middle, and do this for your family members as well, because we're all little teams when we're family members.

And then, right there, do a circle for each member of your team. So that might be a small team, it might be quite a large team if you've got a large team, just think about who you're connecting with on a day to day basis. It might be a senior management team, it might be like a might be a line of, of team.

And then put their names in. And then just ask yourself, have I had a clear and purposeful conversation. Around what I expect of you and what you expect of me.

So I could say, actually, have I had a conversation with Sarah about what I expect of her and what she expects to me? And I, and I don't mean a, an assumed conversation. I mean an actual conversation of what do you need from me?

So different words will work for different people. It's not about just sitting people down and what do you expect from me? And this is what I expect of you, but actually, like, what do you need from me?

This is what I from you or how do I, like, do you know how they like to work with you or what they expect in terms of your working relationship or what support looks like or what, well depending on what your role is. So yes, I have sat down with Sarah and I have said, what do you need from me? This is what I need from you.

How does it work when I give you a report, when I ask, does delegation work, etc. So doing, doing that is, it's really important. So yes, I've had a conversation with Sarah.

Now, I've had a conversation with John because John is, a new report, to me, and so I have, I have definitely, I've said to John, actually, this is what I expect of you. I've gone through his role, gone through his responsibilities. God, I don't, he's never asked me what he, what he expects of me.

So actually my arrow is from me to him. Whereas Karen, yeah, I know exactly what she expects of me, but she has told me, and she tells me multiple times, hey, really, so I know exactly what she expects of me, but no, I have never, ever. Had a conversation with her about maybe what I need from her or what I expect from her.

And with Sam, like, I work really closely with Sam, and we work really well every day. There's not a problem, but actually, have I ever checked in to think about, does it work or does it not work? No, I haven't.

So there's a gap. So if you, you do your, do your, do your circles and then just put, where are your arrows? And Are they, are they both ways?

If they're not, it's thinking, OK, what conversations do I need to have? Because again, if I'm wanting to manage my, and improve my team's strengths, I need to, because we, we need to manage expectations. You can only meet expectations if you first of all understand those expectations and are clear about those expectations, and then you can manage them.

Too often we try and manage expectations or get upset because somebody expects something, and we were unaware, or we're unclear. Or what I expected was different to what they expected. And they expected that, or, I expected that.

They expected that, and then, well, I might as well just do it myself. It's quicker and easier to do that. So expectations is the mismatch of expectations and mother or frustrations.

So always don't leave, things to as to assumptions and presumptions. So, I was just thinking about actually, well, what are, what are my, what are my strengths in how I lead? What are, what are my strengths in how I do my job, my role, where are my areas of growth?

Am I aware of those? Am I understand, I understand how I would prefer things to be, and I preferred communication style? Do I understand the communication style of others in my team?

Am I able and do I, so not only are you able, so are you aware, are you able, and do you modify your approach depending on the environment, the situation, the people, and the message you're trying to communicate? Or do you always say things in a certain way? And too often we, we hear that.

Well, this is how I am and this is who I am, and this is what I'm going to do. Fine, do that. Outside of work, do not do that inside of work.

That is not OK. We all have to professional behaviour is about modifying and adapting. We can only modify and adapt if we know what our starting place is.

And that's where this, again, the disc profiling can really, really, really help, with that first bit of awareness to then go, OK, this is how I come across. It works in this situations, but if I overuse that as a strength, it will like trip me up. So because of who I who's around me and the message I need to do, this is now how I have to modify.

And that is incredibly easy to say when we stood here talking about it, much harder in the moment. And that's where, again, that coaching and that, that work on that, so that, again, that awareness, you can be one step ahead of yourself and make your life easier. And I'm up for an easy life.

So anything that can make your, make your life easier is, or make my life easier, and then hopefully your life easier as well. I'm, I'm, I'm up for doing. We often talk about when we're talking about focusing on team stunts about motivating people and engaging people, we know that, the majority of people are in your workplace, just because they're at work, are sat on the fence.

So they're not engaged, and nor they are they necessarily, actively disengaged. But that means we've got a massive, . Pool of of potential resource that we can use, which is the human potential.

We also know just being in the betting profession at the moment, there is a lot of stress and strain, in, in, in them. So actually, again, understand how many of your team are actually dis disengaged and because it has a, has a cost in terms of financial cost. Human cost and moral responsibility we need in order to have that engaging, engaging working, workplace.

And, we are more, if we're not engaged, we're more likely to have poor communication, miscommunication, more likely to make mistakes. So it's something that's really important and, and when we look at motivation, people are either motivated towards something or away from something. So again, Understanding people is really, really important.

Understanding what motivates them and what motivates you. And it could be different things. And I think that's, that's key.

But one of the things we do know regardless of your preferences, regardless of your role, that the three things that are going to motivate people are not going to be money, chocolate, and Christmas parties. But we can Chris's party, but those things don't motivate. They're like superficial things.

The key drivers to, human motivation at work within the workplace are having a purpose. So knowing each day what I need to do and how, and then having the autonomy in order to do it so that the ability to self-direct to do what I need to do. So the purpose, does your team knows all your individual pillars, all your individual people, do they know what their purpose is on a day to day basis?

And, and one way to think about this to start off with is, do you know what your purpose is? Are you super clear with what your purpose is? Not making an assumption.

So this comes back down to those expectations, your purpose in terms of what's written on your job description, but then also what your team need from you, what you need from your team. Have you had a clear conversation of exactly what is expected of you, what your purpose is, what your role is? How you're being measured.

Because I need to go into work each day thinking, I know exactly what I need to do to be able to do it and then be able to, to finish the day thinking, I know what I need to do. I did what I need to do, and that is satisfying and that is fulfilling, and that is engaging. And that all needs time in order to, to work it through.

So again, having probably more conversations to, because otherwise my purpose would be driving it, driving a is that guilty in that way and that person's purpose because it's an assumed purpose. We'll be going that way, another person's purpose that way. And actually, we need to all making sure that we're going towards those visions, shared visions, shared, shared values.

So again, there could be some work to do, some background work in terms of the kind of purpose. And again, it's really common that people go, well, it's, we, of course, I know what my purpose is. I need to drive motivate, drive a motivated team, and I need to do my best for the animals and my care and I need to be there for the patients and the, and the clients.

But actually, everybody will be coming with different, again, there's different values, there's different mindsets, the different things that they think that is important. So I think this is important in my role, another vet or another nurse or another colleague, but I think something else is important, which again is why we tend to get conflict. So again, realigning people's purpose, do people know exactly what they need to do?

So for you, for them, do they have the autonomy? Are they clear about where they can make decisions and where they need to get that support or seek that, seek that agreement? And then mastery, you want to grow, you want to learn and we want to develop.

So where are they developing? How are you helping them, what support looks like, etc. So autonomy, purpose and mastery.

And these are some, these are things that we work on a lot in, in our leadership training to really help out because none of this is easy, it's not a quick fix. There's not one way of doing it because every team is different. So, so it's thinking about when we're building, high performing teams, how we can do it.

So, and it's all about people. It's not about the animals, it's not about the technical ability. It's about how we, how we lean into the relationships, how we understand people, how we focus on our for ourselves and others, our strengths, our weaknesses, how we work together.

And, always thinking about, we, we will be seeing behaviours all the time. So ourselves, our colleagues are Clients, our, our animals, what's the intention behind the behaviour. There's always a reason behind that.

And understand that and getting really clued up with, with people's and human behaviour will give you a massive insight and a massive advantage to then think about, OK, how do we now function function well as a team? And it's not just by, default, but it's actually with purpose, and clarity of what works and, what needs to, what needs to happen. Oh, there you go.

My, my slides wouldn't go on. So what I'd like you to do now is just to very, very quickly, we've got only got a couple of minutes until we move on. But just think about.

Listening to sort of all the questions and all the sort of things I've sort of chucked at you today, and I, I do, I'm aware that we have sort of chuck them at you. Think about actually what are you gonna start doing because actually it, it might help just again, you have to click to whatever for doing it, but just what could you start doing? What are you gonna stop doing so you actually just know it's not helping you, it's not helping you focus on your team's strengths, and what are you going to continue to do?

So you can either just pick one of those actions and pop it in the chat box, or you can pick all three, absolutely fine. And just think about what are you gonna start doing, what are you gonna stop doing and what you're gonna continue to do. One, so I'll just let you, let you pop that, put that in as I just sort of, conclude.

One of the, challenges that we can have is again, we can come to any of these sessions and it all seems that's great, and then we can all make these big commitments, and I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, and I've learned all this, this stuff, but, it's thinking about actually how can you hold yourself accountable to, to doing some of these things and helping you, helping you help yourself. So, if you would like to, I am more than happy for you too. Drop me an email, drop me an email with what you're gonna start, what are you're gonna stop, what are you going to continue.

And then in 6 weeks' time, so what are we gonna say in the middle of January, just as everybody's, best intentions are starting to waiver or actually that they've already wavered and being ditched. I will send you then an email and just say. How are you getting on?

Are you still doing what you said you're going to start? What are you gonna stop, or are you gonna continue? So please do feel free to drop me an email, and my email's there of what you're gonna start, what you're gonna stop, what you're gonna continue to help you really focus on your team's strengths to, you are all busy, I'm sure your teams are flat out.

And there's probably not much capacity, in them at the moment, in yourself and in them. So what are you going to, what are you going to start stopping to help up through this period and then set yourself up to 2021, but hopefully should be a better year for, for all. So, what action are you going to, are you gonna take?

As I said, please do feel free to drop me a message with that and I'm more than happy to follow you up, follow up in about 6 weeks' time.