Good evening, everybody and welcome to the latest in the practise management series that's the webinaret. My name is Andy Mee from Veterinary Management Consulting. Tonight, our sponsors are Simply Health Professionals and MWI Animal Health, and it's my pleasure to introduce you to Rory Berry.

Who has been training and mentoring people for the last 10 years. His experience across multiple industries that include veterinary IT and construction means that he's uniquely positioned to understand the real life factors that impact those that have recently or not so recently been promoted. A trained actor and TEDx speaker coach, he was born in South Africa and now resides in West Sussex with his wife and what he terms his four fur kids.

He's a life coach that adds practical tips and tricks to all his workshops. And tonight he's talking about team dynamics, over to you, Rory. Thank you very much, sir.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to, to the webinar. I hope everyone has a good time and gets to take away some valuable tips to make some changes in their teams or just to further enhance things if, if, if it's all going really well.

Obviously, I hope and trust that it is going very well for everyone, and let's see, let's see where we get to at the end of the adventure. So, First of all, as, as Andy mentioned, thanks to our sponsors, Simply Health and MWI, without them, we can't do a lot of the things that we do. So, who's this guy that's chatting with you this evening?

Specifically to the vet industry, over 3 years of experience now. I was everything from a receptionist all the way up through to a practise manager and operations manager for a small group of vets. And I'm currently still an operations manager for some.

I've done training both in South Africa and the UK, as mentioned, I'm a life coach, TEDx speaker coach, and I also do corporate training. So, the classic, together everyone achieves more team that we all talk about. People often say, well, there is a me in team when you say there's no I in team.

And my response to that is no. Well, that means you're generally reading it backwards and upside down, so the team's probably not functioning quite as well as it should and could be. So yes, we want to make sure that team's getting forward momentum and positivity as it goes through.

So, let's talk about teams. We're talking about teams, teams dynamics this evening. And there's sort of two polar opposites to what these things look like.

So, Do we have high staff turnover in branch? Is morale low or if you've misspelt it, morals low, as I may or may not have spelled in one of the iterations as I was putting this together. Is there no fun?

Now I'm not saying there needs to be barrels of fun all the time, but we spend more time at work and in this beautiful and crazy industry, more time than some other work at work, so there's got to be just a little bit of the fun involved. What are your sickness levels like? Are there frequently people pulling a sickie?

Are there those regular repeat offenders that, you know, are missing on a Monday or a Friday? Are accidents happening? Are shortcuts happening?

Are people getting lazy? Do you want, or if you're lucky, do you have better engagement from your staff? Are people wanting to be at work?

Are they excited about being there? Are they helping each other? As a result of the happiness levels higher.

Do you want a higher happiness levels in your branch, in your practise, in your group, depending on the size of the organisation that you work in? We will go through some of these things in terms of how to get these things towards the end of the, of the presentation. How's your start tension?

One of the highest conversation points when it comes to veterinary is always recruitment, recruitment, recruitment. I need to talk about recruitment. And that's generally related in my experience, to team dynamics, happiness, and culture.

And They're scary numbers and statistics that will tell you anywhere between 10 and 45,000 pounds sometimes per month to try and recruit a vet. And yeah, if we can better retain the staff, obviously good things happen. So when was the last time you heard this in your practise?

Or if you're the team leader? When was the last time you said that? It seems like an obvious thing.

And yet We often Forget to say thank you. We often forget to. Build into the people that we're working with because it's just go, go, go, go, go, and we just assume that people know.

That they are doing a great job. And as a result, we just assume that people are happy with the job that they're doing and they don't need that encouragement. And incredibly really Amazingly powerful book that's impacted the way I managed teams and managed teams along the way and both in this industry and in the IT industry when I worked there.

Was the five languages of appreciation in the workplace. It is loosely based off the five love languages that people talk about in relationships and it's directly correlated back into the workplace and it talks about different ways that people want to be affirmed and want to be looked after and encouraged, . So It's something that you, if, if you ever get a chance to find it on Amazon or wherever you purchase your books from, not encouraging or endorsing any specific provider at that point.

I really would encourage you to, to get it. I'm just trying to find the name of the authors, really sorry guys. .

So that I can give you the The, the, the details, it's on a piece of paper which has now escaped me, but I will get it before the end of the The the presentation, . And yeah, just if you can get it. Make sure that you are fully able to spend the time reading it and you'll look after it.

It's by Gary Chapman and Paul White. There we go. I knew I had it.

They talk about things like words of affirmation, which essentially doing a good job, you tell someone they're doing a good job. They talk about quality time, which is undivided attention. And in many cases, this is where your staff just needs to, and I know this sounds weird, but hang out with you.

And as a result, they feel like because you're giving them time. They are receiving a different kind of affirmation or appreciation because they know how valuable your time is. And if you give them time and that is their language of appreciation, that is obviously something that's Will just impact them in a big way.

I worked with somebody who I thought needed words of affirmation, so I kept saying, great job, you're doing an awesome job. And it never seemed to inspire him. And yet when I just went and hung out with him in his role for an hour.

And got stuck in in the trenches with him, his performance turned around in a big crazy way and I realised that he didn't need me to tell him he was doing a good job. He knew that. What he needed was for me to Hang out because I had, he had my full attention and we were all good to go.

There's other things like acts of service, which is obviously where you go and help someone, tangible gifts. Some people just show me the money. For them, you give them more money, they feel like they're having a, a, a good experience from an affirmation and appreciation perspective.

And then the last one is obviously touch and in the workplace has to be physical and appropriate touch. And we won't go too much into that because it's fairly obvious for many people. But a high five and a handshake are obviously always up for people that are high fiver and handshakers.

So, we talk about that because unfortunately, For some people, this is the status quo. This is their day to day. And nobody wants to be in a position where That is how they feel about their job.

I mean, A, I'd like to be able to sit down long enough some days to have an idea of how well the chair swivel, but I wanna know that that's not the only highlight of my day and every single employee wants to be in the same position. They don't want to be going to work and going, well, we've got great red mugs. What else is lovely about your work?

Sometimes I get 3 spoons of sugar in my coffee. That's not positive, that's not great engagement, that's not great team dynamics. That's somebody that's Just existing and is probably looking and at some point is leaving.

I love this quote. And It's just so powerful because as managers, and obviously this is the practise management stream, so, in a second, we'll, we'll throw up a pole and we'll get a good sense of who's in the room. But if you have any interaction with a team, And you are the manager or the assistant manager depending on the size of your team.

You have a lot of power. I mean, the classic Spider-Man with great power comes great responsibility is true because If you are leading the best possible way and you are defining leadership and defining the interactions with the team in a positive, engaging, uplifting, motivational way, You're winning half the battle. But if you walk in and it's grumble, grumble, shout, shout, do what I say, don't do what I do.

Don't worry about the hypocrisy. I'm the boss, you're the underling, do what you're told. That's not going to Get you anywhere.

And as a beautiful example of this. So there's a movie called Remember the Titans, lovely movie, one of my favourites. And there's this quote in it which is attitude reflects leadership captain.

So this gentleman on the left was a incredibly good player who was not performing to his full potential. And obviously, as by, by reflection, this is the captain. And Captain came to him at the end of a practise and basically said, you're a waste of talent and energy, and why, what's wrong with your attitude?

And the, the player on the left said, well, I'm gonna look after me because no one else is looking after anyone else. And the captain said, well, that's the worst attitude I've ever seen. And he turned around and he said, attitude reflects leadership, captain.

Now, as with some of these things without being a spoiler alert. The captain took a long, hard look at himself and realised that he needed to be part of the change and as a result, he needed to be the one that led the change and good things happen. I won't give away the ends of the movie, but if you, if you get a chance, go and give it a watch.

So it does start with you. I know there's a poll that's available and I'd love us to just pop it up now so we can get a good sense of who all is in the room, . But Essentially, What I would love to Just sort of demonstrate with this picture is what are you seeing in the mirror?

And are you happy with it? When you go home at night? Are you that manager that blood, sweat and tears goes home and goes, Put in an epic effort today and I feel like we've done well, or are you going home and you're questioning What's going on?

Why is it not working? But ultimately, You've got to, to quote the old Gandhi, be the change. And it's got to start with you and it's got to start sometimes with a long hard look in the mirror, and understand what you're seeing.

Is it what you want them to be seeing. So this metaphorical mirror will identify in you the flaws that we have. Now obviously we're hard on ourselves and as a result, you don't beat yourself up about it.

But if there's things that you know where you're lacking, find people that can coach you in those things and Guys, one of the most important things that I would love for you to hear this evening is The strongest people in the world are the ones that ask for help. There is no weakness in asking for some help, please. There's no shame.

There's no judgement. And if you are getting any of those things, it's because the wrong people are trying to guide you or the incorrect people are being asked potentially. So, think about the people that will build you up and help you out when you're feeling not spectacular so that you can then be in a position that When you go and ask for help or you're having those bad days and the crises of confidence.

You can walk up to these individuals and go, help me, and you get People that listen, people that care, people that help, people that build you. And that's where you're gonna start to grow and change potentially as leaders and as a result of that, you're gonna be in a position where You will be powerfully able to. Make the change that you wanna see.

So, Rory, can I just interrupt you there, obviously it was multiple choice, so you could have picked more than one, which people have. So half of the people on our owner managers and 3/4 of vets. OK, perfect.

That's it. Lovely stuff. That's very helpful.

Thank you very much. So, Then I think this slide will be very relevant. It's been statistically proven through various studies and various iterations that positivity improves profits through different means and different ways.

So, reduce sickness. It sounds obvious, but sickness has Sometimes a 2 or 3-fold effect on profit. One, you've potentially lost income if it's a vet or if it's an RVN and it's the only RVN and you don't have any else that can monitor an anaesthetic, so you can't do an operational or in from that perspective, so reduced income.

Sickness also has the knock-on effect of overtime for the other staff who then obviously will claim for overtime which costs money. And in extreme cases, the sickness results in people resigning and then you have recruitment costs as a result. So positivity from a profit perspective once again.

Reduced recruitment means increased savings to the business, which basically means less money paid out and more money brought in. As I mentioned earlier, I was involved with a bit of a study at some, at, at a, at a point about 2.5 years ago where we were looking at the numbers that it cost to recruit in a vet.

And the things to think about, so there's the potential invoice to the recruitment agency. There's the cost of a locum, which is always going to be more expensive than a full-time member of staff. And then the decreased productivity of said locum, now that's no disrespect to locums if they're in the room, but people that are engaged and employed by a practise, statistically speaking, are always going to be higher earners and more productive.

So essentially, Locum is going to be more expensive and do bring in less income versus a full-time member of staff. Therefore, there's a, there's a cost benefit to that. Culture change means teamwork.

It seems obvious, but people sometimes forget this when if if the culture is not in a great place. And things start to turn around, it suddenly feels like the workload decreases. The workload in many cases actually goes up.

But what's happening is because there is a cohesive unit that is working together for the same goal to achieve X thing today or look after Y patient in a, in an appropriate and positive way. It seems like it's less painful and more importantly, people are more inclined to help each other out. Once again, reduce training costs due to staff retention.

Training costs a lot of money. CPD is expensive, especially if you have a new grad that you've got to bring up and invest a lot of time in and time is a valuable resource which This is the only chargeable thing aside from drugs that this industry has. And if you are an owner-manager that's spending 2 days a week training up a new person, that's 2 days a week that you can't earn.

Or ensure that other people are charging correctly to make sure that there are less refunds, etc. You start off wanting to come to work when the positive culture exists versus, as I said at the top there, the sickies. I know it sounds like the same thing, but it is slightly different.

There's less stress. Less stress means less sickness, which means more people coming to work. And there's less complaints, which means there's less refunds.

People will walk into a room. And they will feel if the energy is good or bad, and that sounds rather ethereal, but. At the risk of throwing the NHS under the bus, walk into a doctor's surgery and very often there's the dragon that's keeping an eye on you as you walked in and you're going, I'm not actually sure if I feel like I'm welcome here.

Walk into a vet surgery, that receptionist on point. You feel like you've come home. Those people welcome you, make it a beautiful and wonderful environment.

Those people are the gatekeeper to the practise and when they're on side inverted commas or they're excited about being work because the culture is in a great place. They will make sure that that customer who's waiting 10 minutes longer because the previous consults run on long for whatever reason, is OK with waiting. That customer is not gonna complain as much because they can see that the environment in the room, the environment in the building is one that is generating an excitement and as a result, it's making people want to be there and they're happy to.

And then they walk out and they go, oh, you've got to just go to my vets. Every time I walk in, Billy gets a treat and he gets a bit of an ear rub, and sometimes they even take him to the back and the nurses just give him a huggles because they loved him when he came in for his neutering and they just, he's just their favourite person ever. Now, they may have 10,000 favourite persons ever.

But to that customer at that time, that's what they're experiencing. Less complaints, less refunds. Important.

So there's positively malarkey. What's it all about? Well, it comes from a place of respect.

Communication is a massive, massive part of this because the easiest thing in the world, and we'll talk about communication a little bit later on, is To get your communication wrong and it wrecks so much more than just that moment because It becomes a case of, oh, you never do. They always do this, and that's what we wanna try and avoid. The hardest thing in the world to measure is fairness.

But if everyone has a good sense of fairness, even if it doesn't necessarily Feel fair to them at that time and there's a uniformity of decision making and people not going rogue a great deal, then You're gonna have a better environment. But if Mary always feels like she can't take her lunch because everyone else gets first dibs on when lunches and she always gets lunch at 3 and she's always exhausted and hungry at that point. That's not gonna feel fair.

So she's not gonna be bringing positivity into the workplace. One of the things that is really important to me and when I've done some of my coaching is finding the joy, wonder and awe. Now, We live in a crazy busy, wild world and work in a beautiful and yet somehow incredibly frustrating industry where we're just trying to look after everyone's most important special, fluffy, but can get stuck into it.

Every single day, there is an opportunity to steal 5 minutes to look at the world through kid eyes and find joy, wonder and awe. And It's been proven that when these things happen, the serotonin in our brains kicks in and that takes down our stress and it enables us to handle the crazy stuff. And it, it, it just enables us to be functional in a world that is high stress.

And to remember that fun is allowed. I spoke about it earlier and I'll speak about it again later. I'm not saying we have to be having sort of karaoke and reception.

I'm saying that having an opportunity to smile and take some joy and bring some positivity is hugely beneficial to not just the team but also to the person giving the The joy and the excitement and the wonder. So. The most important thing to know is that it does take time to bring change.

And each day, you may not get all of the progress that you wanted. But as long as you're making some progress, You're going forward. Team dynamics and the positivity around all of that.

There's a trust thing that needs to be built in some cases. If a team's been us against them or us against the world and we try and bring change, there's gonna be cynicism and scepticism in the beginning. But each day that you move forward in the direction of the positivity in, in, in the direction of the positive changes and in some cases, these are the changes that they want, but they're scared.

To be excited about because they're worried about it possibly getting taken away from them. And from a psychology perspective, it's an important part to think about that Owner managers and vets leading teams, possibly in branches, etc. You guys are wanting really.

From a core part of your being to for people to enjoy work, I would like to assume. And To, to be keen, engaged in all of these things, and they want those things as much as you do, but they're scared of getting hurt. And so they want to dream, they want to dare to dream.

But it's gonna take them a little while to get there. Once you get the momentum going, the progress can come at high speed and pace. But initially, it may feel like trying to sprint through quicksand.

You will get out of it. You will get to the end and the most important part of that process for you guys, especially as the owner managers, is to take time to find that wonder wonder everywhere. So for me, it could be random things like a squirrel doing parkour, as I said, nicking some, some seeds from somewhere.

The simplicity of Raindrops on a spider web. Or this random photo that I once took and then saw this little spider guy over here when I was going through it all a little while later. Now, it seems so silly, but for me, That was my wow moment for the day.

And it brought me so much joy that I showed it to about 15 people along the way that I was, I had meetings with some people and I had a conversation with, with the boss at the time. And he just looked at me and said, you're nuts. Why are you so excited about this?

And I said to him, why can't I be so excited about this? And when he got that response, He just looked at me like I'd punched him in the face and he was like, Well, there's no reason why you can't be excited about that, is there? That's actually really cool.

And then he took another long look at it and then he was, he was really excited about bumblebees. And so he got really excited that there was a bumblebee there. And out of that small 5 2nd which turned into a 5 minute conversation about a spider and a bumblebee, he left that interaction happier and two of the staff for the rest of the day was like came to me and said, Did you really show him a picture of a bumblebee and a spider?

It made an impact enough on that day for the joy, wonder and awe that he needed to have a little inspiration. So my encouragement to you guys is Find something. Look at the clouds.

Find your thing if it's a computer game for you, a book, or whatever. Find your joy, find your wonder, find the awe because those kid eyes will help you see things on days which are possibly rough. The process starts with you guys looking and listening.

And listening isn't always with your ears. When you're having a conversation with a staff member and they are Engaged but not engaged. And their body language is saying one thing, but their words are saying another.

Without being creepy and staring into their eyes forever. Try and just get a sense check on their face. Because a lot of people can hide a lot of things, but you can't hide what the eyes are saying.

And Time and time again, I've looked at people and seen straight through the facade and understood what the problem is by just taking a look at their face and listening to what they were actually meaning when they were saying things. So, if you think about The staff members that you have, maybe you're specifically thinking about, ah, there's that person who always just seems weird when I'm talking to them. Look a little deeper next time and then listen a little more intently and you might just see what they're saying or what they're crying out for.

Because sometimes people are just crying out to be heard. I spoke about fun earlier. And this is a beautiful statistic.

And, and it's true because I've seen it in practise, . If you're trying to do training, you're trying to change things, and you can involve some form of play or fun or creativity. You will get a faster uptake, a higher retention rate, and most importantly, You will see results faster.

I have seen this in practise because I've seen people change by learning through play. And Yeah, I mean, I can just give you hundreds of examples. The one I'll give you is I'll try to teach a new person how to fix the rota on our practise management system.

As a result, I. Hid some fake appointments over the next couple of weeks and I told them to find them, edit them and bring them back to me on the right day. And I tried something different to teach the same concept to 5 other staff members and the newer 2 staff members found them, fixed them, and retained the knowledge faster by having a game than the others that had just essentially been lectured to, and, and gone from there.

So if you can make it fun within the realms of safety and health and safety, see what you can do and we can have conversations about that. After this, if you need to, my details will be at the end, because there's tonnes and tonnes where we can do with fun and there's tonnes that you can do to make things fun and engaging and learning will be increased. It all comes down to communication.

Now, depending on which statistics you believe and which studies you You read 50 to 65% of our communication is body language. 35 to 45% of our communication is tone and inflexion. Which means 7 So 15% of the words, 15% as if you're an epic emoji user.

Now, the question that I have to you is, if words have that little effect and that little ability. To communicate stuff. Why do we send emails when we can just talk to people?

Now, people are gonna talk about Efficiency, inability to talk to everyone at the same time. And I understand all of those arguments, but if you're in a one branch group, if you're in a team of X number of You will get more done faster. By talking to people than by expecting people that are busy and possibly not interested in being involved with reading emails.

All you have to do is talk to them and then followed up with an as discussed email because an as discussed email is going to be a footnote to a conversation versus a please read this and do this. Yeah, but I couldn't be bothered to read that, so I'm not gonna do it. Then I'm gonna get shouted at for not doing the thing that I didn't know about because I didn't read it, which means I'm gonna be miserable.

But he sits in the office two doors down and he could literally just pop around and say, hey, Rory, when you're doing the refunds protocol, please make sure to put this note on the system. And we will then be able to reconcile it better from an accounting perspective. That's a quick conversation that would probably be a 3-page email to try and explain.

Whereas That interaction happening and then I get an email, hey, Rory, as discussed, please don't forget the new refund protocol involving the note on the system. I've been told, I understand and therefore I have a higher percentage chance of complying. Once again, I know we're all busy people and I know it's not always easy, and I know there's times when email is the most appropriate way to talk to people because of volume of people to talk to and you can't get around to, I don't know, maybe you've got 6 or 7 branches in your group and you can't get around to everyone because that's gonna take you 7 days and there's 5 days in the week.

So sometimes email must happen, but where possible, try, talk to them. And if you can't get in front of them, pick up a phone. Because you more than double your ability to communicate properly by just adding tone and inflexion, AKA your voice.

It's important to remember that the communication is key when you're trying to change the team dynamics. So how do we do this? Well, it starts with being willing to change, which sounds like as obvious as Anything else that you can think about.

But sometimes people don't want to change themselves, which is why I said we, we start by looking in the mirror. So we've got to be willing to change. And Within that, you wanna make sure that you mean it.

It's not a, right, you lot are gonna change because I want you to. Well, no one's changing. But Delivering it from a position of Guys, this is what I would like to do.

This is where I see this going. This is what I would love to have happen and this is the outcomes that we're looking for and this is why I'm excited about the changes I'm gonna put in. Means that people are seeing your heart in the solution and as a result, they're more likely to be involved in it with you.

And then commit to the marathon, not the sprint. It's easy to fix 4 things in 7 days and be awesome and then it stops. Change to team dynamics, change to culture.

Change that brings the positivity, the fun, the creativity, the reduced stress, the reduced recruitment, etc. Takes time And Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to 7 seconds of from miserable to awesome. It is gonna be a marathon and that is why the joy, the wonder thing that I spoke about earlier is so important to the process because there's gonna be days when you're gonna feel defeated.

And that's OK because you're a human being and that happens. But Knowing that going in. Is gonna give you a higher percentage chance of success.

Without a shadow of a doubt. Care about the outcomes and define them properly before you start. And the proper definition of your outcomes is not just for you, it's for your team.

Because If they Want The same thing that you want. And they've completely bought in to the outcomes. Because they've been properly defined, you have a higher a higher percentage chance of them getting stuck in and on board and focused so that you can then.

Achieve the goals that you're trying to, to set. So how can you start the change? Well, the first question is, have you asked everyone?

Have you asked everyone how they feel? Have you got a sense check of your Staff engagement right now. My suggestion, find a way to survey them through these various different surveying options online and make it anonymous.

Because that way you're gonna get an honest answer. And let them be brutal. Yes, it could hurt a bit in the moment.

You could feel like the selfless, thankless task of management where you just bust your ass and no one appreciates you. But Don't let that affect you and derail you before you begin. But you don't know where they're at, and you don't know what they would love if you haven't asked them upfront because walking and going, I'd like to change this, this and this, and I think that'll be great, means it's a you solution and a you everything.

However, if you have the conversation and they're all involved, then it's a we. We want. We agree We will achieve together.

Along the same lines. Is everyone drinking the Kool-Aid? Do they know what it is?

If the entire concept for you of why you have your your branch, your group, your whatever size organisation you're in is because you believe in X level of care. You want the customers to have this level of experience, da da da da. And somebody sitting in your organisation is like, yeah, I'm just here for the money.

Just pay me my salary, I'm gonna go home. How engaged are they? And What's it gonna take to get them on board?

And do they care enough to want to change? One of the things that you may have to. Decide along the way with this is.

If somebody's not gonna change. Are they gonna stay? Now that sounds crazy because we spoke about reduced recruitment, etc.

At the beginning, but somebody that's not supposed to be in your organisation for whatever reason, be it personality clashes, etc. If they can't get past it and be professional, they're gonna do more damage than good. So if they're not drinking the Kool-Aid and they don't want to drink the Kool-Aid and they don't want to get on your bus and they just wanna hang out at the bus stop.

Maybe the bus is gonna leave without them. You start change by living in day tight compartments. So Yes, you've got the big hairy goal for the for the future, the change that you want to see for the 5 years' time, the 2 years' time, the 1 year's time.

But you've got to start with the, what can I do today to make a difference today? What can I do today to make a difference? Maybe for tomorrow.

Because if you start with day tight compartments and you win more days than you lose, if you then extrapolate that out. You will win more weeks than you lose. You'll win more months than you lose.

And going forward, you will ultimately be on that marathon running with a whole crew versus you trying to drag a crew along with you. So daytime compartments is something that's Easy to envision, easy to manage. Think of it like an optimist.

You walk in in the morning and you go, right, I've got 2 dentals, a spay, and a lumpectomy. All I have to do today is smash those out and I've achieved my ops list. Not dissimilar, today I want to make sure that I engage with my receptionists properly because I actually haven't sat down and had a chat with them for 4 months and I don't even know the new girl all that well or the new guy that well because I haven't actually spoken to them.

On that day, your success will be having that conversation and getting to know your team better and they get to know you better. And as a result, they start to drink that Kool-Aid. Eat the elephant one bite at a time.

It's a beautiful saying and obviously being from Africa along the way, people talk about eating elephants, how do you eat the elephant? One bite at a time. And It's just a reiteration in a different way of the same things from above and I, and I include them because for some people, the daytime compartments will resonate and for others, eating the elephant one bite at a time will resonate.

So just think about how to break down that Mahosev task and make it manageable. Care like crazy. Now, this is something that I, I worked at a summer camp in America many moons ago when I was slightly shorter and had more hair.

And, One of the directors looked at us all after our staff training the first year that I was there and he said, oh, first year counsellors, hang out afterwards. And we just had the big insurance chat in America about liability and danger and safeguarding, etc. Which of course is a bit of a downer when you've just spent sort of 3 weeks climbing trees and building rafts and things to get ready for what you're gonna be doing at camp.

And you could see there was general fear and trepidation in the eyes of some of the guys that were having their kids arriving the next day. And he said, gentlemen. If you want to make this the best summer ever for these kids.

You've just got to do one thing. You've got to care. You've gotta just care like crazy.

And When he broke it down to something that simple. It made sense to us all, and we did, we just cared like crazy and we had the best summer ever, to the point that I ended up going back 3 times. It wouldn't have happened if Captain Lloyd hadn't just made that simple comment.

To resonate with us all. And for you guys, the caring like crazy coup coupled with the wonder is gonna enable you to continue to push your teams. Continue to guide them, encourage them, motivate them.

And when you're having a rough one, finding the people to align with to stand alongside you. I'm pretty sure there's people in this webinar that are close enough geo geographically to be able to connect. And not compete.

But if we're all aiming to succeed together, then we're all going to succeed. And I think that. If you've got no one nearby, reach out.

I'm sure that there are people that can help you on those down days. So, when you care and you feel like you're empty, take time to refill and that's where you find your wonder and your joy. So as we're wrapping up, before we go into some Q&A, once again, thank you to the sponsors, for, for their, their time with us, and for, for giving us the opportunity.

. As I, as I mentioned along the way, for me, it is really, really important that people take away from this a nugget of some sort. So I really hope that as you reflected on the time we've had together and, and if anybody's got any questions, that's me. .

I'd love to answer some questions if we've got any, Andy, but just to sort of like to, to sum it all up in, in a small succinct bode for everyone. It is possible to bring massive change with small impactful things. In a day tight compartment, one bite at a time of the elephant way, but you've got to find a way to have your joy and your wonder because without that, you're going to be burning yourself out trying to push without refilling.

And that refilling is the thing that's gonna get you guys to the end of that marathon and not just that 100 metre sprint. OK, thank you very much, Rory. A fascinating talk there.

As yet, we don't have any questions from the, attendees. Just to remind everybody, there's either the Q and A box that you can use, or the, chat box. Quite a few things that struck me there, one in particular, you talked about people not drinking the Kool-Aid and getting them off the bus, and, it, it reminded me of, Clive Woodward.

In his book when he talks about the energy sappers, and he just got rid of them. But obviously sometimes, you know, you might be going into a new practise, might be people who've been there a while and, and, and maybe getting rid of them is not your first choice. So have you got any kind of less extreme tips for getting people on board?

Yeah, absolutely. . When, if you're a sort of a new, a new manager in a, in an environment and you're sort of inheriting a team, one of the things that I have found has been incredibly successful when I've worked with people in the past is Interview everyone, not as in to keep their job, but to get an understanding of how they feel about their job.

Because sometimes the people that are entrenched and appearing to be miserable. Are actually incredibly passionate and care a great deal more than is evident, but have never been asked. So, taking the time to actually listen to everyone gives you a better understanding of where you're gonna go.

And as a result of that, you can sometimes turn around some of those people just by listening. Because a lot of the time they haven't been listened to. OK, yeah.

It sounds, sounds very logical when you, when you put it like that. Yeah, I guess if, if they're not being listened to, it will be frustrating for the motor. Yes, and as a result, they can often, sometimes the loudest dissenting voice can ending, can end up being your biggest champion.

Because they just want it to be heard. Sometimes they don't even need something to change. They just want it to be heard.

Yeah. I mean, again, are you familiar with Steve Peter's work, Chimp Paradox stuff? A little bit of his stuff, yeah, yeah, again, because he, you know, one of the big things he pushes is that, you know, very often it is the chimp just wants to be heard and understood.

So it kind of fits with that too. Yeah, absolutely. And again, you, you talked very much and, you know, particularly like your slides with the, the spider web, etc.

When people, you know, sometimes are going to practises and, and, and just everybody just feels, oh, we're just so busy and, and then you talk about take 5 minutes to. To go and look at the wonders of nature. Again, you know, I know people that say, well, I don't even get a lunch break or a cup of tea during the day we're that busy, again, any perhaps helpful tips there around of making that time of creating a space for that?

I mean, This is gonna be really random, but I love moths. And I worked in a place where occasionally moths would come into the building. And so in the midst of a day where I may not even get a tea break or a lunch break, I would sometimes be scurrying along a passage and there'd be a random moth on the wall and it would absolutely distract me for even a split second, half a minute.

Sometimes, you know, whip the old cell phone out, grab a quick peck and off I dash. But for me, I could still find that wonder. You can find Wanda on the drive to work.

You can find Wanda on the drive home from work. You can find it in a Google image search if you like, you've literally got no time but you're sitting at a computer and you need to look at Google, you know, seascapes, landscapes, mountains in Switzerland. Everyone's gonna have something that they will find to resonate with.

And if you know what it is, It's helpful because then you're probably gonna be more on the lookout for it. But I mean, I, I, one of the other things that I love to do is I'll take photos of the frost. So I'll get out to my car in the morning and it's all iced over and that's a perfect opportunity to be like, oh for goodness sake, or as it's defrosting, I'll be sort of randomly wandering around to see if there's a cool crystal or an interesting leaf that's got some frost on it in a different way.

So obviously that, that doesn't happen in summer, but then, then there might be a new blossom or a new Flower petal that I haven't seen before or a bird will fly over or something. There is always something that you can find no matter how busy you are. Brilliant.

Thank you. Well, as yet, there's no more questions. I'll do my usual thing of giving everybody about 10 seconds if you've got any burning questions.

To ask Rory and whilst waiting for those, if they do come, just to say thanks again, Rory, that was, you know, very interesting talk. Some great ideas there and some, you know, thoughtful reflections hopefully from that for everybody that's attended. Just to quickly thank our sponsors again, Simply Health Professionals and MWI Animal Health.

And no more questions. So thanks again, Rory. No worries.

Look forward to seeing everybody on the next practise management webinar. Thanks for your attendance.