Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat. I'm so pleased to have my good friend Jackie Lang on the line with me today to, chat. Jackie and I probably met about 2 years ago in Dublin.
We'd obviously been chatting. We were working together on a CPD project with her, company that she was working for, a vet group that she was working for in Ireland. And er I think we've become firm friends since, haven't we, it's been a lovely sort of getting to know you, meeting you at some of the meetings.
I think it's great the way vets we share so much in common, I, I often find that cultural barriers don't seem to matter, vets seem to get on the whole world around, don't they? . Yes, thank you for having me, Anthony.
It's it's such a pleasure to be here. And yes, I was before this call, I was reminiscing on on how we met and and that was just wonderful. That was absolutely, you know, if we jump right in, you met me at a time when I was really overwhelmed, really struggling in my role and I was thought I was holding it together and we met for coffee and you saw through that and you were just so kind and then you reach, you know, you you you you appointed yourself my mentor and said you check in with me monthly and you absolutely did that at anytime I needed you were there and I'm I'm really grateful and I really love how our friendship has grown from that.
Yeah. Oh no, I appreciate that and I think it's just we're very sharing, generous people, we're in the service industry aren't we as vets, so we find it easy to give sometimes not so easy to receive. So it's you know it's great that I was, I was able to help you a little bit during that time, but you are, are now thriving, you've sort of changed direction a little bit, but perhaps tell us a little bit just so people know who you are from, you know, listening in the podcast.
Obviously veterinary surgeon, about 2025 years qualified now. Yep, yep, this year 25 years qualified. Wow, obviously from Dublin.
So I graduated from UCD in Dublin. I'm born and bred in Dublin. I worked in the UK several times, but Ireland's home.
I love home. And so that's where I'm based now. And when I graduated, I did some small animals and horses and then very quickly started to focus.
Just on small animals, realised I was quite adept at surgery, went on, developed, a lot of training and developed in orthopaedics. So I did small animal orthopaedic referrals for a number of years, which I loved. And I suppose briefly to say, you know, I felt I'd plateaued in orthopaedics.
I felt that I had everything I do. I like to do well, but I love to be growing and developing and you know I started to look at what the next thing would be and at that time I decided to take a career break as well and when travelling extensively and Learned a lot then as well. And when I returned, I did some orthopaedic training and mentoring and the job of chief veterinary officer in a large group of small animal veterinary clinics in Ireland came up and that absolutely was on paper my dream job, head of LND and maintaining best quality standards across the group.
And I was very fortunate. I was appointed chief veterinary officer and Then very quickly, there was a lot of private equity came in. There was a lot of growth.
There was a lot of change, there was a lot of restructuring and you know, as we touched on there, I I I I was I was I struggled for for quite a while and it was through that that then I wanted to be a better leader for my team. I wanted to make sure that was always really important to me that no matter what I was going through, I wanted to make sure my team were supported and that they were doing well and You know that actually is is a theme that's really personal to me and it always has been even doing orthopaedics if there's any way I can help someone else. I never want someone else to struggle in a way that I had if I have the answer and I can help them.
That's a real foundation of my coaching business that you know I see the brilliance of coaching and how we we actually always have our own answers and we know exactly what we need to do. But sometimes we just need that clarity of thought and that confidence to take those steps. I think somebody said an intelligent man or woman learns from their own mistakes, but a genius learns from others.
And I heard that before, yeah, that's where it's, it's so important if we can, you know, don't struggle cos probably somebody knows there's a bit of an easier way to do it. Yeah. Yeah.
And and there is we we we get in our own way. So and that's it's a human it's a human trait and very normal and the more stressed we get, the more overwhelmed we we lose that ability to think logically and reason things out and now things become more challenging and it's even harder than to trust ourselves. So it's kind of it all compounds and and that's I suppose what I what I love about coaching is when I work with people I go right.
Let's slow it down, let's unravel it, and then they can see exactly and then I work with them to decide what they need to do and how then they find their own solutions and when you have your own solution, it's so much more empowering than someone else telling you what you need to do, what to do, exactly, you have to, I think coaching obviously not done it as as formally as you've done but, As a vet it's very easy to give answers and and solve problems for people, but actually, you know, you have to listen more. And then actually, often when people talk things through, they, they solve their own problems, don't they? Yeah, 100%, but it's, it's the.
Moving forward and not getting stuck in the story I think is important. But when you think about your journey there and there was so much change going on external to you as well, that is really difficult. To cope with that and to change cos change is difficult for, you know, the majority of us and change is going quicker and quicker, and I suppose we we go to vet school, we learn how to be, you know, good vets, good nurses, and then we go into a practise and we learn a bit more and then you maybe do something like orthopaedics or dermatology and you get better at that and you know we learn, obviously with the help but sometimes it's self learning as well, a bit of a mixture.
And then suddenly, you know, as people say sometimes people are promoted to their level of incompetence, you know that there isn't that training there, we didn't go to vet school, we didn't go through management training at vet school, it was very much how to become a better vet. So it is really difficult, isn't it, to, to, to run your own business. I mean I didn't make a very good job of my practise, you know, trying to make a decent profit was always a struggle.
I think that was partly position of where the practise was. We moved it up the road, it did a lot better, but very shortly after that I kind of discovered webinars and then sold the practise quite quickly, and then we've been 16 years running webinar there and there's been good years and bad years, years where you go, oh why did I do that, and then other years where things flow more so business is very much up and down, isn't it? I think and.
Coming into a new role as a tactical technician who's very good at mending bones, doesn't mean that you're gonna be great at running a practise or in your case you know running a whole group of practises, group of vets, . And and it's interesting because there there there wouldn't have been one thing. I mean, absolutely, you're right, the jump from clinician to senior executive, that was quite a big step and and going from being the expert in the room to suddenly being what I would perceive myself as being the stupidest person in the room.
That is really tough because we're used to providing answers and knowing what to do. And also in a leadership position, it's it's it's it's people management. There's a different pace.
There's all the shade of grey. There isn't a right or wrong insofar as you get a treatment, the animal gets better. You do a surgery, you see the post-op radiograph.
There isn't that automatic quick feedback. On where you are and then what to do about it. There's there's so many different entities going on and and it's that can be quite difficult to move into.
It's a different way of working. Do you, do you think, you know, I sent, I know you sent a text a while ago saying to me you've done some a tour for some students. And then you were saying how the teacher had come up and said how confident you were, do you think that you lost confidence during that period, would you class yourself as a confident person perhaps prior to that, and then if something goes wrong, is that where sometimes confidence, you see it with the football at the moment, Arsenal 9 points clear, they lose a few games, confidence goes, you know, they're now kind of at a level playing field with Man City.
Is confidence very fragile, do you think? Do you think we lose that easily? Yes.
Now what I've learned is there's two types of confidence. So there, you know, there's external confidence and then there's self-confidence. And you can get carried along with external validation of doing a good job, where actually it's that self-confidence piece that you need to rely on.
You're 100% right. And that's something that I've learned is that it's not, you know, a lot of people come to me wanting to grow confidence and that's absolutely something we can work on and we work on really well. But actually you've got to maintain confidence.
And I learned something recently that when you break a promise to yourself, you'll lose confidence. So if you say I'm going to do something, no matter how small maybe I'm gonna exercise this evening and you break that promise to yourself, you actually you're you you learn that you can't trust yourself and it actually can whittle away your confidence that simply as well. So, so you're right, it's it's noticing the small steps.
It's, it's building confidence and you know, managing your confidence and maintaining it is really is really, really important. Because the external environment will change, you cannot predict what's going to go on around you, all you can do is, is manage your own, your own well-being and your own internal self. I suppose it's having that foundation, isn't it, of believing in yourself and, and liking yourself almost and realising there will be ups and downs, realise there will be cock ups, there will be successes, and actually within all of that, of course you want to grow and of course you can get better, but at the baseline you're happy.
In your own skin, I suppose. Yeah, 100%. And and and that's something that that came up for me because as I mentioned to you when we were chatting is, you know, a lot of the time when I do say I was in a very senior leadership position.
I came to coaching because I want to be a better, better, you know, leader, and I fell in love with the brilliance of coaching and that is 100% true. But the important part of the story, as I mentioned, the pivotal point, yes, was meeting you. And then actually what I did and I can remember very clearly was I actually started implementing a self-care routine in the morning, that hour when I get up, do not check my phone.
I had a number of different things. And that routine of valuing yourself, valuing myself, having myself grounded, not getting distracted by emails, whether that was meditation, a 15 minute yoga, and just a facial care routine. I had my my routines and it was Important for me, like you say, for valuing yourself first, for for grounding yourself, for grounding myself in the morning.
And that I think then gave me that. Stable ground underneath me, but then I was able to think more objectively and then I plunged myself more into learning, developing. I was refusing to fail.
This was not going to happen. How was I going to make, how was I going to get through this and what was I going to do and then that was training, education, and then moving to coaching, which when I was like that was the waters parting, everything became clearer. Yeah, so you've obviously, you've left the role at er at your practise and you've gone into coaching and very much doing a a a number of things but very much also helping business owners in the veterinary field so I know I talked to you about Spis and it's a conference that you've been to for the last couple of years, you've spoken at the conference and things.
It's a really great environment I think isn't it, to find people who are. You know, in the independent space and and not just needing support, it's a lonely place I think being a business owner, where you can't, it's hard to find people that you can talk to and go over the issues that you're having, you know, in your business or whatever. Yeah, and, and sometimes you just need someone in your corner and your team, your staff, your employees, they look to you, you, you know, you're the leader, the business owner.
And then who do you go to? So I'm working with really, really great people. They're they're just fantastic.
I love, I'm so admiring how they have grown their veterinary businesses and yet it's just that confidence pieces. Am I doing the right thing? This has happened.
Let's slow it down. Let's reflect and that's how I work with them then through through coaching and because it can be lonely otherwise they can't come into work and pour out their hearts because everyone's looking to them. And, and there's other parts that you've developed and you were talking about that kind of emotional connection for leaders as well and how to resolve conflicts, maybe talk to us a bit about that, how you, what your strategy is for people in a practise perhaps not getting on with each other, how can you help sort that problem out with with coaching and and .
You know, chatting to them and so on. Yeah, and and it's so interesting because I suppose I'm drawn to that word problem and I don't, I don't like to label things a problem because they're just they're they're human responses, their patterns, their negative patterns and cycles and it's you know taking away any blame. So when we look at the fundamental that humans.
We're required for connection. We do our best work when we're connected to other people when we're coming from a very structured and safe environment and you know right now we're we're we're we're very lucky. We're generally in a very safe physical space, but that's psychological safe space as well.
So we do our best work when there is that connection. And looking at that, and it's very natural that sometimes conflict can can can arise. Conflict is a big word, but disconnection, fractured relationship, and then that the patterns that can happen from that where there people are just in an environment of stress.
Now there's some disengagement. Not able to do their best work. And so ultimately what I come in through a coaching model called the EMC leaders and coaching model is very much unpicking that slowing it down, looking at our very normal raw spots, the emotional responses that we can have.
And what I do is I offer a vocabulary because many of us and this is something that you know, I would have certainly been the same. We have a very poor vocabulary of emotions, but the studies will all show if we can accurately label an emotion, it reduces stress and it increases well-being. So that's part of the process of work through understanding what goes on, understanding what your automatic thoughts were, your protective behaviours and processing that conflict or that disjointed relationship 1 to 1 with what someone first.
And then I invite them to go through it as if the other person was there. So seeing another perspective. So very much first I work 1 to 1 with the person so they can understand.
Their normal human reactions and what happened and realising that the other person was just having again a normal reaction and response. And then once the two parties have had the time to process and reflect, bringing them together and then rebuilding the connection, rebuilding the relationship so that they can do their best work together because people want to feel connected and it's ultimately just a byproduct of when we're disconnected. We're unsure and it's our responses to that that then are the outward signs of dysfunction in a team or a bad culture or something like that.
And it's a knock on effect if there's two people who have a tense relationship and they're people in a senior leadership or in a managerial position, they've got a tense relationship. Everyone feels it. So it has a knock on effect for for for a practise culture.
What I also do is I also come in and just in a training workshop workshop so that people understand emotional connection and the need for that and what happens in conflict and so offering then again a language of vocabulary to speak about it at a foundational level for what's going on. Because we all can get caught in the story and as a as a friend to someone you want to encourage them and support them. But sometimes the story is not healing anything.
You want to say what's really going on? What do you need? And so offering teams this language of connecting with each other when they see someone is just not themselves.
What do you need at this moment to feel safe, secure, validated, happy, fulfilled, you know, what do you need and then identifying that and then moving on. So it's it's an area I'm really I'm excited about. I'm very passionate about.
It's something that I think there's a great need. I mean, I've noticed in business, people don't we don't really like to talk about emotions, but we have to acknowledge that we're emotional beings first and then we're logical beings. And if there is disconnection, conflict, strained relationships that affects working morale, engagement.
Lot, lots of people don't, you know, especially men, I think more than women would see ourselves as quite logical, but we are all, as you say, emotional beings, aren't we? And I think from my own position, the other option is, is just that you all go into corners and have a natter about each other and then pick sides and, and all those sort of things, and, and of course that doesn't really help to build a healthy culture or in the, in the practise, does it? No, no.
But difficult conversations, I was reading an article, Harvard Business Review and saying actually difficult conversations are really important because you can actually grow out of those, whereas I think I definitely avoided them earlier on in my career where you know I wanted to be liked and I wanted to be nice to the other person so sometimes again probably not having that vocabulary to say to them, do you know what you did there was really horrible. You can't quite put it that way, you know, you've got to put it in a way of, you know, what was happening there, what were you thinking, etc. I mean, obviously you will know better than I how to approach it.
I think the other thing my wife just started a new school and, and she's amazed because she, you know, obviously all teachers are psychologists with young kids, you know, primary school. And very much there's often a lot of conflict often around football on the playground and you bring the two people together, often you've, you know, as you say you've chatted to them individually, you can't spend an hour doing it so you've got to do it, you know, within a, a reasonable amount of time, obviously sometimes you have to spend longer. But she said what's really interesting in this place compared with the last place she was in was forgiveness came very quickly, whereas here it will just be a case of sometimes going.
No, I'm not gonna say sorry. No, I'm not gonna forgive and actually sometimes parents actually back that up, and forgiveness is so important isn't it, it really can heal relationships and if we hold on to that bitterness, on the whole it usually hurts us more than it hurts the other person doesn't it? 100%, 100%.
And I I've coached two people recently and with emotional connection leaders framework, and they were both separate, not related to each other off work, signed off sick from stress due to conflict, and one person had an underlying heart condition that she's been back in hospital with again. The other person has been 3 months off, cannot even approach work because she's so and when I went through. And we processed it and they were able to articulate what was going on.
Like it was just insane. The changes was amazing. One of the lady with the heart condition was like, you know, I'm going to go back into work and have a have a conversation.
The other needs a little bit more time, but she was like, right, again, that self care. What can she start to do now to start building herself back up where she feels stronger and that had been eating them away for months. And it's corrosive.
Yeah, yeah, and we don't need to. There's this is this is I suppose there are solutions. There are there are really solutions and like say when you reach out and you ask and you find and this is really what I'm like delighted to be here because I would love more people to realise there is this solution that can help them in a conflict, disconnections, teams where there's stress and And it's being really challenging to work through.
There's a very easy solution and that it doesn't have to be as, as we make it. If somebody's listening, you know, a vet, a nurse, a practise owner, an employee, and they feel that there is a problem that needs to be solved within the practise. It's worth coming to you, but you're working more with business owners, but obviously that must entail that you're talking to employees as well, so really anybody can perhaps email you as a start up to seeing if you can help or not.
Yeah, absolutely. I can't I'm never going to to to inject myself or force myself. It has to be people that have identified and they want to to resolve it and they're aware there's something.
But yeah, 100% I'm delighted if anyone reaches out and even just wants a bit of support and my email is [email protected] Lang.com.
Yeah, we'll put that underneath the podcast for people as well. So a bit like the confessional box, everything is confidential that you discuss with people. Everything is confidential unless they were to share with me they were going to do harm to themselves or to anyone else or to break the law.
And there is then that slight caveat that if I come in for organisational coaching, if there's a corporate space, you have to if they share they were going to break anything that was within the terms of their their company guidelines, that that would be a caveat. But above that, the actual essence of what they're saying, that is confidential, yes, always. Brilliant.
So finally, I've been noticing you popping up with one of my other good friends Andy Green on all sorts of, professional speaker association things. I think there was one just at the weekend, by the way, sorry, I don't know if I said Happy Earth Day because we're, we're recording this on, on Earth Day, so, 22nd. Yeah, but I think it was the weekend before I saw something popped up on LinkedIn with you and Andy together at a, was it an event in Ireland?
No, it was in Leeds. It was the Professional Speaking Association Impact conference in Leeds. Yes, Andy and I, Andy and I were there.
Now he would be my inspiration for joining because I met Andy at this conference. Absolutely amazing guy. So inspiring, engaging to speak to.
And then I noticed purely on his LinkedIn that he had one emerging speaker in PSA and I and I looked into it a bit more and decided I wanted to attend the conference and met up with him there again. And that was just incredible, the calibre of speakers and and so whereby currently I do a lot of speaking when in the kind of lecturing education. Facilitating workshops sphere and, but I really admire someone who can deliver a keynote, bring, bring a story along, have a learning, have a, you know, have an inspiring takeaway, and that's, yeah, that's something that I really love and that's something that I'm I'm working on.
Brilliant. Yeah, I must admit I probably need to have a chat because I, I think we're both, we, we've both got a bit of Irish where you've got a lot of Irish blood in you, I've got a bit of Irish blood in me, we all like to. To chat, I, I, I went to Blarney, but I went inside the castle first, or I went into the gardens and by the time I went to go inside the castle, the castle had closed and my wife was very pleased that I didn't kiss the Blarney stone because she said you don't need to.
No, she's talking even more, yeah, exactly. Ah, but Jackie, listen, it's great to speak to you as always. You too, I think it's amazing what you're doing on the coaching side, you know, helping him veterinary practise because a lot of these stress related problems actually are probably easier to solve than we sometimes make them out to be, but of course you need somebody at your side to help you with that often to try and do it on your own is, is difficult, isn't it, and as you said.
I think er before we started, you know, don't struggle, look for the easier way and the easier way is often to find a coach or a mentor, or just somebody, sometimes a a problem shared is a problem halved, isn't it? Yes, exactly, reach out. Yeah, and cherish.
It's a simple finding a simple solution and there's nothing wrong with you. I sat thinking there was something wrong with me for so long and it's not, it's just a very human. Human response to stress and it's hard to think clearly, then you just find the simple solution and then things become clearer and then you move forward and there's just Yeah I I really I suppose I really want to support other people to find fulfilment and enjoyment and in their job, you know, in their role and that and in their life because it's it's fulfilment, it's purpose.
You know we You know we get we get one chance at this and to do as much and to to not to struggle and actually to enjoy everything you've worked so hard for. Brilliant. Jackie, thank you for being so inspirational.
We'll put your email details and any website or anything underneath the podcast and obviously looking forward to hopefully seeing you soon at a conference or whatever. Fantastic, Anthony, thank you so much for this morning, really appreciate it, love chatting with you and I'll see you soon. OK, take care, see you Jackie, and thanks everyone for listening, see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon.
