Hello everybody, and thank you very much for joining us for tonight's webinar vet practise management webinar, which has been kindly sponsored by MWI Animal Health. I'm Catherine from the webinar vet and tonight we are thrilled to be joined by Liz Jones, who will be talking to us about our leadership superpowers. So before we get started, we would love you to get involved with the session, and if you've got any questions for Liz, please pop them into the Q&A box as we go along.

It won't disrupt the webinar, and I can collate them all and then put them to Liz in the Q&A at the end. We've also got Kyle on the session from the webinar vet team who is on hand to help with any technical support that you may need. So Liz has over 25 years experience in business and management, having carved out her credentials in leadership with a 10-year career in the Financial Times group.

She is a business consultant and coach, specialising in organisational culture, employee engagement and leadership styles and behaviours. Liz runs her own consultancy business and works with organisations from a range of sectors including universities across the UK, the NHS, and the private sector. She's a coach, trainer and is one of the lead trainers for the coaching Academy, the largest training provider of its kind in the world.

She is also a public speaker and has spoken both in the UK and Europe on leadership, employee engagement and positive. Psychology in the workplace. So thank you so much for joining us, Liz.

I've got my pen and my paper. I'm really looking forward to the session, so I'll hand over to you now. Oh, thank you, Catherine.

Thank you so much. Thank you for a very warm and most complimentary introduction. And thank you to everyone here joining us for this particular session.

What's your leadership superpower? I just want a slight change. Let's, let's break from the slide show and let's get the camera on, because we've actually not met.

We, I've not met you guys in person. You've not met me before. I'm assuming we've not met before.

So I don't know how many of you are actually fans of action heroes, or the movies or the graphic novels that we can see or that we can read. Some of you may be ardent DC fans, others may be Marvel fans, and there might be a whole group of you out there that have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. But essentially, The superheroes are the ones that are blessed or bestowed with these super powers.

They don't all necessarily wear capes. We know that. But they do walk amongst us, and they, they are, they are part of us, and they don't bring out their superpowers until they're needed.

Until they need to unleash them, whatever they are, or indeed, wherever they are. Now, I'm happy to admit that I'm a fan of something quite different. I am a big fan of playing after dinner games.

You know, the kind of thing when you have people around for a meal or, or, or you're at a restaurant or, you, you may be out for a drink somewhere and there's that quiet moment, you decide to play a round table game together. And the one game that we like to play quite often is what superpower would you choose? Now, I'm off.

I'm down it already. I'm down the rabbit hole already trying to think, what would, what would my superpower be? Cause I have to be honest, it changes on a fairly regular basis.

I often think invisibility would be a good one. That would be pretty cool, right? Or maybe it would be good if we could go forwards in time.

I'm thinking lottery numbers. That'll be good. Or maybe it'll be really good to go back in time.

Go back and and relive some amazing event in our lives. But I have to say for me, there isn't really a a go to superpower that I would pick over and over again. To be fair, I'm, I'm quite often influenced, not least by some of the other superpowers that people are choosing round the table, but the honest answer is it depends.

Depends on the situation, depends on the context, depends what I'm trying to achieve. Now, in my line of work, doing sessions like this, doing master classes, workshops, training, particularly when they're live, and particularly when I'm working with leaders, senior managers, partners, people like yourselves. And again, particularly if these are live or, or, or interactive, I very often throw in an icebreaker and do an icebreaker exercise.

And what I've started to do is morph the superpower game into an icebreaker, which I now call what would your leadership superpower be? So I'll share with you some of the common answers that have come up when I've done that as an icebreaker exercise in a room in an auditorium, whatever. One of the most common answers that comes up is, well, I don't know.

And then you get some jokers amongst the crowd a lot and say if I knew I wouldn't be here. Very often people say, well, I don't actually need one. I just need to know how to deal with a certain individual in my team or how to work with my line manager.

And very often people will actually say, you know what? I don't think I really need one, it just all depends. But the truth is we all need one, and in fairness, we probably need quite a few.

And the skill is understanding when we need to bring them out. One of the times we need them, one of the times that we don't, and that's what this session is gonna be about. And hopefully what you'll find is it'll start to give you some clues about what your superpowers are, because they're in there.

We just need to find how to unleash them a little bit. So here's what we're gonna be looking at in this session. We're gonna start off by looking at some leadership styles, because that will start to give you some clues about perhaps what your go to style already is.

And then we're gonna start looking at behaviours, human behaviours, as well as leadership behaviours, because you can understand how that works. You can start to then think about how you can apply your superpowers and where, which kind of leads us straight into emotional intelligence and, and, and, and how that works and how that can give us some ideas about how we shift and how we can change and when to bring them out. We're gonna be looking at some communication techniques and what happens when different styles and behaviours meet in the middle somewhere.

And what happens when those different behaviour types might be, as I say, quite different with one another. We're gonna throw in some transactional analysis for good measure. What else are we gonna cover?

Yes, we're gonna take a step back. We're gonna look at the wider culture and the wider context, what's going on within your teams, your organisations, your companies, your practises. Because you haven't got the culture right, you can have any superpower on the planet, but it's not gonna land and it's not going to work.

So all the way through, there's gonna be a couple of models to help you get your head around it, as we say, throughout the session, you can hear, there's there's lots of stuff that we're gonna be covering. There's any questions, throw them in the Q&A box and we'll get to them at the end. So are we ready?

Shall we start looking at our superpowers? Let's bring those slides up and start looking at each of these in turn. OK, so as I said, we're going to be starting on, starting to look at the evolution of some of the leadership models that are around.

We haven't got time to go through all of them. But over the years, correction, over the centuries, we've really been trying to capture what the essence is of being a good leader. And I would say from within the 19 sorry, within the 20th century, from about the 1950s onwards, we really started to apply some research to it, some science behind it and start to develop some models.

So there's been a kind of an evolution of leadership styles. They've always been there. We just put some models around it, and started to look at them in, in a bit more depth so we can start to analyse them a bit more.

So this is a bit of a whistletop talk. I'm gonna start with one from around the 1960s, the Blake Mountain model, and this is where we start to look at your leadership style, whether it's based on your concern for the people around you, or are you more concerned with the results with the task in hand. That slide looks a bit small on the screen there, so I'm gonna make it a little bit bigger.

Let's break this down a little bit. So, as I say, concern for people is the access at the side, and then we also can compare that to A leader's concern for the task, very arbitrary, we're gonna look at low versus high in this particular instance. So as you can see, we've got 4 quadrants.

And Blake Mountain started off by looking at or considering the style of leadership that somebody would have if they were very highly concerned for the people within their team, and perhaps had less of a regard for the task in hand. So, this is the top left quadrant, and they call that the country club style of management. You can imagine your country club was very, it was, it was all about, people getting on and, and, and, taking part rather than thinking about the, the task in hand and the results that were required.

And then conversely, we can then look at, well, what's the opposite, diametrically opposed, I would say version of that where we could have a style of leadership which the individual leader or manager is more concerned about the actual task itself, rather than the people. Look at the terminology they gave that produce or perish style of management. Always quite judgmental in the approach and, and feeling that, it was quite a hard style of leadership and management.

Their view was the preferred approach to leadership was the team leader style where you had a great balance of either being having concern for people and a great balance of concern for task. Getting that balance right, high concern for both, describe that as being. Team leader style of management, heaven forbid you should fall into this category, impoverished management, low concern for task, low concern for people, just for completeness.

They had one in the middle, which was the middle of the road style of management, which they described as being a bit bland and as the name describes, a bit middle of the road. So this is quite a fixed model, and you could take various psychometrics and work out what your style of leadership or man and management may look like. So it was around the 1960s, as I say, and a bit of a fast forward, more recently, theory X versus theory Y style of management.

So what's different here is it's less about how you, what your preferences are, what your, you tend to lead with in terms of your thinking. It was more about your team and what you felt motivated them as individuals. So, therefore, what did that tell us about your leadership style?

So for example, if you felt that your team wasn't particularly motivated, you're described as having a theoryX style of leadership. In other words, you would display leadership behaviours. That would be very controlling, that would be arguably a bit micromanagement style of leadership, keeping an eye on people, driving them, and, and really pushing them because you feel the motivation isn't there, whereas theory why style of leadership, more open, you believe they are motivated.

They can be left to work under their own devices, very often seen in kind of creative style and creative industries. And this is a completely different style of leadership based on our perceptions of our team's motivation or our staff's motivation. But again, quite fixed.

Fast forward again, let's look at situational leadership model. What I like about situational leadership, and this is where it leads into, particularly into what we're looking at, as, as part of this session, is actually, this is where we talk about it depends. It depends on the maturity of the team, how adept they are at the task in hand, and adapting your leadership style as appropriate.

Let's break that down a little bit. Now, this is gonna look a little bit like the Blake Mountain model, but I'm gonna go to lengths to show there's some subtle differences here. As you remember, the style of leadership is led by the ability of the team.

And we're looking at, yeah, kind of from a people perspective, but more about how we need to support that team as individuals, as people. And rather than looking at the task, it's more about. Giving them direction in terms of what they need to do and helping them to understand their skills and capabilities.

So again, we're looking at it from high and low, we end up with 4 different quadrants, but let's compare this to the Black Mountain model. So let's imagine you have a team that are. Very willing and very capable.

Hearts and minds. Think about it about hearts and minds. If they're willing, then you have their hearts, they're capable, you have their minds.

You have both of them. Your style of leadership can therefore afford to be what we call here the delegating style. It's, it's almost throw it in, they'll get on with it.

There's no need to be over-directive, over, using micro, management style of leadership. Let's compare and contrast with a few others. Let's imagine that the team are perhaps unwilling, for whatever reason they are disengaged.

They're very capable, but they're not on board. You're gonna have to have a lot more supportive behaviours on show, and we call that a more participative or a participating style of leadership. You have to sit alongside them.

You know, this is about winning their hearts. The minds are there already. Compare that with a team.

So this time, a bit of an unpack and rebuild. This time we're looking at a team, they're willing, you know, they're they're, all up for it, but for whatever reason, the capabilities are lacking. They're unable to do it.

You need to give them more direction. They don't need the support as much. You need to focus more on the direction.

This is the telling style of leadership. I think the interesting one here is when we look at the top right-hand quadrant. Remember, Blake Mountain loved this quadrant.

They said, this is where the team leaders live. Look at this. This is the style of leadership that you would adopt if you had an unwilling and unable team.

They're disengaged, they're not skilled. This is when you really need to throw all all the guns at it and have a selling style of leadership. There's a great balance of that support and that direction.

But it's kind of because the team aren't there and you really need to bring them through. So what I like about this situational leadership model is, it's actually recognising that we all potentially have our core style as leaders, our default behaviours, if you like, but it's recognising that there are times when we just need to change a little bit because we're starting to recognise that people are, we need to understand what's going on in their minds. So here is superpower number one, telepathy.

Mind reading. Let me change mind reading for mood reading. Your num your first superpower for this session is telepathy, mind reading and mood reading, and adapting your style according to and your behaviours according to the needs of the team around you.

So let's now look a little bit about behaviours, because here's how behaviours work. And no conversation about behaviours would be complete if we don't start making this analogy to what you're seeing here, which is the iceberg model of behaviours. And it's a great analogy, because when we talk about behaviours, it's everything that's observable or that is experienced by, other people.

So for example, if I display a set of behaviours, you are seeing what's above the surface. You can see whether I'm unhappy or I'm animated or I'm angry and sad. What you don't see, however, is what's lying beneath the surface.

What's driving those behaviours? What values do I have as an individual that are starting to influence the behaviours that you are seeing and what you're observing when you're around me? What's happened in my world?

What's the context? What's happened during my day? What's happened 5 minutes ago?

All these things are unknown and hidden and sit beneath the surface and are unknown. But actually carry way more volume and energy associated with them than what's actually observed, the observable behaviours that sit above the surface. And it's very, very difficult to predict what's going on underneath.

So this is the, the, what's above the surface is almost to be like the end result of what's going on and what's driving us. So, with that said, is it possible to measure or to start putting some metrics against something that's arguably quite as nebulous as behaviours? And the answer is, actually, yes, there is.

There are many different ways we can do it. And a lot of them fall under this umbrella of psychometric testing, which I do and practise quite a lot as, as part of my work. I just want to be very clear before I go any further.

I'm gonna stop talking about a psychometric profiling tool that I use. I am not trying to sell it to you. And I'm certainly not trying to train you, so that you can have a, a, a, a licence in this particular model, but it's a really useful one.

It's actually one of the most more simplistic models. I also work with MBTI, which is a very complex, quite dynamic model. What I love about DSC, which is what I'm going to share with you now is its simplicity, and how useful it can be, whether or not you've done your own profile, whether or not you've done your team's profiles.

If you understand the principle behind it, you can start to make some predictions about behaviours. Let me explain a little bit about how it works. This particular behaviour model looks at two considerations, which I'll unpack in a bit more detail in a second.

We look at how outgoing somebody is versus how reserved they are as an individual. And then we balance that with the next continuum, which is, again, see how familiar this is, how task-oriented they are versus how people oriented they are. And when, and very typically we will see the disc model displayed like this.

I'm gonna unpack that and show you a bit more detailed version of that in a second. So if somebody does this as a profile, it gives them a measurement. It helps them to understand their perception of their own behaviours.

But more importantly, remember, the behaviours are a bit above the water. It's the what's going on underneath that starts to become interesting because it starts to tell us a little bit about their motivations, what are their environmental preferences, how they achieve goals, what are their communication preferences, how they make decisions, how they're operating, particularly in and around other people. So it's a really useful tool and metric to use.

And as I say, I love it, whether or not you actually do the profile or not, because it's simplistic. It's easy to understand and interpret for ourselves. And indeed, when I start to unpack it in a second, you're gonna start recognising yourself being described.

What's also interesting is it's possible once you have even the simplest understanding of it, you can start to predict other people and other people's behaviours. Let me give you just a really quick whistle stop tour around disc, because then you'll start to be able to recognise, kind of, the behaviours you'll see. So as I say, we've got two continuum going on here.

First one is where we compare, how outgoing somebody is versus how reserved they are. It just needs to be, again, just for clarity, we're not talking about confidence here. When I'm talking about outgoing, I'm talking about action-oriented approach.

Do first, think later. That kind of outgoing, that kind of action orientation. And when we look at how reserved people are, it's, it's more about, they're not shy, they're not withdrawn, they're not, you know, socially withdrawn.

It's not that at all. It's more about people who will think and contemplate first before they take action. So that's a distinction I would make.

And then we have this other continuum that we've looked at before. Interestingly, whether somebody's more task focused or whether an individual is more people focused. And where the disc terminology comes from is when we consider the quadrants of behaviours within each one, we, we divide them up into these four dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance DISC.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna describe what an extreme D I S and C would look like. Mindful that actually we all tend to be a little bit of blends and and that, but let's just start to look at some of the extremes of these. So I'm gonna look at this top left hand quadrant first, so this is, these are individuals who are.

Act first, think later. Equally, they are task focused. So we're looking at individuals here.

Think about the behaviours you're likely to see. They are very determined. They are completely driven, particularly by the task in hand, very results orientated.

Quite dominant. If you know somebody who has a high day or you work around somebody, they will appear dominant. They're all about the task and not about the people at all.

Quite decisive. They'll make decisions quickly because they're not influenced by the impact it's gonna have on other people. It's all about the task, and they're quite direct as a consequence.

Let's look at eyes who will still act first, think later. But this time it's more about the people. So they're working and they're getting results in and around other people.

So we call this the influence, so they are influential. They can come across as being impressive. Interactive, wanting to know how other people work, wanting to get involved, as another I word with people.

Always interested in other people. And they can appear quite inspiring because they're trying to win the hearts and minds of other people. It's all about the people getting, the job done through others.

So on the other side, we have the reserve, the people who are taking that step back before they take action, and on the people focused side, we have the steadiness quadrant. People who may appear to be taking the safer option. So it's all about the team.

It's all about working together and contemplating with people before we will take action. So as a consequence, that can tend to slow things down a little bit. So they will appear very steady.

They can be sensitive because of this, contemplation around other people. They love the status quo. They don't like change at all, in that quadrant.

Real team players. Team, you know, the really good team players are steadiness. And in fact, in terms of, of numbers and, and how often we see, what, what the, adult population is made up of, the vast majority of people, I'm talking the 65, 67% of people will fall into steadiness, very stable group of people.

Then we have the reserved task focus, the compliance, and what we tend to see here, cautious, careful. They're sticking to the rules, they're following the rules, because that's how the task gets done. They're thinking and contemplating through those tasks, the transactions and, and the operations, so they can appear calculating.

And they'll appear competent because you'll show them how to do something and they'll just keep doing it. Loads of words on the screen. Let me just get rid of some of them, but let's just start thinking about some of the behaviours and some of the types of people we would say.

You know, dominance, very driven, very results orientated. You will often see business leaders who are dominant because they are so driven. Jeff Bezos, never done his disc.

Guarantee he's a he's, he's would be a disc, sorry, he would be a D on the disc profile. Whereas somebody like, let's say, Richard Branson, who is better at winning the hearts and minds, I would see him more up here as influence. I'm, I'm a high I.

Start to think now, what would happen if we put somebody who's dominance, who's a day of a desk with perhaps somebody who's here steadiness. The dominance would be, come on, let's do this. Let's drive forward.

Whoa, I've got a team of people full of steadiness who are not I can change and wanting to, to talk. Oh, let's talk about this first before we do it. There's a potential clash of behaviours going on.

What would happen if an eye was working with the sea? The eye is trying to influence and start to be interactive with people the compliance just wants to get on with the job and the task in hand. So we're going to apply a superpower here.

It's about thinking about who we are, whether you do your disc or not. Where do you think you sit within that grid? What are the behaviours, whether you are aware of it or not, that you may be displaying?

What are the behaviours you're seeing of other people and what's that starting to tell you? So if you have the ability of Pre precog predictions. If you can start to think about how you need to behave, that's gonna how your behaviours are influencing other people, that's gonna be a great superpower to have and certainly to start with.

So let's think about that again. Let's think about the different behaviour types interacting with one another and working with one another. Let's go back to this behaviour model again.

So I've, I've shared with you what what I know, I'm a, a high I. You may start already be thinking about what your particular. Behavioural profile may look like.

But remember, you are seeing it from your own experience. It's subjective and you're experiencing it here at the bottom of the iceberg. It's what others observe.

It's above the iceberg, and we're possibly not aware of. And conversely, it's the other way around with other people. Because when we think about other people, this is what I observe up here.

Again, that's what's driving it, it's what's below the water for them. So think about it. In terms of, when I observe other people, I'm basing it from my view of the world, from unless I apply any thinking to it, any conscious thought, I'm applying my subjective view of the world on their behaviours.

And similarly, they're doing the same to me. So we need to just take a step back from that, a bit of a metaposition, and just start to think about. That's not telling me the whole story, that tip of the iceberg, because A, I'm probably viewing it from down here somewhere.

B, there's a whole picture going on. We need to be quietly observing that whole picture. Superpower number 3.

Invisibility. Watch without being observed and seeing what that whole picture starts to tell you. But if we're just observing, and that's literally all we're doing, we're not doing enough.

We need to start doing something with that particular information. So here's a great model, from Danmark Goldman that will help us to think about how we can start to influence that and how we can start to change some of our behaviours. Let me just go through the model.

You, you might be familiar with this. This is, this is quite a common one. We're certainly familiar with the terminology around emotional intelligence.

So let's just break it down a little bit more. OK. So we talk about how our emotional intelligence matures from when we are babies.

It starts, to children, to young adults, through, through to adult life. And it starts with self-awareness. We become self-aware, as we're growing up, as we're maturing, and we start to recognise that no matter how self-aware we are, you know, I'm happy, so I laugh.

I'm, I'm hungry, so I cry. Actually, some of those emotions and some of those behaviours don't necessarily always serve me in those situations, and there are times when I need to regulate those behaviours in those situations. And we call that element of emotional intelligence or that phase of it, if you like, self-management.

We're starting to have to demonstrate. Some self control over our emotions and over our behaviours. And we're doing it under our own initiative, not waiting to be told by somebody else.

We're learning that it serves us to adjust and to control our emotions and behaviours in a certain way. But it's not all about us. We are a, a societal creature, and there are other people around us, and we recognise that other people behave differently.

For those of you that either have children or around children or worked with children, how often do they come to you and say, they're doing it wrong, they're not playing nicely. Different equals wrong when we are learning and developing our emotional intelligence. And what we recognise is that We, need to start orientating ourselves into those social groups, into those teams, and into those different social interactions.

So that's the first part where we're recognising others, developing our social awareness accordingly and orientating into those teams. But here's the important bit. And this is the bit that a lot of people miss.

It's more about that. If we want to have really impactful, enriching, and powerful engagements, it's more about the regulation of not only our emotions, but how we can influence and inspire other people. The relationship management piece.

What can we do? Not just to adapt ourselves, but to influence the people and the teams around us. And if we're talking about leadership superpowers, that's where it sits.

And I would call that shape shifting. How can we shift and change the way we are to influence not only our own behaviours, but the behaviours of those around us? It's kind of like chameleon, like a N.

So there's your next superpower, shape shifting. But why is all of this necessary? And he's right.

Because unless you, you, you own your own business or you've set it up from scratch or you're somebody like Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson, it is extremely unlikely that you have handpicked your team. And typically, we have to play with the cards that we've been dealt with, and it takes a certain kind of leadership skills to get the best from the hands that we've been dealt with. How do we get the best out of the people around us?

And one of the first steps we need to do is to create an environment that is conducive to that. So I'm gonna introduce now another management tool. This one's actually, quite an old one, and it's been around for a long time.

It's actually, I checked the date this morning, 1955, to be precise. And it's called the Joe Harry window. Great stories to how they came up being called the Joe Harry window.

It was developed by two Americans, Joseph Loft and Harry Ingram, Joe, Harry. See what they did there? Anyway, it's a model that's really useful to help us not only understand ourselves, because we're going to learn that a little bit.

And how we are perceived by others, but more importantly, what's the importance of that? What's the impact of that? And, and why does that make a difference?

So, the context we're gonna look at as we explore this, particularly in the context of this evening, is what we know about ourselves. What we are aware of in terms of our behaviours, and we're gonna contrast that with what other people know about us and what they see in us, and what they observe in us. Let's look at each of these in turn and we'll start with the arena.

OK, so in the arena, this is the area which is, or the quadrant, if you like, where it's happy days. Look, look at the icons there. It's, it's this, this is where we are operating, where we are playing, if you like, where we are acting out, where we are interacting with our colleagues, our peers, our team members in such a way that we know we're comfortable with the way we're acting, with all the behaviours, and, and everybody.

Equally see that. We, we're all aware of one another, and this is described as being the most conducive area. There's no surprises.

Nothing's being hidden. There's nothing that people aren't aware of. It's not only the most comfortable, but it is the most productive way in which we can operate with the people around us.

Probably makes more sense if we start to compare it when things are slightly different. So the next one we can look at is the blind spot. OK, so this is when we are working with people and we are displaying a set of behaviours, and then we're not aware we're doing it.

Remember the iceberg. You know, we're looking at this subjectively from the bottom of the iceberg. We may be displaying some behaviours that we're not aware of and we're certainly not aware of the impact.

I think this is a very optimistic icon, because we're not aware of it and it might be something that's really good and really supportive, but equally, it may not be. We may not be aware of a detrimental impact that it could be having on an individual or on people around us, because we're not, we don't recognise that that's happening. Let's look at things slightly differently.

It could be that we are actually playing out and other people aren't aware that's something that we are either holding back or we've put on a huge mask, and we are hiding something consciously or subconsciously from the people around us. Now, you could argue, is there, is there a problem with that? What, what, what, you know, why is that not conducive to a, a productive working environment?

More than anything else, you're carrying a mask, and as long as you are carrying that mask, there's an energy associated with that, and you're having to mask something out, suppress something, you will not be performing at your best if you're holding something back. And also, we can only hold it for so long. Sooner or later, the cracks will start to show, the mask will slip, whatever analogy you want to make.

So again, this is not conducive to a productive or working arrangement or working environment. Here's a weird one. This is the one where, you know, we're displaying behaviours and, and we're hiding stuff and and people around us don't know what's going on.

We call this the unknown area of the Johari window. And it's, it's, if you're familiar with the Tuckman model, when new teams form and get together, and he calls it the forming, norming, sorry, forming, storming, norming and performing. It's the process a team goes through while they're getting to all know each other.

This, this is the forming and the storming. You know, the era of the sharp elbows. Nobody knows what's going on.

Really unproductive phase of working. So what we're wanting to do and what we're aiming for here is what could we do to influence that Joe Harry window. Now, it's called a window because we're imagining a window with 4 panes in it.

But what we want to do is maximise this arena. Let's play in the arena. Let's get out in the arena and play in there, cause that's the most productive place for us all to be in.

And how can we minimise the blind spot? What can we do to reduce that facade, and what can we do to completely blitz the unknown out of the equation? So going back to the original model, here are some of the things that you can actively do and I would encourage you to do.

Go out, find out where your blind spots are. Seek feedback. And I'm not just talking about, let's just wait for the annual appraisal.

I'll have a nice chat with my line manager, you know, the he or she or they will tell me stuff. If you're lucky enough to have an annual appraisal, go out and seek it. I'm kind of a fan of the 360 appraisals.

They're OK. Just go out and talk to people. And that's what this is about, creating that environment.

I'm talk about environment now, between now and the end of the session. Create that environment where it's, we're having those conversations. Seek that feedback from yourself, learn from it.

What can you do differently? How can you adapt your behaviours? Disclose if there's a mask, because that carries weight.

And certainly, in terms of our emotional health and well-being, that's not always a healthy place to be. Find ways in which we can disclose. Guys, this is a bit of a mass that's going on here.

I need to share this with you. And if it is the unknown, if it is the forming and storming phase of the team, if people are fractured, be the one. Be the one that starts that conversation.

Now I know, and I know from experience, I don't know from sessions when I can see people, and, and, and talk to them about this, you might be feeling a bit uncomfortable about this. Because this takes a whole stack of stuff. This takes courage, this takes trust.

This takes a high degree of vulnerability. But if we're gonna go out and play in the arena. This is what we need.

So your next superpower. Superhuman strength. It's having the strength to be able to do some of those things and being the brave one to start those conversations and to have those conversations with the people around us.

So talking about conversations and how to have conversations, I thought it would be useful to very quickly look at what's actually going on in those conversations, particularly if you have some of those different behaviour types. That are going to be interacting, if you're a D working with an S and all those lovely things. So I'm gonna look here at some of Eric Byrne's work, and transaction analysis.

Now, Byrne has, taken some of the work of Freud, where they look at the ed ego and super ego, and he's, he's defined three derivatives, if you like, of the, of the ego state. And I'm just gonna whiz through quite a deep psychological model and try and do it very, very quickly. But he describes that when we are communicating, when we're operating, when we are with people, we tend to do it in different states.

Parent, child, and adult. Let's do parent and child first. These are behaviours that we will adopt without even thinking about it.

They're in our subconscious. We learned them in our formative years. So anywhere between the ages of 1 and 5 or 1 and 8, depending on which psychologist you're reading.

But because we observed, we experienced behaviours, we, had parents or carers or educators around us who would nurture us. And we had learned those behaviours, who would criticise us, and we learned those behaviours. We learned as children, as a child, how to be natural and free and have natural instinctive behaviours.

We also learned how to be adapted child. You know, the hands on the hips and stamping. Our feet because that's how we got our way.

We learned those behaviours and we see them in our mature years. They play out. You'll observe them in other people.

Next time you see somebody hands on hips, stamping. They are being an adopted child. They're not thinking about it.

They are reacting. Parent and child states are reactionary states. But Bern also talks about a third state, the adult state, which is when we start to apply some conscious thought to it.

And that's what I want to encourage here. So let's just unpack some of burns stuff, and you can sources and look into this. He wrote a great book, the games people play.

We talked about transaction analysis in quite some detail. He talks about the initiation, the respondent. As you, you're the leader, you're the manager, respondent.

These are the people that we're setting up these conversations with. Very often you will see, typically in a, in a management, manager, stroke team member situation, you'll often see. Parent, adult, child, you will often see, team leader acting as a parent.

Respondent's child. One's not more mature than the other. It's just about the behaviours we see.

Arguably, it's complementary. It kind of works, but it's not conduct it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not a productive conversation, because we're falling back on default reactionary behaviours. So it's far more effective we can adopt this adult state where we're having those kinds of conversations.

But it'll only be really effective if we're all in adult states. So it's not just about us. We could think, oh, you know, I spent time preparing for this, I've got an unconditional positive regard for the individual I'm having the conversation with, but they're not ready for it because they're still in adoptive child, baby.

So, it's not just about ourselves, it's about helping other people to be in that same state. So, yes, it's preparing ourselves, but it's also about creating an environment. Creating a whole culture with those conversations are all right, and people are OK with it, creating that adult state.

So your next superpower, you can develop those skills to control your own mind and also to help other people to get in that state. It's the superpowers of agility, or certainly mental agility, and that mind control. What can we do to set that conversation up so the other person will be in adult state.

The final thing I want to share with you tonight is talking about taking a step back, another big step back again. And I want to share a model with you that starts to look at more of the culture around either your team or the whole practise or company or business. And I'm using as my inspiration, actually, it was a piece of work, a piece of it started.

Of the UK government commissioning two researchers, authors, David McLeod and Nita Clark, to look at organisations that were really effective at their employee engagement. And what, #1, were they doing? And number 2, what impact was it having on them as an organisation?

There's the publication that came out as a result of that back in 2009, still valid, still widely recognised as a whole movement around engaging for success, which I certainly signpost you to. But the one I want to look at is a model that came out of that, the four pillars of employee engagement. I work across large organisations, universities, the NHS, hospital trusts, but I also work with teams, small teams, marketed.

This model works. You can get these four pillars right within your teams. You're gonna make such a difference on the culture around you.

Now to remain true to the original model, I'm gonna use the same terminology, but I'm gonna perhaps put it into a, into more of a context so that it fits around, you know, your own scenarios and where you're working. But the first thing we look at is organisational integrity. That's the first pillar.

How do we behave? How do we act towards one another? What are our values as a team?

As a company, as a business. And how are we, how are we behaving within those values? How can we demonstrate that we're living and breathing those values by the way we behave with one another, the way we behave with our, our clients, our patients, our customers, whatever they may be.

So in that organisational integrity, have we defined that and are we open about that? Let me look at strategic narrative. And put simply, have we got a story that we tell that describes our past and our present and our future?

Where have we come from? Where are we celebrating what we've done? Particularly in recent times, and I can't tell you how many organisations are just skimming over that.

Where are we now? And are we talking about that? Have we told people where we're going and what our intentions are?

And more importantly, what that means for them and where they fit into that picture, the strategic narrative very clearly told at all, to all people across the, the business, whatever their role may be. And who's telling that story? We need to make sure that we are, and we are supporting, engaging managers.

Who are the people that are leading their teams? How are they inspiring people? Are they setting people development objectives that will stretch them and inspire them and challenge them, but bring them forward as individuals?

Are we listening to them? And I mean really listening and taking on board what they want and inspiring them. And providing them with this 4th pillar, the employee voice.

Are we truly listening to them? Are we giving them the platforms so that they can communicate with us? And I don't mean just, you know, let them have a notice board or let's have a team meeting once a month.

You're the leader, you're the manager. Sit down with them at least once a month. Keep in touch meeting, regular catch up, whatever that may be.

And I don't mean a quick teams call once a morning and check in and make sure everyone's OK. It's really making sure that we are listening to their concerns, their ideas, their suggestions, and providing that voice for them. These 4 pillars, I can't tell you.

If you can look at each of those 4 pillars and keep sight of them at all times, I can't tell you a difference that will make, even within just a team. The legacy of a positive culture that that's going to leave will be absolutely immense, whether you're there or not. And that, my friends, is your last superpower for this session.

Immortality. If you can get those four pillars right, you will have absolutely left your mark on your team or you maybe across the entire organisation. I'm really conscious about time, that and that is, or unfortunately, we have time for.

However, I do want to finish off by saying a really big, huge super thank you to all of you for, for, being part of this, whether it's live or whether it's on the catch up. Thank you so much, for all your attention. Thank you also to MWI Animal Health, who sponsored this session.

I'm gonna stop the share there. I'm hoping. There are some questions there, please feel free to tap away and type away.

I might grab a pen and paper so I can jot some of them down. Hi, let's get back in the room. Catherine, maybe you can, perhaps let me know if anybody has, has put anything in the, in the Q and A's.

Yeah, thank you, Liz, that was brilliant. Thank you so much. That went by so fast.

I can't believe that was 50 minutes. Thank you. You're welcome.

I've had a couple of questions through to me directly, . Yes, certainly. I'm gonna grab a pen and paper so I can notes at the same time.

Cool, yeah, fire away. OK. So, Sarah is asking, do you have any tips on giving and receiving feedback in practise and what do you find would work best?

OK. Giving and receiving feedback. Gosh, there's so many different ways of that.

So, if it's the, the, the, the key thing is to be, don't leave it a long time. It needs to be current. So dealing with things quickly is the number one tip.

Far too often it's left, I'll deal with that at their appraisal next month, or I'll wait until the next team meeting to deal with it. Also be very clear that you have firsthand, and this is good, bad or indifferent, that you have either observed it yourself, or that you can contextualise what it is that you are saying. Because very often when feedback is given, it's just a bit bland.

And people sort of walk away from it and not really clear what it is that's happened. So be clear about what's been observed and How that fits against your expected standards of behaviour. And again, this can go both ways.

So if it's feedback on performance, you know, our standards of performance are here. And here's the feedback, and here's the evidence I've seen, and if it's good, then this is fantastic because you're here, and that's great. Look how great you're, because we'd expect it to be here, so we're delighted with that.

Equally, if it's not up to standard, we need to be quite clear about it. And present it as an observation. So here's our standards, and this is the performance that we're seeing.

Let's have a conversation about for what reason that's happening. Because again, we're only seeing the top. Remember the iceberg.

That's really important. We're only seeing the top. There could be stacks of stuff going on underneath to provide an opportunity for them to Explain coaching techniques are great for that.

Got a whole session on that. But, you know, get them involved in the process. Don't necessarily, and you need to do this and you need to do this, and you need to do this.

First of all, standard, performance, because I've observed it. Let's have a conversation about how we bridge that gap. I'm hoping that's answered, feedback, timely, factual, and against standards, that probably sums up what I would suggest there.

Brilliant, that's great. Thank you. Another question we've had through is, does there tend to be a most popular superpower?

Most popular superpower, gosh, . I can tell you which ones are probably my favourite. So I, I would suggest.

Really understanding what's going on in other people's minds, and starting to think about. So, starting to make predictions about other people's behaviours, observing that invisibility, if you like, and starting to observe people and thinking about, OK, so how do I adapt? How do I then do the shape shifting to adapt into The most appropriate leader I can be at that particular moment.

You know, you do not want to wear your Superman shirt around the office or around the, practise all day every day. We don't want to see it all day every day, but there are times you just need to run away, put your superman top on, and, and, and put it back on again. I actually I said my favourite, I realise what my favourite is.

It's the last one, it's the immortality. Get your culture right. Be the one that gets the culture right.

Leave your legacy. For those four pillars, I really, really would encourage people to look at those four pillars. They're so helpful in terms of getting the employee engagement right.

Like it's such a long way to organisational culture or team culture. OK, brilliant. That's great.

Thank you. And there's one final question around building trust within your team. How any tips on how you do that, particularly when people are feeling vulnerable?

OK. Building trust So much of it is about communication. And if we're looking at it from the perspective of being a leader within the team, it's just creating that openness, creating that honesty, and, making sure that, that you have clear and consistent lines of communication with every single member of the team, because you can guarantee that the minute you deviate or say something different to one of them, that those, those barriers of trust just break down.

And providing people when we talked about the employee voice, providing people with the opportunity to talk, to raise their concerns. And it does require people to be brave. I think there's a real sense of honesty.

So when we're talking about, you know, when you, when you're, when we looked at the Joe Harry window. And, you know, we talked about seeking feedback. I think there's, there's, there's an honesty in saying, you know what, sometimes we're gonna get this right, and sometimes we're gonna get this wrong.

But if I say something and it doesn't land with you, talk to me about it. Explain what your challenges. I can't always fix it, but let's at least have a conversation about it and start to, you know, can't get trust overnight, but start to create and develop that trust.

But it only happens if we start having those consistent, honest conversations, but creating an environment where that's OK, and nipping in the bud when people are transgressing that. OK, that's lovely. Thank you, Liz, that's brilliant.

That's all the questions that we've had in so far. If anybody is watching this on demand, Liz has kindly agreed to, answer any questions that come in over email, so feel free to send them in and we can always pop them on the blog. And that's, yeah, it looks like that's everything for tonight, Liz.

So thanks so much. It's been a fantastic talk. I've really, really enjoyed it.

I'll definitely be going back and looking back at some of the tips that you gave us. Thank you very, very much and thanks again to NWI Animal Health who have sponsored the webinar 2021 practise management series. Lovely.

Well, thank you to everyone else. Thank you for all being part. Thanks for your support, Katherine and Carl, great, great for that, and I say thank you to everyone that's joined us and, and taking part in this session.

Good luck with your superpowers. Thanks a lot, Liz. Take care, see you.

Bye for now, bye.