Hello, er, welcome everyone. Well, today we are really gonna be looking at communication for leaders, specifically for veterinary leaders, and really why that is so, so important. A little bit about me, as to why, why sit here and listen to me.
So quick intro first. I'm a farm animal vet, been qualified about 20 years now. I have over the course of that time, being an intern, a resident, an employee, owner, director, etc.
All along the way. And then for the last sort of 5 years, I've been running my own leadership and management, training consultancy business, together with some interesting people that I Sort of met, over the years. So people from professional sports, mountaineering, business, and the military.
And I have to say, over my time, I have seen and experienced really, really great communication from leadership and also really, really bad communication from many leaders that I've worked with, including myself. I have to put my hand up there, and I'll, I, I'll give a few examples of that, as, as we go through, the talk. Why is it hard?
Leading and communicating effectively is hard. Everyone, even the very best leaders I've seen, struggle, from time to time with this because it's an art, it's not a science. You're communicating with people, you're not communicating with machines.
These people have got their own issues, their own struggles, their own baggage that they're bringing along with them. And so sometimes you absolutely nail it, fantastic, ticking the box, happy days, and then sometimes you just don't, . And really, the very best leaders out there seem to be the ones who go, yeah, I, I understand that.
I'm trying, I'm trying to learn, I'd like to get better, er, can I do better next time round? And some of the worst out there are the ones who just go, got this. I think I've got this leadership lock absolutely sorted.
I don't need to learn anymore. They're the ones to be a little bit scared of. Now, the big problem for us, specifically as vets and vet nurses, as professionals, is when we're in leadership roles, it's often even harder because we're not just leaders.
We're having to do our technical job, we're having to be clinicians, we're having to then squeeze that leadership and that communi. Piece into times when we're not being the vet or the nurse. And certainly then over the last 12 months, we've then had all the added stuff that's come in and all the added anxiety and fears and worries around, our personal lives, our health, our finances, work, all those challenges.
And then trying to support and communicate with the team to hopefully relieve their fears and their anxieties has definitely, you know, it's not been easy. So over this talk, we're just gonna focus on a few things that sometimes we get wrong, and then hopefully we can have a chat about some ideas and perhaps some ways to really focus in on, ways to either prevent or reduce or or get them a bit get them a bit better. Starting off with, we'll have a good look at communicating why.
So not just telling people what to do, but telling people why they need to do it. Professionals love to be involved in the decision making process. They love to understand why things are happening, and if we think back, the, the, the amount of change and the pace of change that we've had this year has been pretty horrific.
One way to reduce anxiety and increase perhaps the uptake of your, of your new idea, to increase the uptake of whatever change it is that you now need to drive through the team, is to get people involved. If we think about when people have done change on us, when we've had to deal with change ourselves, it feels so much better, doesn't it, if we're involved in how that change has has evolved, how that change has come about, rather than having that change forced upon us or ambushed. Well, here's the new thing, right, get on with it.
So even if the change is not great, it's people will more likely buy into it and and and get it done if they're involved in that process. Talking and one-sided conversations. Obviously you know this, if you're communicating, it's not just telling people what to do.
There's gotta be a better back and forth. Professionals love to be asked their opinion, you know, so ask it. Have a listen, have a listen to what they what they have to say.
Remember, you don't need to always do what the team says. But it is very motivational to ask them. So, you know, if you ask, look, I'm still the boss, I'm still gonna come up with a decision, but I'm really interested to hear your opinion, that is really motivational to the people that you're talking to, to your team that you're chatting with.
Remember not to hijack the conversation. Now, what do I mean by hijacking the conversation? It might be, has this, has this example ever gone?
Oh, Dave, how are you doing? Did you get on holiday last year? Yes, Paul, I did.
I, I went down to Cornwall. Cornwall, I've been to Cornwall. Let me tell you all about my trip to Cornwall, OK?
So you see what you've done that, you know, you've, you've asked someone to. Talk about their experiences, to put the spotlight on them. As soon as they mention something, you jump back in and hijack the conversation, and now it's back to you.
Now, I suspect all of us have got friends who are like that, that, when we're in the pub, when we're at a dinner party, when we're socialising, whenever the conversation changes, they want it back on them. They jump in and hijack the conversation. If you don't think you've got a friend like that, then maybe it's you, just have a think about that one.
But constantly pulling the spotlight back on yourself, is quite irritating. You think you're trying to build common ground, you think you're building rapport by by going, oh yes, me too, me too, but actually all you're doing is just dragging the car, dragging the spotlight off them and back onto you again and again and again. Not communicating enough.
Well, this sometimes can be quite a surprise. It can be, leaders can go, oh, I wasn't expecting that when their team says my leader's not communicating to me enough. We've probably all said it ourselves, we've probably all said, head office, never tell us what's going on.
We're like mushrooms, kept in the dark, those in their ivory towers, etc. Etc. We don't know what's going on.
It's often a surprise when you tell leaders that their team don't think that they're being communicated with enough, because they often feel that they're talking all the time. Leaders often go, I'm always talking, I'm always chatting, but perhaps as a leader, we need to think about, are we actually delivering a message and are we delivering a message to the people who need to hear it, or are we just talking? OK, so it's something just to have a think about and later on in this in this webinar, we'll have a chat about having a structured communications plan to really help with making sure that we are communicating at the right time with the right people and getting the right message across.
Fears, vulnerabilities, a lot of leaders don't like to show weakness, you know, a lot of people don't like to say, I'm struggling, this is quite tough, because they're worried that that might make them seem less of a leader. But actually, hopefully. Be able to convince you that showing, not showing your feelings, not showing who you really are and what you're really feeling actually is, comes across as inauthentic and can sometimes create a bigger gap between you and the rest of the team.
And then finally, we'll have a little chat about assuming that everybody likes to receive communication the same way that you do. People are different. People have different personalities, people have different ways of learning, different ways of communier of consuming communication.
So you need to flex your style and your method of communication to suit the receivers to suit the person that you're trying to talk to. Rather than trying to flex and communicate in the way that you want to. Now, some people love face to face, some people hate it.
You've probably over the last 12 months experienced the old Zoom meetings, you know, some people love to chat, chat, chat, chat, they take over, centre of attention, all of them. Some people find it a real chore being on Zoom calls and just keep quiet and go, oh come on, let's get this over with. Another one, hopefully it'll finish soon.
Realise that some people don't like that face to face. Some people love the emails. Some people like time to think about and and compose their feelings and their thoughts before replying to you, whereas some people don't like crowds, they like to do it 1 to 1.
They like to have a phone call or a 1 to 1 Zoom call. Rather than the sort of the, the boisterous Zoom chats that, that we sometimes have. So have a think about who are the people and who are the people that I need to talk to that I need to get this message across to, and are they happy communicating in the way that I'm, I'm doing?
Am I trying to do a one size fits all, or not? Now, anyone who's heard me talk before has probably seen this slide. This is, I'm really, really keen on talking about giving people a toolkit.
So because we are dealing with people, because we're dealing with the art of communication, I'm not gonna be talking about a process or a tick sheet or a list of things that you must go through in order to do perfect communication. But rather, hopefully what I'm gonna try and do is is explain and go through a set of skills. That you can then choose from.
So a bit like a toolbox, you then get to choose the one that fits the situation, that fits your style, that fits the culture of your team. And if you think one or two of the things that I speak about today just won't work for you, that's fine. Don't use them, you know, a bit like a toolbox, leave them in there if you don't want to.
Because there really is no one way to lead, there's no. Way to be a leader. You can see that just with the, the vast array of different leaders and leadership styles that are out there.
And so because of that, there is no one way to communicate as a leader. If there was, we'd all just teach that one way, and we'd all communicate in exactly that way. So, from today, just choose the skills, choose the tools that work for you, and if anything isn't, then, then don't worry about it and move on.
So we'll start off with why. OK, there's there's a lot of different ways to, to say this, to, to explain the same thing. So it is sort of why or in order to.
The whole thing comes from high performance team theory, and the theory is that if you want a team to be not just trundling along, if you want a high performance team in the military, in professional sports, in business, it doesn't matter. If you want a high performance team, it's really important to ensure that the team has got a common goal, that they all understand the outcome, what they're pulling towards, what are they trying to achieve, what is it? Otherwise you end up with a group of individuals rather than that team that's, that, that, that's that's flying.
I put the book down there, if you want to dive in and and and do a bit more sort of reading around the subject, you've probably heard, you may have heard of Simon Sinek before. He's a, he's a US writer, thinker, sort of business leadership guru, that sort of, that sort of, term. And he's written a great book called Start with Y.
And it's all about looking at companies and business and saying that actually, pretty much every business understands what they do. Some understand how they do it, but very, very rarely do they understand why they do it. And so I suppose for us, in veterinary, have a think about how you communicate to your team.
Are you just telling them what to do? Or are you telling them why they need to do it? Explaining where they fit.
If you understand, as a team player, as a member of a practise, as a member of a team, if you understand where you, where you fit in the big picture. It's very motivational. Understanding where you as a small cog fits in the bigger business, really allows you to, to feel better.
It makes, helps you feel that your work is important, it understands that you actually matter. And it allows you to use your initiative and skills and training and all the stuff, all the years of experiences that you've built up. Now.
I put the military, the slightly military photo in there, just because in the military, in the army, you might think that it's all shouty shouty, I don't want your opinion, just do it. I'm not interested in what you have to say. But actually, in the military, it is taught that if you ever need to give an order to somebody, you always must finish it off with an in order to.
That's the why, that's the military way of saying er why, just to so that people understand why they are being told to do whatever it is that they need to do. For example. If I had a group of soldiers and I was in charge of them, and I said, right, you lot, I need you to go to the top of that hill.
Now, if I ordered them to go to the top of the hill, they would go to the top of the hill because I've ordered them to do it. But what if they couldn't get there? What if there was a, I don't know, a, a river and no bridge, and they couldn't get across it?
What if they couldn't get up the hill? Many, many reasons, but for whatever it is, they, they're unable to get to the top of the hill. What do they do?
Well, they, they probably give up and they come back and go, yeah, we tried to get to the top of the hill, but we couldn't do it. Or we weren't able to, to, to do that. Can I have permission to do this?
They might start asking permission to, to do this or that. What I should have done, and if I'm trained properly, I would, I would say I'd like you to go to the top of the hill in order to look out for the enemy. Now actually, what I'm saying there is, going to the top of the hill is not the important bit.
The, in order to is, why I want them to go up there is to look out for the enemy. So now, off they go, and if they can't get to the top of the hill, well, it doesn't matter. They understand what it is that I want, so they can use their.
Skills and experience and training to go and find somewhere else. Another hill, a high rise block of flats round the corner, whatever it is, they're able to use their initiative to solve my in order to, to achieve the why I sent them out there in the first place without having to come back and ask permission. So if we give people the why, if we explain why or explain what in order to, to our team when we're communicating with them.
What we're actually doing is we're delegating responsibility to them. It's very empowering for professionals to have responsibility delegated to them. You're basically saying, as a leader, I trust you.
Here's the outcome. Here's the output that I want to achieve, and I'm happy for you to use your skills and your knowledge and your ability and your years of training in order to achieve that. So it's fantastically motivating for the team because they feel trusted.
It's also brilliant for you as the boss because you then don't have to have constantly people coming in through your door asking permission to do this. Can I do this? Can I do that?
If you are allowing them to use their initiative, then they understand why something needs to be done and they understand the outcome that you want to achieve. They can get on and er and do it without constantly having to come back to you. If you are micromanaging them, which is basically what you're doing when you don't give them a Y, they are having to come back constantly to ask permission, ask permission, ask permission.
And it's very frustrating as a boss, because you now can't get on with your clinical job. You are getting your time filled up with having to micromanage. It's even harder nowadays with remote situations that we're in, bubbles, perhaps not seeing everyone face to face.
It's even harder than it used to be. It was difficult to micromanage before COVID. It's a lot harder to micromanage now, so perhaps, perhaps micromanage is not the way to go.
The reason I put this photo in, er, is because there is actually one situation in the military where they don't, on purpose, where they don't give you an in order to. And that's special forces selection. If you are ever silly enough to think I'm gonna have a go at Special Forces selection, or you might have watched SAS Who Dares wins, are you tough enough, and Middleton, any of those sorts of things.
In reality, most of selection is you walk somewhere and you get to meet someone, and then they point on a map somewhere else and you walk there and you meet someone and then they point point somewhere else on a map, and then you walk there, and they point somewhere else and you walk there and on and on and on. But on purpose, they never tell you the big picture. They don't tell you how far you're gonna walk in total, how many hours, how many days it's going to be, so you just don't know what's going on.
You get to the next point and then you get something else added on, so you never know the finishing point. And they do this on purpose because what this actually does is it starts to create self-induced pressure. They want that in special forces selection.
And you end up with these little gremlins sitting on your head sitting on your shoulder just whispering, you're not good enough, you're gonna get found out, you're gonna fail, all that sort of imposter syndrome stuff that you get there. Just whispering, go on, give up, quit, etc. So what I'm saying is, if we don't give our teams the big picture, if we don't tell them why, if we just give them the what rather than the why, what we are actually doing is increasing stress and increasing anxiety.
So, and I'm sure we don't want to do this, cos it's even worse in the current situation where they. There's a lot more anxiety and stress and worry out there. If we don't want to run our teams, like some sort of special forces selection without Middleton, in there, then make sure that we are communicating the why, or the in order to, whenever we tell people, rather than treating them, treating them like mushrooms.
You set the culture. When you're the boss, when you're the leader, culture comes down from the top, you decide what the culture is going to be in your team. So you get to decide what the coms culture is going to be like in your team.
Remember, yes, it's about what you say, but it is also about how you act as well. We've got a little saying in my company that if you need to tell everybody in your team that your door is always open, it isn't. They should just know that from watching you and how your team reacts.
If you're constantly having to tell people my door's always open, hm, probably it isn't. A great way to communicate with your team, especially professionals, is to ask them their opinion. Vets, professionals, they love to tell you their opinion.
So ask. It doesn't mean that you're a weak leader, OK? Some new leaders, newly into that position feel that the reason they've been promoted into that leadership position is because of their technical skills.
And that puts a lot of pressure on them. They sort of feel that I, therefore need to come up with all the answers. My team just has to do what I tell them.
I've got I've got to be the solution maker. I've got to come up with all the answers, because I've been put in that position. And if I don't, then I'm a failure as a boss.
No. The important point to get across when you, when, when leading your team is, I'm the leader, I'm the decision maker, I'm gonna make the ultimate decision, but before I do, I'd love to have your input. What do you think?
OK, that's interesting. What do you think? OK, that's great.
If you were in my shoes, what would you do? OK, that's great. I, I might not do what you suggest, but I'm gonna listen and I'm gonna thank you for your input, OK?
That has two really huge benefits, OK? It's very, very empowering and motivating, especially for professionals to be asked, what do you think? Because professionals love to go, well, in, in my professional opinion, let me tell you, you've got 20 minutes.
They love that sort of thing. And secondly, it just takes pressure off you as a leader. You don't need to come up with all of the solutions as a leader.
You just need to set the team up to come up with the solutions. So sometimes, when you ask the team for suggestions, their opinions, etc. They might come up with ways that are actually better doing it.
Or come up with better solutions than you would have thought about yourself. Now, as long as your ego can cope, and it should cope with this, because it's all about the team doing well, then that's fantastic. You, as the team, which you lead, has come up with a fantastic solution.
That's a good thing all round. Some leaders feel that they have to be this sort of spartan leader, show no emotion, you know, be, be the big tough, roughly tufty boss. Now, I'm not sure that that sort of British stiff upper lip, Victorian public schoolboy approach ever worked.
It certainly doesn't work now. If, if you are that person, if you are that sort of, if you are breezing through your practise like a swan, if you are effortlessly coping with COVID and all the changes and all the pressure of work and cases and stuff, all of that sort of stuff, if you are just conveying fantastic coping with it. Then actually what you're doing really is increasing that gap between you and the rest of the team who perhaps aren't achieving that perfection, that Instagram perfection that you are you are showing off.
Just imagine if that perfect boss, that everything under control boss, wanders in and says, er, says to the new inexperienced member of the team, hey, er, how are you getting on? Guess what the answer's gonna be? Absolutely fine, boss.
Everything's great, loving it, love your leadership style, thanks boss. You know, they're gonna tell you what they think you want to hear. OK.
If, however, you're able to show a little bit of empathy, a little bit of weakness, you know, oh, hey, this is tough, isn't it? How are you doing with homeschooling? That's not fun, is it?
You know, really struggling with all these changes. I'm worried about XYZ, whatever. If you're just showing that that you.
That you are not this perfect Spartan leader, if you're opening up and showing a bit of weakness, what you're actually doing is giving permission to your team members to also open up. You're closing that gap between you and them. And so therefore, you're more likely then to be perceived as a mentor rather than a big scary boss.
And you're more likely then to be told the truth rather than just to hear what they think you want to hear. All informed that. Now, always hate giving giving credit to the Americans, but, General Stan McChrystal, probably one of the best leaders, military leaders of his generation.
Key points that he really was great at was challenging the status quo and, and something that perhaps we need to as a veterinary profession, keep, keep in our minds, and drive forwards on. He hated, we've always done it this way as the answer to anything, and I think sometimes we fall into that trap as as as vets as a culture. What he did with this all informed net idea, and I'll explain how it's a, it's a great tool to use in your communications armoury, is.
He adopted it when he was, the general in Iraq and then Afghanistan. It's subsequently been adopted across, across, lots of the US and British military. Is he realised that, the distance, metaphorically between him at the top and the, and the front line.
It was huge, and it went through many, many layers, many philtres of different people along the way, up and down. So we sort of got, you know, that telephone problem of the whispers changing as they went down and then came, and then came back up. And so there was a big gap between what was really happening and what he was thinking, and that caused problems in terms of trust both ways.
What he did is what he came up with this idea of once a week, he would just get on the radio, and it was the radio initially, and then as technology caught up, he would then do it on on video conferencing. It was for sort of 30 or 40 minutes once a week, he'd just jump on the radio and anyone could listen in. And this is the important thing, he would just talk about what was concerning him.
You know, what, what was happening? What was he worried about? What decisions might he have to make next week, two weeks' time?
What does, what is his boss thinking about? What is, what does he think his boss might ask him to do and that sort of stuff. It is not a time to tell people.
Decisions that you've made, OK? That, that's, that's separate. That's, that's a separate part of communication.
This is a very specific, just chatting about what I'm up to, what I'm thinking about, what I'm worried about, stuff that might happen, not definitely decided, decisions I might need to make in the future. And amazingly, what he realised this, and what this what this did was it relieved stress and it built trust. What it did was it showed the people on the front line that their leaders were actually doing stuff, were actually trying to do stuff.
Now. Quite often, all it was saying was the leaders understand what the problem is. We haven't got a solution yet, but at least we understand what the problem is.
That's great if you're on the front line, if you're on the front line of the veterinary practise, dealing with the constant change and the COVID situations and the social distancing. Sometimes you feel that perhaps the leadership don't understand. Now it might be that the leadership do understand, they just haven't got a solution yet.
But just by the leadership explaining, I understand what your problem is. I haven't got a solution yet, but I'm working on it. That's very that that that relieves stress and pressure on you on the front line because you're like, actually, yeah, the leaders are not just sipping prosecco and and and and taking a nice holiday, they are working on it, they just haven't got to a solution yet.
That's great. And so it allows people as well. To start preparing for stuff, as I said at the beginning, change is much better when you're involved in it than when it's surprise, ambushed onto you.
So it allows people to realise what the boss is thinking about, what you as the leader, are thinking about. It allows you to start thinking about what change might be coming over the horizon, and it gives your team time to, time to adjust to that, time to mentally get ready for that. And also, it allows them to feed into your decision making.
Rather than you just going, hey, here's the new rotta, this is what we're doing, you can go, well, actually I, I, I might need to change the rota in 2 weeks' time because of XYZ. It then allows the rest of the team to go, well, have you thought about this? I could be flexible here.
What about that? What about this? So you can feed, your team can start feeding into you, perhaps getting involved in the decision.
Remember, change is a lot easier to deal with if you're involved in it. If it's surprised and thrust upon you, it's really unpleasant. So it just, just by having that sort of discussion about what's coming up, just massively reduced pressure and stress, on the front line, and the, the people on the front line then started to trust their bosses, their leaders a lot more because they realised that they really were working hard for them and did understand what them they on the front line were, were going through.
Covering each other's blind spots. At the moment, with teams in bubbles and a huge amount of change happening, all that anxiety around friends and family, perhaps not being able to see everyone you want to see, maybe overworked, a lot of pressure on, the childcare issues that we've got at the moment, all of that, the risk is. That your fantastic high performing team that you used to have starts to stop being a high performing team and just ends up being like a, a group of individuals just looking out for themselves.
I've got a good friend who, his job, he's a, a professional, he's a professional driver. He, you've probably all seen them, some of you may have even done them. He runs track days so you can, get, you know, those red letter days, you can go to Silverstone and you can go very fast round round the track in a car with a, with a driver sitting next to you, which is one of the things he does.
And one of the interesting things he does is on the first lap, flying round Silverstone, going far too fast, much faster than you've ever gone before, you're going round the corner, absolutely concentrating on brake and acceleration, apex, etc. And he'll turn to you and go. What's your postcode?
And pretty much always the people are just like . I, I don't, and they can't even answer. They can't even answer a simple question like what's your postcode?
And then when they get back to the pit, you'll be like, Oh, you, you remember when I, when I asked you your postcode, you know what it is? And they're like, yeah, of course, blah blah blah blah blah. You know.
And, and what that is, is that's, that's bandwidth. That's the fact that when, when you are stressed and anxious and doing something that's new and stuff's flying past you far too quickly, you often then don't have enough room in your brain to process even the simplest of things. Swing that in with all the anxieties and worries and pressure that's on you at the moment.
Don't be surprised that when you communicate with people, sometimes they just don't hear or they don't process it. And you might need to communicate to them 234 times, maybe in different ways, verbally, face to face, send them an email, write them a note. In the past, they'd have got it on the first time, because of the situations we've got now and the fact that there's so much else going on.
They might not have as much bandwidth as they, as they did, a year ago. Your job as the boss is to relieve anxiety. One of the things to do is to try and prevent a comms vacuum developing a communications vacuum.
This is where, because you as the leader are not telling them what's going on, they innuendo and rumour and worry starts to circulate and you need to get in front of this curve now. I have made this mistake before, . I've made the mistake where I needed to go and give bad news to the team.
The team knew that I was gonna have to come and give them bad news, but I wanted to make sure that I knew 100% what was going on. So I waited and I delayed going to see the team because I didn't want to stand up in front of them, and then someone asked a question and I go, I don't know the answer to that. So I was scared or worried or embarrassed that I wouldn't know everything, and so I waited until I had all the answers and then went to them.
And what that did was that left a a day and a half gap where worry, innuendo, rumour got worse and worse and worse, and ended up with it being much worse than the actual, the reality of the situation. What I should have done. Is not allowed that vacuum, that gap to appear and just gone in front of them and had the guts to say, This is what I know, and I'll tell you what I know.
And there are parts that I don't know, so this is all I know. But actually, I don't know that, but I will get back to you. So don't be scared to stand in front of the team and go, actually, as a boss, I don't know the answer to that.
I'll tell you what, I'll do my best to find out, but I just don't know the answer. Don't try and wait until you have all the answers because often that will leave space for that worry and that anxiety to, to build up. Now then, communications plan, as I mentioned at the beginning, how are we gonna do that?
Well, if we're communicating with people, the, the absolute best way, and so the gold standard or the default should always try and be face to face, or obviously in this situation where we are now, if you can't do it face to face, then perhaps Zoom, FaceTime, etc. So we can see each other. The reason for that is it's instantaneous communication.
We can, I can say something and you can reply straight away, I can then reply, we can chat, we can discuss, we can debate, we can argue, but we can get it done straight away. And you can see as well as hear me. So all of that, all of that emotion, you can see my body language, you can see that what I'm trying to say, there's a lot more than just the words that I'm communicating, there's all that other emotion and body language and stuff that surrounds it, which you can communicate face to face or nearly as well, over Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, etc.
If you can't do that, phone's probably the best way because it's still instantaneous. You can still go back and forwards, chat back and forwards, have an argument, disagree, have you thought about this, have you thought about that, bang bang bang, and thrash out whatever it is that you want to do. You can still get emotion across quite a lot, you know, you, they say that you can tell if someone's smiling over the phone call, and you can, you can tell if someone's grumpy, if they're being sarcastic, you can hear that over the phone.
And so you can still get quite a bit of stuff er across. Really what I'm getting to here is Tex and email last. Don't use email.
Email's there for transferring of facts, big documents, you know, here is the rota, here is the Excel spreadsheet, here is the procedure, here is the process, here is the Word document, here is the stuff, the large amounts of facts that I'm sending to you. That's what an email is for. Don't try and communicate over email because I would guarantee that every single person listening to this has either sent or received an email that somewhere the emotion's been misunderstood.
It is too easy. To go, are they, are they, are they taking the mickey here? Are they, are they being rude?
Is that a joke? Do they mean that? What's that going on there?
Every, all of us have done it, all of us have, reacted emotionally or got angry or misunderstood, misrepresented what the email was trying to come across as. And at the moment, when we're perhaps seeing each other face to face less than we used to, perhaps people are more anxious, people are more worried about. What's going on, they're just so much more concerns and all that sort of stuff.
It's just too easy to get the, the tone wrong, to get the tone wrong, to press the button wrong and just to cause issues. So don't do, don't do email. For communicating.
Don't send an email, how are you getting on over the email? That's just, you know. Reserve that sort of stuff for informal check-ins.
OK, now what do I mean by that? Well, I do this. I have a little notebook and I scribble down people I've spoken to over the week, and if I haven't spoken to someone that in the team for for about a week, I'm like, OK, I, I'm gonna pick up the phone, give them a ring, chat in, discuss how are you doing, what's going on.
The idea is, it needs to be informal, OK, this is your emotional intelligence, your EQ this is your checking in, this is what you probably used to do while making a cup of tea with them, or that sort of mythical talk around the water cooler stuff that everyone talks about. This is your this is your gossip, this is your nattering, this is your, your checking in, this is nothing to do with work. This is you as the EQ boss, the, the emotionally intelligent bos.
It needs to be informal and it needs to be seen to be unplanned, OK. Yes, you can plan it, but try not to let the people know that you've planned it. So don't every Friday at 3 o'clock ring Jane, OK?
Because then it'll be obvious that you've just written an Excel spreadsheet, ring Jane at 3 o'clock. By all means have a plan, but try and make it irregular, I suppose is what I mean. Try not to talk about work, just have a chat, just have a check in.
If you're doing, and I know quite a lot of people were doing, I know Monday morning huddles, you know, everyone on a Monday morning or Tuesday morning, everyone on a Zoom call, we'll do 15 minutes and, and then we'll go off and do our work. Fine. But it's very easy to be very quiet, er, keep out the way, say nothing, if anyone says how you doing, yep, fine, check in, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, and then off you go.
If people are like that, give them a ring. Have a chat with them. It's a lot harder to hide when you're having a 1 to 1 with with someone, and you're just having a good chat, er, and a good natter rather than lots and lots of people on a, on a Zoom call where you can hide.
That's your, that's your emotional checking, that's showing that you care and that side of it. So, conclusions around communicating as a leader, be aware. Of the heightened emotions that are out there at the moment, be aware of that bandwidth issue.
The factors, as I was saying about, you know, racing around a car around Silverstone, be aware that people will be, experiencing a lot more outside of work than perhaps they've ever done before. All of that emotional baggage, their friends, their family, worried about, worried about . Health, COVID, vaccinations, homeschooling, all of that stuff is there grumbling away in their background, OK, reducing their bandwidth.
OK. So they may well be, have heightened emotions, they may be quicker to anger, they may be quicker to take offence, they may not, enjoy the banter or laugh stuff off quite as much as they used to. They might not take in and receive your communication as easily as they used to.
It might be, you know, it used to be, I said that to to Keith, and he got it and he did it, and I never had to check up on him. But now, because of everything that's going on in Keith's background, I perhaps need to check in 2 or 3. Times.
Did you, did you get that? Everything OK? Is that working right?
Just to make sure that they've heard. Remember, it's like, you know, racing round at 10 or 30 miles an hour, and someone asks for your postcode, you probably don't hear, you can't process it. Too much is too much else is going on.
Keep the team informed as much as possible. You probably can't communicate too much. It's almost impossible, especially at the moment.
Keep the team informed with what's going on, keep chatting with them, keep talking to them, and then have a think about that all informed net. Try and tell them not just what's happening and what they need to do now. What about this might be happening, these are things that might happen in the future.
These are the three options that we're looking at. These are things that could, could occur. What do you think?
Cause you're gonna allow them to process and prepare for the, whatever it is, the horrible thing, the change, the new way of doing work, the new bubble, the new flexibility, etc. And it gives them time to feed into your decision process. They might come up with a really good idea, which you hadn't thought of, which you can go that that that fixes all the problems, that's, that's nailed it, brilliant.
Have a think about that, why, that in order to, especially if you're not seeing them every day, you can't micromanage your team. People don't like being micromanaged, if you are micromanaging, if you were micromanaging, it's very bad for retention. Professionals hate being gripped and micromanaged, and often when they can, they will leave and move on to other teams, jobs, roles where, where they're not micromanaged, where they're respected, where their abilities are asked and listened to.
So don't micromanage them, give them a Y, give them an order 2. You're basically delegating responsibility. This is what I want you to achieve.
I don't care how you get there. It's really hard. I absolutely promise you, it is really hard doing that because you're like, why are you doing it that way?
That's, that's not what I'd have done. But you just have to relax and say that as long as they achieve the outcome, do you care? Hopefully not.
So give them the why, give them the you in order to, you're delegating responsibility to them. You're shouting very loudly, I trust you. Your job as a leader really is to relieve pressure, not add pressure.
So shouting at people, screaming at them, adding more pressure onto them, telling them their jobs at risk, you know, if you don't do this, why are you doing this, etc. If you add pressure to someone who's already pressured, you know, professionals usually are quite good at motivating themselves. If you're adding pressure to a situation, increased pressure usually results in increased mistakes.
So if you're shouting at them because they made a mistake, all you're probably doing is making more mistakes happen in the future. Be approachable. Try and not be that spartan, try and open up, try and show that you're having a bit of a tough time as well, whatever that may be, and you're just, allowing, giving permission for people to then, come and have a chat with you.
If you are the Spartan, it's very hard to say, boss, I'm struggling, this is tough. I'm not enjoying this, etc. Etc.
If you're able to say, you know, it's not perfect in my life either, I'm struggling as well. Together we can fix this. .
Much, much better, much, much more likely to be told what's really going on and have a plan, actually have a communications plan. I'm going to have a face to face here. I'm going to have my Zoom calls here, and I'm going to regularly have some check-ins.
I'm gonna use emails to to to forward over the new process procedure, new rota. But then I'm gonna phone people up afterwards. Go, ah, did you see the rota?
Yeah, what do you think? Are you OK with that? Let's just chat it through.
This is how I think. It'll work for you, in your situation, in your practise, in your branch, with, with, with your hours, etc. Etc.
Let's just chat this through rather than just an email saying what do you think, send. Have that communications plan, because it will, hopefully make sure that the time, the quality time that you're spending is quality, not just quantity, and that you're getting across the message to the right people at the right time, rather than just chatting away. Hope that's been useful, by all means get in touch and chat further.
Thank you.