Hello everybody, and thank you for joining us for another episode of Vet Chat. Today I am very excited to be joined by Joe Keille, who is the managing director of Belvin Limited. During her 20 year tenure at Belvi, Joe has been responsible for spearheading strategic and operational activities and building the Belvi brands both in the UK and worldwide.
In addition to liaising with global partners, Joe leads the UK team and works closely with Doctor Meredith Belbin to ensure that innovation is always in line with the company's ethos. GO's Joe's Global speaking engagements have taken that all around the world via universities in Estonia and Poland, to name a few. In the UK, Joe is a guest lecturer at several universities and speaks regularly for associations and training organisations.
More recently, Joe has focused her efforts on bringing the bellbour message to international audiences, inspiring them to use the team role framework to usher in lasting team and business performance improvements. So welcome Joe to that chat. Thank you very much for inviting me.
It's wonderful to be here. Brill, so today we're gonna be talking about teams, which sounds simple, but I think as, as we know they rarely are. But before we get started, could you tell us a little bit about, Belvin and what it is that you do for those who might not be familiar?
Brilliant, no, thank you, Catherine. Belvin is a language really. It's a way of being able to describe the strengths that you bring to a team, and it gives you a language so that you can tell other people what strengths you're bringing to the team, as well, so it's a great tool to.
Self-development, but also to try and help teams work better together. And as we all know, this is really easy on paper, but really, really hard in practise. So, yeah, we help teams day in, day out, trying to be as effective as they possibly can be.
OK. Brilliant. Sounds good.
And I touched upon the team role framework in the intro. Is that quite pivotal to Belvin? Is it all sort of centred around that?
Oh, absolutely, yes. The whole idea and all the research that was carried out, a few years ago was that for a team to be truly successful, you need access to 9 different clusters of behaviour. And each of these clusters of behaviour, we call a the team role.
All of us can play all of these 9 different team roles, but we tend to Feel most comfortable playing 2 or 3. They're where we really, really do come into our own. And the ones at the bottom of our profiles, we really should start to delegate.
That's where the team of stress comes in when you're working in a role which doesn't align with your behavioural strengths. But some of your, listeners to this podcast may, be familiar with the terms complete or finisher. That's one of the team roles, the one that's always looking at the detail, checking and checking and checking again.
Or perhaps the shaper who brings the drive to the team, who makes sure that the team does get to its objective, and brings energy and focus in there as well. So, yeah, it's just a great way of, bringing in a, a language for the team to understand the contributions everybody needs to make. OK, brilliant.
Oh, that sounds good. And is it normally, Right at the start when you're hiring somebody that you'd bring in the framework, or do you tend to find that it's sort of further down the line in in practises and teams? That's a really interesting question because normally we're brought in when there's problems.
It's very rare that you get brought in when everything's, you know, hunky dory and the team's working really, really well. So we tend to be brought in when there's some change going on or where there may be a bit of conflict. However, A lot of that can actually be mitigated if you did start using the Melbourne framework earlier on, because then you'd perhaps be able to predict some of these problems.
Yeah. So the sooner that you can use it, the better. Yes.
OK, brilliant. Sounds good. .
So if you're a manager in veterinary practise, for example, how do you choose sort of the best person in your team that you might want to bring in to sort of fill that position? It's tricky. I'm not gonna pretend that it's a really easy, oh, you just do this.
Because first of all, as the manager, you need to work out what skills that person needs to bring in. So you need to know if they're, if you, if you need particular qualifications, experience, etc. Because that is a, a given, I'm sure in, in many areas, you don't want an unqualified vet, in your team.
For example. So you have to make sure that that's there. But then what we need to do is place more importance, perhaps on the behavioural contribution that somebody's bringing in.
So, what type of, vet, what type of manager, what type of, nurse, I, I don't know the right terminology, I do apologise. But what types of people do you You want to bring in? Do you want those completed finishes you're looking at the detail?
Do you want the, the resource investigators who are quite enthusiastic and always going outside of the organisation to see what else is going on? So it's really seeing what type of behaviour that that person needs. And to think about that is in terms of your team is what do you already have a lot of?
Very often we tend to recruit people who are very similar, and we call that cloning. So we find that teams have very distinctive characteristics because they have only sort of like 23, maybe 4 of these team or behaviours, which are prevalent, and we just, we keep recruiting more and more people like us. Which is fine to a point apart from when things change or you want to do things differently, and then you realise you don't have the best of those behaviours to be able to draw upon.
And so when a manager is looking to recruit, it's, first of all, look at the qualifications, but then see what's already available within the team. Sometimes you find that your team may not be particularly. I know running on all cylinders or whatever the the terminology is, and it could be that you need to rejig in the team first.
Before you then look at the recruitment. Yeah. So it's really important.
I always say, take as much time as you can, right at the offset to be able to work out exactly what you want, not just in terms of qualifications, but in terms of other things that people are bringing in. Their attitude, do they have a can-do attitude? Are they quite versatile?
Can they do lots of different things? All of these things need to be looked at. And what you can do is also think, well, what's the relationship if I'm the manager?
Do I want them to have with me? And it could be that you really want somebody like you because you'll get on better with them. But it could be that actually what you need to have is somebody who's very different to you, because although it may be more difficult, actually the outcome is far more productive.
They often say we enjoy working with people who are like us, but we're actually far more productive working with people. People are very unlike us. So it's trying to ask all those questions, to start with.
OK, brilliant. And I guess that's where the sort of profiling is useful because as you say, you've then got that language and you can have open conversations more easily around these things. Absolutely, I think, you know, managing is, is really hard.
It's a blinking hard job, especially if you've become a manager because you've been very good and you've been sort of promoted throughout. Sometimes I don't think being a manager is much of a promotion because I think it comes with a lot of hard work, a lot of extra stress. So anything that can make life easier.
If we can provide that shortcut, and as I said, we do with the language of of Melbourne team roles. So it could be that a manager says, yes, we just, we are all, I don't know, implementers, completer finishers, shapers. We're all very task orientated as a team.
We get things done in a very systematic way, there's no mistakes. But actually, it'd be quite nice if we had a few more social roles. So the next person we want on the team are people who can communicate with other people, people with empathy, people with listening skills.
And it's not saying that the existing team don't have that, but maybe if it's something which comes through, as a more of a natural role, that would help balance out some of that task. So yeah, just using that language really, really does help. Brilliant.
I think in sort of veterinary practise, you know, it can be quite stressful environments, you know, we hear that a lot at the moment from our community. Do you have any tips on how we could better manage a team through stressful situations? Yeah, and I think you all had it really, really tough through the pandemic as well, didn't you, because you were having to go in, you can't treat, .
People's pets online, can you, it must have been really tough with everybody having to go in and I don't know about you, but I'm finding actually it's getting busier now, so there's been no let up, there's been no break, and I think right now it is quite a stressful time, but in particular, . You know, for, for your members and for the people who are joining us today. It's gonna be a difficult one, but what we do need to therefore do, and this isn't easy, is find a time to stop.
Mhm. Find a time to stop, be it everybody's just putting a couple of extra hours in the evening, or I know nobody has any extra hours, and I know it's an unrealistic thing to say, but try and find a time when you can all stop what you're doing and forget about the day to day, and then come together as a team. And talk.
But don't just talk, but actually listen to each other and find out how everybody is feeling, but doing it with an appreciative ear. And I mean that by not trying to think, well, what am I gonna say next? So how does that relate to me?
No, just listen. Listen to everybody in the team, give them time to talk. And once you've done that, people will feel that actually they, they are more appreciated, you know, they they're being appreciated more within the team.
But then what you can start doing is just saying what we want to do is be really successful going forward. What do we need for the future? And to start really breaking down what it is that the team does into into jobs, into tasks, into work, what is it that this team is here to achieve and how we can we break that down into individual components?
Once you've done that, you can work out who the best person is to actually fulfil each individual component because you don't need everybody doing everything, and I think that's where, Some teams have, struggled over the last 2 or 3 years because they've felt that everybody needs to get involved with everything. And that's really, really isn't constructive at all. So try and spend some time listening to each other and then start breaking down what does this team need?
Breaking it down into manageable chunks, allocating the right person to the right task, and you can use the Belbin model for that. And then ensuring that everybody understands when that contribution needs to be, to be made. The great analogy is actually, if you look at it as actors on a stage.
Sometimes we know what the script is, we know what the play is, but we've all decided that we're all gonna say our lines at exactly the same time. So therefore, nobody's listening to one another. It looks a complete mess.
Yes, you might get the point across, but it's really hard. What you need to do is know who needs to be in the wings and who needs to be on the stage at each point. Other people know what's going on.
They don't need to be actively involved in everything. What they do need to know is when that prompt is for them to come on stage and for somebody else to leave. So if you can try and really work that out, it will be beneficial.
But if you can't do that, I would just say, take a couple of hours out and just listen to one another. Truly, truly listen. That is, is the first best, starting, stepping stone.
It's not. That's great advice, thank you. It's communication, isn't it?
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Click the link in the description to register today. So, if there are, any sort of situations in practise where there's a lot of stress or conflict or anxiety, you know, if these sort of good channels of communication are not happening, do you have any advice around the right sort of approach or questions that teams and managers should be asking? Well, actually, yeah, asking why and most importantly is listening to the answer.
Truly listening, like I say, it is about communication, it really is. Some of the reasons why there are stress is that people are in a role which doesn't resonate, so you're not playing to your strengths. And this sometimes happens because you pick something up because it needs to be done, and therefore it then becomes yours.
Not that you wanted to, because you started off just trying to help, . But what happens is we continually do that, but actually it didn't play to our strengths in the first place. And so we find ourselves with jobs, tasks, roles to play, which actually are playing to what we call our, our, our bottom team roles.
And we tend to call this where sort of team role stress comes out. I'll give you an example. I may at some point in the past, decided that I would proofread every blog before we put it on our website.
I could probably have done that once. But if I had to do it time and time and time again, it would call me undue stress because my completed finisher is non-existent. I'm not gonna use that as an excuse for not to do something, but I'm really not the best person to do that.
Somebody who has that high attention to detail is. So sometimes as the manager, it's just checking to see what work is that person doing and does it align with their strengths. And this is really important because we also know that if you play to your strengths at least once a day, you're 6 times more likely to be engaged in the work that you're doing.
That's from Gallup. They did a massive study. And being engaged means you actually want to do more with your job.
You're really interested in it. And you're actually looking forward to, to, to going into, the workplace. So, as a manager, the first thing I would do is just to check to see if the work that they're doing really does, Align with their strengths.
And then the other thing, if it's conflict, especially with others, it's understanding and appreciating difference. And again, Belbourne helps you with this framework. So here in, in the Belbourne office, I know that people who have hired completed finishing get really annoyed with my high resource investigator, because I'm starting loads of things.
I've got so many plates going at once, it's unbelievable. I say yes to everything, because there's an opportunity everywhere. Let's do this.
And then the office, some people in the office are going off for crying out loud. Can you not just finish one thing? Just finish one thing before you go on to the next.
And you can sense that there'd be some tension there, because you're looking at things with completely different viewpoints. But when we had the realisation that I couldn't do my job unless there are people who are fabulous, who are finishing things up, and at the same time, the company would just stay very still if we didn't all go out and try different things, etc. So, We really annoy each other and we'll say to each other, you're really annoying me right now.
But we know that we need to cos together we're a really powerful combination. But unless you know that, unless you appreciate that difference is actually strength. That's where a lot of conflict does actually happen.
Or again, if people are exactly the same as you. So we have this behaviour called a shape of behaviour which is the one you're very driven, very, drive, very driven, sorry, there's all obstacles, just just get knocked over and very task orientated, gonna get there. Very competitive.
Well, if you have lots of people like that working together, there's gonna be blood on the walls, you know, it's a nightmare cos everybody's trying to outcompete and outdo everybody. So again it's understanding and saying hang on a sec, we're all competing for the same ground here. How are we going to best manage ourselves so that this conflict doesn't happen?
So, again, yeah, there's lots of things you can do. There's not one simple solution, I'm afraid. Everybody wants there to be one simple solution for being able to get all the stress out of your team and to manage a team well.
The key thing, like you said before, it's communication. It's aligning people, their strengths to the work that they're doing, and then appreciating difference and understanding those that really drive you mad. Could actually be the most powerful working relationships that you have, but it takes time.
So interesting, so many examples are springing to mind as you as you go through it all. Brill. So if, if a lot of what you're saying, if people like myself are thinking, yeah, that's, that's definitely happening, you know, in our business, what's sort of the first step into sort of, having these conversations and sort of, you know, removing almost the sort of bad group dynamics.
First thing to do is work out the objectives of the team. That's the first thing you need to do, because very often we have people come to us and they don't really know what it is that they're meant to be doing anyway, and that takes a lot of time, so make sure that the team knows what it's there to achieve. Then.
Like I said, work out the, the, the jobs that are needed, but then you need to know people's strengths, and that's where Belman comes in. So then, you complete Bel questionnaires from, our website, get your Belbourne reports. You're there armed as a manager, and you can go, right, I understand now the behavioural strengths that everybody's bringing into the team.
Let's plot those up on a, a flip chart. Let's see where the gaps are, let's see where the overlaps are, and let's start talking. And this is something that, you know, practises can, can easily do themselves, or, you know, you can always contact us and we'll help you.
Mhm. OK. Brilliant.
Sounds good. We are running out of time. But were there any other final comments that you wanted to, share with our listeners today?
I think just an appreciation that life's been really, really tough, and there is no magic, switch to make your team's work, work better. But to give, especially your manager, give yourself some time, give yourself some space. Take a deep breath, take a step back, because if we're in it, we can't help it.
We need to be able to step back for that to be able to happen. And, just remember everybody is a human being and to let everybody talk and listen to them. OK, that's great advice, Joe, thank you very much.
And if anybody listening did want to hear more from Joe, you can go to the webinar that platform. Joe recently did a webinar with us where you touched on this in a lot more detail. So yeah, please do go and check that out and thank you again Joe for recording with us today.
Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. Cheers.
Thanks, Joe, bye bye.
