Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the latest in the webinar vets practise management series of webinars. And tonight, our sponsors are Simply Health and MWI Animal Health. And it's my, pleasure to introduce you to our speaker, Jenny, Jenny Guyatt, who is a former general practise and ECC vet, personal growth coach, mentor, entrepreneur.

BSAVA regional speaker and founder of Vet Harmony, a personal growth coach service for the veterinary profession, which you can find at www.vetharmony.co.uk.

Jenny's also a certified HBDI psych psychometric profiling practitioner, all of which will become clear in the talk. And specialises in guiding people through career crossroads and helping them establish a healthy life balance. So I'm Andy Mee from Vet Management Consulting, and it's my pleasure to let you take over, Jenny.

Thanks very much, Andy. Thank you. And good evening, everyone.

It's Jenny Guy here. OK. So, when I first went non-clinical, it was about 11 years ago now at Vets Now, leadership in the veterinary profession was, was not really being talked about, focused on, and developed the way it is now.

So we were in the same boat as lots of other vocational, technical, and kind of science-based professions, whereby we've got people who are really intelligent, competent and high achievers in their field, who end up by default becoming leaders or business owners, but without specific leadership training. And then by the time I started my work with Alan Robinson at Vet Dynamics six years later in about 2013, it was definitely on the radar a bit more then. So we were starting to link up the negative consequences perhaps really and outcomes from a practise management perspective with the lack of specific leadership skills and realising that this needed to change.

Now over the last 6 years, I don't know about you guys, I've definitely seen this change quite a lot, so. That now we're seeing a lot more talks, lectures, CPD events and courses that are aimed specifically towards that new professionals developing their leadership skills, and us recognising as vets that we're actually all leaders, even if you don't have an official leadership part of your your job title, because we need ourselves, we need our clinical cases, and of course, we need our clinical teams as well. I was at BSAVA last month, and, one of the first lectures I sat in, they were presenting some really successful and, interesting results, because the first cohort of vets had been through and completed the RCVS Edward Jenner leadership programme.

And Amanda Bogue was emphasising that from the Royal College's perspective, non-clinical, sort of emotional intelligence based CPD was equally important to them as the clinical stuff, which I was quite interested and pleased to hear them saying. So, now we've reached a stage where for a chunk of the profession, there has been this important realisation that leadership, leadership skills, they're not just innate, they're not something that we're naturally going to be good at just because we're intelligent high achievers in other areas. But that it is this very specific skill set that can and must be learned and developed the way that our clinical skills are.

So that's great stuff. However, just the leadership on its own isn't enough. Because right now, we are really in need of some daring leadership.

And tonight I want to look at what does that mean? What is daring leadership and what gets in the way of having the courage to be a daring leader in practise today. So do we need daring leaders?

Why am I saying that? Well as I started to wade through the foot deep pile of vet times as in my in-tray when I was preparing for this leader, this, webinar tonight, I was kind of trying to crystallise what we're facing currently as a profession. So at the moment, we, we've got a shortage of drugs and medicines in some areas.

We've got a shortage of vets and qualified VMs. We don't have a shortage of corporates, and that's positive and negative. There's, there's various different factors within that.

We've got technology that's changing the way that we're offering our services to clients in and out of the consult room. We've got organisations that are helping us to keep our head above water with the rate of pace of change in technology out there. And we've got organisations that are just trying to help us keep our head above water.

And then of course, we have the unmentionable B word, which you'll be pleased to know is not going to feature heavily in tonight's, presentation. I hope no one is offended by this side. It made me chortle quite a lot.

So, yes, if you ask me, do I think we need daring leaders in the profession right now, my answer would be a big fat hell yes. Like never before. You know, we've we've always had change going on in the profession, but we are experiencing a a particularly large amount of it at the moment.

And having said at the start of the, presentation that the profession has improved with its leadership skills, I think there's still a long way to go in certain areas. So many of the people that reach out to me in my own coaching practise are still experiencing being on the receiving end of some really appalling examples of management and leadership in some practises out there. So it's definitely not improved across the board.

And I did a study back in November last year, and I spoke to 40 vets, about 1/5 of whom were diversified or non-clinical. And of the remainder, they were about a 50/50 split between vets who were generally quite happy vetting most of the time, and vets that were dissatisfied, unsure about vetting, or even thinking of leaving. One of the questions that I asked was, what are your top three stressors or challenges right now?

And we're looking at the results for the the dissatisfied group here and the most commonly cited stressor, affecting their enjoyment of their vetting role was poor leadership management or lack of support. Whereas when I looked at my, cohort of generally happy vets, poor management was still in the top three stresses, but it was only 2%. So it looked more like the wedge, the blue wedge next door.

So it was 2% of respondents rather than 20%. So we've still got an issue with this out there. In some practises.

Now, I've already touched on some of the topics I'm going to cover tonight in two of my previous lectures. You do not need to have watched these for tonight to make sense, and I'm going to try really hard to not repeat myself too much. However, if tonight's webinar does resonate with you, it might be worth dipping back into one or both of these just to get some additional knowledge and skills and tools in this area.

For anyone that knows me, you'll know that I'm a big fan of the work of Doctor Brene Brown. And much of what I do is translate her teachings into how they function in the UK veterinary environment, particularly or yes, generally in the veterinary environment. So in the passion and purpose lecture, we looked at the anatomy, if you like, of shame and vulnerability and how these impacts on our personal ability to connect with our passion and purpose as individuals.

Then in the disruptive engagement one, we started to look at how shame and vulnerability are unavoidably involved in giving and receiving feedback in your practise and covered a lot of tools and techniques on how you can overcome some of those challenges. So tonight then, It's about taking some of these concepts and putting them, you know, overlaying them, having the perspective of how they affect us as leaders. And why good leadership calls for immense personal courage at times.

So I want to take a couple of minutes now to just agree on some shared common language before we move on. So that if I start using terms like vulnerability, shame, the arena, the armour, then you know what the heck I'm talking about. So, vulnerability, let's start here.

Vulnerability in this context is defined as the emotion we experience at times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. So examples of vulnerability might be going on the first date after a divorce, trying to get pregnant after you've had a second miscarriage. Maybe it's starting your own practise or watching a child leave for university.

It would certainly be apologising to a colleague about how you spoke to them in a meeting. Or maybe you waiting for the doctor to call back. Giving feedback and getting feedback, which is what I covered in my previous lecture, getting fired, or having to fire someone.

Now, as vets, on top of that, those sort of external examples of vulnerability, we also face a disproportionate amount of it on a daily basis in our clinical work. So uncertainty, tick, risk, another tick, especially with surgical procedure, procedures, and emotional exposure, oh, only about every 10 to 15 minutes for 5 hours of each working day if you're in small animal practise, and on every visit in large animal and equine. So we're dealing with a lot of this.

And it's about having the courage to show up and be yourself when you can't predict or control the outcome. Now, vulnerability is paradoxically, it's also the birthplace of, of all the brilliant and lovely things we want in our life as well. So it's also what we have to pass through if we really want to experience true joy, happiness, creativity, love and belonging.

But it's something I think we all fear greatly because of this next factor. Shame. Shame is often referred to by researchers as the master emotion, and it's the never good enough emotion.

So as a social species, we are absolutely hardwired physically, emotionally, cognitively and spiritually for connection, love and belonging to other people. Shame is the intensely painful feeling of believing that we are somehow flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging and connection. And you see this every, in, in action every day, in consult rooms, up and down the country where, for example, vets are struggling to charge properly because they don't want clients to dislike or think badly of them.

The kind of, please like me, which some, but, you know, many of us, not all, but many of us can identify with feeling like that at times. So there are 3 truths about shame. It's completely universal, we all have it, and it's one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience.

Secondly, none of us like talking about it, and we, most of us think that it doesn't actually apply to us. And finally, the less we are talking about it, the more control over us it has. And it's why we fear vulnerability, because if we lean into vulnerability and resist the urge to armour ourselves up, and that does lead to us feeling shamed, blamed, put down, ignored or pushed away, then this can deliver such a blow to our self-worth and make us frightened to try again, unless we know how to handle it and how to get back up again.

Now you know you've got shame operating within a practise culture or even worse, being used as a management tool. Whenever you see things like perfectionism, favouritism, gossiping, people's self-worth being tied to their productivity or how well they're doing, anywhere where there's people using power over or bullying, where there's teasing or whether there's cover up of mistakes, then you know you've got shame kind of operating behind the scenes. So, unless you're mindfully practising, building your courage levels, and you've got some tools and techniques up your sleeve, most people's innate response to the discomfort of vulnerability is to arm ourselves up emotionally and to self-protect.

Because it seems like a logical strategy, right? It, it's kind of definitely how I've approached it in the past. We have lots and lots and lots of ways that we do this, and we all do this on a daily basis.

So, That can be, perfectionism, it can be numbing ourselves, you know, just to take the edge off things that we all do like food, booze, being excessively busy, mindlessly scrolling on social media in the evening. Or it could be the way that sometimes we can refuse to let ourselves stop and actually feel happiness and joy. For some people it can be what we call the smash and grab, so inappropriately over sharing or actually trying to use vulnerability as a way of grabbing what attention we can.

Well, for some people, they take the defensive stance and they come out swinging. So if they feel vulnerability of shame, then they will tend to come out with cynicism or being very critical. And as leaders, we can display many different types of armoured leadership styles as well.

So we'll discuss some of these later and how you can start to shift from being armoured to daring leadership instead and what that looks like. Because while it seems like a logical, reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately, armoring up our heart has some very deleterious effects.

Because in doing this, we actually start to lose our ability to truly connect with people and to genuinely feel joy and happiness, and we lose the capacity to be who we really are. We're wearing that mask, we're kind of, we, we're, it, it takes a long time to assemble and put on the armour. And sometimes we do that so frequently that it's just too difficult to take it off in the evening or weekends and it stays clamped on.

And we, we're not being who we really are. We're being who we think we ought to be. So there's a lady called Minoush Minoush, Minoush, I can't remember his surname, Manoush Shafik.

She's the former deputy governor of the Bank of England, and she's currently the director of the London School of Economics. And she's quoted as saying that businesses used to be about muscles, and today they're about brains, but in the future, they'll be about hearts. What does that actually look like from a work perspective?

Especially a vet in a vet practise, you know, what does that mean? Because most businesses currently subscribe to the myth that if we can somehow sever the heart, so that's vulnerability and other emotions from our work, we'll be more productive, efficient, and let's not forget, easier to manage because at the very least, we're gonna be less messy and kind of less human. And these beliefs lead us to either consciously or unconsciously build cultures within our practise that actually require and reward armour.

But the problem is that when we imprison our heart in that way, then we absolutely kill our courage. So how can we start to help ourselves here? Well, there's a famous quote that I mentioned in my, one of my last lectures that you might, you all of you may be familiar with, the man in the arena quote.

So it's not the critic who counts. It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or how the doer of deeds could have done it better. The credit belongs to the man or woman, who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, but when he's in the arena at best he triumphs and at worst he fails.

But if he fails, he does so daring greatly. So, to clarify, the arena that we're talking about here this evening is that of being a leader in a vet practise. And therefore, it's also about being a team member in a vet practise, because you need as many of your team down there in the arena with you, not sat up in the cheap seats, throwing out criticism or giving feedback in quotes, but not being willing, willing to actually be vulnerable themselves.

You you're never gonna get that everyone in there, but you want to be aiming for kind of 70 to 80% of the team being there with you. However, you as the leader, if you are, for those of you that are actually officially leading practises that are on on tonight or listening on catch up, you are gonna have to show them the way. So there's a particular scene from Star Wars here that fits perfectly with this, and you need to excuse my dodgy Yoda impression.

So, Yoda's trying to teach Luke how to use the force, and the dark side of the force, so fear, anger, aggression, is holding him back. Luke and Yoda are in the swamp where they've been training, and, Luke points towards a dark cave at the base of a giant tree. And looking at Yoda, he says, Oh, there's something not right here.

And Yoda explains to Luke that the cave is dangerous and strong with the dark side of the force. Luke looks confused and afraid, but Yoda's response is simply in your Musgow. When Luke actually says, asks what's in the cave, then Yoda explains only what you take with you.

So as Luke straps on his weapons, Yoda hauntingly advises your weapons, you will not need them. But Luke grabs lightsaber anyway, as I probably would have done. So the cave is dark and scary, and as Luke makes his way across it, he's confronted by his enemy Darth Vader.

They both draw their lightsabers and Luke quickly chops off Vader's helmeted head. The head flies to the ground, the face card blows off the helmet, only it's not Vader's face that's revealed, it's Luke's. So Luke ends up staring at his own severed head on the ground.

Nice. So, what I'm trying to say here is that it's not necessarily our leadership skills per se that are the problem here. It's a lack of personal awareness and our hidden or not so hidden fears about either not being enough or not knowing enough.

So the cave that we fear to enter, the cave that's the entrance to the arena of veterinary leadership, are these two inconvenient Truths. That who we are is how we lead. And that we cannot get to courageous leadership without leaning into vulnerability.

So to become a Jedi then. It's about starting to put down the armour and to protect ourselves instead by learning how to lean into vulnerability, really living into our values, building trust with our teams so that people feel emotionally safe and learning how to pick ourselves back up again when we inevitably get hoofed in the nuts as part of this process, because if you're brave enough for long enough, that's gonna happen. And just as skydivers, the first thing they learn before they go anywhere near a plane is how to land.

And as leaders, we need to do the same. We need to learn how to get up again emotionally before we need to use those skills, so not as we're hurtling down towards the ground, in the middle of some HR nightmare. And as for the treasures we seek, Less fear and anxiety, less feeling not enough.

More working together towards goals that excite both you and your team. So, what I want to do now is I want to look at the first of the two things that you're gonna, you do take into the cave with you. So if it's not gonna be your lightsaber, what is it?

And the first of that is your own hard wiring and how this is likely to affect your leadership style. And the main way that we start to find out about or validate our own thoughts about our hardwiring is through psychometric profiling, which some, if not most of you will have already had done at some point I'm imagining. So here you're gonna be thinking about what are your strengths?

Where are your blind spots? How do you respond under pressure? How does your style complement or differ from the rest of your management team?

Which types of people within your team are you likely to resonate with and get on well with and which members of your team are likely to drive you up the wall, unless you understand or value and learn how to use your differences positively. So there's lots of different types of profiling out there. The ones on the left of your screen are, looking at, more looking at you as an individual, which I think is actually of most importance when you're looking at how you might, how you personally might respond to vulnerability, because of a lot of how we do respond to our vulnerability comes from our earlier life experiences and our kind of journey to being who we are right now.

So that's things like the HBDI disc, PRSM, Myers Briggs, Insight. Some of these will be familiar. Some of them you you'd have had done, I'm sure.

They all seem to have a 4 quadrant module, and they all seem to use primary colours, but annoyingly, for us as coaches, the colours never seem to overlap, even though some of the quadrants are fairly similar between the different profiles. On the right, you've got things like Belbin and talent dynamics, so they're more based on how you perform within a team. Now, although the individual profile tools that you can use do have some overlapping similarities, there are differences as well in what they look at.

So that's maybe differences in the design or the research behind how the questions were generated and in what they measure. Now having had most of them done to me personally, I actually prefer to use the HPDI. Assessment.

I'm not going to spend long going into full details about this, because I know you've had this covered in other lectures before. But I just want to demonstrate tonight using HBDI as an example of why it's such an important thing to get done or to review any profiling you have already had done in light of how the results could affect you as a leader. So, the HPDI is a brain physiology based profiling system.

It's created by a neurophysicist called Ned Herman in the 60s. And his research demonstrated that we actually have 4 physiological thinking structures within the brain. So yes, we've got two hemispheres, but within those hemispheres, we have a further separation into the upper neocortex part of that hemisphere, and then the lower limbic part on that side as well.

Hence 4 structures giving 4 distinct modes of thinking. So directly from the physiology, Herman then created this metaphorical model of the brain that you can see on the screen that forms the kind of target diagram that you get your results on, where the yellow and blue quadrants represent the right and left halves of your neocortex, and the green and red quadrants represent the left and right sides of the limbic system. Now just as we have a dominant hand, foot, and eye, we also have dominance patterns within the brain, and they're unique to you and they come partly from your genetics and, and then partly from your environmental aspects as well.

Now, we all use all four parts of the brain, but we do have preferences over the 2 or 3 quadrants that we most likely use. So very, very briefly, in about 30 seconds, the quadrants in the HBDR assessment look like this. So the blue quadrant is our typical vet one.

It's very data and evidence-based. It likes analysing and rational logical thinking. The green quadrant is also often quite high in vets and particularly in nurses, especially head nurses frequently.

This is the quadrant about details, system and process, planning and timekeeping, and reliability and security. And then we mosey across the corpus callosum into the right side of the brain to the red quadrant. This one is about people, feelings, emotions, values.

So it's about our intuition and also expressing yourself as well. And then finally, we have the yellow quadrant, which is our creative side. It's about lateral abstract thinking, new ideas, and also the slightly more visionary longer, bigger picture stuff.

So, the wider vision and it's also, you'll see more risk taking in this quadrant, and it's less structured as well. So that's HBDI in about 30 seconds. Now the point is, and you can think back and reflect, you know, if you've had discs done or you've had one of the other ones done, there, there are similar sorts of quadrants and, and styles of thinking.

So, with HBDI, when you take your profile, then you get a score for your preference of thinking in each of the four quadrants, rather than just sort of being pigeonholed into one area. And you get a profile shape like these two examples here. So these are, two examples, from my clients, obviously, I've removed the, the data of their names.

So looking at the vet on the left of your screen, this person, you can see has a really heavy left brain focus, particularly in the top, left blue analytical data quadrant. And they've got a slightly lower preference in the emotions feeling quadrant and actually a real lack of interest or potentially avoidance in the vision and creative thinking quadrant. Now, unless this person is aware of their own hard wiring and actively working to be flexible, which I know this person is, is definitely doing that.

But let's say they weren't, then they are likely to have a very different leadership style to the person on the right of the screen whose thinking preferences are much more spread across all four modes of thinking. But this person, however, because of that multi dominance of their preferences, they might be more likely to struggle to be decisive when they're leading, because they can see multiple perspectives and points of view. So profiles are neither good nor bad, they just have situational consequences.

But many of the attributes for effective leadership actually do sit in the yellow and red quadrants. So knowing your own preference strength, and therefore your areas for development or growth in these areas is really important. But understanding what hard wiring you're taking into the cave with you, however, is not set in stone.

So you'll all be aware of the difference between fixed and growth mindset, I'm sure. And the neurobiology that underpins the growth mindset ability that we all have is the brain's capacity for neuroplasticity. And the fact that just like if you sat at the piano and practised your scales every night for a month, you would develop new neural connections that allowed you to then be able to play scales.

And exactly the same is true for our old patterned mindsets and ways of thinking. So if you want to be more compassionate or mindful or grateful, or you want to build your mental muscles for leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability because you know it makes you a better leader, you absolutely have that capacity. It's our fears and old habits that hold us back in the fixed mindset of, no, that's just me, I'm set in my ways, I can't change.

So the, both of these profiles are actually me. The profile on the left here is me in 2012. I'd not long gone non-clinical, and, the profile on the right is 5 years down the line after I had moved into coaching and allowed myself to go in the direction of my passion, rather than fighting my own hard wiring.

In between these dates, I also married a very high yellow quadrant thinker and I went to work for an off the charts yellow quadrant thinker. So 5 years later, when you look at the differences, my blue vet quadrant has shrivelled somewhat because I'm no longer needing to use it, and I actually I just gave myself that permission. My yellow quadrant, however, has expanded because I've really purposefully stretched myself into that way of thinking.

Now that I understand and appreciate it more, I've, I've wanted to expand in that, in that area. My red quadrant has also expanded even further because that's my zone of excellence, and it's where I'm at my happiest. So, looking at this, I'm able to see exactly how I have rewired my own brain in the last 5 years.

And I know that I could change it again if I wanted to moving forward. So, you do need to know what you're taking into the cave with you right now. However, I think that is really important.

So I would strongly encourage you to dig out any profiling you've had done and just reflect on it again, review it. And, and if you haven't had it done, I would definitely encourage you to get it done. Or if you, all the, all the stuff you've had done, if it's really, really, you know, several years old now.

So my contact details are gonna be at the end of this presentation. I've been profiling vets for over 6 years now. It's one of my key areas of expertise.

So if you need me, I can help you with that if necessary. So that's the first thing that we take into the cave with us. So apart from your own hardwiring and current leadership style, the other thing that you're taking in there with you is your existing level of knowledge of and beliefs about vulnerability.

So where do you stand on this vulnerability stuff at the minute? . Now since Brene has started taking her courage building work from just looking at individuals out into the workplace, she's been interacting over the last 2 or 3 years, I think, and analysing organisations of every different size and including all sorts of different variations on gender, age, race, country, ability, and culture.

And her data has shown there to be these 6 persistent myths surrounding vulnerability out there in the workplace. So I want to take some time to look at each of these ones now so that you can get a baseline feel for your own stance on these statements. So let's run the diagnostics.

Myth number one, the first and most common myth is vulnerability is weakness. Absolutely, this is definitely what I thought, what associated with that word, before I knew all of this. And, yeah, I think it's what commonly what a lot of us feel about vulnerability.

However, there is not a shred of empirical evidence across any of the research data, and that's not just Berne's work, that vulnerability is weakness. If you think back to the examples of vulnerability I gave you earlier, all of those examples require the demonstration of courage and strength. So remembering that vulnerability is defined as the emotion we feel when we experience uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, can you think, have a quick think now, can you think of a single courageous act that either you've done, witnessed or heard that didn't involve experiencing vulnerability?

Renee's now asked that question of it, and I'd be really interested, actually, if you can think of one, let me know at the end. Brune has now asked this question, oh God, a couple of 100 times in meeting rooms all over the globe, and she's asked, everyone from fighter pilots to software engineers, accountants to teachers, CIA agents and CEOs, clergy and professional athletes, artists and activists, and not one person has been able to give her a single example of courage without vulnerability. The weakness myth simply crumbles under the weight of the data and people's lived experiences.

Onto myth number 2, the myth of, I don't do vulnerability. Quite a one. So our daily lives, both as humans and especially as vets, as I've said earlier, are defined by experiences of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

So there actually is no opting out, but we do have two choices. You can do vulnerability, or it will do you. So choosing to own your vulnerability and do it consciously means learning how to be mindful and aware of your own emotional reactions to things.

So it's about being able to notice when you've been hooked emotionally by something. And then taking the time to pause, to listen to and reflect on, and then critically use that amazing vet quadrant to critically analyse the stories we you're telling yourself about that person or that situation. Decide how useful that narrative is, or whether it needs reframing.

And then it's about making proactive choices to respond in ways that are true to our values and true to who you want to be as a person, even if that means having to have a difficult conversation with a client or a colleague or a family member. Is that easy? No.

Is it worth it? Apps are bloody loly. Because the alternative, pretending that we don't do vulnerability, means letting our subconscious fears, our old patterned ways of thinking, drive our mindset and behaviour, and that's without our input or even awareness.

That's it's behaving mindlessly. And that's when you start cutting off your own head with a light sabre, i.e., shutting down or acting in ways, behaving in ways that negatively impact other people.

The third myth surrounding vulnerability is that I can go it alone. I don't need to be vulnerable because I don't need anyone. Now, I tried this one out in my early 20s, and I thought I'd found the perfect solution to escaping from the risks of being hurt or not feeling enough.

But instead, what that approach led me to personally was numbing my feelings instead with drinking and partying. And then that ultimately resulted in a deterioration of my mental health. That's not what would have happened to everyone, but it's certainly, I think, The problem with needing no one or attempting to need no one.

Is that it pushes against everything we know about human neurobiology. So as I said before, we are hardwired for connection from our mirror neurons to our language skills, we are a social species. And in the absence of authentic connection, we suffer.

Authentic here means the kind of connection that doesn't require us to change to fit in and be accepted. So it's the sense of belonging that comes from being ourselves and connecting with people. And this actually came out in my own research as well when I looked at the top 3 things that people were enjoying about their roles.

So this, we're still looking at the dissatisfied vets here. And then the group that were dissatisfied professionally and unsure about betting, it was actually working with a great team that came out top of the things they were saying that they were enjoying. So although there were stresses out there from poor leadership and management and also their own lack of clinical confidence and stress about cases, the fact that they were connecting in with a supportive team, that was their solidarity and their comfort, and the thing that was helping them get through it, and the thing that they valued most.

So as humans, we don't derive our strength from our rugged individualism much as we'd like to think so. But rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate and work together. Our neural hormonal and genetic makeup all support interdependence over independence.

But what about when your line of work means that you walk into work every day with one clear task, engineer the vulnerability and uncertainty out of systems and mitigate risks. This brings us on to myth number 4, that you can somehow engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability. Because, you know, there is that desire of, can't we do that?

Can't we do it somehow? It's very tempting. And this, I'd really love this one to be true.

I've been spent some time figuring out how I could make this one be true. Because for many of us as veterinary surgeons, in fact, most of us as veterinary surgeons, we equate vulnerability with death. You know, we spend our days engineering the vulnerability out of a sick animal by creating a list of differential diagnoses and then running tests precisely to give us more certainty.

The same is true for lawyers who might equate vulnerability with loopholes or liabilities, or maybe engineers who think of vulnerabilities as potential systems failures. Bernay said she loves working with professions like this because sooner or later someone will inevitably suggest that we should make vulnerability easier by engineering the uncertainty and emotion right out of it. So she's had people recommend everything from a texting app for hard conversations to an algorithm to predict when it's safe to be vulnerable with someone.

Oh, how I long for something like that. This then comes down to how we actually think about vulnerability and the way we use the word. Because what we're talking about tonight is relational vulnerability, not situational vulnerability.

And they're two different things, which is why it's important to clarify this to yourself, and, you know, if you start to do this work with teams, also to your teams, if you're gonna start to dissolve both your and their resistance to relational vulnerability. So Brenne was working with a group of rock, rocket scientists, put my teeth in, once actual rocket sci scientists, and during the break, an engineer walked up to her and said, I don't do vulnerability. I can't.

And that's a good thing. If I get all vulnerable, stuff's gonna fall from the sky, literally. Renee smiled and said, Tell me about the toughest part of your job.

Is it keeping stuff from falling from the sky? And he thought and said, no, we've created sophisticated systems that control for human error. It's hard work, but it's not the part I hate the most.

He thought a bit more and said, Leading the team and all the people stuff. He then started to give an example of an underperforming employee that he'd been trying to manage and he'd been trying to give feedback and it hadn't been working, and he was now at a point where he was gonna start to get into trouble because this guy wasn't performing and Rene said, yeah, that sounds really hard. How does it feel?

His response? Ah, got it. OK, I'll sit down now.

So, fields like ours where systemic vulnerability is equated with failure and poor outcomes. These are the fields in which leaders struggle the most for daring leadership skills. And you can also start to see why not only do we struggle for our leadership skills, but why vets struggle with their mental health as well.

You know, we are really rewarded for eliminating situational vulnerability, and yet we desperately need relational vulnerability to stay emotionally healthy. Because can you imagine how hard it can be to wrap your head around the critical role that vulnerability plays in leadership if you're rewarded for eliminating it every day. However, it's also in these fields where once leaders understand this stuff, and once they're given the knowledge and the tools, they're usually the ones that are willing, willing to really dig deep and leaning hard to this work.

So I hope all this is making sense. This brings us on to myth number 5, that trust comes before vulnerability. Now if I ask you all to fill in the blank on this question, I grew up believing vulnerability is.

I suspect many of you would answer with some variation of the message that if you're stupid enough to let someone know where you're tender or what you care about the most, it's just a matter of time before someone uses that to hurt you. So these conversations then bring up the chicken and egg debate about trust and vulnerability. So how do I know if I can trust someone enough to be vulnerable with them?

And is it possible, can you actually build trust if you're not ever gonna risk vulnerability? Now, the research is clear on this, but it's not a huge relief for those of us who would prefer that app or an algorithm. We need to trust to be vulnerable, but also we do need to be vulnerable in order to build trust.

Now, that's an arena in and of itself. Because trust building is a vital part of becoming a daring leader, and it's something you are gonna need to work on with your team. And it's this slow building, iterative, layered process that happens over time.

And both aspects of it involve risk and require courage. So to illustrate this iterative layer layering process, Brune uses the story of the marble jar. So one day her daughter Ellen comes home from school, she closes the door, slides down the door, and promptly bursts into tears.

She told something embarrassing about herself to a classmate that day at school, who she thought was her friend, but by break time, the entire class knew about it and everyone was teasing her about it. It had got so bad that the class teacher had taken a handful of marbles out of the class's marble jar. So any parents out there listening tonight might be familiar with this sort of rewards, system.

The theory is that as and when the class make collective good decisions, they get to put marbles in the jar. But when the class collectively make bad decisions, then marbles come out. And the teacher had taken marbles out because everyone was laughing, apparently at Ellen.

So Ellen looked at her mum with sort of real hurt and defiance and said, I will never trust anyone ever again. Now after calming down her inner lioness response of wanting to phone the other parents and really shout at them, Berne sort of thought about the classes marble jar and how it was a perfect metaphor really for how we do build trust with people. So she told Ellen We trust the people who have earned marbles over time in our lives.

So whenever someone's kind to you or supports you, or sticks up for you, or honours what you share with them as private, you put marbles in the jar. But if people are mean or disrespectful or they let you down or they share your secrets, then marbles come out. Now we look for the people over time who put marbles in and in and in until one day you look up and they're holding a full jar.

So those are the people you can tell your secrets to. So she asked Ellen if, if she could think of any, does she have any marble jar friends, and Ellen said yes and named a couple. But I was really curious, as, as, as a child, kind of, you know, how have they earned their marbles.

And Ellen related things to them like a friend taking the time to remember the names of her grandparents when they picked, her up at sporting events, or being willing to scoot over at the school lunch table and share a seat if there were no spaces left at the table where all the friends kind of hang out. And comparing this to the data and the research out there on trust, Rene found a correlation in that trust isn't earned necessarily through big grand gestures. It is in fact earned in the smallest of moments.

So in a practise setting as a boss, that might be just backing, taking the time to back up one of your vets in the face of an unreasonable client. That really builds trust. Or maybe remembering on your way in in the morning to ask one of the receptionists how her mum's chemotherapy is going.

Trust is the layering and stacking of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time. You can't as a leader, turn round to the team in a moment of practise crisis and just say, you need to trust me. It doesn't work like that.

There are either marbles in the jar or there aren't, and that takes time to work on. Now, in the book that tonight's talk, a lot of tonight's talk is based on, Dare to Lead, Brene talks through a really, really useful seven step inventory around trust building in the workplace that you can work through with your team to kind of baseline check the current levels of trust on both sides and to start to agree some behaviours and actions that would improve it for your specific practise and team and the things that you do. The final myth is this one that isn't vulnerability just disclosure and letting it all hang out and and oversharing.

And this comes into play if you are interpreting engaging vulnerability to mean leaders disclosing personal experiences and kind of openly sharing emotion in all cases, you. So, so that's not it at all. Now, so if it's not disclosure.

And that begs the question, OK, right. Well, how much should leaders share with their employees and colleagues? Now this comes down to your, to practise and emotional intelligence.

So some of the best daring leaders out there have got incredible vulnerability grappling skills, and yet they disclose very little. There are also some leaders who share way more than they should, and yet demonstrate little or no ability to genuinely lean into vulnerability. So it's a tricky one.

It's a balancing act, and it is something that you, it takes time to, to wrap your head around this and to get it right. And there will be times when you probably will get it wrong as well, and that's fine. So let's have a look at an example of how a daring leader would handle this.

Imagine a practise that's recently gone through being acquired by corporates, and it's in a, that sort of tricky period of change and uncertainty that initially happens. So people are worrying about whether they're going to keep their jobs. Everyone's struggling with changing to a new PMS computer system.

I know that doesn't happen immediately, but it often happens sort of not too long after. There are cultural changes going on, and some vets are hacked off because they actually had partnership aspirations before this happened. Oh, and let's imagine that the practise is really short staffed and struggling to find cover.

Now I know there are some practises out there, this is their reality, that's what they're going through at the moment. And also sort of independent practises are not immune to vast amounts of change and uncertainty as well. It's not just corporatized ones.

So a daring leader might sit down with their team and say, Look, guys, these changes are coming in hard and fast, and I know there's a lot of anxiety. I'm feeling it too, and it's hard to work through. It's hard not to take it home.

It's hard not to worry, and it's really easy for us all to look for someone to blame. Now, I'm gonna share everything that I can with you as soon as I'm able to share it. I want to spend the next 45 minutes working through how we are all collectively managing these changes.

Specifically, I want to know what does support for me look like? That's a really amazing question to ask. Especially if you're willing and open to actually hear what, what they say.

What questions can I try and answer? Are there any stories out there on the rumour mill or stories that you're telling yourself that you want to check out with me? And after all that, let's see, are there any other questions that you have there?

So those are some really great questions that you can have, really good vulnerability openers. However, before then opening the discussion, this leader wants to create a safe psychological space so that people, team members are in an atmosphere where they feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other and to say what's really on their mind, and to move away from the two things that commonly happen in practise meetings, which is where the dominant people hog the meeting, or the bandwagon effect where people just kind of go along with the general consensus rather than stick their neck out and express their own view. So a good way to get around this is to ask everyone to write on a Post-it note one thing that they need from this group in order to feel OK sharing and asking questions, and one thing that's gonna get in the way.

And then everyone's post-its can be handed over anonymously, popped up on a whiteboard or something, you can sort of coalesce them into general themes. And those themes then create the ground rules for that meeting. So common themes that get in the way include things like, I don't want to feel judged.

I don't want people to just, give unsolicited advice, interrupting when someone else is speaking, that's a really common one. And also sharing outside the meeting. So, if it's a meeting of, say, just the head vet, head nurse, head receptionist, that, you know, smaller meeting rather than the whole practise, people are gonna want to know that if they express an opinion, That's not going to go outside of that meeting, that it's safe for them to do that and someone isn't gonna go, oh my God, I've just come out of this meeting, you're never gonna guess what Louise was saying.

Because that happens and it breaks trust. Common behaviours that people need are things that you would think of really. So listening, people want to know that they're actually gonna be listened to, that people are gonna stay curious, they're gonna be honest and they're going to keep confidence.

So, that's a great example, that exercise of of leaning into vulnerability. The leader in this case is naming some of the unsaid emotions, and they're creating a safe container by asking the team directly, what do you need to feel open and safe in this conversation? This is one of the easiest practises to implement, and the return on investment for that 20 minutes it's going to take you to do that is huge in terms of trust building.

And also in improving the quality and feedback of conversations. I used to work on this with practises at Vet Dynamics as well. I talked about doing a similar thing in the disruptive engagement webinar, around creating a holding environment so you can go back and dip into that if you like the sound of this.

In this example, the leader is not oversharing, they're not disclosing appropriately as a mechanism for trying to sort of hotwire connection or trust. There's also no fake vulnerability. So fake vulnerability would be telling the team they could ask questions, but they're not actually taking the time to create that psychological safety, safety, not making it safe for them to do it, or saying, yes, you can ask questions, but then talking constantly for 4 to 5 minutes and not pausing in that conversation for anyone else to speak at all.

They're also not trying to shirk their responsibility for attending to the team's fears with statements like, Oh, I'm really falling apart too. I don't know what to do either. You know, guys, I'm not the enemy here.

Don't hate me. Basically, please feel sorry for me. Don't hold me accountable for leading you through this hard time because I'm scared too.

Because I think a lot of the time we do feel that, and we do want that to happen, but it's not appropriate to say that. To help you know where to draw that line between appropriate vulnerability or disclosure or oversharing, there are a few tools. Setting boundaries and being aware of any stealth intentions and stealth expectations.

Boundaries is about making it really clear to your team what's OK and not OK in the context of their roles and relationships. So it's OK for you to do or say this, it's not OK for you to do or say that. Because vulnerability with no boundaries is not vulnerability.

It might be confession or manipulation or desperation, but it ain't vulnerability. It needs boundaries. So going back to our practise example, let's say the practise had a different leader who was new to this knowledge, they'd watched a webinar on it and then they rush out into the living room and say to their partner, this is brilliant, I'm gonna go into the practise tomorrow and I'm gonna get really vulnerable with the team.

And their partner might say, OK, tell me more. And the leader might say, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna tell them the truth. I mean, way over my head here.

I know behind the scenes, the smallest branch surgery is haemorrhaging money, and I know the new owners are going to close it down. I've got no idea what I'm doing when it comes, comes to managing this post acquisition phase because I've never been through it before. Hm.

So firstly, alarm bells should be going off already because if you're excited about getting vulnerable, you must really not have understood the concept yet. Reality, you'd hope that this person was, was having that conversation, that they were sitting down with their business mentor or with their mastermind group, or with someone high up within that corporate, for example, or, or, you know, the, the, the other vet partner and sharing those vulnerable feelings, but absolutely not in front of the practise team for obvious reasons. So in, in the instance of that happening, what would be going on here is some stealth intentions and stealth expectations.

So a self intention is actually a self-protection need that's lurking beneath the surface of us wanting to share something, and it often causes behaviours that are outside our values. Closely related to that is the stealth expectation. A, a, which is beyond our physical, it sort of sits outside of awareness.

It's an expectation that we have about what will happen when we do that sharing, and it typically includes a dangerous combination of fear, plus fantasy thinking. So the stealth intention in that bad example I just gave is that if I tell them the truth, if I get really vulnerable, then they won't blame or hate me. They'll understand how hard it is.

And the self intention is the expectation that if you do that sharing, then the practise team are not going to turn away from you and think you're a bad person. These sorts of feelings are really common. So it is important to do some reflection before meetings like this to recognise your your own professional boundaries, look at your role, look at their role, think about why you're sharing the information and get really clear on your expectations and intentions first.

That brings us towards the end of this evening's talk. Now, I realised that in terms of learning to apply these concepts, we're really just at the beginning. I could easily do a 2 to 3 day seminar on how to put all this into practise, but that's really beyond the scope of obviously one evening webinar.

However, what I'm hoping that tonight has opened you up to is realising that these two statements on the screen are not in fact inconvenient truths, but they're actually really empowering ones. Yes, they require at times great willingness and courage from us. But as we navigate this turbulent time, both within the veterinary profession and the world around us as well, we're in greater need than ever at the moment of leaders who are willing to dare greatly in this way and to really go there.

And the skill set that make up courage, they're not new. They've been aspirational leadership skills for as long as they've been leaders. And yet, over the years so far, we haven't really made great progress in developing these skills because we don't dig into the humanity of this work.

It's too messy. We're too afraid of it. It's much easier to talk about what we want and need than it is to talk about the fears, the feelings, the scarcity worries that get in the way of actually getting out there and making it happen and achieving it.

You know, ironically, it's like, it's like we don't have courage to really talk about courage, but it's time. And if you want to call these soft skills after you've tried putting them into practise, you go for it. I dare you.

But I'm hoping that I've convinced you tonight to consider starting to find a home for your armour, and I look forward to really seeing you out there in the arena, cause I'm still very much in it myself as well. So in terms of resources to help you, if this this has interested you, if you thought, OK, well, I hear you, I'm curious. A lot of what we covered tonight comes from a combination of my own profiling and and coaching work, but also this wonderful book from Brune, Dare to Lead.

And as well as what we've covered tonight in it, she shares the 16 different types of armoured leadership. And I, cause I thought about trying to cover those types in the talk tonight, and I thought, you know what? Different practises are gonna use different ones, and really, it needs to be personalised to each practise.

So I wanted to teach you the theory first and let you go and explore this for yourselves. So, yeah, she talks about the 16 different types of armoured leadership and how you can shift from them to daring leadership in each of those areas. She also covers building trust in teams, how to really live and embody your practises values.

And I know that that, the, how to create and embody your values. That's something that I know from speaking to the webinar vets, people are really interested in how to do that. So, I know there's interest out there for that.

And also, she teaches the skills that you do need to get yourself back on your feet again when things get tough as part of this. The research shows that courage is a collection of those 4 skill sets and that they can be taught, observed and measured, which is vets, I like that. I like the fact that we can measure things.

So, from these, you can find a way to choose living and leading without your armour, to choose courage over comfort, and to learn how to be both brave and afraid at exactly the same time. Now, the link I've put up there is because if you do decide you're going to go and read the book, then on her website, she has several downloads and worksheet sheets. And they're, they're on that particular page, and it is a bit of jiggery pokery trying to find it on the website.

So I just thought it would be helpful to stick it on there, if you're watching this on the replay of so you can just pause it and grab that link. Because the, the workshops that she has on there, you can use those as a framework to run through with your practise teams. Perhaps not the entire whole practise.

I know it's really hard to get everyone together. But at least maybe with your management team or a representative cross-functional team from the practise. So yeah, I'm hoping that that will be helpful as a further resource to deepen your learning on this.

And the other resource is me, really, I guess. So, as mentioned earlier, I'm a certified H HBDI practitioner. I've got a wide range of profiling workshops that I can offer.

So if you've not had profiling done before, or if you have new members on your management team, or if the profiling you've had before is ancient, then I'd love to help. So do please get in touch. And as I mentioned, there's also there's two previous lectures on this topic available on the webinar vet.

So do review those if tonight's been helpful. And that's me done. So thank you very much for listening.

Thanks for your time and I'd be happy to take any questions that you might have. OK, thank you very much, Jenny, for that fascinating take on leadership. Just to remind everybody, we have the Q&A box at the bottom that you can use.

I'll, I'll kick things off, whilst we're just waiting for questions to come in. Just to, reiterate, learning to lead, sorry, the, Brene book that you mentioned, I've forgotten the name of it now, yeah, yeah, brilliant book. I, I've, I've read it recently.

Have you read it as well, yeah, fascinating stuff. So, you talked very early on about the Edward Jenner programme, which very great again, fantastic programme. That was developed in conjunction with the NHS Leadership Academy, and I think I mentioned to you earlier, I, I teach on part of that as well.

One of the big things we do in the NHS programmes with senior NHS managers is push, reflective practise. You touched on reflection. How, how much do you push it in your coaching side of things?

How important do you think it is? I, yes, I think, I think it's really important. I think if you are, I think without it, it's very difficult to be proactive.

I think if you're not taking the time to reflect, you know how with clinical governance, if you're doing it properly, you're looking back at any difficult cases or things that didn't go well or didn't have a great outcome. And reflecting back from a clinical perspective on what could have been done differently or what's the learnings or how might you handle that, in the future. That, that works.

It, it needs to work exactly the same for the slightly kind of messier emotional concepts or, or, you know, the, the soft skills and such, as they are, to, to help, because I think As a leader, you don't have to have all this nailed. You don't, you can learn this with your team, but you're not going to learn it with the team if, if no one's talking about it and if you're not reflecting on it together. And that might be quite a new or different, you know, I think we're used to organising team, team meetings to to sort out admin and structure and process, and we're used to doing clinical meetings, you know, vets have vet meetings and stuff.

But I don't know many practises where there is reflective practise around these sorts of topics. I don't know really whether that is, is happening anywhere yet. OK.

I mean, yeah, one of the key questions we get people to ask themselves is what's it like to be on the receiving end of me as, as a leader, you know, that's, to be constantly reminding yourself what impact am I having on other people. You mentioned that teamwork came out, No, sorry, I've got that wrong. It's being part of a great team with so that's, you know, in the, in the dissatisfied, that was, that was the best thing.

What was the best thing that came out for Satisfied? It was autonomy, freedom, and, kind of the, the flexibility to, It was, it was kind of flexibility either around working hours. So a lot of the vets that were, were, citing that, either they were actually practise owners.

Interestingly, so obviously you have much more autonomy if you are the owner, or, or practise partner. But of vets that weren't owners, it was, they had wrangled their hours or their rota or their working pattern to a way that didn't deplete them, where they were still able to, you know, not consistently have amazing work-life balance, but it was certainly work-life balance wasn't an issue. Apart from occasionally.

And also having, just autonomy, I suppose they were people that felt like they had an input and were being listened to and were part of a valued member of the team, that, that was coming out strongly for them as well, as one of the reasons of why they were happy. OK, and those, those good points are very much linked presumably to good leadership within the practise. Yes.

And that's leadership on both sides of the fence. So that's leaders being leaders, but that's also people, the, the people within that practise, understanding that they lead themselves. And so, yeah, that happens both ways.

And I actually had a lady on Twitter, she was talking about this having, she'd been through the Edward Jenner leadership programme, and I made some comments about poor leadership and management, and she came back quite. Rightly, quite defensively saying it's not just about the leaders, you know, we're all leaders and I thought that was a really valid point and it kind of reminded me of that as well. Yeah, very much so.

So, a few of the questions that have come in then, you talked about rewiring, and I think this question is pertinent to that. I think it was one of the earlier slides where you had a vet that was very blue and green. So the question is, I'm very much the one on the left, and I seem to recall, how do you manage this?

OK. So, knowledge is the first, the first step is awareness. If you don't know the lenses that you have on, the lenses that you're seeing the world through, everything is happening under the level of your radar, and, and you are not going to be making proactive choices.

Once you know, like, if you know your profile is that direction, Then just having an awareness that other people see the world completely differently. And I guess trying to to imagine what that might be like. So for example for me would be the marrying a high quadrant yellow and going to work for one.

I was really freaked out by that way of thinking. I didn't understand it. I used to say, I'm not creative.

Oh, I don't get it. And almost repelled it, really. And just for me, you know, an awareness helps.

And then it's about, Mindfully being aware. So when you're trying to rewire your brain, if you want to stretch into, into an area, initially, it happens retrospectively. You can't make the jump in one go.

And that's why you need to have some periods of self-reflection. I, I have 15 minutes a day where I, I do some reflection. And so that would be about thinking, you know, getting to the end of the week and thinking what went well, what didn't go well.

And in times where it didn't go well, what quadrant was I being really left-brained? Could I, you know, is, is there a way that that's, impacted? So, quite often, let's say someone is very high up in that blue quadrant, often that quadrant is less emotional.

It's, yeah, I've had vets where they're very, very high blue quadrant where they sort of, a receptionist will end up in tears, and the vet will generally be mortified that that's happened, and they'll have no idea why what they said was felt so deeply by that person. And it's, and actually, you know, having the knowledge of the different ways people think makes you think, oh, OK, I, I, if I say that in that way, that person might take that differently. It would, if I said that to myself, it wouldn't bother me, but I can maybe see how that would affect that person if she sees the world differently.

I don't, I hope that's making sense. But, yeah, so rewiring, first step one is awareness, knowledge. The more you know about this stuff, it starts to shift for you anyway.

And also the second, there's another important point, I think. You don't have to become omnicompetent. The aim here is not to become fully whole-brained.

It, it's, it's about looking any areas where you have a lower preference, you've got two choices. You can either decide, actually, I really want to upskill myself in that area, so I'm gonna learn about it, read about it, practise, think back and think, could I have done anything differently? Or you can, you can think of an area I really don't like that way of thinking.

I don't like using my brain in that way. I'm just going to choose. Job roles or situations where that's not a big part of it, or I'm going to outsource it.

And I I know someone else in the practise really likes that way of thinking, I'll go to them and say, Can I kind of borrow your yellow quadrant or whatever. And that's about working, you know, knowing the people that you work with, and getting their help if it's not in an area that's your natural preference. So I hope that helps.

OK, yeah, thank you. And, leading on there, so you're saying working with people, this one is, is kind of the opposite of that. What do you do if you find you cannot trust people because you discover you're being gossiped about behind your back.

Yeah, so that does, the second anything like that happens, our armour just comes on whether we like it or not, you know, we, we, it's people then when if you find out something like that, it's emotionally painful. We normally triggers shame feelings in us. And, then we, we naturally go to self-protect.

So the way there is, well, I was, I, if I was in that situation, I was, it depends, I guess, who's doing the gossiping, whether it's other colleagues or whether it's the leadership themselves that are doing the gossiping. In, if so, if it was a colleague rather than management, I would be going to the management and, and saying, this has happened. Can you help get their help, kind of, it, it needs to come out in the open.

Normally, you need those two people sitting down and, and sticking to behavioural things. So, I overheard in the prep room you saying this. So you stick very much to the facts, not, not an opinion, just this happened, this data, this is the data of what happened.

Then moved to, that made me feel these things. And it's OK. Part of assertiveness is being able to express how that made you feel.

And then saying what you want. In future, I would prefer if you had an issue that you spoke to me directly. And you need someone else there to kind of mediate that conversation, because, and that's where kind of setting the rules beforehand of no interrupting, no kind of rudeness.

And a good leader should be able to mediate and manage the tensions there and agree on a way forward. So you're looking for what's, what happened? How did that make the person feel?

What would they like instead? What agreed actions can you have? Now, if it's the management that we're gossiping about you, obviously, that's more I think more challenging.

Again, there it's requesting a meeting in private. And it's being, and this is where you need to strap on the biggest set of testicles you have and in terms of courage and saying, look, I found out this, I've discovered this. And the same sort of thing, it made me feel this.

In future, I would prefer this and seeing what their response is, really, if you could get all sorts of responses there from, Someone accepting it, that, you know, probably a rare response would be, oh my gosh, sorry, I didn't realise that. That would be the nicest response. And in, in really good leadership, that's what should happen.

If you've got a defensive person, then you might get all sorts of reactions from denial to them saying that didn't happen, to being angry, to them trying to twist it around and make it your fault. All of those things are not OK. And that's where it comes into being boundaried, and the boundary about saying, look, from, if I'm gonna work here, this is not OK.

This is OK. You know, pulling me in, saying, I've got, I've, I have this issue with your performance or whatever it is, but saying that in a private forum to my face, that is OK. Saying it behind my back is not OK.

And if that situation doesn't resolve and the person continues to doing it, then you have to vote with your feet. You, I wouldn't stay in a practise where that's how I was being treated. OK, brilliant.

You're just very neatly summed up there. I, I use a framework called Biff behaviours, discuss the behaviours, the impact it's having on you, the feelings it provokes and what you want to do in the future. So yeah, perfect.

OK, I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the last one we have is not a question, it's a comment, from Dawn. Thank you very much.

I don't have a question as I need reflection time. There we go. We talked about reflection, haven't we?

Yes, definitely. Dawn, if anything comes up for you, hit me an email. You know, some of this stuff is it, it challenges people.

I've had people before having all sorts of weird, you know, difficult reactions to it initially. And if it does bring up anything difficult for you, then, yeah, send me an email and well, let's chat it through. I'm, I'm really open to that.

I really want to help people. Get wrap their heads around this and start to work with it because I think it's transformational. It certainly changed my life and a lot of people, a lot of practise owners that I know that are using it.

So I'm more than happy for people to get in touch if something comes up for you in a few days and you think, oh, hang on a minute. OK, yeah, fantastic. She's, she carries on, then this was a really thought provoking seminar.

She uses disc profiling, and again, you just discuss the different ones that, you know, I use MBTI we all use something. She uses disc profiling almost daily in practise to help herself and team interact in a healthy, considered manner. I want to learn more now.

I'm sure therefore she'll be in touch with you. Thank. Right, that at the moment is the last of the questions.

I'll just leave it 10 seconds in case anybody's got any burning issues. They want to chat through. Just to remind you, then you've got Jenny's contact details there if anybody wants to take this further, to thank again our sponsors, Simply Health and MWI Animal Health.

And if we don't have, oh, we have. Something in the chat box. Oh, just to thank you, very interesting.

So, well done there. So yeah, thank you for that comment. I hope everybody has enjoyed it.

So I found it fascinating and, look forward to seeing everybody on the next practise management webinar. Thanks again, Jenny, for that really stimulating talk. Thank you.

Thanks, Andy. It's been a pleasure. Good night, everybody.

Cheers. Cheers. Bye.