I'm really delighted to introduce Andrea Jeffrey, who's gonna come and talk to us about women in leadership. Andrea began her nursing career in the NHS where she trained as an orthopaedic nurse, and she then moved into veterinary nursing and worked in both primary care and in referral businesses. And, and it was in those settings that she really developed her passion for educating the next generation of veterinary nurses.

She firstly moved into further education and then into higher education, and spent many, many years at the University of Bristol Vet School and was responsible for the undergraduate vet nursing provision. While at Bristol, Andrea co-developed the first graduate training programme for vet nurses as well as introducing a masters by research programme for the veterinary nurse. Andrew is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, has an MSC in the area of e-learning and its value to the veterinary nurse curriculum, and achieved her PhD earlier this year, which reviewed the factors which influenced retention within the veterinary nursing profession.

In 2019, she was appointed as the chief nursing Officer with Linnaeus, the only veterinary nurse executive post in the UK. She's served as an elected member of the RCVS VN council, and as such has had a pivotal role in driving forward the professionalisation of veterinary nursing in the UK. So Andrea, I am delighted to welcome you to come and speak to everybody today, and I think, you know, I, like many vets, owe an awful lot and and probably still having my MR CVS to the vet.

Nurses that have er steered me along my er my professional career and gone, are you sure you want to do that, Ben, or do you not want to do it this way? So I think a, a big thank you from me to, to not just you but to every member of the VN community. So I will hand over to you to er to discuss women in leadership.

So thank you very much for that introduction. And some of you might be on this call thinking, so, so why is a veterinary nurse talking about leadership within the veterinary profession, but obviously the, the, the veterinary profession is, is much wider than than just, vet veterinary surgeons as, as Ben alluded to. But also I think, you know, that, that, that Carlos touched on the gender difference, and I think within our profession as well, we've, we've got a difference between perceptions of veterinary surgeons and Bettery nurses, but the fact that I've been invited to talk as a veterinary nurse about leadership, you know, I feel, I feel very honoured to do that and so.

In terms of my introduction, I think what I will say is that I am a single parent, and I've brought up two children by myself for, for my life. I hit my menopause very early on, and, you know, to those have been challenges as well. So it's really just to put me into context in terms of, of, of an individual and, and sort of those barriers that, as well as being potentially a female in leadership, those other challenges that one has.

But it's not just about being, being a female and, and being able to lead effectively. Leadership is much bigger than that. And so if we think about what, what it is we're, we're, we're going to talk about in this session and what I hope will, will be at the end of it, is, is really to explore the role of women and their potential to actually facilitate change in approaches to, to veterinary leadership.

And, but I want to start off by asking you to think about. While you're sitting or standing wherever you are in the world, is, is actually, do you actually have any bias yourself towards men in leadership roles versus women in leadership roles, and you may think, well, why on earth is she asking that question? That's, you know, it's the 21st century.

But I think it's really, really important that. Whatever roles we have as as a group in this audience, we need to recognise whether we like it or not, we do all have an unconscious biases, and they're also termed implicit biases. And The reason, regardless of whether we're female or not, we need to be aware of, of our unconscious biases is because they will influence the way in which we interact with people, the decision making that we make as leaders, and that might be just in a position of of leading oneself rather than leading others even.

And . And I, I'm sure a lot of you are aware, but for those of you that aren't aware, Harvard University have an initiative called the Implicit Associate, association test. And it, it covers a huge range of topics.

It's free and I've put the link into the slides. And and I think it, it really is worth actually having a better understanding of ourselves and. The tests are, as I say, wide ranging, but when we're thinking about leadership, we're thinking about the veterinary profession and the people we're working with and making a success of being a leader in that veterinary team, we may want to test ourselves against whether we have a bias around age of somebody, their weight, sexuality, race, skin tone, and, and, and of course gender.

. And one of one of the tests. Reveals a sort of a relative link between females and family. Versus careers and males.

And from what I've just said to you, you might think, well, actually, Andrew is probably neutral in that. But actually, I was really surprised because of, you know, the, the, the, the, the role models that I've had in my life, the strong female leaders that I have worked with, that, that actually I do still have that implicit bias towards. Careers and men and women and home, and.

And so for me, I had to sort of reflect on that and think, so does that affect the way I behave when I'm in a, when I'm in a, in a, a meeting where there are some powerful male leaders compared to being in an all female meeting? And do I, do I have a bias towards male applicants versus female applicants for roles? And, and actually when you think about, when I thought about it a bit more, and it does, it is about reflecting upon ourselves and our own personalities as well with these, these tests, is, is actually, I come from a very traditional background.

I had a father who has had a military career and, and a mother who, for the most part, stayed at home. Her career started when my father retired from the army. So actually, it's not just about your own education, it's about, it's about your life and your, your family backgrounds and your personal values, which may also sort of influence these, these, these bars tests.

But I, I would really, really recommend it. And, and I do think that within our professional area, you know, those, those biases or those implicit biases may go further than the role of male and females. We've talked about age, weight, status, but also coming as, as a, as a veterinary nurse into into this forum.

You know, do, do we value less the input that a veterinary nurse or somebody who works as in, in a front of house role? When we're looking for opinion or advice, do we, do we think about the statuses of those individuals within our current framework of, of our businesses and, and. And take what some people say with more value than others.

And I think that's, that's very important. So, so knowing they they exist may alter our approach to situations in the workplace. And, and a piece of research that I was, I was looking at around this was actually around student human centred nurses.

And the, the, the, the, the, the research was was talking through about actually asking the students to do a number of these implicit bias tests. They didn't have to reveal . What what the results were, but actually they were asked to consider a patient scenario and for in our case, this is easily translatable.

It's sort of, or that client or, you know, that that behaviours of a client and then looking at our implicit biases and then looking How we might approach that differently, knowing what they are. And I think that would be a, it's a really useful learning tool and, and, and something that we might, we might want to take away with us, even working within our teams and do some sort of exercise. And so The next piece that I want to sort of link in with that is, is, is talking about women in veterinary leadership.

And, and I, I want to thank Louise Brennan for for sharing this, this paper with me actually when we were starting to talk about me, me coming in and talking and delivering this session today. And there, there is a huge amount of research out there around women and leadership and the gen gender balance and glass ceilings, but there is very limited research actually for our professional area. And, and this paper by Tinsel Weller and Kinnison was published earlier this year, and I've got all the references at the end of end of the slides for you to look at.

But their, their paper was about women in leadership, their motivations and their enablers, and. These women were interviewed, they did semi-structured interviews with 16 women in various leadership roles, in academia, working for professional bodies, in industry, but also in clinical practise. And, and what came, they did a thematic analysis, of, of the interview of the interviews that that that they transcribed.

And they found that there were two themes which emerged from the interviews with these women. And the first was that being a woman in a leadership role, there was potential for positive influence, but that also for that to happen and for that to happen well, there is a requirement for external enablers. And so if we think about the, the potential for positive influence, what, what, what the paper found was that that as women, as you became into I'm sorry, as you developed as a leader, then there was, there was more control.

And that sort of being able to develop their own job role, the ability for flexibility over their own time, and easier to manage a work life balance. But by realising that that's what a leadership role enabled for them, they, what, what the, these interviews sort of revealed was that that then made those women, makes us have a passion to, to, to implement change. So the opportunity to do that as a leader and including sort of helping others by improving their working conditions.

And then the other positive influence that was was revealed with with in this research was that that being able to mentor and to inspire, and that may be through. Official mentoring or coaching or in or just increasing awareness by, by sharing experiences, and I know Caroline Crowe's gonna be talking much later about, about coaching, with, with her experience lens. But I think we can all mentor and we can all inspire, and we will all of us have, have role models that we, that we have have helped us on our way, whether those people have been aware that we're, we, they're our role models or not.

But, but I also think . There's something around, as a leader, being, being put on a, on a, on a pedestal and, and looking at that individual and saying, well, yes, they got there, but you know, there's no way I'll get there. So it's about talking about yourself and your experiences and .

A colleague of mine at Bristol, Paula Hotster Moore was responsible for all the the pastoral care and support and development of our, of our student cohorts. And one of the most powerful things that she involved me in was actually having individuals who were, who were looked up to who was senior coming in and talking about the personal challenges that they had overcome. To get to where they were or were still overcoming and we had somebody talking about, about challenges around an eating disorder, we had somebody talking about Challenges of, exam nerves and, and failing exams on 1st, 2 attempts.

There, there were all sorts of things, but what that brought at the end of that, when we got the student feedback is many more students engaged in terms of actually sharing their concerns and felt that they had had learned something about those individuals that they, they looked, their personas were these, these personas of, of, of . You know, you've got it all right and you're, you're, you're really flying with your success, and I think, so, so really, we, we do have a duty to, to help and support and nurture our, our, the staff and the teams that we work with. And so that the second part of that that paper was also needing to have external enablers to allow us to lead well and and what enablers there are for us as leaders and and that sort of giving people the opportunity to grow and and how those leaders have been given those opportunities to grow.

So that gradual increase in responsibility and also a comment was around. That an element of risk taking to turn an opportunity into, into a leadership pathway. So it, it wasn't all plain sailing, that there needed to be work and sort of working sideways and thinking this might not be a committee, for example, that I particularly want to sit on, but actually I'm going to do it because it will give me extra experience in an area of X, Y and Z, so broadening my, my.

Strengths and my abilities, that mentoring and support, again, having a good support network inside and outside of the workplace, formal or informal. And, and really interesting, I was I, I'm a member of the, the veterinary voices group on, on, on, on social media and yesterday somebody was talking about. The challenges of being a single parent as a veterinarian, .

And, and was there a group that was specifically there to support that group of individuals? And somebody shared a link to a, a, a group in the States, but there wasn't anything within the UK. And within half an hour, when I went back on, somebody had set that up.

And I, I've become a member of it, although my children are grown up. There are still challenges with them, as, as I'm sure those of you with older children will also recognise. But, but it was just that actually those support networks are out there and, and, and people are willing to, to help and to share experiences.

And there are also, of course, more structured support networks. But what they also said in in the research was that an external enabler is is actually having leadership training, and, you know, what other skills do do we need to acquire? Very often, and I think particularly so actually within, within our professional area is people become leaders because they've been there the longest.

They, you know, it's they're the oldest person there. They, you know, and, and we may become leaders, but not ever have had an education in leadership training. And so actually having that support, professional support and leadership skills was also something that was identified as a, as an enabler for successful leadership.

And so, again, I know, as I said, Carolyn's gonna be speaking later on in the conference about coaching. But I just wanted to share it in a, in a veterinary environment that the the Society for practising Veterinary Surgeons in SIs has, has an Institute of Learning and Management course and also from, from a nursing perspective, I know that there are some nurses on, on, on, in this conference, but the, the College of Animal Welfare also ran a a leadership and management programme which can get Institute of Leadership and Management accreditation. A certification, but some of you may also know of ones in your own countries and might want to share the links with us and we, we can have that as an exchange on this, on this forum.

I, I, I was lucky enough to have access to, to a, a leadership programme within education in higher education called Aurora, and, . I, I had, we had to find a mentor for, for this network and I had really, I'd really admired the Pro Vice Chancellor of Education at Bristol University. And so I actually just emailed her to say, you know, I'm part of this programme, I know that you support it.

Would you be my mentor? And I'd I'd had a, a rejection of . Of, of a promotion, and I really couldn't understand.

I was really frustrated about why that was, what more I needed to do, and, and she then put me in touch with somebody else who'd who was now a professorial level at the university, but had been rejected three times, and, and what that had felt for her, and it was just really empowering listening. So, you know, networking, connecting with people and you think, well, is there any harm in me reaching out to that individual? It will all help.

And . And as I say, those leadership training and development roles and having role models is all really very important. I think in terms of what we can do as leaders, we can actually use our job descriptions and the job roles to.

Play a part in enabling individuals to develop and so actually having. If we think about what leadership means and what behaviours, what professional behaviours and accountabilities would we expect an individual at a certain level to exhibit, even from the point of leading themselves, what would we want as professionals in this area, that by actually building those descriptors. Into job roles and job descriptions will actually help guide people into, into the behaviours and teach them about the behaviours that we want to see right from an early level and build on those and put us a leadership framework in place with that to help them grow and develop, not only in their clinical skills, but in their leadership skills.

And I think that is one thing which I'm, I'm very proud of from a, from a veterinary nursing perspective is that. Within the United Kingdom, we we have embedded within our regulators day one skills and competencies, a professional behaviours tool. And If you think about when we are taught as clinicians or nurses or veterinary technicians, then we, we are taught to about our clinical skills, so we start off and we, if you look at Miller's pyramid there, that's an a a really Strong evidential piece of research that's used in medical education and veterinary medical education where, you know, we, the student knows, they then know how, they then show how and then they do.

And Benner has a very similar sort of professional competencies tool. Which is, which is a nursing tool. And you'll see that these are very old, actually.

When you look at this, this is primary research, it's still being applied in the 21st century, but they have a novice, you then have your advanced beginner, and then you move up through those, those, those competencies until you become an expert. And, and we can all recognise that in terms of clinical abilities, whether it's a nursing skill or or a veterinary skill, we can, we can understand that. But actually, When we're educating, having an understanding of.

Not only our clinical behaviours and our competencies, but our professional behaviours and our abilities and that is really important. And, and so the, the piece of work that that we've embedded into our, into our day one skills and competencies for nursing in the UK comes originally from Benner, and I was lucky enough when we, when we launched the first undergraduate programme in veterinary nursing in the UK. To work in collaboration with a human centred nursing degree programme.

And so we, we adapted that, we rolled it out across two veterinary schools that deliver nursing in the UK and now as I say, it's been, it's been embedded nationally. And there's lots of information on this slide and I don't expect you to, to read through it, but you know, it's looking at sort of initiative con confidence, time management ability, communication skills, attitude to feedback and guidance. Professional accountability, professional development, and the student will score themselves on them.

And the, the clinical supervisor would score them on that as well. And then there would be a conversation about where those scores might be below a 3, and about how that professional behaviour can be, could be changed, improved, what, what support they needed to, to help with that. And, it was just really, a starting point for a conversation, but it's, it is professional behaviours are very important in terms of leadership.

And so having that leadership framework where leadership professional development is clear at every level, linked to those job descriptions is, is, is, is very important and, and needed and, and I, I am lucky enough to work within Linnaeus as an organisation with a, a very strong human resources of people, people in operations team and. And actually we have now aligned the people framework within our organisation to a leadership framework and we will then be embedding the CPD flags to say, well, at this level, these are the, the cuts that we'd recommend for you and here's the CPD sort of flags in order to support you with that. And I think that is very important in terms of, in terms of success of individuals.

And so When I was asked to do this talk, I, I, I wanted to get some perspectives from the other female leaders within within Linnaeus, and, and there are two, and the first is from Professor Severin Tasker, who is the Chief Medical Officer for Linnaeus, and, and she's saying is that if you think about the skills that if we think about. That that women may Portray listening, empathy and support can be a real benefit to practise, and they're often hidden in terms of recognition. So the impact of these behaviours needs to be acknowledged.

And then, you know, ensuring that a reward framework includes these sort of hidden nurturing skills. So actually recognising that not only do we have these clinical competencies that we need to be successful, but having those leadership skills. Regardless of gender, frankly, that actually helps somebody support others and actually being recognised for that set of skills is really important.

And so if we think about, well, well, what has happened within COVID, what has, what has helped us within COVID, what is it, what have we learned and what can we move forward with and, and, and apply. And Tracey Morley Dukes is, is, is another female leader with within Linnaeus, and she's the managing director of one of our large referral hospitals and, and, and, and I asked her comments on the impact. That COVID had had on, on the veterinary hospital on employee satisfaction and culture and you, and she said, you know, that the challenge for every leader this year, male or female, has, has, you know, the COVID has added to that challenge and, and although for females where we're the, where the key carer or the main carer, then, you know, those multiple commitments make a tough situation even more challenging and.

In terms of employer satisfaction, that the, the environment and the work pressures, you know, have, have been, have been huge, but we found ways of working through that, and there was resilience was shown. And although we went into quite a sort of slump, if you like, in terms of resilience, that actually that, that sense of weariness is showing early. Signs of of recovery.

And so we need to think about, well, well, what were we doing differently within COVID that we can then move forward with? And I know Carlos has just said, you know, that it's a telemedicine may be there to stay, it may drop off in terms of how we use it within, within the profession. That's one of, one of many.

But I think One of the things that we could think about in terms of sort of what the the post COVID world might look like is, is being more flexible, those implicit biases when we appoint somebody, actually being more flexible. Where we've got position where the best candidate has caring responsibilities, and realising that in COVID we've been working small bubbles, we've managed to do some homeworking with people and can we actually think about, you know. Really making sure that we appoint the best candidate regardless of the other pressures that they might have and how we can support them in overcoming those pressures to still do a good job.

And also, you know, that, that use of the bubbles that we've had to have in the UK where we've split teams, we were working short, smaller teams so that if somebody contracted COVID, it didn't wipe out wipe out the whole of the veterinary team within that business. What that has helped is, is with job sharing and also with shared leadership. And shared leadership at.

Is not common within, within the veterinary profession and severing. Says, well, you know, should we consider it with overlaps allowing for allowing for for the crossover of roles and then do a piece of work where we actually look at the long term effects of, of retention and . And, and, and success.

And so As I was gathering all these sort of anecdotes and quotes from, from, from the leaders that I, I work with, I think actually it, it's all well and good having an anecdote, but, but as Carlos has shown there in terms of let's, let's, where's the evidence to support this and is there any? And, and this Ortega paper from 2009. They actually did a systematic review of over 1300 papers about shared leadership within a clinical team.

So this isn't a veterinary clinical team, this piece of work hasn't been done in the veterinary profession. It has been done within the medical profession. And, and their, their findings were that it, it, it, it actually that shared leadership actually provided the social support.

Because it wasn't just one person, situational awareness and psychological safety within the team. And that actually what they, what they found was that the high performing teams actually showed an increase in this shared leadership behaviour compared to the traditional leadership in less experienced teams. And I don't know within our veterinary profession, whether we've quite got it right yet.

It's not around the. Might not be less experienced, but we, you know, the, the, the sort of the very structures that we might be used to, actually thinking about how can we do that differently and how COVID is actually perhaps really challenged some of our traditional ways of thinking, and, and this being one of them. But the main finding was that shared leadership actually increased job satisfaction, and it opens up the whole possibility of people that may have caring responsibilities.

And that might not only be children, that might be parental care as those people become older, but that they, they may not be able to work full time, and should we consider actually part-time working, but with this clear shared leadership framework to support them. So, what they, what they found at the end of this review from a, from a human centred workforce was that actually they needed more of a systematic evidence-based review for that. But I think it's something that we can within the veterinary profession, start thinking about and and working towards as well.

So I know Carlos touched on, on . On telemedicine, but the other opportunities that it's shown us within within Linnaeus is, is, you know, telehealth can work and other avenues for working from home. You know, we had some really big projects that we had originally timetable.

For sort of 23 years down the line because of workload. But actually, when we found that we had those, those, those individuals who couldn't be in the clinical practise, by being part of a major employer group, actually, we could call on and use those people's experiences and their time to actually support bigger projects moving forward for our organisation. I think the other thing that, you know, remote meetings, I know that we're all pretty tired of of Zoom and whatever, but it has really shown us that we can attend meetings, we can run businesses, .

And people can be at home while this is happening and so it, those, those virtual meetings do allow for more inclusivity in terms of, of, of, of women but also others in terms of what their, what their home life balance needs to be. One of the things that I think is important is, is, is actually, you know, if, if we're working internationally and at, you know, a 3 o'clock meeting UK time is 7 o'clock in the morning in, you know, West Coast USA actually setting the rules of engagement and, and not making somebody feel that because their child has walked in and they're in a 6:30 meeting in the morning and their child is wondering, you know, what they can have for break. First.

It's, it shouldn't be viewed as a, as a negative, you know, they shouldn't be feel like embarrassed by that, if they're a single parent or their, their, their partner's already gone to work or works night shifts or whatever. And so making, also working from home, normalising that as part of work rather than being a negative, knowing that you can get value from individuals working on very specific projects from home. And, you know, the question is really, and again this was Severin's point, who's the CMO, is, is actually, you know, up until COVID-19 really were our leadership roles accessible for those who could travel and work long hours, you know, is, is that what it, what it amounted to and, and actually it doesn't need to be that way and I think, you know, this, this crisis has shown us that and we need to.

Use some of that for positive moving forward for inclusivity. And so one of the other things that we, we were asked as part of this, this talk was, was actually. Women veterinarians making a difference.

And in the UK I think we, we have past presidents of the British Veterinary Association, which is a representative organisation for veterinarians in the UK, and the, the, the person that led, led the profession through COVID was, was a woman and, and was a a a real role model in in that respect, . Our first plan. Female president of our Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was, was appointed this year, and that is groundbreaking and you know, we also have the chief veterinary officer, the government chief veterinary officer is a female.

BSAVA past presence female too, so, so all the major areas within the veterinary profession within the UK have been led by women. And are being led by women now or have been recently, and they've all showed leadership in in different influential parts of the profession, a much more sort of collegiate approachable style and you know, we would hope that those people would be role models because And this, this quote from, from, from, from Severin is a really important sort of take home message is that, you know, people can't aspire to be something that they've never seen. And so it's, it's about inspiring the next generation through what we do and and the way in which we, we behave.

And so, If you think about women and the future of veterinary medicine, it's, it is clear. That the demographic of, of the veterinary profession is changing from, from a veterinary nursing perspective, my challenge has been as, as an educator up until very recently is, is, you know, males becoming. Becoming veterinary nurses and what's stopping them becoming veterinary nurses, but, but actually the demographic in the UK particularly is that we, it's more women are coming into the profession than males, but then making sure that we have those women emerging as in into these leadership roles and that there are the mechanisms to implement and support their development.

But actually, what, what we really need to recognise is that diversity is wider than gender, as, as, as a, as an issue within our professional areas. And so, although that's been the topic of, of, of this, this session, actually, that's something we need to go away and think about in terms of, a, a complex picture that we do need to, to face into, that we need to own and, and we need to change. And I think the last thing that I really wanted to say was that I, as I said at the beginning, I, I joined Linnaeus .

And was really proud to be appointed as the chief nursing officer to sit on the executive board of of that major employer group. I then. Thought about what the strategy would be for that group and then wrote job descriptions for for a team to, to work with me in, in, in being able to roll out a a strategy for for nursing in terms of retention, recruitment, job satisfaction, career for life, for nurses within our business.

And that team came together in February of this year and. They've worked incredibly well. They've never, we haven't all been in a room together because COVID hasn't allowed that.

And then actually, I actually contracted COVID and was off sick from work for 4 weeks. And actually they, they, they were incredible. I, I, they, they.

They were empowered to do what they did and they did their job incredibly well, and, and as I would expect, you know, but, but actually a good leader is about leading, not managing, and giving people the tools to do their best. And so that's my, my take home for this, and thank you very much. I'm going to stop sharing now.