Hi everybody and welcome to this session, 7 top tips to create confident, compassionate and collaborative teams. My name is Doctor Katie Ford. I'm going to do a bit more of an intro shortly, but I'd just like to say a huge thank you to the webinar vet for having me here to run this session for you.

I realise that these last few years have been a tricky few years to navigate, particularly if we've been leading teams and we've been supporting others through this as well. So I just wanted to take a minute. To acknowledge that and to thank you for being here and for learning more about how to support your team.

So I wanted to do a little bit more of an introduction. Many of you might have met me before talking about different topics, but my name is Katie Ford. I'm a veterinary surgeon, I'm a coach, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm involved in a lot of different companies within the veterinary space.

I have experience in clinical practise as a veterinary surgeon for many years with my certificate in small animal medicine. I was a clinical coach, I was in a senior vet role, so I was leading a team. And I'm also an experienced team builder outside of the profession too.

I have a level 7 in event management. I work at introducing events, which is my partner's business, and I help to facilitate team building activities amongst a variety of different industries and professions. We've done everything from Premiership football teams, facilitating team builds there to data analysts, banking companies, marketing companies.

We've done. And all sorts. So actually, I'm bringing in some insights from a couple of different viewpoints here.

I'm also a certified coach. I'm undertaking a master's degree in emotional wellbeing at the moment. I'm a business owner, and importantly, like each and every one of us on this call, I'm a human being.

And if there's one thing that I'll always promise you during sessions, it is that I'm going to be real and I'm going to be authentic with you as well, because sometimes this is hard, right? But we don't have to do it on our own. So come with an open mind, there might be bits that you already know, there might be fantastic new insights that you don't.

So please just keep, keep in mind as you go through this session, what am I learning? Is there anything actionable off the back of this as well? Cos I think one of the really important things that we always need to talk about on these sessions is this is one hour long.

And actually real change takes time and it takes consistency. And as much as I'd love to give you some snippets and some insights, a lot of this is going to be what you go back and you put into practise as well. We don't have to do this completely on our own and we don't have to do it all at once.

So sit back, relax, have an open mind, let's look at where we can support you, amazing team builders, leaders, managers in bringing your teams together to enable them to lean into some confidence, some compassion, and some collaboration as well. What are we going to be covering then? I think it's really important that we do define confidence, compassion and collaboration as individual terms, because we've been handed definitions from society of what they mean.

And sometimes, actually, we've never checked in. I'd love my team to be more confident, but what does it actually look like? I'd love for us to look at explaining the impact that bringing a team together can have.

Let's explain how understanding practise core values and their definitions can impact a team as well. There's a lot more talk in personal development now and certainly the work that I do at Vet Empowered with a lot of new and recent graduates about us getting really clear on what's important to us as individuals. Like what at my core is important to me, not what I think should be important to me, not what the world tells me should be important to me, but what actually is important to me.

And that comes alongside our teams as well. Now it's not always going to be that our team's individual core values align and match perfectly with the practise. But there likely will be some overlap, and it's about us understanding and starting to define those two.

I'd love to help you less some actionable steps in practise to help bring a team together. And I'm going to signpost some further resources as well that we can use moving forward, because again, as I've just touched on, this is a process, and I am never going to sit here and proclaim that you sitting through a one hour session is going to change the way that you do absolutely everything, like the flick of a switch. If it was that easy, we would have all done it already, right?

So let's start with what is confidence? And what isn't confidence? I'm just gonna give you a second, whether you're watching the recording or whether you're on here live, just think, what actually is confidence?

Because we've all been handed definitions of confidence. I don't know about you, but for me confidence used to bring to mind a body posture where someone went in and they almost seemed like, They knew just what they had to do in any situation, and they were just naturally brilliant. I don't know if that resonates with any of you, but actually, over the years of the coaching work that I've done, the team building, the personal development, my work into my masters, I've realised that confidence actually isn't something that we are or are not born with.

It's something that we can build and it takes practise, and actually we've become more confident the more that we do. But a really interesting definition that always has helped me in a lot of what I do is thinking about what if confidence was taking action even when we don't 100% know the outcome. Yet we have trust in our ability as individuals, and in this case teams, to deal with it.

So this comes contextualised as well. This isn't saying, you know, I'm, I'm a new graduate veterinary surgeon and I'm going to have a a go at spinal surgery because, you know, I'm feeling confident today. This is us saying, OK, I'm human and as much knowledge as I could possibly ever get, sometimes things aren't going to go to plan.

Sometimes they're not gonna read the textbook. But in the instance that that does happen. I know that I've got backup, or I know that I can ring this person, or I know that I've got an alternative way to try to do this.

So confidence isn't something that we either do or don't have when we're born, it's something that we build by actually sitting back, looking at the situation, taking action, having faith in our ability to deal with the outcome, as whether that's as a team or whether that's as individuals as well. So how can we boost that within our teams is something we're starting to think about? How can we start to reassure our teams that actually we are a team, we are a unit.

It's really, really common, especially amongst the conversations that I have and the individuals and the new graduates that I work with, for them to feel like it's completely all on them. They feel like they should know everything, they feel like they should do everything completely on their own. But how can we start to reassure our teams that actually confidence is saying, look, OK, I know as much as I can do in this situation to take a step forward, but whatever the outcome is, we've got trust in our.

Ability as a team to deal with that. And you might have a slightly different definition of confidence in this instance, but it's just looking at what actually is confidence and what does that mean to us? And what does that look like as a team?

What is the endpoint for our team for, for them to be confident? Is it initiative? Do they feel safe to move forward with their initiative and to take their initiative?

So I'd really encourage all of you just to reflect on. What is confidence and what does it mean to you? And does this definition help you?

And then that moves us on to what actually is compassion, and what isn't compassion, because we're having more and more talk about compassion within the profession. And sometimes when we're learning about things like mindset techniques, and we're learning about positivity and things like this, we can actually bypass the step of compassion, which compassion is actually us meeting somebody when they're struggling, or when there's something that's more uncomfortable, holding them in that space and almost asking what, what do you need? What do you need, and we're still saying kind whatever's coming up.

So I always loved the definition by er Chris Gemma, who is a psychologist from Harvard University that says compassion is when love meets suffering and stays loving. Because the reality is, at the end of the day we're all human, and we're going to feel every emotion at some point. And actually sometimes it's us sitting back and honouring that in space for us to realise, oh, OK, actually, in this moment I'm feeling this way, without, without judgement, without criticism.

What do I actually need? How am I going to move forward with this? How am I going to respond rather than to react?

So sometimes a compassionate team is more for us to meet each other with a little more understanding. A little more kindness, but also a little bit more self-awareness to ourselves as well, because actually it's really easy sometimes for us to end up bringing compassion to other people. What do you need?

How are you? How are you feeling? That sounds really tough.

I'm so sorry that you're going through that. But we don't always bring it to ourselves too. So compassion I'd say mainly, as we say is this definition from Chris Kerman, but also as remembering.

That we're all human, we're all human, we're gonna feel all the emotions, we're all gonna struggle with things at certain times, we're all going to make mistakes. And actually to hold ourselves and other people with that bit of compassion as well. What is collaboration and what isn't collaboration, cos again these different definitions are important.

Collaboration is when we're working together towards a common goal. So it's involving us sharing ideas, resources, responsibilities to create a shared outcome that might not and could not have been achieved by an individual alone. And this isn't the same as cooperation.

There's a slight nuance between the two things, right? So cooperation is, we work together on this task. OK, right, we've cooperated.

Collaboration is when we're moving towards that common goal or objective together, which we're gonna move more onto when we start talking about practise values, but it's a really important piece for us to think on that difference between collaboration and cooperation. So collaboration isn't the same as cooperation. Collaboration is actually.

Thinking as a team, where are we heading to and what does that look like on a daily basis, and that makes it easier to, to celebrate together as well and bringing in the other things, like we said, confidence and compassion along the way too. Which brings us on, now we've made those definitions to team building and working in the event space as well and actually being a part of many different industries, team building can have some stereotypes attached to it that aren't always the most useful. So it tends to find that people think it's just about raft building, or just about having this one-off, isolated team experience that we do, we get teams come in and we run it.

But actually, the act of team building can be seen in two different ways. It can be a continuous process, which is something that we're all always working on. And then you can have formalised exercises, which is what we come on board and we do at introducing events when we do the team builds.

And the interesting thing about those is, actually, when we're adding in different scenarios, so whether that's we're putting a little bit of pressure on a team because there's some challenge coming along, or maybe we're letting everybody let their guard down a little bit cos it's something a bit more fun, we can start to see where communication differences lie, for example. So we'll have teams where we might have 4 different sections of the room. And in those 4 different sections, they all have to build an interconnecting ramp where, for example, a ball has to roll down this ramp.

And they have to communicate with the other teams to make sure that their section aligns with theirs. And we'll put certain communication rules in place, like only certain people are allowed to talk to other certain people within the team. And actually very quickly you can see where those gaps do come up, but that's just just simulating a potential situation within a workplace to be able to highlight, oh OK, that's really interesting, maybe that's something to continue going with moving forward.

So team building is more than raft building and building a team is in the daily dos as much as these formal structured activities. So one of the objections that we come up with frequently from people that come within the vet space and say I really love to do a team build is that we can't get everyone in one place at the same time. Because we do out of hours or everybody's always working at some point somewhere and actually pushing back on that, our building of a team is a continuous process.

And it doesn't just have to be something that we do, getting another team to come along and put on a formal team building activity. And we know there's evidence out there that bringing teams together can increase job satisfaction, it can improve decision making, and it can increase productivity as well. And when we look at it from a really logical rational level as well, I think we realise that actually, if we do have teams that are working together in the same direction, they're compassionate, they're confident, and they're collaborating, it's an absolute no brainer that that's going to help the others and help us as leaders too.

Yes. But how? How do I do this?

Because at the moment I have talked about definitions, I've talked about what team building actually is, but how do we start to put that into place? And I am going back into that realism territory of assuming that there's not that many potential times for you to get everybody together to run off all my team builds. So we're gonna talk more about those daily dos and about those situational things that we can do in practise, when it's busy, that you can start to think about.

Everybody on this call is going to have a different team, a different set of circumstances, and you all unique humans at the end of the day too. So there are gonna be different bits that resonate with you. So keep an open mind, listen out for the bits that you think, you know what, actually that's something that I'll take home with me.

And we're gonna run through 7 top tips and insights for you to consider. So the first tip, and this might be one that sometimes there's that internal groan, oh, you can't pour from an empty cup, put your own oxygen mask on first, but you know what, it's far more than a cliche, it's true. Especially these last few years, leading teams, bringing teams together in the testing times of 2020 onwards, it's been a lot.

And actually, when we're having a lot of potentially trickier conversations, when we're dealing with lots of different challenges that are thrown at us from all angles, it's really important to make sure that we're checking in with ourselves. And that self-awareness, I'd really encourage you to be without judgement. So often within this profession we criticise ourselves about criticising ourselves.

But where can we create that space to check in with how we're feeling as people that are leading the teams? Because actually when we're having these conversations, when we're bringing lots of teams together facing these challenges, we can deplete our own energy stars as well. So I'd really encourage you to look at where you can raise your own self-awareness.

And two really good starting points for that are topics such as self-compassion and emotional intelligence. Because again, as leaders, let's role model. And that doesn't mean that we're perfect.

Because I'll tell you, perfect doesn't exist. Perfect is a mind-made construct that so often we all beat ourselves against but it doesn't actually exist. So let's just remember, you can only do the best that you've got with what you've got available to you at the time.

So when we're talking about topics such as self compassion, a really fantastic resource is self-compassion.org that is run by Doctor Kristin Neff. There are thousands of papers on there about the benefits of self-compassion.

It's not just a fluffy woo woo subject. The science is mind blowing when you look at it. We've got improved motivation, we've got improved wellbeing.

There's so much science behind self-compassion, and it's lovely to see it becoming more and more of a topic. And actually, without diving too much into this, cause this could be a session in itself, but there are three arms to self compassion. The first one is non-judgemental self-awareness, noticing, giving ourselves space, how do I actually feel?

What story am I listening to? Is that something that I'm ready to let go of? How would I speak to myself?

Like, what, what is coming up for us? Like, in that moment, where are we giving ourselves a chance to create space just to notice? Because as we're going through the appraisal process, as we're doing all the jobs that we need to do, so frequently we can become bottom of our own priority list.

And I know that because I've been there. So the second part of self compassion is what we call the common human experience, which is that. Just like it says on the tin, we are all human and in being human, we're all gonna experience every emotion at some point, there is a need behind every emotion.

And alongside that, we've also got to realise that we're all going to make mistakes, we're all going to have things not going to plan, we're all going to have failures, no matter how many letters we have after our name, no matter how many years of experience, no matter how many other incredible things that we've done, sometimes we're just gonna have things that don't go to plan. And we're gonna have things that happen unexpectedly, and we're gonna have struggles, and we're going to have suffering that comes to us. And we're often very good at being compassionate to other people.

But actually, let's start to gently, where we can do on a regular basis, extend that compassion to ourselves. Because it's tough, right? Sometimes, and that they can feel like it's pressure, and that we do have this pressure that we should be perfect and that we should get everything right all of the time.

And yes, let's learn more, let's educate ourselves, but let's also be a little bit gentler with ourselves. Cos if you're going to show up and lead these incredible, confident, compassionate, collaborative teams, we need to look after you as well. So I just ask you on a reflective point now, what helps you to keep feeling like you?

This might be something that you come back to after this, but I really encourage you, like, what gives you energy, what helps you as an individual, as someone that is leading and bringing together these teams? And where can you start to integrate that, even if it's a micro moment of the thing that brings you something that helps you to feel like you? And let's make sure that you're on the priority list as well.

And this was something I just wanted to really briefly touch on because as society we've been handed this set of beliefs about certain emotions that we shouldn't shouldn't feel certain ones, we should always be happy, we shouldn't feel angry about things. But quite frequently, they're gonna come up for us. And actually sometimes it's about us acknowledging them and realising that there is a need behind most emotions.

Now, sometimes the day is busy, sometimes we don't end up having that space, we don't check in. We don't need to overanalyze every single emotion that we feel during the day. But sometimes we do need to acknowledge how we feel and what we might need.

So if feelings could talk. So for example, sadness. Is a perfectly natural emotion.

I quite often we'll feel sad cos we need connection, we might need to cry. Maybe if we are feeling sad about something, that's a a time for us to reach out and have a chat with somebody. Stress, stress.

We know that not all stress is bad stress. Sometimes stress is preparing us for performance, we realise that. But if we are feeling stressed and it feels very uncomfortable, then maybe it's that we do need to take it a step at a time.

We need to look at, OK, is there anything that's not within my control that I'd like to let go of? Where would I like to put my focus? How can I break this down?

If we feel shame, we know that Chris Gemma, that talked again, I mentioned the quote from Chris Germa in Compassion, says that self compassion is the antidote essentially to to shame, which again is another session that we could do on itself. Resentment, maybe it's that at some point we need to create some forgiveness, and again, that's the whole story in itself, anxiety. Do we need to breathe?

Do we need to lean into where we need to be brave? Anger, quite often we'll feel angry if someone's crossed something that's important to us, or they've crossed one of our boundaries. Maybe if we feel confused, perhaps we need a little bit of time just to start to listen to ourselves.

Enjoy, I need to do more of this. So when we think about emotional intelligence, sometimes it's starting to notice how we're feeling in that moment and what we could actually need. Because what we resist persists, so when we get really frustrated at ourselves for feeling a certain way, I shouldn't be angry about this.

I shouldn't be sad about this, I shouldn't be stressed with this. Rather than just saying, you know what, I'm feeling a bit stressed with this, what do I need? Let's stop.

Let's take a breath. Let's observe, notice, without judgement how we're feeling, and then decide how we want to proceed mindfully. So it's about saying, oh, I'm angry, I'm allowed to go and be angry at everyone.

It's saying, you know what, I'm feeling angry in this moment. Maybe there's a conversation that needs to be had tomorrow or later today for me to talk about that boundary, or for me to talk more about this cos it was clearly important to me. Or maybe there's someone that you need to debrief with, so actually that is probably one of the most important things that I'd say to you is, Acknowledge you and what you need as well.

And finally, like we said, overwhelm a common one, maybe that's that I need to start prioritising and release some pressures. So number 2, what is our top tip, number 2 is to embrace uniqueness. You know, when I first started out in a leadership role, I thought, I'm gonna read a few books and then I'm gonna know the exact framework of how all of this works.

Now the reality is that the beautiful thing about teams. Is we've got lots of different people come together in them, and they've got different ways that they learn, they've got different strengths, they've got different skill sets, and they fit together in that jigsaw puzzle. So I just say the importance of you getting to know the strengths of each team member.

Now that might be on an informal basis, that might be you just observing and starting to notice. That might be you looking at some of the personality profiling tools and realising, oh OK, you know what, this is something that they do really well. This is something that maybe they don't do so well.

And we don't always have to improve weaknesses, that's what school teaches us, right? But if we can. Understand the strengths of our teams.

We can start to look at where people are best placed in roles. But at the same time, we can also look at where we can give praise and acknowledge people too, because quite often those people that do really well in Excel are feeling like imposters underneath and do benefit from just having that little bit of feedback. And also realise that some will handle handle change differently to others in that uniqueness.

There are gonna be some people that embrace every change that we bring in, they love it, they feel like they're a part of it, it's fantastic. And you're gonna have people that are more change averse, and actually that might mean that we're just looking at that really without judgement to understand those little nuances and uniquenesses amongst different team members and not with judgement, just to say, oh, OK, this conversation with this person is probably gonna go slightly different with this one. Different learning styles, again, we know if we're coming to things like personality profiling, we're gonna have different communication styles as well.

But let's start to notice, is it that some of the team really do absorb information that's given to them written in bullet points? Is it that others prefer it if it's handed out in a team meeting and starting to just have those conversations with our teams to understand those different styles of learning and different styles of consuming information too. Do it with curiosity.

You know, everybody's different. We worked out the odds of everyone being born as individual humans, them being born as them, and the odds came out at 1 in 400 trillion. So yes, there's gonna be some overlap, but actually, let's lean into.

Not everyone's going to absorb this in the same way. Let's understand where they all fit in as different team members. Just in the same way that we will do as well.

Different doesn't mean wrong. So number 3, and this is a super actionable one actually, when we talked about collaboration we said collaboration was about moving towards a goal together, and this is a massive thing in team building. What is important to us as a team?

So when we talk about having a practise vision, a practise mission and values, are they integrated into the daily do? Because it's really easy for us to end up having a practise mission statement written on a letterhead, maybe that's on the saffron wall, perhaps that's on our website. But what does that look like on a daily basis?

And can we involve the whole team for that? To encourage teams as well to look at their individual values. And where that overlaps with what our values are.

So really actionable exercise that you can do with this, if you already know your practise, vision, mission, and values. And again, this could be a whole session in itself, but what is the most important thing to us, because our idea of success as a team is not gonna be the same. Has another practise idea of success.

Yes, there are going to be some overlaps. Yes, we want to make sure that our patients stay healthy. We want to make sure that our clients are as happy as can be.

But we all know that we've got individual, statements and nuances. We're all different types of practises. So what does that look like?

So you might decide that you're going to get 4 big sheets of paper, you might have 4, big dry white boards, where you write on. Those key values of that mission statement, so for example, if one of the biggest values for your team is trust, what does trust mean to everybody in the team? What does that look like on an individual basis?

What are the actions that the team are taking to make trust something that's important to us? And then collate all those responses and bring them together. If people want to do it in a more anonymized way, you might just have a jar that everybody puts a Post-it note in.

What does trust look like to us on a daily basis? Equally, we might have treating pets like our own. When we look at that, realise that treating pets like our own might look different to every individual member of that team.

So how can we get a definition, and how can we bring those things together to look at how can we all make sure we're on a similar page here? It might be that kindness is value. What does kindness look like to us as a team?

What are the important concepts that fit into our daily do, and what do they look like? And come together and do it together so you can see, you know what, we are working towards this together. Because quite frequently if we're all headed in different directions, we're gonna end up diverging off.

And just coming back to that last point where I said, encourage teams to consider their individual values too. That might be using values, finding exercises, that might be having a coach come along to help with something like that, because then that helps people to feel more bonded as well to the practise in a way. If they say, look, actually, kindness and trust are two of my biggest values, and that's values of the practise, and that's what it looks like in action.

And you know what, I am aligned with the workplace that I work in. So this can be a really useful thing for us to think about. Our practise values, what is important to us as a team, and importantly still, what does that look like and the daily do and the daily actions.

And that might just end up that you all just have a conversation around like what does trust means for us? OK, so trust means that we feel comfortable to have conversations about these things. It might mean that trust says, you know what, we do, these handovers that are so clear, but also we know that if there's something that doesn't make sense in here, we trust that the rest of the team have done XYZ.

Right, so just look at how can we get really clear on what those values actually mean to us as individuals, but as a team. And then everybody's, everyone's aligned, we know what that looks like on a daily basis, and it does not just become another set of words that end up on our letterheads or on our website that actually we slowly miss a line from. That's something to keep checking in on.

So what is tip number 4 for building confident, compassionate and. Collaborative teams. So this is clarity on responsibilities and roles.

What do we mean by this? We've said already, everyone is different, some of our team will need absolute clarity to help boost their confidence as well. So we've said already confidence is taking action even when we don't 100% know the outcome, but we have faith in our ability to deal with that as a team.

Some people need absolute clarity on what that action actually is. So maybe it's clarity on our job descriptions, our roles, our responsibilities. What does it look like if, say, a vet is going off duty for 3 days?

Is it that one of the other members of the team picks up the lab results and reports them in their absence? Is it that actually come together as a team and say, you know what, let's play that by ear, but for the people that do want more clarity. They have these two options, like how can we give everyone clarity on those rules and responsibilities?

Have we actually provided this? Because there are some people that are absolutely happy to use their initiative to go with the flow, but there are other people in our teams that need a little bit more clarity, and once they've got that clarity, they're gonna fly with it because they know, oh, OK, this is a really clear expectation. It's been outlined to me, I understand, this is fantastic.

And like we said, that's beyond just the job description alone, that's part of ongoing conversations. Is there anything that you'd like more clarity with? Is there anything that we can bring up at the team meeting and work around together?

Because like we said, sometimes those people that do need more clarity are the ones that sit and overthink and worry, have I done the right thing? Have I not? So let's look at where we can work together to create a little bit more clarity.

Remembering that high performing teams cover each other's blind spots. So let's integrate knowing the roles and strengths of the others on the team as well, and realise that you do come together as a team. So frequently, particularly the new graduates, put pressure on themselves to do things completely on their own.

Or to know everything. Or to balance everything or to match up to those that have been in practise for 5 or 10 years. And I know this because I have conversations with them regularly about this, where they feel like they should do everything completely on their own.

How can we boost confidence in teams by saying it's OK to ask for help, I have faith that you can do this, I'm here for backup. But you can still ask for help, you can still look things up, how can we create those cultures moving forward? And that's by having the conversations and looking at the small daily dos too.

Which leads us nicely into tip number 5, which is around communication and discussion, when we are looking at building those collaborative, compassionate, confident teams. Where are we creating opportunities for communication and discussion? And this is aside from scheduled formal appraisals and reviews.

How is this process ongoing? And are we truly actively listening? And I appreciate that sometimes when life is hectic, that can feel difficult.

But where are we creating those times where we can listen to and lean into that mindset of more coaching and supporting rather than dictating and disciplining, which I know all of you on this call are gonna be more into leaning into that coaching and supporting piece, but actually, Can we ask a few more questions? Can we be as interested as we are being interesting? And just ask for a little bit more clarity, create those conversations, those coffee conversations, just check in with our team, see how they're doing.

And also really important one and again coming back to the work that I do with a lot of new graduates is what happens when a mistake has happened? And let's look at this without judgement, what is the process? Is it that there is a debrief?

Are there Schwartz rounds? Is there space for open discussion? Is there a system in place that if something doesn't go to plan, that there's someone that they can go and talk to about this?

And that's not just new graduates, it's at every stage of our career that actually quite often leaning into creating an opportunity for a debrief as soon as we can do afterwards, and not in. A blame-based way if this was your fault, but in a way of this has happened, what can we learn from this, what does everybody need for support, what can we do about this? Because otherwise I'll tell you so often, so many members of our team go home and blame themselves.

And the reality is that most mistakes are an accumulation of many different things along the way, and often the actions of multiple members of the team. So it's not about blame, it's about us looking at this as something that's happened that potentially is uncomfortable. I'm realising It's something that we can learn as a team moving forward from this, and how can we support everyone when this has happened?

And that's really gonna help because when we're looking at building a confident team, quite often one of the things that stops people from confidence is fear of something not going well, not going to plan, making a mistake. And actually, if we've embedded a culture that if there is a mistake, we all sit down, we talk about it, we learn about it, we support each other, can you see how that would then boost their confidence? And also boost their compassion too.

So let's see where we can lean into and build a mindset of growth as a team. And not forget the compassion part to you. One of the things I'm really passionate about speaking about within this space is that as we learn more about a growth mindset, which is the idea that we are all able to grow, to learn more, to get better, the more that we do, it's not just that people are born brilliant at things, it's because they've put the work in.

We sometimes put pressure that we have to learn from something immediately in that moment, and we forget to acknowledge that quite often making a mistake or having something not good to plan feels uncomfortable. And that's not because we've specifically done something wrong, although it's certainly not because we're a bad person. But actually sometimes can we create a check in just to say, do you need a cup of tea?

What do you need? If it's appropriate and if you're in that position, sometimes you might give them a hug. You know, you're gonna know your team, there are gonna be some people that would absolutely hate that, there's gonna be others, we've all got the team huggers that are, are up for that, but actually, Let's just hold a second, like, yeah, this feels really uncomfortable.

I'm really sorry that this is, this has happened, that you're going through this. Let's all see where we can talk about what happened and debrief from it, but. Maybe can we check in with people?

Can we see how they are after that for the next couple of days? I mean because sometimes that can play on the mind more than we realise. And then let's lean into and build a mindset of growth as a team, because as much as it feels uncomfortable to have things not go to plan, there's learning every time that something doesn't.

So actually let's create those communication and discussion opportunities and use them to lean into that mindset of growth as a team. And let's, in those communications highlight the good stuff too, right? Is it that we can create a practise gratitude movement?

Can we celebrate together? Because we're very good as humans with a negativity bias at seeing the things that didn't go well. But is there something that we can do to say, look, no, we're actually gonna platform that we did this really well.

Can we align that with our values? You know what, well done, everyone. It's been so good to see you all working so collaboratively together on this.

And then as we come into number 6, we talked a bit about compassion already at the beginning and what that actually means, but how can we bring that into the culture? We said already part of this is like, how are you? What do you need?

How can I help? And creating those opportunities for open and supportive discussion, so a lot of this you can see really does overlap. Asking what does being compassionate as a team look like on a more difficult day.

And this might be part of a meeting that you have, this might be when you're talking about values. What does that actually look like? Because often.

If we've not got in mind what compassion looks like on a difficult day, it's not going to happen by itself. So when we are in a place that we've got time and we've got space to discuss these things, can we ask the question, what does it look like for us as a team to be compassionate on a more difficult day? What are the actions?

What is the do? Is that that actually we say, look, this is a difficult day, this is a busy day, so the important things for us on that day are going to be making sure that we work out that everybody gets a period of time to eat. Is it that on that day, we are gonna have something to look forward to at the end of the day?

We're all going to have a quick 20 minute debrief. In the staff room at the end of the day, where we're all just gonna chill out, we're gonna pop some music on. Is there something that would help you all on that that day?

What do we need as a team? And let's start a future plan that might look a little bit different on every day, but what is there that you could do as a team for all those trickier days? Well let's recognise and resolve conflict with empathy and with respect, realise that.

We can't decide how somebody feels about something, we can't say you shouldn't feel angry about that. Sometimes we do have to come in with a little bit more compassion, a little bit more curiosity, what do you need? OK, thank you so much for sharing that and just looking at where we can resolve conflicts with empathy and with respect.

And these are bigger topics again in themselves. But further things to go and look at are things like psychological safety, where people feel safe enough to speak up, civility. Well actually are those little microaggressions that people say that we don't see.

These are huge topics in themselves, but I'd really just signpost you as someone that's leading a team to look at these, to learn more about them. And then #7, and we are gonna do bonus number 8 as well in a minute, but to create human opportunities. And this is really important when we're building these teams that are compassionate, that are collaborative, that are confident for us to remember who we are past our job titles.

Because we're all humans, at the end of the day, we all go home, we all have loved ones, we've all got friends, we might all have family dependent on the situations, or pets. You know, we are more than our job titles, and sometimes it can be easy for our team members to end up just so sucked into just that job title being their whole identity. And actually that means that when we're talking to each other, we forget that bigger piece of who we are beyond that job title.

So maybe it's like you could create some practise meetups, some fun evenings, some walks. I think the most important thing is looking at what your team as an individual would enjoy doing. And this might be part of talking to them and what does compassion look like on a difficult day?

What would we all like to go out and do together? Is there something that we can create? And yes, this might look like it's, oh, is this team building?

Yeah, it is, it maybe it's not formalised, maybe you've not got me and they introduce an events team coming along and and running this for you, but actually it just reminds you that you are all human. This might be something that you do on a lunch hour. There are gonna be some people again leaning into that different thing that says, I don't, I don't want to do this, it's probably not for me, but there are gonna be plenty of people that do appreciate that too.

As we said, just ask the team, what would we like? What would we enjoy? What can we look forward to as a group, where we can just remember, you know what, we are all humans, we can get to know each other when we're not in a stressful situation and come together as a team.

Where can you create those human opportunities? And number 8, a really important one is patience. Cause real change takes time and it takes consistency.

And actually everyone's gonna deal with that differently. Let's bring them on board, let's involve them. You've heard me say many times, let's ask the team about this.

And yeah, probably not going to keep absolutely everyone's idea. In there, but we can at least make them feel like they're part of the decision making process, because they're part of the team, the team is the people. And where we can be, let's bring the team on board, on board, we've just said that.

Look for 1% improvements and small tweaks rather than singular colossal moves, because that's how you, those people that struggle with change, those colossal moves are gonna feel really scary to them. So it's a great book, Atomic Habits by James Cle. If you are into reading, I would highly recommend having a look at that.

And they talk at the beginning about the British cycling team and the fact that they made loads of tiny, tiny tweaks to that team, and it made a massive difference. They had a huge amount of success at the Olympics as a result of tiny things. I think it was Chris Hoy that they went to and said, Oh, what has the coach done for this team?

And he said, Oh, he just got me to wash my hands more often. And someone just looked at him really confused and he said, well, the reality is that the more I wash my hands, the less viruses and things that I picked up and the less time that I ended up having out my training. So he didn't bring in a huge new training regime, he just changed a few little bits up.

So this isn't me suggesting you go out to your teams and say you need to wash your hands more often. This is saying that actually sometimes it's the small things that can have a big difference as well. So involve the team, let's be patient.

And also remember that piece about looking after you first. As Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. And without pressure, you know, we don't have to be perfect.

Our teams aren't going to be perfect, perfect doesn't exist. But let's look at what do we want to do as a team together, how can we define that? How can we look after each other?

I think an important thing to say is you don't have to do this alone. And you don't have to do it all at once either. Remember, you've got formalised team building companies, you've got coaches, you've got consultants.

There's loads of people within the space that can come and help with this. You've got support that you can signpost for your team, and support for you. Remembering that there are employee assistance programmes that I bet many of you have that offer things like counselling and support to your teams as well, because when there's something challenging that our team members go through.

It can feel like a lot of pressure on us as leaders sometimes to feel like we have to take away their discomfort or fix the problem for them. And actually, sometimes it's, it's listening and helping to signpost and support them in, in ways such as helping them seek professional support when they need that. And that's a whole other conversation too.

But just to remember, you don't have to do this on your own. So I want you to take a second to reflect. To think about what are my key take homes.

And then what small doable action can I take? Do I need help with this? And when am I gonna check in and see if this has helped or not?

Maybe it's that during your next team meeting, you ask the question, what would it look like for us all to be a bit more compassionate to each other, compassionate being that when love meets suffering and stays loving, or when we actually provide each other with with kindness and provide ourselves with some kindness and some understanding, what would that look like on a difficult day? Is there anything we could be doing as a team that we'd like to look forward to? Is there anything that we'd like to learn about a bit more as a team?

Whether that's something like emotional intelligence, whether that's self-awareness. Because as we learn more about ourselves and our teams learn more about ourselves, we can learn to move forward as well. So if anyone does have any questions off the back of this, please do drop me a message, more than happy to help.

And again, just acknowledge yourselves for being here on this session, giving the time for you, giving the time for your team, look after yourselves, realise there's huge amounts of information out there, but sometimes it really is the smallest steps to begin with and defining, like, what is success to us as a team. What does that look like? What do we need help with?

So thank you everybody for being here.