27 Feb 2026
Practice leaders urged to encourage team members to “step into the spotlight of accountability”.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
Richard Gerver spoke at SPVS Congress 2026. Image: SPVS website
Vets have been urged to create a “culture of change” within practice to improve their leadership and get more from their teams.
Speaking in the opening plenary at SPVS Congress yesterday (Thursday 26 February), keynote speaker and author Richard Gerver – who has worked with leaders at corporations including Google and Microsoft and across elite sports – addressed delegates.
He called on practice leaders to “change our paradigm” from one of management to leadership.
He said: “Managing is actually about compliance, and actually managing is quite easy, because if you’re in a position of power, making people comply is easy.
“Empowering people is much harder, and the point about creating a culture of change is not about managing, it’s about leading.”
Mr Gerver argued empowerment involves encouraging team members to “step into the spotlight of accountability” and for leaders to invite ideas and challenges, adopting an “assumption of excellence” from their team rather than incompetence.
He continued: “When you move people into the spotlight and assumed excellence and you say, ‘I want you to innovate, I want you to go suggest ideas’, you create solutions to the problem.”
However, he noted: “You can’t go from one to the other really quickly. You have to build that culture over time, you have to build the confidence in people.”
Mr Gerver also warned against attempting to “solve complexity with complexity”.
He concluded: “I would suggest, now more than ever for you remarkable people who change lives and save lives every single day, your instinct is right. Don’t get too complex too soon. Don’t get too structural and systemic too soon.
“Think about the human problems and the human challenges that you face and use that as the starting point for the way you are going to build change in the future.”
