Shadow of the leader: a case study from XLVets community

The best teams are created and able to flourish only if they have great leadership. Yet, when the time came to take on a directorship, many of us within the XLVets community recognised this step up – which, in many ways, represented the culmination of many years of hard work – actually made us feel inadequate rather than triumphant.

There was a strong sense of imposter syndrome – who were we to lead, when in fact we had no formal training to enable us to do so?

Perhaps paradoxically, as independent practice owners we also believed veterinary professionals were the best people to run veterinary practices, rather than bean counters with formal management and leadership training, but no understanding of the needs of our patients, clients and people. It meant we very quickly realised that here was an area where we really needed to up our game if independent practices were to thrive in this competitive and rapidly changing environment.

The leader is the message

The Shadow of the Leader programme was developed by XLVets in conjunction with The Brathay Trust, which works to improve the life chances of children, young people and families by inspiring them to have positive effects in their communities. It also has a “people and organisations” development arm that helps businesses create more engaged, skilled and collaborative workplaces.

In any workplace, norms of behaviour are often determined by the organisation’s culture – or the way we do things round here. Those behaviours are often formed by the leader, whose actions we will naturally imitate, often entirely subconsciously. This means it’s not just what you say you do, but what you actually do that demonstrates to the team how they should behave, too.

Where there are multiple leaders – which is common when there are several partners – it’s important they speak with one voice and don’t give off conflicting signals about how they expect people to behave. That probably sounds like a familiar bone of contention. Previous leaders can also leave a shadow for some time after their departure and it may take some time to dissipate.

If all of that sounds just a little bit abstract, here’s an example of the power of a leader’s shadow from a recent practice meeting at Fenton Vets. There was a set agenda including out of hours fees, subsidised testing and at the top of the list, a desperate and repeated request for prompt booking of work. At the end of last month, several vets would have noticed me playing the memory game, booking the previous two weeks of work in a last minute rush. With increased awareness of my shadow, the penny finally dropped.

As the meeting awkwardly continued on to other matters, I looked around the room. One director was busy labelling faecal samples, another was sending a text message. Everyone else seemed attentive. The meeting drew to a close and the final large animal director came in, apologising for being late.

What was the real message conveyed at the meeting? I doubt it was the intended content. Rather, that it is acceptable to not turn up for meetings, but if you do, then there is no need to concentrate. Also, it is fine to not carry out things that you have said that you were going to do. What should have been an opportunity to align the business with its objectives had, in fact, had a negative impact that could affect future client and patient care.

Deborah Hepple from Brathay puts it this way: “People are often not the leaders they want to be or even the leaders they think they are. What we do is shine a mirror to help people see what leadership behaviours they are really demonstrating and give them an insight into what they can do differently.”

The Johari Window concept explains our relationships with ourselves and others: there are elements known to ourselves and those known to others but there is an aspect of ourselves that others see that we do not – a blind spot. The course is designed to reveal that blind spot and, in turn, recognise what kind of leaders we really are.

It means that after the course we can lead authentically and in a way that uses our strengths, rather than being forced to meet a higher authority’s way of thinking about what management looks like. It helps us find our own comfort point between how much we like to use authority or gain consensus. This is important because it means our individual practices retain their diversity and that sense of what makes each of them unique.

The shadow we cast

So how does the shadow of the leader course bring about a shift in thinking from logical to reflective? First of all, while there is a serious purpose, the course is also designed to spark creativity and inject some fun. Break-out sessions include learning to juggle.

Small groups of around 8 to 12 people at a time take the course and all are veterinary professionals. It’s important this takes place with peers, who, over a couple of days, learn to trust and support each other.

There is value in realising that someone you look up to and admire also often feels vulnerable and this cultivates a sense of real belonging. Brathay runs the course with two consultants, as the process can be very emotional – often leaders are very hard judges of their own behaviour and there are sometimes some profound moments experienced when the penny drops.

Deborah says she finds that veterinary professionals are often pragmatic and like useful information that can be applied to their business. They are also high achievers, perfectionists and set high standards, so often value support to enable them to appreciate and recognise their own strengths and the positive things they have achieved.

There needs to be a level of dissatisfaction with the current status quo, a clear vision of what the future looks like and a belief that change is possible. Having all of this in place means that the resistance to change is lowered and that something actually happens as a result of the process.

During the course, the participants are offered coaching, 360-degree feedback from their teams and peers, DiSC personality profiling and one-to-one sessions with Brathay. The day is rounded off with visualisation where people are asked to draw a picture of how they see the effect they have within their practice. It encourages people to think more emotionally and creatively and helps them connect to the things that matter most. This often results in unexpected insights and is the breakthrough point for a lot of people, with leaders representing themselves as anything from a warm and cheerful sun, to a villain casting a dark shadow over Gotham City.

An overnight stay means there’s the opportunity to chat and chew the fat in the bar. The propensity for perfectionists to judge themselves harshly means that it’s essential that people have this time to decompress and come to terms with what they have learned about themselves in the presence of peers they trust and who completely understand where they are coming from.

Lasting change

This isn’t a course that delivers the complete “how-to” of management – although there are some ideas on that, too – and it’s very different from clinical CPD. When participants return to the practice, they tend to have higher levels of self-awareness and to also be more aware of the results of their actions. The conditions are created to allow change to happen.

Confidence comes from gaining a better understanding of how we can support others and the knowledge that we are more able to encourage and enable our teams to support us in our vision for the practice. Initially, there’s a level of conscious competence that comes from thinking carefully about what we do and its impact. Over time, these behaviours should come ingrained or second nature as we achieve unconscious competence – or doing the right thing without even thinking about it.

Participants are also more accepting of the idea that it’s fine to step back from the day-to-day work to be a more effective leader. The course itself is a completely unique experience and allows people to grow and develop, which gives a genuine sense of career progression.

Has it made me a better leader? Yes, I’d like to think so. Certainly, it has made me a more thoughtful leader, both in terms of self-reflection and consideration of my impact on other people. In some ways I haven’t changed at all – I haven’t suddenly become obsessed with targets overnight or started wearing suits. I am more confident about where I sit on the spectrum of boss leadership versus team-centred leadership and appreciate the balance between challenge and support in creating the right conditions to bring about excellence.