Team dynamics: understanding what makes your staff tick
By Simon Fowler
In a busy vet practice, when the appointment book is stacked with consults
and chaos reigns, it must be tempting for a practice principal to encourage
people to just ‘get on with it’ rather than taking a step back to try and
understand why things are not running as smoothly and efficiently as they
could.
Often the issue may be more complex than a team’s perceived lack of
productivity or focus. According to the Vet Support+ Pulse Survey¹ (Oct 2010)
the answers may not lie solely with a team that ‘get on with it’, considerable
leadership and management issues were also identified. When asked about
the barriers to change, the survey of practice managers and owners revealed
that 60% thought lack of time was the biggest challenge, 32% suggested
insufficient experience within the management team in setting strategic
direction was a barrier and 34% cited the level of teamworking could be
improved.
When asked what changes practice owners would most like to see in their
team there was a strong and consistent message: a need for improved
communication (56%), a desire for greater team work (52%), improved staff
management (44%) and greater capacity to delegate tasks (42%).
Whilst the issues may be very clear, addressing them may seem
overwhelming to many practice partners who are already over-stretched. One
solution may lie in personality profiling models such as Insights Discovery®,
which can help partners to better manage the performance of both individuals
and teams.
Based on the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and continually validated
by evidence-based research, Insights is a personality profiling tool that helps
partners to:

better understand their staff

recognise their own personality and its implications for management
style

deal with challenging individual behaviour and team dynamics

recognise and deal with stress both in themselves and others

deliver effective motivation and reward schemes

run effective appraisals
Participants complete an online questionnaire which provides insight into their
personality profile, based on three building blocks. The first preference is the
degree of introversion or extroversion: do individuals think before they speak
or vice versa. The second preference is the degree of thinking versus feeling:
does the individual focus on the task or the relationships involved in the
decision. The third preference is the use of sense versus instinct: how
individuals take in and process information. Analysis of the profiles helps
identify a personality type based on four colours – red, blue, yellow and green,
which are then broken down into 72 combinations.
This is all very well I hear you say but how does knowing someone’s
personality colour help me manage my team? Well, the beauty of the
personality profiling model is that it helps partners to understand what makes
their staff tick, their strengths and weaknesses and how the partner’s own
leadership style affects the team dynamic.
With bases in Kendal and Lancaster, Farm Gate Veterinary Services is a
newly-formed large animal practice founded and managed by two partners,
Mark Stott and Jim McKinstry. Insights was a perfect tool for the practice as
large animal practices rarely have the whole team in the same place, the
teams were new to working together and the partners’ HR responsibilities had
substantially increased from their previous roles.
We tend to find that there is a certain amount of scepticism and a mistrust of
being ‘pigeon-holed’ when practices start the Insights process, though this is
usually swiftly laid to rest once the participants see the accuracy of their
profiles. Staff at Farm Gate were no exception. Whilst there are always parts
of the profile that individuals may challenge, they are constantly surprised by
its accuracy and the detail that can be generated from answering simple
questions in an online survey. In fact, I recently carried out an Insights
session for a finance team and one delegate was convinced I had also
spoken to his mother before writing the report!
One of the benefits of the process is for individuals to understand both
themselves, and other people better, which is a tangible advantage for a
veterinary practice. The Farm Gate team read their own profiles and were
happy to share the skills they brought to the team and their potential strengths
and weaknesses for effective communication. I have seen this done with
many teams and I believe having a forum where this information can be
shared amongst a team is very valuable. It provides the team with a common
‘language’ to discuss possible barriers to communication without which there
is a danger that these conversations can become heated, misinterpreted, or
perhaps even avoided altogether.
I commend the team at Farm Gate for being open-minded enough to
implement this process. The partners said that they had learned ‘what other
people may think of their ways’ and that ‘there are different routes to the same
destination’ as well as identifying that there were ‘people in the team who can
do parts of my job better and will enjoy doing them’. Hopefully these sorts of
learnings can help more practices to share the work load more efficiently to
the benefit of both the team and their clients.
Simon Fowler is a Pfizer Business Consultant, committed to helping practices
improve business performance, client relations and staff motivation.
implement this process. The partners said that they had learned ‘what other
people may think of their ways’ and that ‘there are different routes to the same
destination’ as well as identifying that there were ‘people in the team who can
do parts of my job better and will enjoy doing them’. Hopefully these sorts of
learnings can help more practices to share the work load more efficiently to
the benefit of both the team and their clients.
Simon Fowler is a Pfizer Business Consultant, committed to helping practices
improve business performance, client relations and staff motivation.
A graduate of the University of Aberdeen with an Honours degree in
Agriculture, Simon has considerable experience in the Animal Health industry,
gaining invaluable insights into the unique issues of both the companion
animal and livestock markets. He is an accredited Insights trainer and has a
particular interest in helping practices improve their staff management issues.
References
¹
Pfizer Pulse Report, Spring 2011
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