Ben Lynch: Hello, hello, hello.

Hannah Dunn: Hey.

Ben Lynch: Look, we're all here at 12.30. That's what happens when Jack's not here

Hannah Dunn: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: We start on time.

Dan Gibbs: That's a stitch up, isn't it? Because Jack's all about early's on time, on time is late.

Hannah Dunn: You should see it. On a Monday, he's forgotten his own rules.

Ben Lynch: G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode. I think most clinic owners make the mistake when developing their leaders to not train them in the art of coaching.

Dan Gibbs: Some people are naturally better wartime generals and it's almost like they gravitate towards creating chaos.

Hannah Dunn: Sometimes our best practitioners are not our best leaders.

Dan Gibbs: When it comes to problem solving we've used the 131 method.

Ben Lynch: How have you framed that up that it's okay to make an error?

Hannah Dunn: I will talk to the fact that I haven't done a good job.

Dan Gibbs: Personal opinion as to whether you're doing a good job is kind of dependent on whether you feel like the owner of the clinic likes you.

Ben Lynch: Did you know Hannah's not into coffee, Dan? What? This episode will be right up your alley if you're looking to build a leadership team that steps up as you step back from the day-to-day. Hannah shares her communication framework that helps leaders take initiative. Plus, stick around for Daniel's 1-3-1 model, a simple but powerful way to help your team make better decisions without running everything past you first. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by Allieclinics.com If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Ali. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinic's policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AliClinics.com. And in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. It is episode 309, and this is no ordinary episode. No, no. Today we are joined by Daniel Gibbs, our bestie guestie who's stepping in for Jack O'Brien. If you've recently tuned in, you will have heard that both Hannah and I have been left hanging by Jack. Did he get the invite? Is he coming? Maybe it's the result of running a paper diary and not a digital one. See what I did there, Hannah?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think that's great.

Ben Lynch: Well, Jack's decided he needs a break, so he's having a holiday meeting. Today we are graced by Daniel Gibbs. For those who haven't met Dan, he's got a celebrated and colourful past. He was a translator at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, ran a chain of Whole Foods stores. He battled it out in the octagon in mixed martial arts, which is super funny because he's one of the most gentle people you'd ever meet. And perhaps most notably running and then exiting a Telstra Business Award-winning clinic at Posture Podiatry, which is really key to the origin of CM. Dan, at the time, I remember you doing lots of coffees and lunches off the goodness of your own heart to help people understand how to grow their clinic until we teamed up, you, me, and Shane, to create CM. And now we're almost 10 years old. Dan, welcome to the episode. Firstly, What did you think to my coffee recommendation to you last Friday?

Dan Gibbs: Oh, thank you. Well, it's good to be back on the pod and yes. Okay. So, on Friday, Ben said, Daniel, I've just had the most gnarly coffee I've ever tasted. And so, of course, straight away I had Gnarly by Cat's Eye, the song, going on in my head thinking, what sort of gnarly are you talking about here? That must be before my birthday. I know your love affair with coffee. Anyway, he said it was coconut, popcorn and sultana were the tasting notes. And so whenever Ben gets a coffee revelation, it's kind of like when he gets an idea in a shower, he's like something big is about to happen. And so I went straight to the place where you had that coffee and I bought the beans. And, um, it was quite an experience. In fact, I've got them right here because, uh, Brazil. Yes.

Ben Lynch: Did you know Hannah's not into coffee, Dan? What? How can you be a health professional and not into coffee?

Hannah Dunn: I don't like the flavour. It's probably something to do with sensory processing.

Hannah Dunn: That's fair enough.

Hannah Dunn: I can go get Wok, guys, if you'd like.

Dan Gibbs: All this coffee chat is getting boring, but isn't it amazing? Ben, you know someone for a long time and they pick on something that happened 25 years ago as a key part of your bio.

Ben Lynch: Well, we'd like to get to know who we're hearing from today. Again, joined by the ever reliable and always practical Hannah Dunn, director of DOTS, an OT clinic with 30 team members in Melbourne, Victoria. Hannah, I want to know, has the paper-based calendar company called Agendio reached out to sponsor you yet?

Hannah Dunn: No, but they absolutely should. I am flogging them to everything. I just love them. It's right here. It's always here. So good. Can you get it in shot? Show us what yours looks like. I'll show you a blank page.

Ben Lynch: You're all about the physical version of diaries. I'm a digital person.

Hannah Dunn: You can set it up however you want. So I've got like a little box at the top that I can make notes in. And then I've got it in half hour time blocks until you get to like after school. And then it's in hours. And then on this side is the weekend and places to put notes of my jobs and to-do lists for the week.

Dan Gibbs: You know what I love about that diary, Hannah? There's nothing in it. It's completely clear.

Hannah Dunn: There is in other weeks.

Dan Gibbs: No, no, no. I mean, Oh, see, see, that's just like chaos. Yeah, chaos.

Ben Lynch: Dan's love language is an empty diary. Yep. Well, it's quite it's quite fitting today. We're going to be talking about diving. We're going to be diving into creating an effective leadership team, which is to release some of the workload off of you as a business owner. But first, a quick and warm welcome to those who've just installed Ali into their clinics. Jack normally does this segment, but in his absence, I'll step up. There you go, Jack. Anyway, Shane, Kirsten, Bryden, Tom, Louise, and Josh, thank you very much. And also, for those who've reviewed the podcast and sent it in via email recently. We've got Jay, Rob, and Gabriela. Feel welcome, please, to log in to your player. You're probably there now if you're listening to this. And give us a review. Go to Spotify, Apple, or Google. Give us a review. Send that through to me, ben at clinicmastery.com. And we've got a couple of these vulnerability cards still left in stock. We'll send you a pack as a thank you. But let's tee it up, Dan. We're talking about and about to launch an immersion. It's a series of workshops internally where we work with members on a specific focus to help them really immerse themselves and create change. This one's going to be about creating effective leadership teams. But there's a couple of things that we commonly hear from clinic owners when they're either starting or evolving their leadership teams that kind of sets the scene. And then we can workshop together some of the things we've seen to lead to effective leadership teams. Dan, tears up.

Dan Gibbs: When we do immersions in the Clinic Mastery community, we get to go deep into a particular topic. This one is on clinic leadership, and we've got five workshop sessions that we're going to be going into. supported by a clinic leadership playbook, which covers everything from how to build a leadership team to how to run meetings, to have difficult conversations, to know what positions to put in place and how to help team members to own it. Because one of the key things we see is, okay, I'm a clinic owner, I've got team leaders, but they're not really owning it. Or they just see this as extra work, or they just wanna focus on their clinical practice and no one really wants to step up, they just want a treat. And what that means is the clinic becomes super reliant on the owner and any thought of growth just is met with this feeling of, oh, I don't want to get too big because it's just going to be so much more work. And look, there's many ways to be right when it comes to leading a business to an ideal size for your location, your area, your profession. But having good leaders on the journey with you is a big key part of that.

Ben Lynch: It's a good point. Hannah, we've talked in a few pods recently about leadership teams as pathways for retaining some of our best team members. Yeah, absolutely. So just talk to me about what you see in the effective leadership teams. And I'm sure you'd class your own as an effective leadership team.

Hannah Dunn: Absolutely.

Ben Lynch: For the groups that you work with, what are some of the characteristics or traits you feel that they get right to be effective?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think they get it right when they see people who are hungry, humble, smart, which is what we want for all of our team members in the first place. But I think making sure that we're already seeing those leadership skills from our team members before we promote them into leadership roles is a key thing that those who are getting it right are getting it right from that perspective to start with. Because on the flip side of that, we see what happens when someone who's promoted based on years of experience or how long they've been on the team instead of those skills already being seen. Because sometimes our best practitioners are not our best leaders.

Ben Lynch: That's a great point that came up a lot, Dan, in people's feedback and submissions to us is like, how do I actually get them to lead? Like they're in a leadership role, but they're not leading by example, they're not taking initiative. Hannah, you're kind of saying, well, it starts from whether you put them in the place or not. Dan, what have you found useful in helping people actually step into that leadership role and be a leader?

Dan Gibbs: Well, I think a lot of people measure the success of their role. in different ways. So if you're a team member who has stepped into a leadership role, but you don't have any key outcomes or key markers of success or what success looks like in the role, then generally what you'll find is your opinion, your personal opinion as to whether you're doing a good job or not, is kind of dependent on whether you feel like the owner of the clinic likes you. And if they're in a good mood and they like you, then, okay, I must be doing a good job. Or if they're not in a good mood and it looks like they don't like me, then, oh, what am I doing wrong? And I just think the vagueness of that whole situation can lead people to go, I find so much more certainty when I'm treating clients. So I just want to do that rather than do this sort of leadership thing, which has so much uncertainty to it.

Hannah Dunn: So position descriptions is what we're saying that are key.

Dan Gibbs: Well, that's a great start, but a lot of people have position descriptions, but never refer to them. Or, you know, a lot of people do a position description when they onboard someone, but then it sort of sits there in a digital folder or even in a paper, paper file on a, uh, on a shelf gathering dust. And it's never really referred to or adjusted or, um, edited. And so that, that can be difficult.

Ben Lynch: I like the framing that you use there, Dan and Hannah, on a previous conversation with Jack, we were talking about knowing how well am I doing my job by actually asking someone, how do you know you're doing a good job? Just open-ended, not a leading question, but how do you know? Maybe for a therapist, it's a version of client satisfaction, client outcomes. Maybe we'd get that through surveys or through assessments. But when we get into the leadership component, Dan, as you're referencing, maybe it's a little bit vague. And I think it probably starts from a clinic owner going, I'm doing these tasks. And actually, the outcome is, I don't want to spend time doing these tasks, so I hand them over. So actually, the outcome is, it's just that I don't have to do it. But then these team members end up with big to-do lists, managing these projects, that when you go back and look at three months, six months ago, what are you actually achieving? What outcomes are you getting for the business? So, yeah, to your point, Hannah, I think position descriptions are key. I think starting with a result, would you start anywhere different? I'll give an example. Someone says, I need help with the marketing. I'm gonna hand over the marketing to someone. And so they end up, you know, going to Canva, you know, doing a lot of chat to BT stuff and getting super busy. And actually what they need is new patients. and they don't anchor clearly enough back to your result is to get new patients and then we can work backwards to what is the best scope of work to pursue from there. Hannah, what have you found useful in making it clear to leaders kind of the outcome that they're trying to achieve in their role?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think as directors, we get really fixated sometimes on setting up a measurable item that is fixed. And what we've found really successful is changing what that measure is based on the project or based on what you're working on. So with your example of marketing, Like potentially it's about number of clients coming into the clinic based on the marketing and maybe that metric changes once that's been achieved. For us, like with our groups, we got more specific about how many groups we wanted up and running, which groups we wanted up and running, rather than just being like, here's the groups project, go and do it. And that flowed across with a whole range of things like our schools and getting specific about we want you to reach out to this number of schools. We want to have a flyer done by this date that we can give to every therapist that when they turn up to a school, they're handing that out. And then the other big change that we made in the last 12 months that's been a game changer has been that we've got a Slack channel that all of our leaders are in or all of our project people and on the 15th of every month they do a video update of how they're going with their project and so that is literally a one or two minute, three max minute video to say, hey, this is what I've done. And it's really just creating that accountability and it allows them to share their work with the other leaders who then get an idea of what's going on and the mentors know what's happening so that they can direct their clinicians back to certain people around different projects. To have that accountability, we did really good goal setting at the start of each people picking out their projects so they knew what those targets were.

Dan Gibbs: What it sounds like, Hannah, is you've done an awesome job in creating a community of leaders in your team, which is so good because I think a lot of business owners in particular get nervous about asking people to do the work for them, or they get nervous about accountability or saying, okay, you've got this role, but how am I going to keep them accountable to it? Because there's a real fear that someone's going to up and leave, or someone's going to not like the role, or someone's going to feel like they're being micromanaged. And, and so in the absence of knowing how, how did you create that community with, with your leaders?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, just being open and transparent about this is the first time we've tried leaders this way, like each time we've tried a different version. We've definitely grown our leadership team in different ways and there's been things that have worked and things that haven't worked. And I think just asking, like we were talking about before about our leaders want to know if they're doing a good job. We also want the feedback as to whether it's working for our leaders. And so being flexible in reshaping that really talking about I understand it can feel quite vulnerable putting these posts up but it doesn't need to be a lot and just providing a lot of support around that in the beginning but I definitely was micromanaging in the beginning and was feeling that pressure of like oh I don't want to make it feel like you're doing something that I didn't want to do and now you probably don't want to do it but And that created an environment where people were feeling like they were making decisions, but then had to run it past me. And so by creating the Slack channel, for example, it's created a space in which they can share, they know they can reach out if they need support. And I think it's just leading by example, like the group that we have, they see each other doing it and they just start to get on board.

Dan Gibbs: So I'm curious, Hannah, because you've obviously gone through a big journey in in your clinic and getting to the size that you are and with building your leadership team, when did you realise it was time to start putting leaders in place in your clinic?

Hannah Dunn: Like Ben, we've spoken about in regards to when we had a clinical team that I felt like I couldn't manage on my own anymore, where I felt like I needed someone to step into a supervisor role. And so we had someone sort of take on someone else in that supervisor role, Michelle. And Michelle's still with us now, eight years later, and her role has progressed and changed during that time as well. And so, you know, I'm not shy to say that we sort of got to the point where we put too many mentors in and we hadn't done enough training. And so in the last 12 months, we've actually pulled back all our mentoring to just two clinicians in our clinic and the others have some project roles or have stepped back from those roles so that we can align the training and make sure that we're all on board because at the size that we're at, I was no longer in the clinic hearing things happening day to day, which I think is different to when we were one site and we had Michelle who was just seeing a couple of therapists, they also had access to me. And so I do think it's just an evolution of trial and error and faking it till you make it and being honest about the fact that you're really learning in this journey as well and you need feedback and you want to work with them to fix things if things come up.

Dan Gibbs: I love that point around honesty. I remember when I had a moment when I thought, yeah, I've got to reduce the clinic's reliance on me as the main practitioner in the clinic and go through the, the, um, the process of switching from the main practitioner to being a leader in the business. And I just had to say to my team, um, guys, this is something new for me and I appreciate your support as we do this and we'll do this together. And I remember the day so clearly it was Tuesday. I think it was the 23rd of December or 24th of December, um, back in 20, 13, 12, yeah, around then. And, and I, the team pulled me, it was a surprise meeting that pulled me into the back room and there was a cake there and there was a card signed by everyone. And it was that moment where they said, you know, you, you've done it, you've, you've made the transition. And, We're super proud of where things are heading and we just want to let you know we got your back. And that was a real great moment, but it sort of was a year of transition, a year of moving in a particular direction, but a year of being vulnerable and being honest and having the team on board as well with it. Ben, what are the signs that you've seen that a clinic's ready for a leadership team? being the bottleneck for decisions, finding yourself repeating the same instructions over and over, having capable people but really not knowing what their progression is. What have you seen?

Ben Lynch: Yeah, I think Hannah, you spoke about starting a family, continuing a family and being able to have time off as a meaningful milestone for your life and going, okay, well, literally I'm not going to be here and I don't want it to rely on me in this period, this meaningful period. I remember you as well, Dan, with the birth of Demi. That was a key milestone in your journey. I think when you zoom out and you look at where do you want to go with your business, I think most clinic owners say it's some version of, I wanna support the people that work with me to grow with me. Otherwise you just run a solo practice and that's okay, but probably the people we're speaking to wanna grow something of significance, of substance, of meaning. And that normally entails having a team and providing pathways for some of those team members to grow with you, become mentors, take over different portfolios. I think the key, and we've referenced it a few times, is when going into some of these pathways, to start with less and to start by validating that this is the right person for that role. To your point, Hannah, is with a lot of the pre-framing, we're kind of buying ourselves the optionality into the future that if it's not working out as planned, we can kind of reference. Remember that discussion we had at the very beginning? that we would go through a learning period. Practically, what does that look like? It's not starting three days a week, perhaps, as head of marketing or head of the clinical team, but maybe it's half a day a week. And then we slowly build the capacity in that role to make sure it's a right fit for them and that they're getting results for the business. To your point, Hannah, like your own journey, of having maybe too many mentors at one stage that creates this almost middle management bloat which is largely and typically unprofitable and then it just becomes more complex and it's less effective. I'm interested in how you went about realising that was something you wanted to change because it's very tricky and a lot of clinic owners are scared to quote unquote go backwards if that is a way of framing from this big team to a smaller leadership team. And then secondly to that, how have you spoken specifically about making errors and failures? Because you said it's trial and error. How have you pre-framed that to allow you to have those conversations or two-parter, maybe start with the decision to scale back your mentoring team?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think we just, from a practical perspective, we also had a period where we had five team leaders and we currently have one senior team leader and two team leaders now. And so we just didn't re-offer those roles if they were to exit or go on mat leave. We had a couple of our team leaders go on mat leave. And so when one of them came back, she's opening up Geelong, for example, so opening up another area. They've taken on a bigger project maybe. So that's from a practical perspective. We did talk to a couple of people about just changing their roles and doing project work rather than managing a team. And also one of our mentors, we're getting to develop our mentor training. So that's been a different way to have still that really positive impact and have that work. From the perspective of the communication to the team, we always frame it in a way about what's in it for them. I'm always thinking, what's in it for them? What's the positive? What are we looking at? And so really talking about how this was going to level up their support, that they were going to get a higher quality of support, and that we were going to be more aligned across the team, more consistency across the team. And really talking to that I was open about the fact that I like it was a failure in the system not in the people that we hadn't put the training in place that was really specific to what we wanted in those team leaders. We've got an awesome onboarding awesome first year training second year training but. When it came to those team leaders, it just wasn't as strong. I think one of the pitfalls for a lot of us is the assumed knowledge of how to lead a team rather than doing that specific training that you would do for onboarding a new clinician.

Ben Lynch: It's a great point. So just to understand there, in the transition of having more mentors available to your team and scaling that back, part of the communication was what's in it for me. I love the with them always. What's in it for me? That's what the team's thinking. And you frame that up as it's going to be more consistent. It's going to be better quality. OK, so you've spoken to those things. It's a really nice way of packaging it up and being very intentional about the the communication side of things. Just to go on the other point around errors and failure or falling short. how have you framed that up that it's okay to fall short, to make an error? How do you create a safe environment for that?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. I will talk to the fact that I haven't done a good job, that I have let you down because I haven't done X, Y, and Z. So I'll often talk to what errors I've made, or I might talk if it's something that's going on for them, we might talk about what has been going on for them, where do they feel like they could improve, what are the areas that we can focus in on, and setting some really tangible goals. But in that meeting also talking about, well, what's the outcome if we can't meet these goals? And it's okay that you can't meet them, let's just see if we can get the foundation, let's go back, get the foundations right, and then we can rebuild onto those skill areas too.

Ben Lynch: to dovetail into some of the functional stuff in a moment. Can you just elaborate on some of your lessons around running the monthly business review and the assumptions in talking to learnings and how we really sort of use that as a way to get better moving forward?

Dan Gibbs: Assumed knowledge. Hannah, you raised that point and it's such a key part of this because We do, we often just have this assumed knowledge. I'll put someone in a leadership position and I'll assume that they'll figure it out or they'll have some knowledge on how to make it happen. Or if we go, I'm about to hire someone with skills that I don't have into a position that is new, that I've never run before, there can be this sort of separation or this imposter syndrome thinking, how can I actually lead that person if I don't know what their job is? Or I'm just gonna assume that they know things. And then to the bigger point, you mentioned the monthly business reviews, Ben. In a monthly business review, we get together as a team to look at the numbers, you know, what is the profit and loss, the cash flow, the balance sheet. We look at what are the projects that we're doing to attract, what are the projects that are in place for delivery, and what are the things that are linking things with our operations. And in going through all of that, there's so much assumed knowledge. We assume that the marketing team knows what the delivery team's doing. We assume that the operations knows what's going on with the finances. And actually, when you come together as a team and look through a report together and sort of bring everyone onto the same page, it's It's amazing to see the insights that other people can then give because you bring everyone on the same page. And into that point, we sort of took inspiration from Jeff Bezos and the way he runs a meeting with time allocated at the beginning of the meeting to actually read the report together, the monthly business review report together in the room, because there's the assumed knowledge that everyone's read the report and to be able to comment on it and everything as we go.

Ben Lynch: So, yeah, it's… And there's a great quote from him, which is around structured docs, like documents or reports, and then messy meetings. Not that they're completely unstructured, but it allows time for discovery, curiosity. Essentially, if you know the answer to questions, they're probably in the report, but we're actually trying to create learning and insight through discussion and debate. The other part to that, Dan, I like is when we're reviewing different areas, we will say, what was our assumption about this thing when we started it? Maybe we assume that the local kindies or schools were going to be really receptive to our referral networking. And it turns out, no, they're not. And these are the reasons why. And so that's going to change our strategy for how we attract more new clients. And being OK that, oh, we went out, we discovered, we learned, and now we can bring that back to the knowledge base for making decisions moving forward. So I find that part of the good leadership teams are sharing, I assumed this, and I think assumptions are good. So long as we go out, we test, we learn, and we come back and say, now this is what I've learned to inform the rest of decision making.

Dan Gibbs: And to that point, when you mentioned the results from that activity, we can think of results in terms of how well the performance was in terms of, okay, we've done well to achieve this result, or if we've fallen short or exceeded the result, there's a problem. Is that a problem with execution? We've done well performance, or is it a problem with forecasting? You know, we expected to get this result. And so constantly on a monthly basis, coming back and revisiting, is this a problem with forecasting or is this a problem with performance? And what are the assumptions that are leading us to think that this should be where we're at? And what are the assumptions in terms of the performance as well? So it's a great activity to do with the leadership team and it stops you from being bound by the numbers.

Ben Lynch: It's a version of, you know, they talk about in business, like a post-mortem, here's a project, here's an initiative that we undertook, and here's where it went wrong, here's where it worked, or here are the lessons. It's a version of a pre-mortem, where you're essentially saying what could go wrong, or at least what are our beliefs or assumption about this particular activity? And how does this matter in a clinic? Well, you might say that Google ads or Facebook ads don't work for us. That's maybe an assumption, and maybe you've got some more distinguished insights as to why that is. But then we're still going to go and test it, and then come back and figure out whether this is the right strategy for us to fill our books with new patients, or insert any other version. Dan, you've got some interesting takes around the functional division of responsibilities and how people can cross-pollinate, but not getting one another's way to slow things down or speed things up. Can you just elaborate a little bit more on how clinic owners should think about the functional division of labor, essentially?

Dan Gibbs: Yeah, so it'll be different at different stages of business. So a lot of people might go through a process where, let's take this journey. We've got a practitioner who started at uni, has worked at a clinic somewhere, and they've decided, okay, I'm gonna go out and start a clinic. So they go into startup mode, they find a location, they start working at this place, and this is sort of the initial stage, that sort of startup phase of business. They'll get to a point quickly, maybe they'll add an admin person, maybe another practitioner, but they'll get to a point where they realise, actually, there's only so much that I can do as one person in a clinic. And there's a decision that needs to be made. And that decision is, are we going to grow or are we going to stay as we are? And if we make that decision to grow, it's a case of, well, what are we going to grow to? And what does my job look like on the other side of this? And it's a, breakthrough zone where we're effectively investing in growth in the business. So that means the profitability on the other side of this is probably the same as the profitability before you started, but you've got a much better foundation now with maybe five or six team members and a bit of a leadership structure in place that can then accelerate you to the next phase of business, that next breakthrough zone, which is more likely to be around branding, location, getting clear on our policies and procedures and systems and everything in the business and maybe looking at how big are we going to become? Are we going to open another site or whatever it might be? And then that investment into the business then leads you to the other side where you're able to make steps into the next phase of business. And so if we look at something that's true across any phase of business, it's that we are all going to be attracting we're all gonna be delivering and there's gonna be an element of operations, I'm not talking about surgical operations, but rather the way things run in a clinic. So if we think of clinics having those functional areas, attraction, delivery and operations, you can then build a leadership team that has some exposure to each of those areas and that helps you build that sort of balanced approach to leadership in the clinic. And I can go deeper into each of them if we need to.

Ben Lynch: That's a good point around like attraction of therapists, attraction of clients to the clinic as two real key growth levers to get right. Hannah, where did you sort of start with that leadership team? What did you find most useful, the roles specifically to help you grow through those early stages?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, definitely getting admin on board was a big step in getting that happening. And I think I really saw that leadership role, that admin role as a leadership role, because it was an area in which I didn't know what I didn't know, like I was doing all the invoicing and everything myself. And Then Lisa came on board. I just advertised on Facebook Mums Group and was like, I need someone four hours a week. And they were like, yeah, no worries. So Lisa came on. And before we knew it, she was doing three full days because there's so much that I didn't know. And then she really led the growth and development of the admin side of the business while I sort of grew the clinical side. And we're now at a point where we have like an operations manager, a finance manager, We have a practice manager, a senior team leader and two OT leaders or mentors. And so I think as Daniel spoke to you before, it's about the stage of business that you're at and where those positions fall and what you need, because I definitely didn't need that amount of support when I was, you know, five or six clinicians. I think the other thing, Daniel, that you spoke to was like when you bring on a position that you might not have expertise in, I think just bringing on anyone in a new role that you haven't had before, you don't have to bring them on ongoing, like really thinking about, is this a 12-month contract? And that gives you the chance to not feel locked in and to feel like you've got time to explore that role. And the same thing can be done with your leaders, like talking about it being a 12-month plan, that you'll be in a different position in 12 months, let's reassess it then.

Dan Gibbs: That speaks to my business mentor. He says all the time, finite time, finite outcome. And in any decision like this, we can think about it in terms of finite time period and finite outcome, which is very helpful.

Ben Lynch: So, on the development and training side, we've kind of all touched on here that ideally we're identifying people who lead by example, who just are stepping up and stepping into a leadership position. But maybe that's the exception, not the rule for a lot of people. They do need quite a bit of training, development and coaching. So what have you found effective at actually getting people up to speed as quickly and as sustainably as possible? Hannah, what have been your go-to and perhaps even your lessons in developing leaders?

Hannah Dunn: I'm going to go back to the desire statements. The desire statements help us so much identify what each individual team member want. I think one of the things that we hear people doing is making assumptions that this person's been with us for three years, they definitely will want a leadership role. But there's different ways that people can lead. That could be by creating a retreat that you take your team away on and that they're leading that project. It could be that they're leading a team or it could be that they're leading an external project. Michelle now manages, she doesn't supervise anyone internally. She manages all our external contacts. We do mentoring for OTs who don't have other OTs in their practices. And so Michelle manages all those external people. And so I think that is what really helped us in the beginning to talk to everyone about what their desire statements were, what the areas were where they wanted growth and also around what they'd had in previous roles that they enjoyed or saw others doing and that gave me ideas like we don't know everything we can't come up with all these ideas on our own and so learning from our team and learning about what they've seen somewhere else or what they've got a passion for I think really helps us Because often when we haven't asked our team and we've just found a position and thought someone would be right fit, we've later found out that other people would have liked the opportunity to discuss whether they would have been suitable for that role as well.

Ben Lynch: Right. So you're really labouring on understanding exactly what this team member wants and what's meaningful to them moving forward in their career, in their life, as a strong anchor point for their development in a leadership role.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. And I think also talking to them about if you've made the decision on who it is and when you're talking about what is the training that you're doing, there is certain videos and language that we want our leaders to be looking at, the above the line and below the line. We want to make sure it's flowing through our team. Brené Brown's work around vulnerability and leadership. Those are the sort of things that we want to make sure that our leaders are aware of and know where to get support. I think also talking about what's gone well, what we've done better in different circumstances as you're learning and growing and just talking about everything being a learning opportunity. An example of that being like if a The thing that comes to mind is like if there's a client complaint that comes in, a complaint about a therapist or, and you go and chat to the therapist in the heat of the moment and feel like the conversation didn't go well and then sort of reflecting on what went well, what could we have done better or anything that happens like that? Yeah, have been the main things. I don't know, Daniel, what else you've done or been?

Dan Gibbs: Yeah, I think coaching our leaders in ways that we've been coached in the past or using our previous experience from the past, what's worked and what hasn't worked can be a great way of helping to develop the leaders on the team as well. And just having those vulnerable conversations saying, hey, I've faced this situation before. This is how I did it. This is how I do it differently now. Or when it comes to problem solving, identifying problems and coming up with ideas how to solve them, we've used the 1-3-1 method. So one would be identify or clearly outline a defined problem. So what is the problem? Because if you can explain a problem in a single sentence, it's half solved. And then, so with that one clearly defined problem, and then the three is three possible solutions. What could we do? Which helps people to step out of that feeling of overwhelm and into problem-solving mode and also helps you understand how they're thinking as a leader. And then the one, 131, is recommendation. What's one recommendation? So what do you think we should do? And what that does is it helps to give safe space for people to learn with some suggestions or a bit of a framework about, OK, here's a problem that we're facing, here are three possible solutions, and here's what I would do. And that just opens the door for good, effective conversations.

Ben Lynch: It's great. It addresses directly that thing we often hear is, I've got leaders, but all the decisions keep coming back to me. And you're really empowering people. You might make the final decision, but you're really coaching them there. Dan, I love that observation. I was going to say, Hannah, I think most clinic owners make the mistake when developing their leaders to not train them in the art of coaching. I think they expect that they are going to have the answers to every possible question, and so naturally they feel a level of imposter syndrome because they know they don't know everything, when in actual fact they just need to be able to ask really good questions. That's not to say that they don't need to have some experience and knowledge, Perhaps the skill of being resourceful is most useful. Your ability to go off and do research and find the answers. Say, hey, I haven't got a solution for you right now, but can I get back to you later today or tomorrow or next week? But actually, I think most clinic owners would be best served to train and develop their leaders in the art of coaching as distinct from just training people to be trainers. And there's a subtle but important distinction there.

Hannah Dunn: And the book being The Coaching Habit. Great one. Trying to see if it's on your bookshelf. It is somewhere. Yeah, over your right, over your left shoulder maybe. It's somewhere here in the library. Over there on my shelf, too far away. It's not on your desk. The Coaching Habit.

Dan Gibbs: I mean, the best book is the one that's on your desk that you're referring to often, right?

Ben Lynch: There it is.

Dan Gibbs: Ah, here it is.

Ben Lynch: The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay-Steiner. Anyway, great, great book. There's essentially like seven questions, right, that you can use. I won't spoil the plot, but go check it out.

Dan Gibbs: And what else? And what else? And what else?

Hannah Dunn: And you can listen to it on Audible for those who aren't that great at sitting down and reading.

Ben Lynch: It's so important, right? How do you actually coach? a team member to be a better leader. Perhaps they've got some natural abilities, but also being able to help them see kind of the ingredients that you see in them, I think is really powerful. So another thing that I would add into this practically is so often I've seen clinic owners appoint a team member to a leadership position. Let's call it supervisor or mentor to the other therapists. And then it's like, done. It's your job now. And there's no connection, there's no Slack channel, there's no meeting, there's no rhythm for the clinic owner to sit down with that mentor and say, how are you going? What are you working on? What's worked well? What's not working well? What are you struggling with? How can I support you? And asking these questions, we actually did a podcast moons ago, we'll link it here underneath the show notes of, it was like 27 questions. that you could ask. You don't need to ask them all in one session, that would be overkill. But 27 questions you could ask in your mentoring of someone on your team to help them find the agency to be better. So again, you're not just putting someone in and then it still relies on you. So I think coach-like is the way to go.

Dan Gibbs: Yeah, I still I'm putting myself in the shoes of a clinic owner who's going, all right, I think I need a leadership team. I don't really know why I need a leadership team. It just sounds like a lot of work because I'd rather just do it all myself. It'll at least get done properly. Or it's a lot of work to try and train up a leader and then have them leave. And now they've got all the elements of the business that I've handed over to them and now they've gone. Yeah, the IP and all of that. And so there's still this fear. And then there's also this, well, what if the leader does really well? And then the team follow that person and not me. And then, you know, it's like they feel like they're handing over some element of control. And then at the same time, they're then going, well, I'm holding on to too much at the moment and I'm still the bottleneck on everything and no one really wants to step up. I want people to lead by example, but then when they do, it's like you try and pull them back or tear them down. this wrestle with, I want leaders, but I don't want leaders. And it's sort of underpinned by this fear of what having leaders would mean. And also the fear of, is the clinic going to lose out because they're spending time in leadership, which is not actually generating any income. And we could lose money by putting leaders in place as well. Like there's all this going on in the mind of a clinic owner. Hannah, I'm curious. What do you do if you come across someone who's in that space?

Hannah Dunn: I mean, what if it does work? Like, what if it does work? I think rolling breakeven gives you confidence around your numbers and knowing how that's going to impact and where that shortfall needs to come from. And I also think having a conversation around, yes, but if we've got one person who's dropped, let's say, four hours to support four clinicians, then is the impact going to be greater that those four clinicians can have than this one clinician was able to have on their own because they're now getting really good mentoring. So in the very first few weeks, maybe we do have a little bit of a dip, but we've done our rolling back even, we know we can afford that little bit. But then we should see the uptake of what is actually the flow on effect of getting that good support in place. And I think just having that abundance mindset of like, yeah, maybe they will leave. But if we also bottleneck and people aren't happy because they're not getting the support, people will definitely leave.

Ben Lynch: Yes.

Dan Gibbs: And you'll lose your best people, too. If you don't give those opportunities, you'll lose your best people. So true. And I find that Once you cross the threshold of the unknown, things become a whole lot easier. You don't give birth to a teenager, you give birth to a baby and that baby takes through stages as my daughter is now on the threshold of being a teenager. they take you through stages and you learn as a parent. And it's much the same in the clinic when you start this. If you feel like you're not a great leader, but you've never really been in a position where you're leading your own team, then that's a normal feeling. If you feel like you're not a great leader and you do have a leadership team in place, that's also a normal feeling. But if you were a practitioner once who studied at university and you remember seeing your first client, did you feel super prepared and super capable when you saw your first client? No. But after time and after experience with treating clients, you then become super capable and super proficient as long as you're open to learning and you're open to being vulnerable with your team and you're open to taking them on a journey with you. That finite time, finite outcome that you know, start small and sort of grow from there. Maybe then you'll avoid some of the pitfalls of putting the wrong person in that position just because they were the only one available or, you know, being worried about how you're going to be as a leader and so creating this sort of us and them type mentality in the clinic. So culture knitting things together.

Hannah Dunn: We've spoken a lot about being vulnerable with our team and making sure that they know that this is a learning journey for us, which is super important. But I think it's also important that we name that it's also really important to be really clear with what is happening and be seen as in control and to be seen as knowing. what is happening that yes this is new but we know how we're going to trial it and if things don't work then we'll reassess rather than we're just sort of winging out and we're just going with it because that won't create that certainty or that need for clarity that the team might be seeking.

Dan Gibbs: This reminds me, I remember when I used to get guilty for not being around the clinic so much. So I'd gone through the process of reducing hours working with clients and then my number one priority was the team. And so I would come into the clinic and in our team meetings, I'd talk about everything that I'd been working on or everything that I've been doing. And I was thinking that what I was doing was keeping everyone engaged with what was going on behind the scenes. And it was only when I was pulled aside once by a practice manager who was awesome and said, you know, Daniel, When you say all the stuff that you've been doing, what the team hears is you're doing all those things because they're not. And she said to me, you know, we trust and we know that you're working on things. We trust that that's happening in the background. You know, what we need you to know is what's going on for us. And so a big key for me was after that moment, realising what's most important is me knowing what's going on with the team. And that helped me to become a better leader.

Hannah Dunn: And that's one thing that we spoke to our team about in the last six months is that there was this feeling that I didn't know what was going on because Belinda was our senior team leader and there was something that happened in the clinic where a therapist had not a great experience with a family who'd gotten annoyed with them. And I initially checked in with them. But then after that, I wasn't in the clinic and Belinda had checked in and Belinda and I have our meetings and we chatted about it. But the person felt a little bit upset that I hadn't personally checked in with them. But after a conversation of I absolutely know what's happened here, like this is like Belinda's updated me. This is what's happened. And, you know, I'm so glad. And when Belinda checks in on you, that is me checking in as well, because I get the updates in these moments. And that really we then made sure the whole team was aware about our flow and about what happened, so they were aware that the information was flowing.

Ben Lynch: I love that. You've got a core principle at the clinic, right? Hannah, I remember you sharing this moons ago with me about communication. How do you state it?

Hannah Dunn: Everything can be solved with good communication, but previously, before I spoke to you, Ben, about it, it used to be nothing can't be solved with good communication.

Ben Lynch: Yes, it was a little more wordy.

Hannah Dunn: Everything can be solved with good communication. It's on everything, like it's on our hub, it's on everything. So we really coach our team around, you know, if something's bothering you, you need to speak up and we will work with you. There's no judgment.

Dan Gibbs: And that's, that's one reason why I think all clinics need to have a chat style platform for communication where everyone can see the messages that are being sent. If you're still communicating with your team by email or SMS, it's very one way and it, reduces visibility with the rest of the team. So I would highly advocate, advocate for, um, you know, moving to say a chat platform like Slack or Google chat or something teams, uh, just where you can have channels around particular topics and you can keep those conversations open in front of mind and available for everyone to see.

Ben Lynch: I want to ask each of you, before we wrap, about how you've changed as a leader in just a moment. Hannah, and maybe provoked by you, Dan, of the clinic owner or various clinic owners going, what if this, and what if that, and I hear Brené Brown say this, and Simon Sinek say that, and I hear the coaching habit, and there's all these different leadership models. You're not going to be this perfect leader. And it can be overwhelming, can feel overwhelming. I've wrestled with that at times of like, I should be more like this person or more like this person. And over time, what I've found really useful is to anchor back to a couple of key principles that resonate most with me and that seem to be effective or championed by others. A mental model of sorts. Otherwise, every scenario seems like a new discrete scope of work or problem or challenge. It can be really hard to navigate the chaos of running a business if you don't have something to come back to. And so that's where I love your point there, Hannah, around everything can be solved with good communication. It's kind of like your number one leadership principle, because good communication means we're okay to talk about the failures. We're okay to be open and transparent about these things. And so in my mind, at least, it connects a lot of what you've said today back to that one principle that you use and has helped you chart the course, because there's always adversity and challenges. But if you use that principle all the time, I think it's a true north for your team. So, Hannah, how have you changed as a leader over the past five years, especially when we were all very tested during COVID? What are a couple of takeaways that you've had as a leader?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think the communication is a big one. I think even if we don't know exactly what our course of action is, I was saying to Daniel and Ben earlier, who have no insight into what COVID lockdowns were, because I'm Melbourne based in Adelaide, that that was a moment where our leadership team really came together. And that's when I just knew that my team was just so incredible. It was a Sunday when lockdowns were announced and And we got together on a Zoom call and we just made a plan and decision of what had to happen. I think one thing we've really learnt is what is out of our control is out of our control. We can't spend time focused on what's out of our control. Let's just get down to the main points. create an action plan, and then let's communicate that to the team and to the families. And yeah, that's just been something that we've flowed through with. And I think not sweating the small stuff, I think five years ago, I would have really worried about, you know, what other people were thinking or what other people were doing, or whether I'd done the right thing here or there. Whereas now I just think, I tried my best. All we can do is do our best. And, you know, if we've made a mistake, we'll try and fix it. And, We can only do the best that we can do on that day.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, it's the ultimate position to be, and I love that. And sharing those stories where you've made mistakes with your team, I think, creates that safety that it's OK, we're not always going to get it right. So it's a beautiful insight into how you lead at the moment, none of us being perfect, but learning along the way to apply those lessons for future circumstances. Dan, I've seen you change quite a lot over the years, but I'm interested to know, yeah, how would you characterise the key changes you've had as a leader?

Dan Gibbs: Yeah, perhaps three things. Firstly, knowing my role. So knowing what my role is as a leader, I think just because you're the owner of a clinic or just because you're running a business doesn't mean you need to be clear on what the role is.

Ben Lynch: And what do you mean? So on that three piece, people,

Dan Gibbs: You've got to look after your people. Problems, you've got to be the one there to help solve problems. And a P word for marketing, promotion. So just so that the PPP works. No one's going to market your business or your clinic perhaps better than you in terms of those referral relationships, the word of mouth, the opportunities that you can find to promote the business. So know your role. Number two, there are times when you need to be a different style of leader. I think of wartime general, peacetime general. There are times where people really step up in moments of chaos. And that does require a lot more. You've got to keep your finger on the pulse. You've got to be a lot more present, a lot more communicative. doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down on your communication in those moments of wartime. Some people are naturally better wartime generals and it's almost like they gravitate towards creating chaos around them because that's where they feel like they can be a better leader. But yeah, being a wartime general and then a peacetime general, knowing when it's peacetime and being able to lead in a different way and that means allowing other people to step up and taking a bit more of a backseat rather than a micromanaging type approach. And number three was realizing that what works for me doesn't always work for everyone else. So key to that one is understanding love languages, getting into personality profiles. When I realized the different personality profiles of everyone on the team, I was like, Oh, no wonder I get so frustrated when that happens. I now have a better understanding of how they tick. And that helps me to lead by example, to delegate, not abdicate, and to essentially build a foundation where people can trust each other and they can trust the culture and the team in the clinic.

Ben Lynch: I love that. Very thoughtful reflections. I agree and resonate so much with the wartime, peacetime. I first heard it during COVID when there was so much chaos, and it was then I realised I'm a peacetime version of that, not a wartime version of it. And I feel like I've learned a lot in that sort of realm of things, because I like to be so deliberate and intentional and thoughtful about what we're doing in the future. I don't like working in the urgent here and now, and that is kind of that wartime if there's chaos. And I learned that very explicitly during COVID and had a few hard lessons and conversations with a few team members, notably J.O.B., much more of a wartime general, to use that analogy. So yeah, certainly resonate with that. The key lesson that I've had, probably semi-recently over the last two to three years, and the practice or the habit is writing. I've found it really quite useful to explore my thinking about something so that I could share it in the most concise way. We often laugh that I'm not the quickest talker. And being on the spot, I like to be super clear and articulate. Hannah, to your point around being clear with the communication is so helpful for the team. I've certainly found being able to be thoughtful and reflect on different things or reflect on where do we want to go and documenting that has been super useful, I feel, in being more effective myself and then helping others be effective as well.

Hannah Dunn: So and I think just on that, Ben, in regards to the message that you're giving it being consistent, like they talk about when you're working with kids, just repeat the same thing over and over. And it's the same with our teams that we just want to put that same message out there, that same communication. We're not changing it. We're not like we can change our tone and the way we deliver it. But the message stays the same. And that's been a really key learning for me, putting time and space between things, but also making sure that message is just consistent no matter who we're talking to, it's consistent across the team.

Ben Lynch: Yes, I love that. I've also learned that as well where repetition, just falling a bit short on the repetition, a few more reps to help it get super clear. Probably the one that I come back to the most is Assuming the other person I'm speaking to has all the knowledge and insights and I don't, so just asking good questions, being curious. I think that helps me get out of a lot of sticky points, is asking lots of questions to formulate the thinking. Well, that's been really insightful. Thank you for sharing so openly. Thank you for sharing resources. A lot of key, subtle practices that people can use from the chat-style communication through to the meeting rhythms, through to how we develop and train our leaders. Dan, Hannah, thank you so much for sharing. Thanks. Dan, we might even get you back because Jack's giving us the flick. Not forever, just for a few weeks. Just for a few weeks, you'll be back. A well-deserved break. All right, we'll see everyone on another episode of the Clink Mastery podcast very soon. Head over to our website, clinkmastery.com, for an abundance of free goodies to help you navigate the growth journey sustainably and all past episodes and show notes there as well. Dan, Hannah, thank you so much. We'll catch you very soon. Bye-bye.

Hannah Dunn: Thanks. Bye.