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.

Jack O'Brien: What we're looking at here for folks listening is a pyramid diagram and this is inspired by Lencioni's book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Ben Lynch: I've made this mistake. It's like, all right, everyone, we're going to be vulnerable now. You freak people out very quickly.

Bec Clare: How do you make the feedback less personal and more around expectations and fine tuning?

Jack O'Brien: Why don't people like accountability conversations? Because they've had accountability conversations previously that haven't gone well. The point is not to be vulnerable. The point is to build connection. A leader's responsibility is to mine for conflict, to rage against groupthink, to go last. You know, as a leader, you should not be stating your ideas first.

Ben Lynch: This episode will be right up your Allie if you're wanting your team to perform better. We're diving into the dysfunctions of a team and trust me, you'll want to hear Beck's take on building trust as the foundation of getting results. Plus stick around for when we share a list of key activities to do with your team to help them step up and take more ownership. 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 organized and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. 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 AllieClinics.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 348, and I got that right because I have messed it up in previous episodes. My system for managing the podcast failed me, and so I've had to fix things. But it is episode 348. I think I doubled up somewhere there. My name is Ben Lynch. I'm joined again by Bet Clare, director owner of Physio West, two clinics here in Adelaide. I'm also based in Adelaide, and they're just thriving. Team of 30.

Bec Clare: 33, I think.

Ben Lynch: Sounds like whenever I score my mates at golf, I always get it wrong. But normally, I'm generous. I'm on the generous side.

Bec Clare: Just not big on the details, Ben. You know that, right?

Ben Lynch: Look, I'm in the same postcode, basically. And as always, Jack O'Brien, also known as Jacobrin or J-O-B. I think we've confused a few listeners, J-O-B. Someone said, who is J-O-B? So Jack O'Brien, you go by many, many names because you're a man of many talents. Former owner of Terrace Physio Plus and exited J-O-B. Tell me, what are you drinking at the moment? What's the cup of choice?

Jack O'Brien: I have Glee coffee roasters, local Newcastle legends here, so I'm drinking a Kenyan washed at the moment, but I will say, oh, I don't have one here. I've been indulging in some coffee pouches for travel, and so Glee do a coffee pouch, as do Single O, so if you're traveling, the old pouch Works really nicely. So there you go. Always got coffee on hand.

Ben Lynch: You should have seen the sideways looks that I got the other day as I poured my own coffee through the parachute bag while I was out. Yes. I don't care. I don't care anymore. You can't beat a good cup of coffee. Embrace the snobbery. So before we do dive into it today, we're going to be covering how do you essentially drive results inside of your clinic. Everyone comes to us and they say, I want to grow my clinic. And it looks like different things for different people. And at the core of it is really your culture and your leadership. How do you help people, the people on your team actually drive the outcomes for the clients that you serve? Everyone wants to jump to, you know, policies and procedures and systems and new clients and those things have merit, they're valuable. But at the end of the day, if you're not able to lead a group of people, you're going nowhere fast. and it leads to a whole lot of headaches. So we're going to cover some really important frameworks for how you can think about it, because there's no silver bullets, but there's a number of things that will help you make good decisions. And there's a number of activities that you can try as well to really strengthen the connection that you have with the team. But before we do, a warm welcome to a number of clinic owners that have installed Allie into their clinic. Allie is really the HR software for you to plug and play into your clinic to support the humans on your team. So, a big thanks to Jeff, Travis, Adrian, Bruno, Natalie, and Ian for installing Allie into your clinics. Joby, what's across your desk?

Jack O'Brien: Well, we've just come off the back of our February workshop, the Ideal Induction Workshop. hundreds of clinic owners registering for that. Clearly, teen induction nurturing is front of mind. Some recent additions to our community, I want to say a big welcome to Amy, who's joined the Business Academy. Claire and Nathan have graduated from Elevate to the Business Academy. There's a handful of spots. I don't know when you'll listen to this, but there's a handful of enrolments available for February. We've already allocated some of our March enrolments. We have a number that we're working with for March and so if you want to sneak into the February enrolment or you want to snavel up one of the March enrolments, the way to do that is jack at clinicmastery.com. We can either have a conversation or I can send you through what it looks like to work as part of our programs, who we help, how we help, how we make the magic happen. That is jack at clinicmastery.com and we'll see what we can do and we'll invite you to apply if there's a good fit. So I've never heard the word snavel up before. Is that a real word? Did you just make that up? Well, you hobnobs over in Adelaide and you've lost touch with the common man. With the Queen's English. The rest of us in Australia is like, hey, just snavel it up.

Bec Clare: I can't believe you've never heard that word before. Not been thrown around on the golf course. Snavel up.

Ben Lynch: No. Snavel up. Great. Okay. I'll use that at my next trivia night when I'm 65.

Jack O'Brien: Anyway, I've got a fun one for you was talking with someone in a leadership context, was helping deliver a workshop, and I mentioned the word throughput. We're talking about productivity throughput, right? Great word. This very well-learned colleague of mine, this is not in the health space, this is in the not-for-profit church charity space, very well-learned, very well-read, a teacher of sorts, and she said to me, throughput's not a word. And I said, I think you'll find it is a word. Anyway, she's a Scrabble queen. Okay. And I'm going to be all over the random words. Turns out throughput is absolutely a word added to the Webster Dictionary in the late 1800s, the turn of the industrial age. So there you go with the two potentially new words that clinic owners have adopted, snavel and throughput. There you go.

Bec Clare: Jack, I think this should actually be, you and I are co-emceeing the upcoming summit. Now, if you haven't got tickets to that, do yourself a favour and snavel up the last of those. But Jack, you and I, this should be something we thread into our emcee. What words can we sort of throw in there to see if the audience pick up whether they're real or not?

Jack O'Brien: If listeners have any Easter egg words that they need us to write, it's almost like Clinic Mastery Summit bingo. Oh, yes. I love that. Dad can get all over that. Get all the Easter egg words. Send them through jackatclinicmastery.com. I'll pop them in there for you.

Ben Lynch: Yes. That'd be fun. Just to add another element to the event. Well, J.O.B., you get to work with clinic owners really at the start of their journey, whether that's quite literally at the start of their business journey or their start of their journey with us. And you often ask the question, a variety of different questions, but one in particular, which is around what's most frustrating for you and perhaps what's weighing on your mind quite a bit. And there's a number of responses that I was just sifting through before the episode today that sounded just like this, and I took these sound bites. Someone saying, staff morale has been left damaged after a recent restructure. Managing staff and reducing admin load to do this is really frustrating. Staff management, hiring, remuneration, we're moving from contractor to employee and it's causing all sorts of challenges. I'm not sure where to start. recruitment issues, staff retention issues. This weighs on people's minds a lot. A little keynote and keyword is that a lot of folks will use the term staff. CM, we love to use the word team. How do we act as a team? Anyway, that's just a little bit about our brand. So one of the very useful frameworks that you've heard us discuss on the pod before comes from Patrick Lencioni, a really great author, especially in the team and culture space, the business space. Probably the GOAT author.

Jack O'Brien: He is the greatest.

Ben Lynch: The GOAT.

Jack O'Brien: I would put Pat Lencioni at the top of the tree.

Ben Lynch: Why? What's your distinction versus a Kim Scott, a Brene Brown, maybe even a Mel Robbins, a Simon Sinek, a Adam Clear? The list goes on. Why Pat?

Jack O'Brien: I think I find Lencioni really practical. There's a lot of associated exercises and activities alongside it, but he speaks to the essence of leadership. It's the tactics and the philosophy is what I love. And then thirdly, the books are often fables or parables, if you will. So the story element is far more engaging than just another dry quasi textbook.

Bec Clare: You can see it really play out. That's what I love about Pat Lencioni's work is you can actually picture it normally. So you're reading it as a leader and like, oh, I can see this one coming. It's also fun to sort of read that versus go through the theory of this principle and how might I apply it. Also his books, they're so easy to read that even if you're time poor or listen to, get through one in a couple of days, max. So it feels like you're able to implement, take something away and implement it really quiet. easily versus feeling like you've got to hammer over a book for weeks.

Ben Lynch: So, it's a great point that you make, Bec. I think a lot of clinic owners are reading books, listening to podcasts, they're doing what they can to get a mental model for how to grow their clinic, whether it's team or new clients or systems, etc. But what I found in my own experience in doing this and seeing a lot of other clinic owners do is you end up kind of creating this Frankenstein type of business where you're just kind of bolting things on with good intention but down the track you realize it doesn't particularly scale very well or it's not so coherent. And so, what I love about coming back to this framework, J.R.B., you put it beautifully, of the philosophy, principles, and then the pragmatics, like the practices. What do we do here? So, let's share this triangle. He's captured it in a visual image here. Let's talk through it. Let's give our own perspective on different activities and exercises, systems, behaviours that we've installed in our own businesses and by extension, the people that we work with in the community that have helped each of these stages be built, be consolidated, be refined over time. But first, JB, do you want to just walk us through what we're seeing here on screen, especially for those listening in?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I will. This is entirely full credit to Patrick Lencioni and the Table Group. And this representation is from Bite Size Learning. And one of the reasons we chose this is they've added their own little elements to it. I appreciate the Australian English spelling here. Candour with a U. It's not straight up American though. For our American friends, we love you and we're coming for you in Q3, Q4. Watch out for Clinic Mastery in the United States. If that's you actually, if you're a US listener, you need to email me, Jack at Clinic Mastery. We're looking for some case studies on the ground. That's a rabbit hole we can talk about another day, but email jacketclinicmastery if you are American. What we're looking at here for folks listening is a pyramid diagram and this is inspired by Lencioni's book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It's really important that we explain that the pyramid starts at the bottom first. You can't just jump to level three. You have to solve level one. before you progress to level two, three, and beyond. And interestingly, Lencioni describes the dysfunctions of a team. And initially, that really rubbed friction in a clinic mastery world, which we love towards positive language. But what we found is that by identifying the dysfunctions, we can focus therefore on solutions that ultimately lead to a functional team. So we've got five layers of the pyramid here. The bottom one is around building trust, which we then look to resolve conflict, commit as a team, hold each other accountable, and ultimately focus on results. But everything is built on the foundation of trust, Ben.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, I love this image. It's such a simple way to articulate where you might start to focus, especially when you look at the results you're getting or the lack of accountability. Beck, you're the HR whiz here, and we're going to dive deeper into HR in the coming episodes. So often we will get a clinic owner come to us talking about, you know, I want to move a team member on because they're not delivering, they're not accountable, they're not following through. We so often see this reaction to team and culture that is at the top of this pyramid, but perhaps off as an opportunity for us to go further down the line and go back to the trust and the conflict side of things. But you just want to talk to the typical narrative for clinic owners that do find themselves in a spot of bother with their culture or a specific team member when they look at the top of this pyramid, which is focus on results and hold each other accountable.

Bec Clare: Absolutely. I think the biggest thing I hear from clinic owners, and we might be at a networking function and drink in hand and they're like, how's business? I'd be great if I didn't have to deal with the people. And it comes back to this laser focus on just the results. We see team members employed in roles, and then we expect a result. We expect an outcome. And without perhaps yet setting up this pyramid for success and this foundation of trust and our ability to resolve conflict, it actually gets to a significant area of conflict, which is a business owner gets to the point of the only way I can move forward with this is if that team member is no longer here on this team. Now, that's ultimately the biggest conflict. that will arise with the team member is the point at which you want to let them go, help them move off the bus. Yet our ability to actually resolve early conflict is where we've perhaps, gosh, failed as a leader is really harsh to hear, but it's our responsibility, right?

Jack O'Brien: Oh, right. I agree with you, Bec. It's not necessarily your fault, but you are responsible.

Ben Lynch: Well, it's a good default principle, yeah, is like, it starts with me, like, I have let this happen. Whether it's, quite frankly, just you hired that person, because it's likely you did. And then perhaps it's like, to what degree was the training, the onboarding set up, their ongoing mentoring, how clear were the expectations, et cetera. So, I think it's a good default leadership principle is to just take extreme ownership. Is that the one J.I.B. from-

Jack O'Brien: I took the words right out of my mouth.

Ben Lynch: My mate Jocko. Jocko Willink. It was interesting just to diverge a little bit here. Was it you, Jack, or was it Mick maybe talking about allocating some of those other thought leaders at different levels of this? pyramid, do you know what I mean? Like Kim Scott talks about the candor side of things, which is kind of like level two, maybe going into level three, which is resolve conflict and then commit as a team. And then sort of perhaps the Simon Sinek version is around focusing on results, kind of like the impact we're trying to make, our big why and where we're going. you know, Jocko Willink around the extreme ownership, perhaps around the commitment side of things, level three. And then you've got folks like Resilience Project, Hugh Van Cuylenburgh, and the work there around vulnerability and connection fitting, you know, at the base layer. So it's interesting actually to sort of transpose other people's work over the top of this. And I hear people saying, well, maybe it's not as black and white as this, but I just find it's a good sort of default visual, a default sort of paradigm for us to come back to and go, where might be the opportunity for this team member or the team entirely? So, Bec, are you suggesting then that the clinic owner who has reached that point with a team member, they're like, I just want them off the bus. Are you suggesting that they just make that happen and kind of move on and start afresh with a new team member?

Bec Clare: Oh, goodness me, not without HR advice, please don't. Please seek some really good HR advice before you do any of that. To work through the process and ensure that there are rules and guidance and law in place, whether we like it or not, but a lot of it's there for very good reason. So we want to make sure that we follow that process and ensure that you've got a really good HR partner to lean on and to support you with that. It then comes to the point of reflection. Why was this person not the right person on the bus? Was there an inability to resolve conflict or have just, as you say, candour to be able to have honest conversations that are not personal? They're not personal. They're just logistics. And our role as leaders is to ensure that our team have the support in place to thrive and be successful. That only comes from being able to have coaching conversations.

Ben Lynch: How do you answer this question, though, Bec? Because people say team members interpret it as very personal, like a personal attack. We might be as pragmatic as we possibly can, but they feel some degree of threatened or undermined, or they don't like the personal conflict. Actually, to be fair, we also see a lot of clinic owners shying away from the candour. They don't want to be seen as the, quote, bad boss. They'd much rather have that ruinous empathy that Kim Scott talks about. How, maybe even practically, do you coach a clinic owner through that or set up so that a team member doesn't feel like it is super personal?

Bec Clare: I actually just had a coaching session myself with Jem Fuller this morning and we were talking about this exact, how do you make the feedback less personal and more around expectations and fine tuning? And it comes back to that base layer of building trust, right? We've got to have that there so that we can say and have honest conversation with our team that my role as a leader is a bit like a coach. A coach on a footy field or your tennis coach just doesn't say to you, great shot, Ben, keep going. They're also going to say to you, hey, your backhand needs a little bit of work here. You don't take it personally. You're like, well, I'm here to actually get better. But you've got to set up that framework. for that to land and to succeed. So having the dynamic and the conversation, and also as a leader leaning into that role, that your role is there to coach. Sometimes you're going to need to be empathetic, but also come from, set the standards.

Jack O'Brien: So, interesting on that point. I heard it said once, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but why don't people like accountability conversations? Because they've had accountability conversations previously that haven't gone well. And of course, we all look at the world through the lens of our past experience. And I often think, and this is a somewhat original thought, although there's no such thing, but trust is really around predictability and intentions. Yeah. You can trust someone when you can predict what they're going to say or why they're saying something and if you understand the intention behind it. So, to that tennis coach analogy, Bec, it's like, well, you can have a high degree of confidence that a tennis coach will critique your backhand. Like, that's their job. That's what they're paid to do. But you can also have confidence that their intention is to help you become a better tennis player. Now, if that tennis coach continues to lambast you and berate you in front of others and never encourages you or highlights, you know, highlights your strengths only, you might start to question is, you know, who is this coach and why are they berating me and, you know, I don't trust that they have my best intentions at heart. So, yeah, people often struggle with conflict or commitment conversations because they've had conflict and commitment conversations previously.

Ben Lynch: I've been thinking a lot about trust recently and one of the simple conclusions I've come to is Do people do what they say they're going to do? And that could be that they're doing and saying things that aren't particularly on brand or reflective of this culture. But at least I can trust that this is what they said and this is what they're doing. That feels like a coherent sort of story and way to reconcile things. The framing as I understand it from Pat Lencioni around the build trust is that, Really, that's created through connection. Connection is created through the ability to be vulnerable or open with one another. And so I'm interested in some of the exercises we've each done and found useful in building that trust through vulnerability and connection over time, many of which we've sort of sprinkled throughout previous episodes, but maybe just to capture a whole bunch real quick. And then we'll work our way up this pyramid here to some behaviours or systems that we've used. I've got a couple around the base layer, build trust, vulnerability. So the first one is the hero hardship highlight. So people can share a hero in their life, a hardship that they've had, and a real highlight in their life. It gives them the opportunity to pick three people or three moments to share with one another. The other one's the timeline. I don't know if it's got a better name than that, but sort of your timeline or lifeline, kind of from when you're born to today. It gives you the ability to kind of draw a snake, if you would, at different highs and lows, like peaks and troughs.

Jack O'Brien: Is it a snake or a worm? Isn't it a worm?

Ben Lynch: Well, it depends.

Bec Clare: If you live golf on the weekend here in Adelaide, there were some snakes in the grass. Snakes.

Jack O'Brien: Now, who's the election night guy? Anthony Green on the ABC.

Ben Lynch: He's a worm. Well, the cricketing reference would be a worm, wouldn't it? Of course. Big Bash. So, the timeline, they can kind of draw peaks and troughs. The idea is they draw peaks and troughs. These were moments when I was five or when I was 12 that were fantastic or really tough. The next one are the vulnerability cards, which we've spoken about before, which comes from Hugh van Cuylenburgh, who wrote The Resilience Project. They're just a bunch of really great cards that have a question on them, and your team members can answer that question in front of their peers, perhaps at a team day or a team retreat. The other one is the anti-values we've talked a little bit about before. Often if you ask people, what do you value, they might come up with some like honesty, integrity, those sorts of things. useful, but we want to really unpack. Often people know what they don't like, so we just ask them what annoys you, frustrates you, really turns you off, a characteristic or a behaviour. It's this sort of anti-value, and then we look to flip it and find what the opposite of that is. I'll give you a quick one. Mine is closed-mindedness. The opposite of that is open-mindedness, or you could say stubbornness. personality profiles, depending on what you use or like to use. We've used DISC, the Wealth Dynamics profiling tool, Myers-Briggs. And for the psychs out there, we just use them as a reflection tool for people to be able, I know they're not gold standard, but for people to go through it, read the report and sort of look at, okay, out of this, what are the things that I do more often than not? Or they are reflective of my preferences of how I work in teams. And the other one that I had was around setting goals together. Specifically, we talk about the desire statement, your ability to share, you know, what does your health look like or your family look like or where you live? Where does your career develop to? A lot of these things require vulnerability. I often think, my framing is, the point is not to be vulnerable. The point is to build connection. Vulnerability is perhaps the best way to get there. Because I find I've made this mistake is like, all right, everyone, we're going to be vulnerable now. And we launch into this exercise. It's like you freak people out very quickly. The idea here is to build trust through connection. We're going to do an exercise here that requires us to be a little bit vulnerable, but you can go as deep or as shallow as you like. So there are a couple of exercises. I know I've probably taken a whole bunch of the CM ones, but are there any ones that you would add to that list that establishes the base layer here, which is build trust? Let's go Jack first, and then I'll throw to you, Beck.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I'll say a more advanced option, and that's the- You're saying mine aren't advanced? Well, not that you're elementary, but the suggestions were elementary. Come on, let's do conflict right now.

Bec Clare: Is a radical candidate coming your way?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, a bit of rad can. I think it's actually a Lencioni table group exercise activity around sharing what you think the single biggest strength that Beck, in this case, brings to the room and we all get to share. I would say, Beck, the single biggest strength that you add is X. Ben, you would say Beck, the single biggest strength you add to this team is X. And then we would do a similar thing where I would say, Beck, your biggest opportunity to work on would be Y. Then you say, Beck, your biggest opportunity that you could improve on is Z. And the outcome of this is our willingness to receive both positive and negative critique. And then to round it all out, Beck in this case, sorry to pick on you Beck, in this case Beck would then essentially mentally collate all of the data points and share what she thinks is her greatest strength that she brings to the team and her work on moving forward or opportunity to bring. And so you're still in control of what you are going to work on 99 times out of 100, it's going to be fairly consistent what the rest of the room says. So the distinction here, Ben, is that this exercise is a little less in your own control. So often we talk about vulnerability is sharing past experiences, which it absolutely is. And the vulnerability cards and all the other conversation tools are useful for sharing vulnerability. Another level of vulnerability is essentially placing yourself in the middle of the circle and receiving commentary And again, the intention here is that it builds trust. I need to be able to receive and trust that the others have my best intentions at heart. They will be honest, but they'll be gentle. And it'll be delivered with compassion and not a critical spirit. Beck, have you played this game before?

Bec Clare: Yeah, we have at a team day. It's going to be a number of years ago. I actually just wrote down to revisit this activity. We've got a team day coming up in a couple of weeks. So Physio West team, if you're tuning into this episode, you know what we're doing. Come ready. I love this in that It's also in the framing of the language. Your biggest strength that you bring to this team, like what are the qualities? People like hearing why they're valued. But I also think it's in the framing of the critique, as we say, it's what is your biggest opportunity, which is something to then lean into, which is I could actually add more value to the team and be considered as a more valuable team member, essentially, if I worked on this opportunity. And don't people want that? They want a purpose. They want to be attached to this thing where they can contribute. I really like that. Just noted it down to revisit that. And that's the thing, right? You do these exercises. They're not a set and forget. You don't just do one and then, oh, we're all connected as a team. Hey, aren't we great? Now we can move on to resolving conflict. You've got to do these time and time again and slightly different.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, yeah. Because we have to, if you're looking at the graphic here on YouTube, you can see there's an arrow over on the left of the trust block and the arrow there talks about guardedness. And where there's an absence of trust, people are guarded. They've got their shield up. And ultimately, we want to get to a place where there's openness and an ability to have honest, transparent, caring conversations. I'll throw back to you in a minute, Ben. I'll give you an example. We did this in a good life context recently, and after the experience of sharing and commenting on each other, my work on, as it's called, or what I collated, the messaging was resoundingly unanimous. The work on that I need to bring is to, and you write it down in like a really brief phrase, my work on is to humanize my conversations. And that makes complete sense to me because sometimes I'm a high C personality on the DISC model and I can be quite melancholic in the temperaments, et cetera. So I don't often think people first or I'm learning to be a bit more people first. It's a developed skill, not an innate skill. So my simple work on is to humanize my conversations. There was someone else in the room whose work on was to be succinct with their contributions. They end up waffling their high eye on the desk. They're people first and they're talking this and never want to offend and, oh, we could do this, but that's a good idea. It's like, no, no, just be brief and succinct. It's super constructive in order to help the team move forward.

Ben Lynch: great exercises to be able to do. The one that also came to mind was for teams, and we see this in our support consulting and coaching with clinic owners around the trust. I'm not sure many clinic owners actually take the time to articulate this is where we're going or where we're trying to go by the sheer fact that probably nine out of 10 clinic owners that come to work with us have no plan in place. And so understandably, they can't share that with the team. And so I think there's a huge opportunity in articulating where we're going or even being vulnerable and saying, I'm not actually sure the direction we're going and what the clinic's going to look like in the next one to two to three years. But I'm working through the process right now of getting really clear so that you can come along the journey with us and grow with us. So I think that's a huge opportunity. Or if they do know where they're headed, it's an interesting one, especially for those clinic owners that are perhaps looking to exit the business. And so they're not being so open at the moment. And that's a tricky one to navigate to. But I just say that that's a good opportunity. The next one, in my mind, sort of blends into resolving conflict and trust. And that is, what is the standard? What is the expectation within the clinic of gathering feedback from your team? perhaps about anything, but opportunities to say, this system's not working, or I'm having trouble with X. What are the mechanisms through which feedback is given frequently and clearly, and then we're able to display that it was acted upon or at least heard, and that builds trust? have this conflict, I'm not going to go through all these things that are actually reasonably hard to do on a personal relationship level, you know, commit as a team, hold accountability and get results. If I feel like every time I offer feedback or criticism and it just goes nowhere, it falls on deaf ears. So I think there's a great opportunity for clinic owners, if they have taken on feedback and acted on it, to be able to share that back to those team members or at least just say, I've heard you and I don't have a solution right now. I think that starts to blend into resolving conflict. JRB, you were nodding your head there in agreement. What was going through your mind?

Jack O'Brien: Resolving conflict, it rises and falls on the leader. How often do we try and avoid conflict? It's the leader's responsibility to mine for conflict. You need to draw it out. One of the things that, you know, Ben, you're very good at doing is raging against groupthink and it sometimes it frustrates me often. But it's a good thing. It's like, let's not cloud each other's judgment. Let's disagree. Ultimately, we're going to get to a place of commitment. That's the third tier. But the point of conflict is that we need to surface other ideas. The leader's responsibility is to mine for conflict, to rage against groupthink, to go last. As a leader, you should not be stating your ideas first often. You need to allow the blank canvas to percolate these ideas. We again see on this graphic here, we want to avoid or work away from resentment. Resentment is the opposite of trust. We want to work towards CANDOR, where we can speak openly, freely, disagree, and ultimately, disagree but commit to move forward.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. How do we get there? I'm interested in your perspective, J.O.B., on how you get there, and Beck as well. I know I tend to have more conflict with Jack than I do you, Beck.

Jack O'Brien: I'm interested in your problem, not a me problem.

Ben Lynch: It's interesting as well, just even in the framing of it. For me, perhaps one of the ways that I reconcile at work through it is that I don't tend to think of it as conflict, even though it might feel like, okay, this is a tough conversation. One of the ways that I feel we navigate that is trying to get to the root cause of things. to really understand, okay, how did this situation come to be? Like kind of get some of the facts on the table rather than just dealing with maybe the symptom that's arising. In a previous episode, we spoke about this sort of therapist mindset of assessing, diagnosing, then treating. Such a great sort of thinking paradigm for a lot of different areas in your business. I think it can be a lot of conflict. There can be a lot of conflict. If we are just sort of sitting at that level, we're not going deeper to truly understand, well, how did we get here? Like, talk us through what was your perspective? What were you thinking at the time? And part of that for us, I think, comes back to the benefit of the doubt. I think there's like a strong sort of seek first to understand principle from Stephen Covey, which is, well, I'm going to assume you weren't acting in some malice or like you weren't trying to do the wrong thing. I'll give you that as a benefit of the doubt. So therefore, I also assume that there was something that crossed your mind. that led you to make that decision or take that action, and I want to understand it. Because perhaps you had the right sort of thought, the execution was wrong, perhaps. Does that make sense? So I think in that sense, if it's like, I'm going to provide you consequences, and I'm just trying to figure out the angle that I can hold it against you. Personally, I don't come from that perspective, but just trying to understand, Beck, How have you gone about doing this in your own clinic, about resolving conflict? You've built the trust. Now you're trying to get to commit as a team, but this sticking piece of conflict. What do you do?

Bec Clare: As you said, Jack, it comes back to the rise and fall of the leader, right? And it takes your mindset to be in control and then to lead through that. So a couple of things that, and I've learned this through my clinic mastery journey, I have to say when we first joined, anytime a team member gave feedback, now we call it advice, would given feedback, I would be jumpy and be like, how dare you? Like, that's not your call to make or no, that's going to create more work for myself. And it came back to really owning the, the space, which was firstly, feedback is a gift. And the second is that assuming positive intent. So Ben, as you spoke to giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Now, I also back that in with and layer it in with the fact that if we've recruited someone who is values aligned, then they are providing this feedback from a point of understanding and living our values. Therefore, it helps enforce that assuming of the assumption of positive intent. And then actually demonstrating that to the team. So when people do provide feedback, taking it seriously, unpacking it like you have been, and then providing context as to whether that is something that's on the horizon or at the moment, it's not quite the season for that, but I can see it being like that in the future. Or, hey, would you like to take ownership of that change? It's not on us as the leaders to solve everything for our team all of the time. In fact, if they've come up with a great solution, potentially they can actually help with the implementation of it.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, great, great. I'm just literally thinking of a recent conversation that I had with someone. I won't name them, but it could have been this conflict. I was really annoyed at this outcome that had happened, and I didn't share that with them. I was just sort of managing it myself. And I was like, okay, well, the first thing is let's try and understand what actually happened. So walk us through the steps. Let's get the facts kind of on the table here so we can figure it out. I think that comes back to trying to provide this psychological safety, if you would, that people can own their mistakes. and not feel like this is going to be held over me. I wouldn't want someone to do that for me, and I don't want anyone to feel that way either. And I think it actually creates the ability, as you were alluding to, Beck, is that it takes you to commit as a team, because so often, if they're given that grace and space, they'll actually be part of the solution. They'll actually say, how can I help? Or If they're not coming to that point, I think it's really useful that you say, I want you to be part of the solution here and finding the fix or rolling out the implementation with me. I'll be here to support you. And that's actually what happened in this scenario as well. But team members said, look, this is totally on me as we just uncovered what happened. They said, I'll fix it. And it was all good. It was really a great exchange. So as we get to commit as a team, I can't help but think around values, and that sounds like what you're touching on, Beck, around if we're clear on the values that we have as a clinic, that serves as one key anchor and reference point, one key activity. One, have you got core values? Two, how frequently do you reference them in day-to-day or week-to-week activities? And three, one of those versions is how do you celebrate or champion those when people do give them shout-outs as an example to reinforce them. There's elements here which are, you've got a position description, they are your expectations How else do you advise clinic owners to clarify the commitment as a team, Jack?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, the point of conflict is not for conflict's sake. The point of conflict is to get to commitment. And so what that means, what is commitment? And you can see here on the screen, we want to get from hesitancy to clarity. And so conflict is about reducing hesitancy. It's about increasing certainty and confidence in a chosen path. it looks like making sure that we're all on the same team. It's all well and good for the leader to say, like, we're doing this. But if everyone else is like, I just, I don't have a degree of confidence in this, it's the leader's responsibility to present an argument and to steel man perhaps other arguments not to strawman and create this confirmation bias, but to rage against bias and make sure, are we sure we're all on the same page? Have we explored all the alternatives? Are we confident that this, out of all of the options, this is the right option? Because if it is and if we commit, then we're going to ultimately hold each other accountable. Are we sure we're going ahead with this? Bec, I'd be interested in your perspective on that.

Bec Clare: I also would lean to Dave Brailsford around commitment versus motivation. Dave Brailsford was the coach of the British cycling team and the very famous story of taking them from no wins to enormous success. He has this core principle mentality where C actually stands for commitment. as distinct from motivation. So, actually deciding on what you are committed to as a group and searching for that. So, when even in our recruitment process or when we're doing our one-to-ones is working out, is this just motivation from a team member saying all the right things and maybe their output is there, but are they actually committed to the outcomes. And I think that commitment piece is just, and the clarity that it then provides, everyone is on the same bus. I think that's really what we're trying to get to, is that there's a commitment to a set of outcomes, a commitment to a set of values. We're not just motivated to live those values, we are committed to living those values.

Ben Lynch: And perhaps the most practical version of this is that things are documented. I mean, that sounds obvious, but how many mentoring conversations, supervision conversations are well had? And maybe there's no notes. You know, I think we do broadly a tremendous job. in a clinical sense with a patient taking notes, this is what we're going to do. But commitment, it's really great to document things. I think a writing culture, a writing standard is a really good way or a documented standard. Obviously, we can use AI and whatnot to record things. But actually being clear on what those commitments are and having them documented is a really great anchor point to come back to. So as we progress then to holding each other accountable, you almost feel like some of this stuff becomes a breeze. If you've nailed the first three, we can hold each other accountable and focus on results. JB, you and I have talked a lot about accountability over time. What's your lens at the moment on accountability and this point just teared up as well from flakiness onward and how you think about holding people accountable in a clinic?

Jack O'Brien: For me, I think about two things, reminding and helping. And, you know, the language of holding to account feels very, you know, one way and hierarchical. But often, you know, we're all sort of made commitments. So sometimes it's just reminding and course correcting. And then complementing that with an offer to help. Again, it's rooted in Stephen Covey's principles, but ultimately, how can I help you with accountability? Is there something that I can do to make your commitment more material? And it's less about pointing fingers and telling and it's like, it's not a power play. It's reminding and helping.

Ben Lynch: Beck, do you have a way that you actually install accountability into your team so that those commitments they made ultimately get done and drive higher standards?

Bec Clare: Look, I think this is my biggest opportunity and something I'm actively working on. My method particularly for this year is around asking team members exactly that question around how best can we set up an accountability framework for you? What works best for you? Do you need more regular check-ins? Do you want to be left to your own device? What does that look like for you? And I think that plays into different learning styles, different performance styles, and because we do need to be a bit fluid with our team. In the end, it comes back to here are the standards. How do we make sure that we succeed? in those all the time and that's just going to be different for each person. My pledge for 2026 is to have more of these conversations.

Jack O'Brien: I would say that's a distinction, Bec, because having many of these conversations is better than the one that leads to a time gap and then you have to have an awkward accountability conversation when it's just baked into – these are accountability conversations. It's not a meeting. It's a conversation.

Ben Lynch: The distinction we've talked about before, J.O.B., is the velocity, intensity, and frequency of the feedback loop is being so key to this accountability. I think something that you do a lot really well is that reporting rhythms. so often when we get to the next stage, which is focus on results, and we are looking really at the outcomes of things, whether they're clinical KPIs, business KPIs, client satisfaction, experience scores as examples of that. If they're done infrequently ad hoc or there's too much time and space in between, to your point, JB, it feels weightier, it feels bigger, but if that's just regular. It's part of our daily or weekly rhythm that we share some of these results and we capture some of the feedback. It doesn't feel like this big conversation I've got to have because we're having a lot of micro conversations. We're constantly adjusting. And so I think that's probably the key is the velocity, which is speed in our direction. So is the feedback directional? Is the reporting directional? Intensity. Don't keep it surface level. How can we get to the kind of the root cause? Yeah, we can have the conflict side of things. We understand the factors that got to there. And frequency. I think that's probably the lever I would pull and suggest people do straight away is If you're doing it fortnightly, could you do it weekly? If you're not doing it at all, can you just start? Can you do it monthly? Can you find little ways? And especially, I think of accountability as people owning it themselves. I tend to think of it less of, as you said, JB, I'm holding you accountable. in that accountability is owned by that person. Do I own how I'm doing? How do we actually get them to report back to us in different ways? Then they're owning their commitments. Did I complete my task list? Did I do the KPIs as we said? Spot on.

Jack O'Brien: There's a great book called Own It by a great Australian author, Becky, you might be able to quote it if I miss it. Paige. Yes, Paige someone. Dr. Paige. Dr. Paige. Turner? Yep. Accountability from others is so much more pleasant when you hold yourself to the highest standard. I'm not intimidated by the accountability that might come from my colleagues because no one holds me to a higher standard than I do. And so it means that everyone else is supporting me along the way and not oppositional. And I really love, I'll land here, Ben, that distinction of velocity as in directional. Adam Grant talks a lot about how feedback isn't always helpful because it's about the past. Now, look, there's a place for reflection. But ultimately, advice trumps feedback, as in future-oriented support trumps dwelling on the past.

Ben Lynch: It takes a lot of the sting out of what could be conflict. Here's what you did, did all the bad stuff, rah, rah, rah, and we're focusing on directionally moving forward. Yep. Right. You both missed my joke about Paige and her last name, but anyway, we'll leave that in. Yes, we missed it. It's terrible. It's not a good one.

Jack O'Brien: It was a real banger.

Ben Lynch: It was terrible. It was terrible. I like that. And then focusing on results, perhaps the piece I'll land on, I'll throw to you, Beck, for the closing remark. It works really well to your point, J-O-B, when you say, if I've got a high standard, being accountable to my own results as the leader, that you go right back down to the bottom in building trust when you haven't done what you were meant to do. Because your standards might be high, but we're all human. And I've found nothing better than to say, I apologize. I dropped the ball on this. or I didn't prioritize it, or I didn't realize it was that important to you, or I made a mistake. And I think that that helps people see, oh, well, you just own it. And it's not to be dismissive of it, because sometimes these things have material impacts. What a way just to kind of connect a number of the dots. Beck, as we round out here, focusing on results, tying this all together, the five dysfunctions of a team, what's your summary? What's your advice for listeners to take away from this session?

Bec Clare: I just love being on this podcast because I learn so much. If you've been feverishly taking notes just like I have, it's about that, right? We're here for continuous improvement. Part of this as leaders is to strip away the ego, take the feedback on board, demonstrate it, own where we perhaps haven't gone right, and show that to our team. The best thing I can do in terms of stripping away the ego right now is just how many notes I took from this session. Yes, I'm here to contribute to the podcast and hopefully you're enjoying what you're listening to. But also continuous improvement, that's our role as a leader.

Ben Lynch: Yeah. It's mastery. Clinic mastery. Nice dovetail. Beck, Jack, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to unpacking this even more. We've got Sarah coming on the podcast very soon to talk more HR stuff and a really exciting episode coming up later this week. All right. We'll see you on another episode very soon. Head over to clinicmastery.com forward slash podcast for all the show notes and past episodes. Bye bye. Bye bye.