Explore the crucial balance of Vet New Grad competence and confidence. Discover insights to boost Grad competence, confidence and avoid confusion about the two.

Discover why your team isn't feeling supported despite best efforts. Learn to bridge the gap between expectation and reality to foster a truly supportive culture.

Explore the phrase "They’re Just Not a Culture Fit" and its implications in veterinary leadership. Are discomfort and diversity mistaken for dysfunction?

Explore the difference between unsafe and uncomfortable in leadership. Learn how to balance safety with growth and challenge in your workplace.

Before I crack into my fifth (and final) Reason Why We Can’t Keep Healthcare Professionals in the Healthcare Profession, I want to reiterate the point I made in the very first article. If you’ve been following along, and have laboured through the poignant Loneliness, the surprising Boredom, the contentious Leadership, and the lengthy Failure to Adapt articles, you’ll be noticing by now that I’ve skipped a few elephants in the room. It’s important to note that I don’t think

Challenging the existing theories on why healthcare struggles with burnout and attrition

One of the clearest leadership truths I have said out loud recently was this: We add complexity to avoid grief. And the more I sat with it, the more I could see it everywhere in leadership and culture work.

All this ease, all this touch-of-a-button information, and it makes deep work feel harder than it used to. It’s not that we’re bad at it—it’

Middle management is the hardest job in the veterinary industry

Do you end up being the emotional dumping ground for all the worries and conflicts of your team? Want to support them, but it takes all your energy to manage your own challenges? Resilient teams need resilient leaders. And resilient leaders role model boundaries. You're a good leader. You care. You want to help them, and you definitely want them to feel safe coming to you. Plus, you know that an 'open door policy' is better for culture. But then you end up with a consta

Episode 5: The Narrative The veterinary attrition issue continues to make the people fit the profession, rather than the other way around

Episode 4: Failure to Adapt The veterinary attrition issue continues to make the people in the profession, rather than the other way around

Yes, I’m going to go ahead and say it: the third reason we can’t keep our people is because of poor leadership.

As you might know, the sole purpose of Unleashed Coaching and Consulting is Keeping Veterinary Professionals in the Veterinary Profession. Despite terms like ‘workforce crisis’ and ‘attrition epidemic’ being thrown around for over a decade, we continue to lose vets and veterinary paraprofessionals at increasingly rapid rates, increasingly earlier in their careers, and with increasing permanence. But if my whole aim is to keep us here in the profession, and my marketing poin

For those that saw Part 1, where I talked about a key reason for the loss of our valuable professionals being loneliness, you’ll know that I am not professing to have peer reviewed, big data statistical evidence backing up my assertions. I’m not arguing with the industry studies that already exist where, given a drop-down box of potential choices with zero nuance or time for genuine self-reflection, we have stats that show that people are leaving our profession for all sorts

The irony was not lost on me that, after spending 3 days lecturing on resilience and mindset at the World Vet Congress last week in Cape Town, I struggled with both a fair bit when my flight home got cancelled. With a sick baby at home, no communication from or ability to contact the airline, sold out accommodation in the city, and then when I bit the bullet and paid for the next flight I could get 3 days later, got caught behind a plane crash on the runway that left us sitti

It would be easy, when trying to encourage veterinary leaders to join our Collective of culture champions, to overlook this fact. To show only case studies where I’ve been successful in transforming toxic, negative environments into thriving, resilient places where people like to work. But the truth is that I’ve failed too. Drastically. I’ve even been fired for pushing too quickly, expecting too much, demanding more than they were willing to invest, not even managing to convi

When I accepted my second major leadership role for a significant animal welfare organisation, I was bright-eyed and bushy tailed about making the transition from a slow, frustrating government job to one where I knew all the staff must be so passionate and engaged and proud to work in such a fabulous place. In my first week, I saw three different people in tears. By my third week, I was yelled at by a colleague until I was in tears. The turnover of staff was above 25%, and p

Does anyone else find that all the books on how leadership ‘should’ work, never do? You go to a training course, listen to a podcast, or even do an MBA, and you take away tools and advice that really does sound convincing. You’re enthusiastic to put it into practice and when the opportunity for that tool arises, you feel a tiny bit of pride as you calmly pull this shiny idea out, exactly as the instructions say and eagerly await the joyous results. And... well, nothing. I mea

The gender-bias of veterinary leadership Have you ever paused to consider why the standard narratives of leadership feel slightly off-key or incomplete? Why some of the tactics don’t seem to work for you? Or the strategies that are supposed to be best practice seem to get taken the wrong way when you try them? Then I’m going to guess you’re likely a female leader reading this. I’m the last person to say that women can’t be great leaders (obviously) - BUT I do want to acknowle