This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we have Neville Brady of Browsup Consulting, a consultancy company "...providing management support for groups, organisations and corporate businesses seeking to develop and implement structures that improve Leadership, Management, Staff Engagement, Continuous Improvement and Operational Excellence. "

After having the opportunity to hear Neville speak recently, Mark thought he'd be a great guest for the Head Shepherd podcast- and he wasn't wrong! 

Nevilles background is in the advertisement industry with studies in marketing. "I was always interested in buyer behaviour. As an adult student I also did some study in psychology." He says. "I was really interested in a theory proposed by Professor Higgings called 'Self Discrepancy Theory". It's as follows

• Actual - This is what I'm actually doing.
• Ought- This is what I ought to be doing.
• Ideally- This is what I could do.

The team of three at Browsup Consulting have been applying that to businesses across Australia "to move them from 'actual' through to 'ideal', so that they can achieve operational excellence."

Mark and Neville go on to discuss conflict. Something Neville says we should embrace. "If we as an organism didn't suffer from conflict, we wouldn't be here. Conflict's fun"

"Wherever you have people living, working, socialising or playing sports together, there is always conflict. Usually we're called into businesses because of the AVOIDANCE of the conflict, rather than the conflict itself."

The root cause of conflict is always one of, or multiple of the following reasons:

• Structure,
• Resources
• Competency
• Commitment

First, Browsup review business structures and resources before they go blaming anyone’s competency or commitment.  "Following this process, we have a farm business input audit that clearly measures their starting point, their actuals... leadership, staff engagement, succession and so on."

Once they've established the root cause of the conflict, they can aim towards being in their "Ideal", rather than their "Actual".

Mark and Neville also discuss emotional maturity and management. Mark asks "How do you get people self aware enough to be aware that they're part of the problem/solution to conflict?"

Neville says, "If you had snot on your nose, wouldn't you like someone to tell you?" It might not be an easy conversation to have. "One of the first steps is to confront the truth."..."and look... It's never come as a surprise, when people rate someone poorly for emotional maturity"

"If you talk about it, it takes some of the heat out of it" says Neville. This allows a plan to be made to solve the issue.

To finish off the podcast Mark and Neville discuss Mens Mental Health, a topic very dear to Nevilles heart. "The suicide rate in male farmers in Australia is 400% greater than females. So get into the conflict early," Neville says. "Conflict isn't like a bottle of red wine, it doesn't get better with age."
 
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