Do you know a super chicken?

But what about the super chickens?

Work done at Purdue University with birds found that selecting for dominant characteristics ultimately led to ‘super chickens’ who would peck each other to death because their need for dominance was so great, even at the cost of the group. In human teams, the super chicken is the person who has to win because their ego is more important than anything else. Chris finds that:

“your team can usually tolerate one super chicken (who is usually super smart), but if you get in a room with two super chickens, two people who have to win, and who see the world a wee bit differently…what a disaster that is”.

In times of disagreement, instead of fighting to be right, the second option is to be accommodating or to avoid the issue. Chris knows there are many of us in veterinary medicine who fit this description but sums up this group as “lovely folk, but not helping teams to do better” because we hold the information and knowledge to change things but do not discuss and share it. Chris shared the secret of what we should be striving to be:

“The only way that consistently sets teams up in a position where they might get the best results is when people who find themselves in the discomfort of disagreement choose curiosity. They choose to listen, to seek to understand. They're not seeking to understand to tell somebody else why they're wrong. What they're doing is listening to somebody else to work out where they're coming from.”

What followed was a very humble but very amusing anecdote about being bare below the elbow - a recent time when Chris still had to catch himself when a colleague was spoiling for a fight. This is what he feels is the real game changer; the self-awareness to check our own responses and change our own behaviour so we can then influence others.

“I think this speaks to what Dan was talking about at the beginning - it's talking about us at an individual level, who we choose to be, and then think about how that interacts with us in our team performance”

Chris remained at VHFL for the whole day, participating in table discussions, and used the time for his closing keynote to instead amplify the wisdom of the room. One table summed this up perfectly in just three words – compassion, curiosity and collaboration.

If you're ready for next year's Veterinary Human Factors Live event, you can join the first-look list to be first to hear the details.

Are you a 2026 delegate?

Don't forget to join us on Tuesday 28th July for our VHFL 2026 online reunion! Check your emails for the link to register!