This week on the podcast…
This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice manager Stephanie Goss are answering a couple of questions about what is professional in the practice. At first glance, these two things might not appear to go together. Hang in there with us because Stephanie and Andy tie them together to have an fun conversation about professionalism and how we draw those lines at work. We've got a manager who has CSR at the front desk wearing airpods and listening to podcasts while they work and a front desk team at another practice who are using the front desk Alexa to listen to true crime podcasts while they work. The managers involved are worried that maybe they are just too old to get it because they feel like it when they view it through their lens – this feels like a hard no due to lack of professionalism. Is that the right answer? It might be. And we talk about why we might want to redefine professionalism in the context of our individual teams, today. Let's get into this…
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Episode Transcript
Stephanie Goss:
Hey, everybody. I am Stephanie Goss and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. This week on the podcast, Andy and I are tackling a couple of questions that at first glance, I wasn't sure actually went together. And when we boiled it down, we decided that they all had to do with what professionalism looks like in our practices. This one was so much fun, we might take the latest set break that we've ever taken in a podcast episode, but we had so much fun and laughed so much doing this. This one might not be so safe for work, although we did try and edit ourselves, but just a warning. Let's get into this one.
Speaker 2:
And now, The Uncharted Podcast.
Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and Stephanie, hiding in my headphones, Goss.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, I was laughing when we started because Andy asked me, “Are you ready?” And I said, “Yes”, and then I was not ready.
Andy Roark:
You were not ready at all.
Stephanie Goss:
I was not actually ready.
Andy Roark:
You just clearly reflexively said, “Yes” when you were not –
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, I'm giving you the answer that you want to hear.
Andy Roark:
And I was like, “All right, we're going”.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, man. How's it going?
Andy Roark:
It's good. Yeah, it's good. I cannot complain. This year is off to a pretty darn good start. Pretty happy with where we are, that's for sure.
Stephanie Goss:
It is busy. It was like the craziness of holidays and then we immediately launched into the craziness of the new year and travel, and I can't believe it's February already.
Andy Roark:
I know. I was just thinking, I was like it, “It's the new year”. I'm like, “Nope, it's February now as we record this” so yeah, it's flying by.
Stephanie Goss:
It is. It's crazy. Well, it's interesting. We have got some great asks that have come in and I've had some conversations with some managers recently. I think this is going to be one of those episodes where there are going to be some people who are like, “Are they talking about my clinic?”.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
But they're two radically different things, but they are two radically different examples and they have a lot of commonality and so you and I decided we're going to do these together.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
So the first one was some asks about team members, and I've heard it from a variety of different positions, from really honestly, the front desk to the doctors to the kennels wearing earbuds or AirPods while they work. And one of the asks was about specifically their front desk, and it had been other people in the hospital in areas where there were no clients who had been wearing earbuds while they did laundry, out in the kennels, no problem, right?
But then it came up that there was a CSR who was wearing AirPods and they have long hair so when their hair was down, it wasn't noticeable for a while. And then someone noticed and the conversation happened and it was, “Well, I'm listening to music or I'm listening to podcasts or whatever while I'm working and if I have to answer the phone or have a conversation or whatever, I take it out. But otherwise, why can't I listen to something while I work? It helps me focus, it keeps me paying attention to what I'm doing”, but the message came from a manager and they were just like, “I feel like this is… Maybe I'm just old, but I feel like this is really not professional, but I also want to gut check, is this the new normal? Everybody just looking at their phones and am I just old?”
And I resonated with that because I was like, I have had plenty of times where I've asked myself, “Am I the crochety old man yelling, ‘Get off my lawn' here?” And then the other one was quite interesting to me, which was some team members, who happened to be younger, all working at a front desk and they were apparently listening to true crime podcasts at the front desk. And so it wasn't over the lobby loudspeaker stereo system, but they had an Alexa or Google or whatever that was playing a podcast for them. And this manager was like, “People come in and come up to the front desk and no one has said anything. We don't have a lot of clients hanging out in the lobby because we do checkouts in the room. And so it's really just the people who are coming in to pick up meds or checking out the front desk, but still, if a client comes up, nobody said anything, but is it wildly inappropriate? Do I need to solve this problem because will a client eventually say something?”
And it was interesting because they were like, “I talked to everybody to see how did they all feel about it? And apparently none of them seem to mind”, but this manager was like, “This seems wildly unprofessional to me”. And so you and I were like, “Ah, this is fun”.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I think this is interesting. I think shifting social norms are always an interesting conversation. This reminds me of, I mean, I'll tell you other things that people have reached out to us over the years, were tattoos.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
I had someone email a while back, and before anybody reacts, they are in a rural town in Texas, and this was a practice owner reaching out, and her perception was that they had a very conservative client base and there was an older area and they had seen us celebrating a practice in downtown Boston and there were lots of tattoos in that practice. And they said, “My staff showed me these pictures that you guys had shared in this practice that you really liked and celebrated, and all these people have tattoos and nose rings and things. And they're saying that I'm a fuddy-duddy for not letting them have it”.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And my response was, “I'm not saying that things that are totally normal in downtown Boston are going to be totally normal in rural Texas”.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And even in Boston, if you're serving one clientele in Boston, something might be totally fine, but if you're serving a different clientele in Boston, it might not be totally fine with that clientele, so there's not an answer is what I'm getting to. But when we talk about the true crime, I thought that was interesting. I think the AirPods are interesting. I lump them together and I would lump the tattoos in with that as well, of things that are socially normal that we see a lot of places. But I think that there can be some concerns about how are these things being perceived. And I think the conversation on tattoos has evolved even more in the last couple years as they continue to become more and more common, but you get the point of changing social norms and that's why I lump these things together.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. Okay. So where do we start? Both of these ask questions about, as the manager, “Am I just old to be worried about this?”
Andy Roark:
Yeah, “Am I just old?”, yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
Which is also your ask was the, “Am I the fuddy-duddy?”, right? That, I think it's a legit question and also have to do with defining professionalism, which I thought was a really interesting question.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. So okay. Let's start with Headspace.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Andy Roark:
First thing that I would say is the idea of a professional-level agreement on what it means to be professional does not exist and is not going to exist.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And there are things out there that I see some of our colleagues advocating for that I would say, “I would never do that”. That's wildly unprofessional.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
But they are out there beating the drums and saying, “This should be totally normal”. I'm not saying they're wrong and that I'm right, I'm just… At some point, it comes down to what are your values? What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish or create? And I really think that therein lies the answer. And I think… I'll give you an example that will get us immediately into hot water. The term vet nurse is a thing.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
And at the national level, there is no end of this debate coming. It is like there are people who hate the term vet nurse, they hate it.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And there's people who love it and think that it is the path forward for the profession. And at this point, it is absolutely clear that this whole thing is a toxic soup that is just a quagmire. There is no forward progress in this discussion at the professional level.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
Quietly, at the practice level, people are doing what they want. They are coming up with the terms that work in their practice, that match their goal and their clientele, and they are moving forward with making decisions at a local level or a practice level based on their culture and their values and what they think is important and what they want to do and what their needs and desires are. And so I put that forward as this thing where you say, “There are some things that we are never, as a profession, going to agree on” and I think we need to be okay with that and just say, “Yep, I'm going to be respectful of all people and all views and know that other people have their own opinions for me and that's fine”.
But I want to look at what I'm doing and what my practice is, and I'm not beholden to what the practice in downtown Boston does or to what the practice in rural Texas does. Those people are going to make their decisions. And so I think that's the first place of headspace is say, there's not a right or a wrong. There's really not. There's just us and what we decide to do with our little team, and that's it. So that's the first thing I put forward. The other thing that I want to put forward too, classic leadership when we talk about professionalism is, and this is really hard, but it is a is Headspace thing, the old, “Because I said so” is not a valid reason in the eyes of your team as to why they can't wear headphones or have tattoos exposed on their arms or whatever. That doesn't work.
Neither does, “Because it's unprofessional” because there's not a written-down description of what professional is and what you think is professional, what they think is professional could be entirely different. And so it's such a subjective term. It doesn't move things forward, you know what I mean? It's not going to be a motivating idea for them. And so I just think you need to get comfortable with that, of you can say no. And I think when we get into this, there are some things I'm going to be like, “I wouldn't do this and I would be strongly opposed to it happening”, but I'm not going to tell my team, “Because I said so” because that's not fun. That's using that authority lever to lead that I really don't like to use. I'm a big relationship lever guy, which means I want people to feel heard and I want them to understand where I'm coming from and I want them to be on board with where we're going, but I don't want to say, “I'm your boss” and “I said so, so you're not wearing headphones”. I really like to avoid those things.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
So anyway, that's this opening Headspace for me. What do you think about that?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, no, I agree. I do not think that, I think we have changed culturally, we have changed societally. I don't think we're in a place anymore where that top-down leadership style of, “I say you do because I said so”, right? I even find myself at home with my kids. I can't use, “Because I said so” because then, when they ask me, “Well, but why?”, I don't actually have an answer for them, right? And so it's… I think that that era has shifted in the world and I think it's compounded by all of the changes that we've gone through as a world over the last few years where we have experienced this blend of our personal and professional lives in a way that we never had previously as a whole because we were working from home and now, all of a sudden, you could be on a Zoom and your suit and tie, and if your toddler that's at home comes running into your camera or your cat jumps up and there's cat butt in the picture, those are things we can't control.
We never had to face that before. And so I think even just in the last three years, we've gone through this tremendous shift of trying to redefine, define, redefine, redefine again, what does professionalism mean, and I think it's not just us in veterinary medicine, I think it's the world as a whole. And when I think about, I think about it from a Headspace perspective. I think part of it, for me as a leader in trying to find the right answers for myself and my team always was asking myself some questions about what do I think that this looks like? But also really drilling down into what are the things that are important to me. And you were talking about what works in one place doesn't necessarily work in another, and I do believe that there is absolute truth in that. And I think about Disney as a classic example of that as an employer. They have, for years, had very clear-cut dress code rules.
And if you didn't like it, that was totally fine, but you didn't work at Disney like that. It was just that it was who they are, and there was no hiding it. It was like, “This is who we are. If you don't want to do this, fine”. And they have gone through dramatic shifts in the last few years about really wanting to accept their people as wholes and starting to loosen up as whole people and loosening up some of their standards as well. And so I think we're looking at things like that as employers, and like the tattoo example was a good one. For me. It was tattoos, it was piercings.
I remember, there was a time where I literally had to write myself up because I violated our policy for hair color and found myself laughing at the absurdity of that. And also looking at why do we have these rules? And so when I think about it, and I would say from a Headspace perspective, it's a worthy exercise to ask yourself, “What do we think defines professionalism?” Because for me, the answers, I found a lot of answers in what that actually meant to me and what it meant to my team.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. So I agree with this very much. I think this is a great example of shifting definitions of professionalism and shifting social norms. I think that that's really good.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I also think if you are a little bit cynical, you could look at Disney and say, “Did they make those adjustments because they wanted to accept people or because they realized it's a tight labor market and they really want to not be excluding people based on things like, ‘Do they happen to have a tattoo?'”
Stephanie Goss:
Could be, could be both. Right.
Andy Roark:
But I'm sure it's about loving everyone and not capitalistic hiring practices. I get it. I'm sure. So anyway, but regardless of the reason, I mean, I'm sure it's some of both –
Stephanie Goss:
Well, you have a cynic Andy hat on today.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Look, I'm like, “Yeah, is it because you love everybody or because you need labor? I don't know. Maybe some of both?” Maybe some of both, I think that's probably the answer. So anyway, but you get the point. Regardless of the reason, these things change and they evolve. And so I want to start with that. Okay. So that's where I want to start. Now, I also want to say there's a difference between people having tattoos and having headphones.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
What? There are a lot of differences. They're different things.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Yes, they are.
Andy Roark:
They're different things.
Stephanie Goss:
They are.
Andy Roark:
All right. So Headspace in this is at some point, you have to step back and say, “Because I said so” and “Because it's unprofessional”, those aren't valid rules, or that this in and of themselves don't make a difference.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And so I challenge people to step forward and say, “Okay, seriously, what is my problem with this?”
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And yeah, and it shouldn't be about morality, it shouldn't be about what's proper, it should be, honestly, give me a case against these behaviors. And so cases that I would consider is what is the goal that we, as a team, are trying to achieve?
What are we doing here? Right? What is our brand? Especially things that are client-facing, what is our brand? Are we telling people that we are a fun place to be and we love pets, or are we telling them that we are a white glove, highly-attentive practice that prides itself on communication and listening?
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
They're not wrong and one's not better than the other, but they're different brands.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Yes.
Andy Roark:
And the last thing is, what is the client experience that we're trying to create? And how much emphasis do you put on that client experience?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
What do we want it to feel like when you're a pet owner coming in to our practice? And the last part is what is the worker experience that we're trying to create? What do I want it to feel like when I come to work here?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
Right?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
And so I think all of those are really important questions that I would sit down and put these behaviors against. So it's having True Crime podcasts playing. Are they playing in the lobby? Are they playing in the treatment room?
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
Or it's someone at the front desk with headphones in? I go, “Well, what's your brand? What client experience are you trying to create? What worker experience you're trying to create?” And just like everything in management, Stephanie, this is going to come down to balance.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
It is. There's going to be like, well, the people at the front desk like to listen to this music and it may help them focus. And at the same time, some clients are going to come in and they're going to feel ignored or they waited on hold earlier today and they showed up and somebody's got headphones in and they're going to make assumptions about how seriously their call was taken earlier. And that's a real thing that could potentially happen. And maybe it won't happen, but maybe it could.
And so anyway, there's a lot of that, “Well, there's this and there's this” and it is not going to be a one side is a clear obvious thing, it's going to be a balance. And I think honestly, if we talk to the staff, we should be transparent about that balance and recognize that yeah, I get that people will enjoy this or that there's a reason that people behave this way. And I would not try to shame anybody by being like, “How could you not be this professional?” But I would also be realistic about what my concerns are on the other side. And I would be willing to hear what other people's concerns, pros and cons are. And I would also really want to make sure, from a Headspace standpoint, that I gave people a confidential way to express their concerns because we have all been around things that were happening that other people seemed on board with, and we really didn't feel super comfortable expressing our true opinion, so we went along with it.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Yes. It's very easy.
Andy Roark:
Well, we decided it wasn't that big a deal, so we're not going to say anything, but we didn't really care for it. And I don't want to be the person who raises their hand and gets headphones banned or gets the true crime turned off that one of the doctors really loves.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
That is a risky political move for me, and you should just be wary about that when you start to have these conversations.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Yes, I agree. I think the Headspace piece there for me has to do with the fact that when we think about whether it's professional, the definitions of professionalism often lead to conversation about appropriateness and inappropriateness, and I think the Headspace piece, for me, is recommending or remembering that whether something is appropriate or inappropriate is truly subjective. And so to your point about creating safe space, that is a risk factor. As a leader, you have to recognize the fact that that subjectiveness is a risk factor because there might be people who are swept up in that peer pressure and just didn't say anything, but really aren't actually comfortable with what is happening. And so you really need to really do your job well here. I think you're spot on in creating a space that is private where you're eliminating the risk factors for them, the political risk factors of speaking up and saying, “Hey, I actually don't feel comfortable with this” or “I have concerns and here's the concerns that I like about the earbuds”.
I might look at it and go, “I don't know that I can really come up with any strong objections or reasons why I wouldn't be okay with this, but you may have a team member who has a valid concern that you don't think about”. And so I think from a Headspace perspective, it's really important to just really hold on to remembering that what is appropriate, what is professional is subjective on our parts and on the parts of our clients, like you were saying.
Andy Roark:
Sure.
Stephanie Goss:
There could be clients who were like, “I don't have a problem with it”. There will be other clients who will be like, “I have a big problem with it and here's why”. And so thinking about it from those different perspectives is important. And I think to your point, doing what we can to see how does the team actually feel about this is really important.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, I completely agree. I'm going to take this a whole, I'm going to take this, what is appropriate is subjective and turn it up to 11. We got a letter. We got a letter, it's been a couple years and we didn't do it. And it's funny, I was talking to you about this before and you didn't remember it.
Stephanie Goss:
No.
Andy Roark:
I don't know if it just came to me. It must have been, maybe it's an email that I got, but I got a letter from a practice owner that had an associate veterinarian that was listening to an explicit podcast. Explicit.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
It was called Guys I Blanked or Guys We Blanked, and the blanked was not blanked. And it was.. And so I was familiar with the podcast because it was in the top 10 on the Apple iTunes Store podcast.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
It was very big because it was explicit and people are dirty.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
But it is what you think it is, it was that. But here's the thing that was interesting, is the doctor was listening to this in the surgery room and the techs didn't want to say anything to the doctor because apparently, the doctor was not open to suggestions or feedback, really, but they were like, “Hey, she's listening…” “She's listening to this stuff and it is obscene in surgery”, and I have to sit there and monitor this pet for anesthesia for an hour. And the person reached out to me and was like, “Have you ever heard of this?” And I was like, “No, I'm sorry, I haven't”.
And so I thought about it later on. I was like, “In what world would you be like, ‘Let's put some porn on'?” And so I always try to argue things in the other direction, right? I always try to take the other person's side and see if I can argue their position effectively and what would that look like? And it helps me empathize. And so I think what I would say on the other side is I would say, this was number three this week on the Apple iTunes podcast list.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
And so clearly, it's not obscene or pornographic because this is mainstream media.
Stephanie Goss:
Culturally. Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And culturally, this is there. And of course, again, I was just like, “This is an HR nightmare. There are so many bad things here. This cannot fly”, but it was just amazing to me. One, that it happened, and I'm sure it's happened a number of times in different places, stuff like that. But it just goes to your point of clearly, this person did not think this was obscene or bad. And I go, “It used to be when…” And again, let me talk about back in the day when I walked to school in the snow.
Stephanie Goss:
Barefoot?
Andy Roark:
Barefoot, yeah. Things that were obscene were clearly labeled as such, and you didn't have ready access to them.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And I feel like there was much more agreed-upon norms of this is socially acceptable, and this is not, and I'm not saying it's bad that things have changed because we have definitely diversified and broken out and the world is different and richer and more robust in a lot of ways, but we are now in a place where a lot of things that people don't like or don't agree with are readily available over the counter, if you will.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, it was-
Andy Roark:
And so I just think it's an interesting shift, but the True Crime podcasts, I'm not likening them to The Guys We Blanked podcast, but I do use that as example of content that is put out through easily accessible channels that some people might feel is okay and feel has been culturally validated. And other people would say, “I don't know about this”.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, it's funny because when you were asking me before we started recording about the letter, and I was like, “I do not remember this” and I looked it up and I was just like-
Andy Roark:
You immediately subscribed.
Stephanie Goss:
I was like, “This is 100% something that Stephanie Goss would listen to. Why is this not on my radar?” And also, the flip side of that was I was like, when I read the email about the True Crime Podcast, I was like, “Absolutely not” because I'm one of those people where I am highly sensitive to suggestions. And I do not watch horror movies, I do not like true crime and forget true crime stuff, I do not watch violent movies. I really struggle mentally with a lot of that, and I intentionally go out of my way to remove that. And so to me, I would have found that radically offensive and would have really struggled as a team member because I would've felt like, okay, now I either have to sit here and know that I'm going to go home at night and have nightmares, or put earplugs in so that I don't hear it just to be able to work with my team members.
And I would've really struggled with that. And it was interesting because I was like, “Oh, okay, wait a minute. This is a really good empathy moment from the perspective of what about team members who would find the other podcasts wildly inappropriate and uncomfortable for them to be listening to?” And I think for me, that was that moment of, “Oh, I could put myself in somebody else's shoes”. And as the leader, our job is to think about the fact that it is subjective and what would other people think. And I told you, I remember at my first practice, I'm going to date myself. It was back when satellite radio first was a thing and came out and I vividly remembered one of our technicians getting a satellite radio and bringing it into the practice and was just like, “I want to listen to the Howard Stern podcast”.
And we had a fairly young team at the time, but that also was one of those things that some people are going to find it wildly inappropriate. But the team was like, “Yeah, this is great. Let's listen to it”. And you immediately brought up the concern, as a practice owner, that if you have team members who are doing something like that and you know about it, what happens if somebody doesn't find it appropriate or is offended by it? How does that look on paper, in a lawsuit if somebody sues you?
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I have three things that spring into my head. Again, and we've talked before about I can catastrophize, I can take a situation and tell you how it's going to end in my financial ruin and me living in a box next to the stream in the forest. I can take that. And here's how you listening to Howard Stern ends up with me in a box.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Andy Roark:
Right?
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Andy Roark:
[inaudible 00:28:45] living in the forest. Right.
Stephanie Goss:
We're in our imaginary vet clinic. Tyler will find this out. Okay.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. So there's three things that I go to, is what does a one-star review look like? What does a court reporter, or reporting look like? And what does the euthanasia experience look like?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And that's it, is like, I can be like, “What if you are…” And again, bear with me here for a second, but what if someone said, “I went in to get my faithful pet of 18 years euthanized, and I could hear Howard Stern through the wall”. I would go “Ooh”, and it depends on what's going on, but you get my point, right? You go, “Ooh”.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, absolutely.
Andy Roark:
What does a one-star review look like when someone says, “I was in the waiting room or I was in the treatment room and I was listening to Howard Stern and they were having this conversation while I was waiting for my pet to come out”? I go, “Okay”. I don't like that necessarily, and there are some things there, but the biggest thing is what does the court reporting look like? What happens when you get sued for a hostile work environment and the court reporter reads out the transcripts from these sections-
Stephanie Goss:
What was playing on Howard Stern.
Andy Roark:
… from Howard Stern and said, “This is what, this is examples of things that were played in the treatment room when I worked there”. I go, “Oh”, and that does sound extreme. Like I said, I can catastrophize, but as soon as you said that, I was like, “Hostile work environment”, and I'm like, “I can 100% see that”.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and as soon as you spelled it out like that, that was the mind-blown moment for me as the manager of like, “Oh, God” because I actively, in the moment, I was like, “We're a young team, everybody is like, ‘Yeah, let's listen to it'”, didn't think twice about it, right?
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And didn't think about it from that context, but as soon as you said that, I was like, “Okay, mind-blown. This is an opportunity for putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, but also thinking about it”. I love your comment about the bad review, but also the euthanasia perspective. And I think a lot of us think about it in that way. And so the comment from the manager who asked about the True Crime Podcast was like, “It's not full volume, it's not over the lobby stereo system. It's quiet, and they're just listening to it” and they had concerns because they were like, “What if a client approaches the front desk and hears this? So far, nobody has said anything, but what happens when someone does?” Right?
Andy Roark:
Sure.
Stephanie Goss:
And then the question becomes, it is assuming that it is our responsibility as leaders to help the team navigate these waters, like where do we even start with defining what that looks like in our practices?
Andy Roark:
Yeah, totally. So I would tell you with the True Crime thing, I had two thoughts from a Headspace. So True Crime for me, number one is what about that person in the waiting room who's here for euthanasia and there's True Crime stuff on?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And again, I was telling anybody, bear with me. I'm not saying, “Oh, I can imagine this thing, so the answer is clearly ban it, ban it, ban it”. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying I'm still going through the process of processing and balancing.
Stephanie Goss:
When you asked that question, I immediately had that heart… It immediately pulled at my heartstrings. And I can't imagine in the almost 20 years that I've been in veterinary medicine, I can't imagine a single person that I have ever worked with, including people that I really didn't like. I can't imagine any one of them not being able to empathize with that client and go, “Oh gosh, I would never want a client to experience that”.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, sure.
Stephanie Goss:
That is who we are as a people and so I think if you asked your team that question, it would hit them in those feels.
Andy Roark:
And again, I'm not trying to bully them, but I am honestly trying to think through this and be positive because here's the other thing, I want my people to be happy. And if there's things I can do to make them happy that don't negatively affect the client experience, I want to have as good a workplace as possible. So you better believe, I want to root for them and I want to be cool, fun Andy, but also, it's my job to balance these things. The other thing I would say is this, and it goes back to what you said earlier, but my wife, the only podcast she listens to are True Crime. And the only podcast I don't listen to are True Crime. I don't like True Crime. And again, no shade on people who do.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I'm not saying anything, but that stuff is upsetting to me. I don't like to hear about those things really happening in the world. You know what I mean? And as a parent, and again, I know I'm a softie, but I don't want to hear about, as the parent of a 15-year old daughter, I don't want to hear about the college girl or the high school kid getting butchered. I don't, that's really upsetting to me. And so I just don't engage with that stuff, but I'm not opposed to other people like, “Go on, do your thing”. And I don't think it makes other people bad people or anything at all. I just, it's upsetting to me and so I step away from it. If I came in and the whole staff was listening to True Crime, and I'm an associate vet or a relief vet, I'm not going to say anything. You know what I mean? Because I don't want to be the guy who's like, “Hey, all you people who are into this, I don't like it and so I'm turning it off” and I'm just being honest about that.
It's like I would just suck it up and be like, “It's not that big a deal, but I don't like it”. And if I had to do it every day, I think my perception might change over time, or I think at some point, I'm not a shrinking violet. At some point, I would say, “Guys, I don't like this. Let's listen to something else”, but a lot of other people would not do that. And I would have to be pretty sure about how I felt before I played the fun police because I don't like to be the fun police.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Well, and I-
Andy Roark:
But it would bother me.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, and I think about it on really… The same thinking about it and listening to you say that, I'm thinking back to when I first started in veterinary medicine, and it was not dissimilar. The feelings that you got when we did put on… Clients were all out of the building. We weren't allowed to play music that was not classical or elevator music. When clients were in the building or when clients were out of the building, we could put on whatever we wanted and it's not dissimilar to that feeling that I got when everybody was like, “Let's listen to heavy metal” and I was like, “This is not my thing”, and it's really hard for me to concentrate and I can't finish doing the day-end deposit. And so I would literally put in earplugs and it's that same, it's a much hipper, newer version I guess, of that than old Stephanie, but it's that same argument of how do we make sure that we're providing, to your point, a comfortable work environment for everybody?
And I think it feels, I remember then feeling like maybe I'm just the fuddy-duddy, like really, I'm the only one who doesn't want to listen to this. But I think it is an important point as leaders that we have to think about. And it's funny because when I was thinking about the True Crime piece, and I said at the beginning, I promised these two things tied together because my solution was, okay, if that's what is happening and everybody else is okay with it, I'm going to want to stick my EarPods in and tune it all out so that I can actually keep working and get the work done.
And then does it become a problem if I'm sitting there at the front desk trying to do the end-of-day reports or trying to get through chart audits and I have earbuds in, and then I am now becoming the person or the persons in the first example of, well, still is this professional if people are wearing earbuds and listening to whatever their choice is because they're then not affecting anybody else on the team because it's streaming straight into their ears, but how does that affect the client experience? How does that impact their interactions with their teammates? Do they hear the phone ring? Do they hear when people are trying to talk to them, but they have something else happening in their ears? So I think they're good questions to ask.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. And now, we're spinning up too, because of this behavior, these other things are now happening, which are also things. And at some point, you get this weird cacophony of different things happening, all that come from this underlying thing. And you go, “I don't know. I don't know if this is a good idea”. Okay. So I want to try to… I'm going to try to make one more pass at this and I want to frame it up a little bit more to try to give it some structure. Okay, cool. So the first thing I want to put down is remember what we said about, “Because I said so” and “It's unprofessional”? Those are not arguments that hold water with your people. And so you need to work beyond that. And also, the world has changed. And I think this is important just for thinking about how we provide work environments.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
We made a lot of our work habits back when people did the work that is now automated by machines, right? When they worked on assembly lines, things like that, they showed up, they did manual labor or things that are largely replaced by machines at this point. And when that used to happen, we got into the habit of tracking time as an outcome, right? We're like, “I'm going to pay you for an hour of your labor”, and you could do that because people were on assembly line making widgets. You know what I mean?
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
But if you look at the goal of our business, which is to provide care and to get pets taken care of and people taken care of, tracking people's time, boy that's really removed from actually taking care of people. It's a really sloppy, crappy metric, right?
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
And so I've been enjoying recently thinking a lot about what do we really do? And so one of the things that's interesting about Uncharted that I really like about the way that we work is we're all remote. Everybody works from home. I have no idea what you guys do. Also, I don't track your hours. You don't clock in, you don't clock out, and you have unlimited vacation. You can just go, if you want Wednesday off, you can just take Wednesday off. That's how we work at Uncharted.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And people go, “That's bonkers” and I go, “Well, why would I do it any differently?” Because I know what work we do. You know what I mean? I know what our projects are, I know what our deliverables are, I know what timetables we need to meet. I know you guys are working hard. And if you can get a day's worth of work done in five hours, I'm not going to make you sit at your desk for three hours. You know what I mean?
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Yes.
Andy Roark:
That's good, that's good for you for being efficient and getting things done, but the work is getting done.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
And so I flipped my mind a long time ago to paying people for the work that they do and the outcomes that they create, the effects they have, the impacts they make instead of the hours that they work. Now, I know that's a different part and our business is weird, and it's not a vet clinic where we have to have people there at certain times when the pet owners come in, but I want to make this point because I think it's really important, the idea that the only way to compensate people is for the hours that they put in behaving in very specific structured ways, I don't think that makes a lot of sense and I think the younger generations are really not on board with that.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, I would agree with that. And I think it applies to the vet clinic. I remember young manager Stephanie, I remember thinking about those days where a team member would come up to me and they'd be like, “We're done with appointments. We've gotten all the stuff done. Can we go early?”, and feeling this pressure of like, “I can't let them go early. They haven't worked their eight hours” because that is the mentality of we're trading the time. And so I remember times when I said yes and then felt guilty, and I also remember times that I said no and felt guilty because I can see both sides of that argument, right? And I think that it has to do with the fear as a leader of not knowing how we're defining things and how we're defining that value.
Andy Roark:
Yes, and that's exactly where I'm going. That's exactly my point, is how do you measure success? How do you measure value? How do you measure the outcomes? How do you define the experience that you want to create?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Is it the amount of time that people are clocked in? Is it whether or not they have tattoos? Is it whether or not they have headphones in their ears or not? Right?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
How are defining success? Right?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I'm a huge believer in hiring good people and training them and then giving them as much autonomy and freedom as possible so that they can innovate, create, do good work, control their own life and schedule. People are not automatons, they're not robots, they're not widget makers, they're people. And so I want to give them this freedom, and I want to pay attention to what the outcomes that I want to create are, okay?
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And so I'm putting that down because that's really important with where we're going. All right? Now, that said, I'm also, I'm realistic, right? I can't be 100% hands-off. Everybody needs support, everybody needs clear expectations, everybody needs boundaries, everybody needs to know what is required of them, right? But I do try to balance those things.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And so as we start to think about what is this? What is unprofessional? Is it unprofessional? I would say to you, what is your outcome? What does success look like? And so then my questions really are, when you look at what it means to be successful working in the kennel, is that impacted by wearing headphones?
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And it might be that, yes, you can't hear anything and we call for help and you don't come because you have your headphones in. And I would say, that's it. That's the answer. Right there. We're done.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
The experience is not being created the way that if one of the ways that we measure the work quality of our kennel is how quickly they can appear to interact with the medical team when needed, and headphones are reducing their effectiveness in that way, I would say headphones are hurting their performance and hurting the outcomes.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
And so that makes that decision for me, but it's not about what's professional, it's about what is the impact.
Stephanie Goss:
And?
Andy Roark:
One of the impacts… I know, I see where you're going. I'll say one more.
Stephanie Goss:
Go for it.
Andy Roark:
One of the other parts too is, I said before, success for me is a lot of times about how it feels to work in our hospital. And if people have headphones in, do they feel like their coworkers are inaccessible, or that they're not being heard or that they're being ignored? You know what I mean? That they're not getting the attention that they need. And if that's true, then that's a problem. And if the answer to all those things is you know what? It makes zero difference if someone in the kennel has one headphone in listening to a podcast. They're responsive, they listen, the work is getting done, there's no slowdown in our output, then for God's sakes, go have fun. Listen to your podcast.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
If are the clients, they're not engaging with the clients or they're popping them out of their ear before they go talk to the clients, then go with it.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
So that's that. The last thing that I want to say, and this is where all this is coming down to, as the Buddhists say, the answer's generally in the middle. And so we're like, do we say, “Go forth and crank up your True Crime podcast and everybody has headphones or they're banned, don't speak of them again, or you'll have to sit in the corner”? That doesn't have to be the answer. There can be some middle ground here. And it doesn't have to be that because the kennel tech can listen with one earphone, the front desk can listen with an earphone while they're answering phone calls and talking to clients face to face, it's a different job. It's like, that's basically the front desk being like, “Why can't I do surgery?”
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
That's because it's just not your job. It's a different job, it's a different person with different credentials, different skills handling different problems. And just because you can't listen to headphones at the front desk doesn't mean that you can't listen to headphones when you clean the kennels. And that may not mean that you can't listen to headphones after we lock the door and the clients aren't allowed in the building, I don't know, or that that… Anyway, it's nebulous, but the answer is usually in the middle. And there are ways that we can bend. As long as we know what's important, what our values are, what success looks like, what outcomes we're trying to measure and create, what the client experience is, what our concerns are and how people feel, a lot of times, we can try to be reasonable and compromise while still protecting the things we care about.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. No, I love that. And what I was going to say is I think if, to your point about, okay, if you have a team member who is in the kennels and is wearing earbuds and they're not responsive because they can't hear, I think it is very easy to go to the black and white answer of, “Okay, then the answer means you can't wear headphones or you can't wear earbuds”. And I would also say that I'm glad you brought up about finding the middle ground because that young manager Stephanie would have been like, “It's black or it's white”, like it is one end of the spectrum, or it is the other. And currently where I am in my career is very much about how do we find that middle ground.
And so the question that I asked back was, okay, well, I asked the questions you did, which is are they responsive? Are they still interacting with their teammates? Are those other things still happening? Because if they are, then what's the problem? If they're not, is there still a middle ground? Are they responsive to a… I'm going to date myself here. Are they responsive to a page? And I don't necessarily mean with a pager, although yes, I had.
Andy Roark:
When their beeper goes off?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. When their beeper goes off, do they come?
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. When the beeper goes off, do they come?
Andy Roark:
When the landline rings and they have to go pick it up off the wall, do they answer?
Stephanie Goss:
Hey, we actually had wall phones in our kennels, so don't knock it. And-
Andy Roark:
When a fax comes in, do they grab it?
Stephanie Goss:
I can't. Oh my God, I can't. Okay. Where I was going with that though is are there modern versions of that? This is not their beeper, but if they get a page on their Apple Watch and it vibrates on their wrist and then they come when somebody needs them, is it still accomplishing the same thing? And so where current manager Stephanie would lean very much into, how do I find that middle ground where we can still do the job? Everybody is getting… We're serving the clients, we're serving the patients, and I want people to be happy at work. I want them to… We're spending so much time together. At work, I want there to be opportunities where they do interact with each other. So I don't want to remove and intentionally disconnect them from each other. And I've been that, like my kid wears her earbuds all the time and she's usually listening to a podcast and I'm fine with that some of the time, but some of the time, I want to sit there and have a conversation with her, right?
Andy Roark:
Yes.
Stephanie Goss:
And so I think it's about finding that middle ground so that if the team can still interact with each other and they can still build those relationships and there are times, to your point, throughout the day where they can pop their earbud in and listen to it, I don't care. I'm cool. I am fine with that because I want them to be happy to be at work. And so, to me, part of the gift, if you will, that Covid has given us is that blurring of our personal and professional lives to the sense of, this is something that makes me happy. If I'm the True Crime junkie and the new episode comes out on Thursday, can I create a space for them to do that at work and still get the work done? Why do I care? Right? I shouldn't, I don't want to. I want them to be happy.
If we can blend those things together and support each other as human beings, great. There is also still, to your point, I think they were three great questions, which is how does this impact the client experience? What would a client, who is here to euthanize their pet, what does that look like to them? And if it impacts that in any way, it's going to be a hard no for me, right?
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And I'm okay with drawing that line in the sand. Also, what would it look like? What would it look like on a court report? And I think that that's a really great HR safety mechanism for, could anybody possibly read anything into this? If so, then how do we do that? Now, if somebody wants to sit there and listen to The Guys We Blanked podcast in their earbud during their time in the kennel, great. Go for it. That is to me, finding that safe space where like, “Okay, it's not impacting other people”.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. If it doesn't affect anybody else and yeah, there's no downside, yeah, sure.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
No, I agree with that. That's why I am in favor of employees having tattoos on one arm and half of their face is because it's like middle ground. We let them do it, but not so much. And they know which employee gets to only look at the right side of their body or which staff, which clients see the right side of their face, which side see the left.
Stephanie Goss:
Stop it.
Andy Roark:
All right, let's take the latest break we've ever taken just for a moment and then we're going to just bang out action steps real fast because I'll tell you how I think about this. All right.
Stephanie Goss:
Have you done it yet? Have you headed over to The Uncharted website, the one that's at unchartedvet.com/events? And have you clicked on that link for the April conference? If you haven't, friend, you need to head over and click on that link. And then you need to hit the register button because I want to see you with us in sunny Greenville, South Carolina. In less than 80 days, we are going to be diving deep into tackling internal communications this Spring. We want to talk about how do we improve our communications amongst our teams in a whole myriad of ways. How do we set boundaries? How do we have conversations about affordability of pet care and communications outwardly towards our clients as a result?
How do we use language and maybe think about changing some of the language we're using to have better communication as a team? Just previews of some of the awesome stuff that we're going to be talking about. So if you haven't done the thing, if you haven't put your fingers to your keyboard and typed unchartedvet.com/events, go do it now because I have hugs waiting for you in Greenville and you should not miss out on this. And now, back to the podcast.
Andy Roark:
And we're back for the fastest second half of a show ever. That's right. It's the second half in-
Stephanie Goss:
10 minutes or less.
Andy Roark:
10 minutes or less. All right, here we go. So what do we say to the staff when they're talking or when they got the True Crime stuff or they got headphones, or number one, clear is kind.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I think what most of us do is we're like, “I don't want to deal with this-“
Stephanie Goss:
“So I'm just going to ignore it”.
Andy Roark:
“… so I'm just not going to say anything” and then half of them wearing headphones and the other half are resentful and there's no system at all. And the clients are like, “What is this? My tech's got one earbud in when she's talking to me about my pet. That seems weird”. And we just don't engage. At some point, clear is kind.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Tell people what the expectation is and we'll talk about how to figure it out in a second.
Stephanie Goss:
I think the other alternative to that is we avoid it or we want to push it up the chain and make it somebody else's decision because we don't know how to make the decision. We're like, “I don't know how I feel about this. I feel conflicted”, and so in talking to one of the managers, she was like, “I just want to give this to the practice owner and dump it in her lap and say, ‘You figure this out because I have no idea how I feel about it'”.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. So clear is kind. We need to talk about this. Putting your head in the sand and just going, “I don't want to deal with this, so I'm just going to let them figure it out themselves”, that's probably about enough.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Not a strategy.
Andy Roark:
The big question to the team is, “Hey guys, what's important about this and what are the impacts? And so I like to ask the team, what are the pros of headphones? Why do you guys want them? Why do they make… Tell me, articulate to me why they're good. Articulate to me what's important to you about them” because otherwise, I'm just guessing. But they need to tell me why do they want this thing and what's good about it and when do they use it and how do they use it? And then I'm going to ask them, what are the cons? What are the ripple effects? If we do this, how could it go badly for us? And I said before, I really like the idea of giving people a mechanism to confidentially share concerns they have.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And so the ripple effects are, “I don't feel like people are hearing me”. We worry about what if the true crime stuff is on and you can hear it through the euthanasia room wall?
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
That's a thing. We need to talk about what those cons are because a lot of times, they just don't think about what the concerns are. But I just think honestly putting them out and saying, what are concerns that people have? How could this be problematic? And I say, “I'll tell you what some of my concerns are, they're these things”. And then say, “Are there ways that we can address these concerns and still let people do what they want to do? Is that possible to try?” And I will, again, always, always frame up as pilot programs, pilot programs, pilot programs, which means I want it, I want you guys to be able to do what you want to do, but these concerns need to be addressed. And so if there's a way that we can address these concerns and still do some of this stuff, I'm open for trying it, but if it's a problem, we're going to be right back here again and we might not be able to do this.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it.
Andy Roark:
So last part, clear expectations. I don't have to necessarily decide this in front of the team, but I need to hear them and what the concerns are. I would really like to have their input on how we might try to move this forward. I'll open the floor to those guys, let them come by the office and tell me, let them put forward suggestions, concerns, complaints, things like that. And then finally, tell them what the policy is. Clear expectations.
Stephanie Goss:
Yep.
Andy Roark:
This is how we're going to go forward, this is how we're going to try it. These are the things that I'm going to be really watching. And if response time in the back drops down, if we have people waiting up front, if we get a single client complaint, if any of the clients feel like they don't feel like they're being heard or we're not being attentive to them because of headphones, then that's going to be the end of the pilot program.
And I want you guys, I don't want you to be surprised. I want you to know, going in, what my lines are and let's see how this goes. And the last thing is remember, balance is key. It doesn't have to be ban them or it's the wild west, it can be a little bit of what's important to you guys, how can we make the things that are important to you happen while making sure the concerns that other people have are addressed? And guys, that's just what it means to manage a team that's healthy, that we try to support while also balancing the needs of the pets and the clients in the practice.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, I love it. I love it. That was the first [inaudible 00:56:01].
Andy Roark:
That's all I got. I told you it was going to be a short second half. By definition, not a half, but you get the point.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, man.
Andy Roark:
One half was significantly smaller than the other half.
Stephanie Goss:
We landed.
Andy Roark:
Those are not halves, Andy.
Stephanie Goss:
We landed the plane. That's the point. I think, no, I'm with you there. And it was interesting because your action steps are all of what I watched unfold in some of the conversations with a group of managers where somebody had asked the question, and it was the shades of gray, right? The perspectives and everybody is going to have a different perspective and so making them feel heard I think is really important. And I love your three questions about what is the client experience, especially from the euthanasia perspective, because I think that is the ultimate empathy tool for everybody on your team. From a leadership perspective, what does it look like potentially in a court document? Because it's a super valid question to ask yourself.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, the what's the euthanasia experience? What is a complaining client with euthanasia?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
What does the one-star Google Review look like?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And what does it sound like if a lawyer reads it back to you?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Those are three just general guidance questions.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. I love it. This was fun. I have a new podcast to listen to this weekend.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Just not, this is why we're virtual. So you can look, you can go listen to it.
Stephanie Goss:
It's not going to impact anybody else.
Andy Roark:
You can listen to it on headphones at work because nobody's there.
Stephanie Goss:
I'm in my closet. Have a good week, everybody.
Andy Roark:
See you, everybody.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. And as always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbag and answer this question. And I would really love to see more things like this come through the mailbag. If there is something that you would love to have us talk about on the podcast or a question that you are hoping that we might be able to help with, feel free to reach out and send us a message. You can always find the mailbag at the website. The address is unchartedvet.com/mailbag, or you can email us at podcast@unchartedvet.com. Take care, everybody, and have a great week. We'll see you again next time.
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