This week on the podcast…
This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice manager Stephanie Goss are working on a mailbag question from someone wondering how we can show deep respect and appreciation to our veterinarians for the work that they do for our practices, our patients and our clients. Andy and Stephanie took an opportunity to address the pizza party elephant in the room along with some other strong opinions they both had when it comes to languages of appreciation. 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 another letter from the mailbag, and this one was so much fun because we got asked the question, “How do you show respect and value and thank you to your veterinarians? And I'm not looking for a food and pizza party type thing. Let's dig into the deeper, ‘I really value you and value what you're doing for our practice' kind of things, making them realize that they are really worth something to us.”
Andy and I had a great time diving into this. We do talk about the elephant in the room. We talk about food, we go there, we soap box. And we had a really good time talking about the psychology of appreciation, the brain chemistry of how it works, and really diving into what are some things beyond the pizza parties and beyond the coffee runs that we can do to really show the team that they matter to us, to our clients and the work that we're doing. This one was so much fun. Let's get into it.
Meg:
And now the Uncharted Podcast!
Dr. Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Stephanie, I will remember you, will you remember me, Goss.
Stephanie Goss:
I was going to say, can you please sing?
Dr. Andy Roark:
We're recording at the end of the year and I have had… So at the end of every year, I'm a personal development guy, lifelong learning is key. I think we should all be growing and getting better. I think it makes this life more exciting and interesting. I have a 100% had on my list for years to get better at singing because I can't carry a tune in a bucket. But what I've heard is it's a skill that you can actually learn to some degree. I'm not trying to fill Carnegie Hall here, but I want to be able to sing for comedic effect and not as a war crime that people report me to for putting them through cruel and unusual punishment.
Stephanie Goss:
“Please make Andy stop.” Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, exactly. So it's, “That was funny when he did it,” but not like, “That was awful when he did it.” And so I feel like it's a low bar to aim for, but when is it going to happen this year? I don't know. It's hard to be like, “I'm sorry, honey, I can't take the kids to gymnastics because I have singing lessons.”
Stephanie Goss:
I mean, I think that that is a very appropriate goal. I also feel like since your wife has to listen to you in the shower, that would be a present for her too probably, right?
Dr. Andy Roark:
It would be. Oh, I can't believe I'm telling you this, but it's so true. I've gotten in the habit of playing the air trumpet and she hates it. But I won't sing as much in the shower. I'll sing and then I switch to air trumpet. I'm like, “Na na na na.” She goes, “No! No! No! No!” And so if you hear my wife going, “No! No!” you know that I am just-
Stephanie Goss:
Andy's giving a concert into a sold out crowd in his shower.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… I do the rhythm section and just like, I was like, I can't sing. I know I can't sing, but I can… I can air trombone.
Stephanie Goss:
You realize you have hit the epitome of dadness right now.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, I bet you're right. I had not thought of that, but I bet you're totally right. That's funny.
Stephanie Goss:
Playing the air instruments, this is the epitome.
Dr. Andy Roark:
(Singing) “Do do do do do.” And [inaudible 00:03:57] like, “No, no, no!” I wonder if there's air horn lessons, like imaginary horn lessons.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh man.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Because I would 100% put my money down and show up for that.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh. Maria, if you're listening, that is one wish to not make come true. Don't buy that for Andy for next Christmas. Because she listens to those things when our team has conversations. She's the sneaky one, she's like, “Oh, I heard somebody say that this is the thing that they want,” and then it just kind of magically happens and appears because she loves speaking that language of appreciation. And that is the thing that we don't need to have come true. Andy does not need air trumpet lessons for Christmas 2023.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There's someone out there who does air trumpet. I'm sure, in this wide world of the internet, there's someone out there who does. They'd have to be virtual. The chances of them being in Greenville is too slim.
But I met this guy. We were doing comedy. So I do this comedy show, it's an improv comedy show, and we do improv comedy inspired by people telling stories. And so people come and they tell a short story, and then my troupe does comedy inspired by that story. And so we keep trying to find colorful people to come and tell stories. And one time we found someone who was too colorful, and we found him on TikTok, and he is kind of this big, white, 60-year-old man who rides skateboards, plays banjos and does nunchucks. And that's what he does on his TikTok. And my friend was like, “Let's get that guy to tell stories,” which seems like a good idea-
Stephanie Goss:
A good idea.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… until he came with nunchucks. And he had butterfly knives that he would, like whipping. We're in a coffee shop and he's talking about a pocket knife and he's whipping this thing around. And my friend goes, “That's not a pocket knife.” And it wasn't. It was a butterfly knife. And at one point he is like, “I give nunchuck lessons.” And then he's got two nunchucks, and he's swinging one around in each hand. And that guy gives nunchuck lessons on the internet. I feel like we could find someone to do air trumpet lessons for me.
Stephanie Goss:
I feel like air trumpet lessons would be a whole lot safer and would probably be covered by our insurance. I feel like that nunchuck lessons, I can just feel Jamie cringing and being like, “Our insurance does not cover that. Do not ever try that.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think the way this goes down is I'm going to pitch nunchuck lessons to Alison, and then when we find air trumpet lessons, she's going to go for it, like 100%. Let me just stop and pat myself on the back.
For those of you at home, write that down. You just learned some A+ strategy of persuasion because if you want air trumpet lessons, start out by asking for nunchuck lessons, and then when you ask for air trumpet lessons, everyone thinks it's reasonable.
Stephanie Goss:
I can't. Oh, it hurts.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That's so dumb. That's so dumb.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh my gosh.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Let's do this episode. Let's actually do something here. Then let's get into it.
Stephanie Goss:
I was going to say, five minutes in and we're completely off the rails already for the day.
This ties in perfectly because we're going to talk about appreciation, speaking of languages of appreciation, we got a mail bag question that I thought was great. It totally made me laugh. Somebody has a sense of humor. They said, “I'm wondering how do you show value, thank you, appreciation and respect to your vets?” They said, “I'm not looking for pizza party type things. I'm looking beyond that, more into the deeper, ‘I value you for what you're doing for our practice.' How do you make them realize that they are worth something to the practice?”
And I thought it was a great question because, all joking and digging on pizza parties aside, because we know vet med is highly food-motivated, as are our patients, a lot of our patients. It can't just be pizza parties. Right? So how do we show the appreciation and the value and give our thanks and our gratitude for what, in particular, the veterinarians are doing for the team, but I think this is applicable to the team as a whole.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, I think so too. I want to start in the headspace. I don't know if our headspace action steps really apply to this because it's like in all headspace, there's maybe some action steps, but for the most part, it's a philosophy sort of thing.
I want to talk about pizza parties for a second. And it hurts my soul a little bit to hear people dunking on pizza parties and donuts, and I get it. There's a common thing, it's not just in our industry, everyone dunks on it and they kind of dunk on their boss of like, “Look, pizza parties and donuts, that's garbage. That's not appreciation, that's blah, blah, blah.” And I understand where that sentiment comes from because, after a while, if you come in on Fridays and there's just donuts or bagels waiting for you, at some point, it loses its luster and it doesn't really make you feel appreciated.
And if you're cynical, you could also say, “This doesn't require any thought. It's the same thing again and again. The corporation just strokes a $35 check or $250 check or whatever it is. They're just doing this little thing and putting it down with a note that says, ‘Thank you' and saying, ‘Appreciation done.'” And so I get it and I get that that's what people say. It hurts my soul because, as most things on the internet, there is no nuance. There is no context. And it's assuming the worst about people's intentions. And so I don't like that.
The truth is, as someone who owns a business I will tell you, I want my people to feel appreciated. I really do. And making them all feel appreciated on a regular basis is really hard to do. It just is. And the pizza party, I think, often comes with very good intentions of, “I appreciate how hard you guys are working. I want to do something nice for you. This is something that scales, it's something that everybody can take advantage of.” You know what I mean? “And it's something that's affordable and within reach, and it doesn't take a ton of time, but I can make it happen.” And so that's why it kind of hurts my heart to have it kind of crapped on because I get the intention. At the same time, you can't have pizza parties every Friday and expect people to still continue to have an emotional response to it as you do it over and over and over again.
Does that make any sense, I guess, sort of why the pizza party donut stuff, why I think it happens, and why I look at it as well and go, “Hey, I get it. I 100% get it”?
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and two other pieces, I think, from being the person who's done those things appreciation-wise for their team. Number one, who doesn't freaking like donuts and pizza? For me, the language of appreciation at the donut shop went deep. I would try and pick out their favorites. We would try new things. It was not like I'm just slinging a box of glazed Krispy Kremes down every week.
So when I hear that, I have some of those same emotions because it was something that I loved. So growing up, my dad used to take me out early and we used to go and get donuts after church and then bring them home to my mom and my brothers. And there's a local donut shop, and it's still there, and so when I had kids, that became a tradition with my kids. And so it was something that meant something to me, I shared it with my kids, and then the kids got in on sharing it with my team because they spent a lot of time at the practice and they loved to go before I dropped them off at school and help pick out donuts for the team and bring them in. So it was a thing that is clichéd, but also there was emotion and true, “I like you people and I want to bring you something that I know brings a smile to your face.” Right? And so when you hear it getting crapped on, it can be something that you take really personal, because again, who doesn't like pizza and donuts?
And I think as a business owner, the other side of it that gets really hard, and where I see this try and get rationalized by leaders a lot, and the conversation never really goes anywhere when you're talking about it with your team, because at the end of the day, what we're about to talk about is hard for them to wrap their brain around because they're not an owner and they don't care the same way that you maybe would wish that they would.
But the other piece of it is, your point about scaling, it is expensive. And even if I'm buying pizza, pizza for a team… When I used to buy pizza for my team of 20, it used to cost me $150, even for inexpensive pizza. And so when I think about spending that money over the course of the year, if I do something, and that's just for inexpensive pizza. And so when you try and vary it up and let's get everybody deli sandwiches or tacos or whatever, when I add all of that stuff up, I mean, I was spending a couple thousand dollars a year on those, not regular, but not never rewards for lunches and stuff.
And that is an expense. That is the thing. And I did it willingly. And also, it didn't happen in a bottle and it wasn't free, and so it is hard to hear that as a leader get crapped on from that perspective of this is a thing that I'm spending money on. There's other things that I could spend money on for the team or not. And so to make that effort and then feel like it's getting crapped on is a hard thing to wrangle. And at the same time, I also understand from the team's perspective that… I can understand why it does get crapped on. I think I can understand both sides of it, for sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, sure. I mean, there's the worst stuff that you hear online is people are like, “Bosses give pizza out so that you won't clock out and go to lunch. They're trying to keep you in the building so they can…” And I go, maybe that's true some places. To me that just seems like a horrible, dark, cynical view of the world and of your employers. And I go, I have never felt like I worked for someone who had intentions like that. But obviously some people out there too, and those people are very vocal and social media likes to promote those very-
Stephanie Goss:
Voices.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… disgruntled angry voices. And so anyway, I think that that's very hard.
Starting to break this thing open and talk about it. And I think this is important headspace distinction as we get into this. There's appreciation and there's compensation, and I think starting to look at the difference between the two is important.
To me, compensation is something that you get for your work. It doesn't have to be expected, but it's something that you get for your work. And appreciation to me, it's being seen as an individual. And I think that that is the 100% driving force here. I think that that's the part that people miss or don't understand. I think it's mission critical when people are frustrated about appreciation, if you define appreciation as being seen as an individual, not appreciation of me as one of the doctors, but me as Andy Roark for the things that I specifically did. And that's why this is so hard to scale because making 20 people all feel seen as individuals at the same time-
Stephanie Goss:
At the same time, yep.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… is very, very hard. I think there's ways that you can do it. And I give an example that we pulled off at the Practice Owners Summit, I think really nicely, but I think you can do it, but it's very, very hard when we talk about pizza parties and things like that, and we say, this costs $150 to do this. I would say that that's compensation. It's, “Hey, you guys work hard and I want to do something nice for you.” So we go, “Man, that's $150 and I could spend it on those things.” And I say, yep, that's true. If you look at that as far as appreciation goes and say, “Well, I spent $150 on this and they didn't feel appreciated, this is a failure.” I would say, okay, I get that. If you gave the whole team a single $150 financial bonus, they're going to look at you like you're bonkers. Like, “What? This breaks down to three, I don't know, a dollar each.” Or $3 each. That's what it is. And then we have to put taxes on it. And you go, well, that's a ridiculous financial bonus.
But I can take that money, roll it together into $150 and get some pizza and we can all have something kind of nice. You know what I mean? To me, that's compensation, that's kind of part of the compensation package if you look at it that way. And I say that that's a win, right? If I have 150 bucks in my pocket, I can't give out financial bonuses. That's just dumb. But I can get some donuts and some coffee, and especially if they're not expecting it and just say, “Hey, I like you guys and I want you to be happy, and I was thinking of you and I want to do something nice for you.” I think you can do that and call that a win. And they may not feel appreciated at an individual level, but hopefully they feel good about working there and they feel like they're valued.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I think that part of it too is for me, a big part of that was the fellowship that came along with that. There is something bonding about food as an experience and as an icebreaker. And so when it's been a really rough week, bringing in Starbucks and standing in the treatment room at the counter and everybody just having, okay, OSHA gets mad at food in the treatment room, but you know what I mean, standing there in the lobby where there's no patients present for 10 minutes and just talking and talking about the week, maybe not even talking about work. God forbid that we talk about ourselves as humans. But it's that sense of connection and that sense of fellowship. I think that that means something there for me. So I think it's smart to talk about it from that perspective. And at the same time, I get it, and there's a flip side to it, and what are some other things we're going to do, which we're going to talk about.
I think your part about being seen is really important. And it's interesting because you know and I have talked about appreciation, and we have done multiple workshops in our community on appreciation and showing appreciation for the team. And I have led some of those workshops. And at the same time, I was doing some reading in prep for this, and one of the things that I don't think that I really totally understood was the psychology behind appreciation. And there's actual science to the psychology and what our human caveman brain response is to appreciation. And there's five pieces of it, being seen is one of those five.
So it's the sense of value being, which is what this person was asking, how do I show them that I appreciate the value that they bring to the team and to the practice? The second is the sense of being seen. The third is the sense of being liked, which when you have fellowship and you're talking and you're creating a group environment and people are included, you have that social sense that these are people who like me and I am enjoying sharing company with them. The fourth is the sense of meaning and purpose, which I think hits on the note for this ask in the mail bag of there is true meaning to the work that we're doing together. And there is true purpose here. And the last goes along with that, fellowship, which is the sense of connection and the sense of community.
And so I think when we think about the fact that those five pieces all help light up the brain, because the second part of it is when we are appreciated as human beings, it literally changes our brain chemistry. When we feel appreciated, when we express gratitude and when we receive gratitude being expressed to us, there are the increased dopamine, the increased serotonin, the neurons in our brain actually get more dense. And people who practice gratitude regularly develop a neural pathway that is more dense than their peers. And it makes us be able to think into those feelings faster and easier as we go. And I think that it's fascinating to me that there's literally a physical chemistry change when we feel appreciated and we feel gratitude. And knowing that as a boss, as a leader, why the hell would you not want to give that to your people as often as you could?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Why would you want to absolutely be able to pull it off? Why you go, oh, there's real effort here.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh yeah. Effort.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I think that is a super important thing to realize. We talk about giving feedback, you and I, we talk about a lot of positive reinforcement. I'm a big positive reinforcement, positive feedback guy. And we talk about appreciation and making people feel appreciated. And when we say it sounds so simple. So why don't more people do it? Why isn't this just everywhere? And the answer, the cold, simple, stupid answer is-
Stephanie Goss:
Effort.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… because it takes time and effort to do it. And I'm not blowing that off, it actually takes thought and intentionality and honestly, scheduling to make it happen. And I say scheduling because for me, I need time to execute things and I need to know that things are coming. I was doing an audit of appreciation initiatives, gosh, that's so nerdy consulting talk. I want to do a better job of appreciating people in my life in the coming year. And in order for me to do that, I have to update my calendar and add birthdays, and not birthdays by themselves, but birthdays with alarms that go off a week or 10 days before said birthday so that I have time to do something.
And that may sound so stupid, but as we say all the time, if you're surprised by something again and again at some point, it's your business model. And my business model is being surprised when someone says, “Today is my birthday.” And I look around and I'm like, do you have a stapler that you like because I got you one and it's wonderful. It's so dumb, and I feel deficient again and again.
Stephanie Goss:
Listen, all I can say, I don't know if she's listening to this podcast, but all I can say is I once gave somebody a stapler as a gift, and it was the best stapler ever because it was a freaking narwhal. And Josie loved that gift so, so much. There are pictures of it on social media, so it is possible to give a stapler as a gift to the right recipient and make their year.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh sure. But there you go. There you go. That's the appreciation part when you're like, “I see you, Josie. I see you. I see who you are.” And bam. I-
Stephanie Goss:
You'll love a narwhal stapler.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Let me pause and pat myself on the back. I'm really proud of what I gave you for the holidays at Practice Owners Summit.
Stephanie Goss:
A very good job.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I think it's more important that I got two of them. I got for me and for giggling Goss coffee mugs that have a little campsite on them, and it says Happy Campers across the top, and it says Andy and Stephanie, it's from our Camp Tough Love episodes. And I am so proud of me for thinking of that and being like, here you go, and I gave it to you. And when it came, it's a tiny little mug I'm like, if I drink coffee out of this, everyone would be in danger. It's going to take me to 12 cups of this to get running.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, maybe not now that you have an espresso machine.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh. Well yeah, I had to raise my game.
Stephanie Goss:
You could boil some hardcore espresso now.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I had to raise my game. That was from my wife for my birthday. I'm still not back to normal free espresso Andy. I don't know how long that transition takes. But anyway-
Stephanie Goss:
But it is true, and I think that's a big piece of it, is that the thought, the intention behind it, the thought, the time, all of that matters. And I think that's one of the things that as a leader, we have to choose to be intentional about that. And I love that you mentioned the birthdays because that was a big thing for me. I went through a period where we always did birthdays. When I had five of them, it was really easy to keep track of everybody's birthdays. And then as the team grew and we got to 10 and 15 and 20, and then when I had 30 of them, I was like, “I don't even remember my own birthday, let alone all of your birthdays.”
And so I was like, okay, let's make a birthday celebration once a month. We'll do all the birthdays, then nobody gets forgotten. But then it takes that specialness out of it, right? Because now it's a group thing and now it's not being seen as an individual. And now if you have four birthdays in the month, they all have to agree on what kind of cake we're going to get for the staff meeting. And it backfired on me, and it took me a while to get to that. And God bless them, they were so kind about it. But eventually one of them came and was just like, “Hey, can I talk to you about the birthday thing?” And they were like, “We would rather just not do this because we wind up fighting about what we're going to get and we would just rather not do it.” And I felt so bad because I had the best of intentions, and I was just like, I don't want anybody to get forgotten. That would be the worst thing.
But feeling like they would rather not do anything because it wasn't individual made me feel worse. And so like you, I was like, okay, I have to figure out a system and I did the exact same thing. And it became a process where it started with, at the beginning of the year, I would sit down and I would double-check and make sure everybody's stuff was in my calendar. Did I set it up for annual reminders? Or set it up so that they would repeat annually, setting the reminders. Because like you, at first I was like, oh, I'll just put the dates in. And then the date would come and I would get that, but that doesn't give me any time to actually prepare. So I was still frantically the first year doing the last-minute run to the store like, “Oh crap, it's Kate's birthday today. What am I going to do for her birthday?” And so then the next year was like, okay, let's put in the alarms, let's get a week ahead.
And I think that it was invaluable because it allowed me to see them as individuals. It also forced me to slow down and really think about, not that it had to be big, not that it had to be extravagant, but what would make this person happy? And it was something that made me feel really good to spend the time doing. But you're not wrong, there has to be a system and there has to be time dedicated to it, particularly for those of us who have bigger teams. And so I think it is important to think about where are we going to put our effort, and how do we make it intentional?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, the thing that landed on me was things that are important go on my calendar. That is how I live my life. I put taking the kids to their activities, that goes on my calendars because I need to know. And I live my life with this idea that things are important go on my calendar.
Stephanie Goss:
It is true.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But I never put appreciation things on my calendar. And then at some point what sort of landed on me was, Andy, you live by this mantra, if it's important, it goes on the calendar. And the fact that you are not putting people's birthdays or team holidays or big events that the people you work with care about onto your calendar, if important things go on the calendar and you're not putting these things on the calendar, then these things are not important to you, is what you're saying. And I said, no, they are important to me. And then it becomes, well then why aren't on your calendar? And I don't know if people need to hear this, but for me it was kind of a powerful moment of looking in the mirror and not really liking what I saw and going, I say these things are important, but I'm not treating them like they're actually important. And that's been a sort of journey.
The other thing I want to say, this is sort of stepping back for one second though. I love that show The Office with Steve Carell and the gang, and I love that show. And my favorite episode of that show, I think my favorite, favorite episode, part of the shtick in this show is there's this guy, Jim, who's the wisecracking younger guy. And he's always looking at his boss, Michael Scott, as a doofus. And he is a doofus. But Jim's always kind of smirking and rolling his eyes.
And one day Michael Scott goes away, and I can't remember why he goes away, but Jim gets promoted to cover the boss's role while Michael's gone. And in his attempt to step forward and be like, “I can do this better,” the first thing he does is combine all the birthday celebrations into one at the beginning of the month. And it goes exactly like you said, exactly like you said. And it's so funny, and you've told that story before about combining the birthdays, and I always laugh because that is the exact thing they used on that show was Jim was clearly this is efficient and let's just get it done. And it's all the problems. And at the end of the episode, Michael Scott comes back and Jim is sitting with him and there's this beautiful poignant moment where Jim has been kind of humbled and he says, “That didn't go very well.” And Michael says, well, “What did you do?” And Jim says, “I combined all the birthdays and put him on one day.” And Michael goes, “Yeah, rookie mistake. I did that. I did that. I did that.”
And I love it so much because it's one of those things that you look at and you go, “This just makes sense,” but it doesn't engage with the human component of what we do. And just the fact that is the example they used in this show and then you had the same experience in real life, I love it. But God, it sums this up-
Stephanie Goss:
Rookie mistake.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… “Rookie mistake. I did that.” And at that point, Jim sees Michael as like, “Oh, maybe you're not a complete doofus.”
Stephanie Goss:
For sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
“Maybe you've just been molded by the realities of this weird world and these weird people that we work with.” And I love it. Anyway, but that's a beautiful microcosm of the issue, which is appreciation can be systematized to the point that it removes the human element. And that, my friends, is the issue with pizza parties in the eyes of the people, is that we have systematized appreciation to the part that the human element has been removed, and people don't feel individual and special. And that does not mean that they're not good. It just means that they are seen as a part of compensation rather than as something that makes people feel appreciated. And that's just by design.
So let's take a break here and then we'll come back and let's dig into some action stuff to how do we fix this, and what do we do?
Stephanie Goss:
Sounds good.
Hey everybody, it's Stephanie, and I'm going to jump in here for one quick second and toot my own horn. That's right, February 1st, Andy and I are going to be leading a workshop that I want to make sure that you don't miss. It is the final of our three-part kind of strategic planning, kicking the year off right series. We are talking about starting the year off right leading a vision and values meaning. And this comes to us, we have done strategic planning for the last couple of years, and we've gotten a lot of ask for how do you actually lead this meeting? What do I say to my team? How do I set it up? What do I make the room look like? How do I actually lead these kind of workshop exercises that you and Andy are talking about? And this is my jam. I cannot wait to nerd out about all of this with you all.
If you are a member, you get in for free, as always. If you are not a member of Uncharted, you should be. So you should all head on over to UnchartedVet.com/events. Members need to register there. Non-members can register as well. You can join us. It's $99 for the workshop. Or you can check out Uncharted membership, because with your membership, you get access to all of our workshops. Just saying, it might be a deal that you don't want to pass up. But either way, I want to see you at our workshop, February 1st. It is at 8:30 Eastern, 5:30 Pacific, and we're going to spend an hour and a half or so talking about all of these things, and we are definitely going to have fun. So come join us. Now, back to the podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, so let's get into this. We've talked a lot about pizza parties and we talked about why we have problems with appreciation at scale. And we talked about the realities and why this is harder to do than what it sounds like at first blush. What are we doing here, Stephanie Goss?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, because our mailbag writer said, “I'm not looking for those things. I want the deeper, ‘I truly value you for the things that you're doing for our practice. How do I make you realize that you are worth something to the practice?'”
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, so big things for me. You have to get specific. You have to believe. If you want them to feel appreciated and you want to make them feel valued, I do not believe that there's a way to do this that doesn't happen at the individual level. And so you have to make a person feel seen, I think, in order to do appreciation. And that takes time and effort. But it's just, I mean the simple answer is you need to figure out a mechanism to make these doctors seen.
Now the first thing that I will say that unlocks this for a lot of people is making it so that you, the manager, you, the team lead, you, the practice owner, are the only one who's giving appreciation to the doctors. That's your problem. If you're trying to do that, that's the mistake. If you buy into what we're saying about this is making individual people feel seen, that is an extremely difficult, almost impossible job for one person to do once your team hits a certain size. And so the clear answer is empowering other people on the team to share appreciation so that it's not just on you to do this.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, not only so that it's not just on you, because that is, again, a giant rookie mistake gopher hole that I fell down trying to put this on my own shoulders. And let me tell you, it never ends well because there are not enough hours in the day, particularly as your team grows, if you're the only person who's in charge of the things.
I think the other piece of it is that when your team is empowered to show gratitude and to share the value that another human being on the team brings to the group as a whole or to them as an individual, you get individual perspective that you don't get when you're trying to be the one person recognizing it. And what I mean by that is there are a couple of things, activities that I love to do with my team, and one of them that I do fairly regularly is to get them to all write down one thing that they like about the person. And usually I always had teams that were crafty, and so we would decorate a thing that had our name on it and then we would pass it around to the rest of the team.
But I was always struck by the radical difference in what the individuals on the team found value in for that person. And so what I value in you, Andy, and what I might write is probably a radically different perspective than what Jamie might write. Because her relationship with you is different, the way you interact is different, the things you work on is different. And when you imagine it in the clinical setting, what I do as the manager with the associate veterinarians or with my practice owner is radically different than the experience that my CSR might have with you as a doctor or that my technicians who are in the room with you day in and day out or standing in surgery with you for four hours a day, their perspectives are going to be very unique. And when you empower the team as a whole, it adds a whole new layer of where the value is found.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I completely agree with that. So then the question becomes, if everyone sees different things and they have different perspectives, how do we teach people to show appreciation to each other? How do we create this culture, this system where these things happen?
So the first thing I think we have to talk about is how to show appreciation. And there's two pieces to it, right? There is the action that you do to show appreciation, whether that's having a pizza party or bringing flowers or writing a handwritten note or standing up at the staff meeting and telling everyone verbal praise for someone else. There's the action that you take. And there is the clear reason, the example of the behavior that you appreciate the person for.
And so there's two pieces of this. You can give, and this is what I would say to the staff, it's like, “Hey guys, I want a culture of appreciation in our practice. I really want to encourage us. I want you to look around and if there's someone who exhibits a behavior that you really appreciate, you should tell them what that behavior is and say, ‘Thank you for doing this and behavior this way and doing this thing.' Or if the impact or outcome of their actions positively impacts you, then tell them, ‘Because of you, this thing happened. And I want you to know how much it meant to me.'” And those to me are the two reasons. So when you start to get into nuts and bolts, how do we systematize it? What is the behavior that the person did? And what is the specific impact or outcome that they caused?
And so that is why this is hard to do at scale. So when the person says, “How do I make the doctors feel appreciated?” Say, “You need to look at them in the eye and say, ‘This is the behavior that you have exhibited. And I can give you an example of when you did it, that really means the world to me.' Or, ‘This is the outcome. Because of you, these specific things happen. This is how the technicians feel. This is the feedback that I got from the technicians. This is what the technician's job engagement satisfaction survey says, and examples they said, that comes from you. You made that happen. And I can't tell you how much that means to me and how much I value having you here because of things like this.'”
But one of the biggest mistakes we make with appreciation is not drilling into the specifics. We say, “You're great, you're fantastic. I love working with you. You're such a joy.” That's a nice thing to say, but it doesn't make people feel appreciated. And so you got to drill into those two things. What's their behavior? Or what's the impact/slash outcome that they made? And so bam, you have to tell them what it is.
I would argue that you can make people feel appreciated. You can bring them to tears with a pizza party. But it ain't about the pizza. It's about the reason that you're having the pizza party and how you articulate that reason and what impact did they have or what behavior did they do that justified a desperate desire to celebrate them that you manifested this way? And I would say that that does constitute appreciation. There's a difference in gathering people together and saying, “We're having pizza today and ice cream because the front desk as a team accomplished this milestone and this is the impact that they had and how we heard that impact. And so we're celebrating. We're just going to have a celebration because of what they as a team accomplished and what it meant.” And I would argue that those people probably will feel very appreciated. And that is very, very different from, “Hey guys, there's pizza in the break room if you want it.” Full stop.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Yeah, yeah. Totally. I think for me, a big part of this conversation is addressing what might feel like the elephant in the room for a lot of people, which is I think you can lead by example and you can make a decision, like you said, Andy, like I'm going to get better at this thing. I'm going to put some time block time to sit down, look at my calendar because this is important to me. And I can do that as the manager or as the leader. You don't get the rest of the team involved in this without forcing it to happen at first. And what I mean by that is they're not just… I mean, maybe you might have the one in 10 million team that is just like, “This is how we roll,” and somebody on the team kind of starts it and snowballs and everybody's all in from the very beginning.
But for most of the teams, it is “forced” from the start, whether that is we're going to do a team meeting and we're going to do an activity to express the appreciation or, “Hey guys, I made a gratitude board and I hung it in the treatment room, and we're going to take 10 minutes this morning and we're going to write down one caught you being good, one thing, one action that we saw somebody else on the team do this week that we appreciated and why did we appreciate it. And we're going to put it up there.” All of those things, no matter what the activity is, it is something that somebody on the team is taking the lead on and saying, “This is the thing that we're all going to do,” with the ultimate end goal that everybody buys into it and that it becomes something that the lead can be shifted from yourself as the leader to other members of your team.
But it doesn't ever really start that way for most of us. And I think it's important to acknowledge that because I think a lot of the times people ask me this question and they're like, “You just have all these ideas and you seem to love doing this with your team. And I don't feel comfortable with that. I can't think of any ideas like that.” And I think the most powerful thing that I tend to tell people is that I force myself to do it too. It was a thing where I was like, I don't know how they're going to feel about this. They may hate it, they may love it, but we're just going to do it. I'm going to rip the bandaid off. You know what I mean?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. First of all, it's a dance party. Appreciation is a dance party. And I don't know how many of you who tried to get dance parties going, I'll tell you, I have. I have started some dance parties in my life, and you know what that means? That means me dancing-
Stephanie Goss:
That means you're dancing alone.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… by myself for a while until people are, I like to say inspired. Some people feel pity and they're like, “For God sakes, listen, please, someone help him.”
Stephanie Goss:
Someone please dance with Andy so he's not dancing by himself.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And then they come onto the floor out of shame and pity for watching me dance by myself. I don't care. I don't care if they're inspired or just sad and embarrassed for me, but they come onto the dance floor and before along this and joint is popping. I don't know, is that thing? That's it. People are dancing together, lots of them. However, the coolest way you say that is.
Okay, I'm going to bring this home here because I feel like we've danced all around this. Summarizing this. Number one, if you're like, “I really want to do this and I want to do this better.” I would say, go get your Uncharted membership, first of all, because in the uncharted community, we talk about this all the time and constant conversations of what are you doing for your staff? And how do you appreciate these people? And what are some programs that you do? And this gets discussed all the time. You will not find better sounding boards for ideas on creative things to do that will make you excited and engaged and mean something to your team than in the Uncharted online community, you just won't. It's 2023, starting off the year, come on board. See what we do here. We are just absolutely the best at helping people come up with creative ideas to do this stuff and to share experiences that have worked for us.
Number two, Stephanie and I are doing, we're doing our workshop, we're doing our interactive team meeting workshop in February, right?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, we are. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
We'll put a link in the show notes for Uncharted. If you're not a member, then you can still join. If you are a member, it's free. And so come on. But me and Stephanie Goss will be running our workshop. I think we're running it on a Saturday in early February. And it's going to be 100% how to have an active meeting with your staff. And so if you're like, “I don't understand how to get this started, how to get my staff to start to exhibit these behaviors, to start to build a culture, to try to get people to engage with the idea of appreciation across our whole team.” That is a fan-freaking-tastic workshop, and it's in February, so you've got time to get registered and get there, but that's got to be on the radar. Number three is you got to put it on your schedule. Like you and I have both said, I think we all to imagine that we are going to be these beautiful in touch people who don't need to write down things to remember, and we just organically appreciate people. I can't tell you-
Stephanie Goss:
When I was 20, maybe.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… Yeah, maybe. Not maybe. I wish. I was completely when I was 20. I was a 20-year-old dude.
Stephanie Goss:
No, I mean, I had a better memory and I could retain more information in my brain. Now, forget it, I can't remember what I did this morning.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. Well, it's funny, I had a sharper mind, but no inclination to help people. And now that I have a big inclination to help people, I don't have the sharp mind anymore.
Stephanie Goss:
Exactly.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But I can't tell you how many times I have committed to, I'm going to write people notes of appreciation. And for two weeks I just bang them out and then the notes stop. And a year later I'm like, “Let's do that again.” And then two weeks and it falls off. But if it's important, it goes on the calendar. And that can be the first of every month, did you appreciate someone on your team? Every Monday the first thing says find someone and tell them why they are important to you. Put it on the calendar because important things go on the calendar. The last thing is-
Stephanie Goss:
And-
Dr. Andy Roark:
… sorry, go ahead.
Stephanie Goss:
… well, to that point, I think one of the things scientifically that has been proven with appreciation and gratitude is that it's nice when the grand gestures or big things come out of nowhere, you definitely feel a greater sense of like, “Oh, wow, they really noticed that big thing that I did.” But I think the little things are equally important. And one of the, I don't remember where it came from, but when I was very first a manager, heard the story about a manager who would take five pennies and put them in their pocket. And their goal was to transfer one penny from one pocket to the other when they gave expressed appreciation to somebody on their team every day. And so for me, that was really powerful because I struggled with those. I had, like you, the best of intentions. Like I'm going to sit down, I'm going to write these notes.
And for the really big things, making sure that they were recognized for birthdays and anniversaries and tech week and stuff like that, I was usually pretty good at that. But the in between would be where I'd be like, ooh, I'm going to write a thank you note and stick a Starbucks card in, and I could do it for one person. But then scaling that on a regular basis was the hard part. And so for me, getting even more granular and small really helped in the sense that what is one thing that I can do today? And how do you physically remind yourself every day, whether it's putting it on your calendar so that you get the alert, you get the alarm and you just do the thing. Or whether it's putting pennies in your pocket and switching them from one side to the other, or some sort of physical reminder on a regular basis, daily or weekly, where we are doing something to stay in touch with our team.
Because I'll tell you, when you try and do it on a bigger scale, this is a rookie mistake that I made over and over and over again as a manager, where I was like, oh, I'm just going to sit down once a month and I'm going to do the thing because then I'll just block a bigger chunk of time and I'll get everybody knocked out at once. And whether it was reviews, whether it was one-on-ones was writing thank you notes, is a pain in the ass to do everybody all at once and it never works out the way that you think that it's going to.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, the employee month program was the classic one for me. I don't like that program. I don't like that program because-
Stephanie Goss:
Yet we have one.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… No. Well, do we really? Is it a program when I, Andy Roark, owner of the company-
Stephanie Goss:
Are employee of the month every month?
Dr. Andy Roark:
… name myself employee of the month, every single month? Is that a program? You keep it going. You're like, “Who's employee of the month this month?” Once again, it's me. You know why? Because it's a stupid program. It's a stupid program. And I'm not going to do the thing where I'm like… Because what happens is, here's how the employee of the month program works, it's like, at first it's great because we genuinely show appreciation to people and we're like, “This person did this great thing this month.” And then at some point it becomes perfunctory and we just basically we can [inaudible 00:50:39]-
Stephanie Goss:
We have to check the box.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… and put them up there. And people, it falls right into the problem that we said at the very beginning is people feel like they don't know what they did to be employee of the month, other than it's their turn and the obvious people have already been picked, and now here we are. And it loses its value and it loses value for the people who genuinely did stuff that was worthy of appreciation. Maybe some people can keep it going. I have just seen it fail again and again and again. And so I just give myself employee of the month, except for a very, very rare circumstance, which I think, now you may laugh, I think it's genius. One, I get the vast majority of the awards, which I'm going to be honest for a second and say I accept the employee of the month award for myself with great enthusiasm and pride again and again and again. But on the rare occasion that one of my employees can take the award away from me-
Stephanie Goss:
Tyler Grogan.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… it means something to them. It has talked about for months after, “Remember when Tyler Grogan was employee of the month.” And people are like, “What?” It happened.
Stephanie Goss:
That one time.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That one time. But, I mean, it was monumental. It's on her CV for the rest of her life, because she did it.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay, you said you had three things.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I do.
Stephanie Goss:
So [inaudible 00:51:57] the time, what's your third one?
Dr. Andy Roark:
The last one is you got to model the behavior and ask for help. It's a dance party, you got to dance first and you have to invite people to dance with you. And that's it. And so being like, “Hey, I want appreciation to happen. I'll be in my office with the door closed if you need me.” It doesn't work. You have to get out there and model the behavior.
And then the other thing too is, and maybe this is silly, I don't think that people feel empowered to tell other people that they're appreciated. I think it's awkward, and they think it's weird. It's going to be too personal. Is this person going to think that it's strange that I'm telling them why I value them and why I appreciate them? I'm not their boss. And I think one of the things is, it's a cultural thing. It's something that you can say at the top, this is our norm here is, tell people what you appreciate about them.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I love it when our team, I'll be honest and say, I love when people come up and say, “Hey, I really appreciate, Andy, when you did this thing for me or for our team.” That really, I don't know, it fills my cup. And I do feel appreciated when people do that. And I think a lot of times people are like, “Well, you don't have to appreciate the boss.” I'm like, “Well, I mean, I'm just a human being over here and I do like it.” But I think people, I think they need to feel invited to do that sometimes in teams, and that may sound silly, but it doesn't hurt anything just to say, “Guys, I want to have a culture where people are appreciated. And when you see someone doing something, I want you to tell them.” And you can empower them in different ways. And there's things like Bonusly and stuff like that that people use to try to put some oomf behind it, but honestly, I don't know if that stuff's really necessary if people just feel empowered to do it.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, I think for me, it starts with you have to allow them to be human, and you have to be human. And a big part of it is we have to get to know each other. You can force the dance party, you can do the thing. And it's easier to drag somebody onto the dance floor if you already have some vulnerability and you feel like, I can make an ass out of myself with this person, I feel okay with that. It's way easier, especially if you are an introvert. And so I think for me, a big part of it is being human, getting to know each other on a human level and being intentional about that.
And so for me, the keys to success start with getting the team to know each other and involving them all in the process. And so there are some things that are absolute must haves for me in terms of getting to know the team and onboarding as a leader that have to do with asking them who they are as a person, what do they like, and getting to know them. So everybody who starts on my team gets a getting to know you quiz, survey. I want to know, are you Josie and you love narwhals, right? What is your favorite treat? Are you a salty or sweet person? We're talking about super basic stuff, how do I check the boxes on a way that allows me to individualize it for you? And also how to find commonality in the team? Because now if I know that one person's favorite color is purple and another person on the team's favorite color is purple, now I can start to create shared experience for those people in the things that we do.
Right now it's about find another person on the team, if we're doing an activity, find another person who likes this thing as you. Those human connections make the vulnerability when it comes to showing appreciation, particularly for the meaningful things and the things that people value about one another, makes that significantly easier because there's a foundational relationship there.
And so making that a part of your onboarding process, having your team go through the languages of appreciation in the workplace course, having them all take the quiz, getting to know what languages they all speak. Are they a person who likes getting the gifts or are they a person for whom, getting praised, hearing the words, you love hearing words from the team, “Hey Andy, this is a thing that you did that I really appreciated.” And for me, I like quality time and you know that about me. And you will make an effort to do something that involves us, like, “Hey, I'm going to call you and we're going to have extra time together to just kind of hang out because I appreciated this thing that you do.” That goes much further for me. Same way that hitting somebody who likes the gifts or the service. “Can we do something together? Can I do something for you? Can I take care of something for you?” So learning about the languages of appreciation I think is really important.
And then for me, the devil is in the details in terms of how do I make this repeatable? So for me, the second step of this as a leader is to watch how they respond to those various expressions of value and appreciation. So if we're doing a group activity, I try and see, did we give someone public praise? And they really were uncomfortable with that? Okay, noted. Let's not do that again. But can I find other activities that I can do with the team that can allow them to maybe read what other people think about them instead of hearing it in front of the group, right? It's about observing the human behavior that comes from the team as a whole.
And then the third piece of that for me is then figuring out how do I repeat that on an individual level to stay connected with them and let them stay connected with each other. So if you aren't doing things with your team on a regular basis, find a way to make time in your schedule to have fun with them and make this part of your normal process the same way you would everybody learning about heartworm disease or safety protocols. It's got to be a part of your culture.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Speaking of part of your culture, our culture is ending episodes in one hour, and that's a resolution more than a culture. It's an aspiration. It's an aspiration. But we are out outside. Guys, take care of yourselves. We'll see you next time.
Stephanie Goss:
Have a great week everybody.
Well gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. And as always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbox and answer this question. And I would really love to see more things like this come through the mail bag. 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 mail bag 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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