This week on the podcast…
This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice management geek Stephanie Goss are picking up where we left off after last week. If you haven't listened to Episode #240 – STOP RIGHT HERE and go listen.
Stephanie recently was asked a question by a fellow manager who is newer to their management position “What lesson(s) do you wish you had learned about being a leader BEFORE you became a leader? Andy and Stephanie got SO into this topic that this is part two because we just couldn't fit all the amazing conversation into one episode. Let's get into this…
You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
Submit your questions here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag
Upcoming Events
December 7-9, 2023: Uncharted Practice Leaders Summit
Episode Transcript
Stephanie Goss:
Hey, everybody. I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. Andy and I are back this week to continue a conversation that we previously started. Now this episode is a little bit different than our normal. We got a question from a colleague who wanted to know, “Hey, what are some of the most important lessons that you and Andy wish that you had learned before you became a leader?” We thought it was such a wonderful question. Both of us had extensive lists and actually I think that we wound up talking about not a whole lot that was on the original list because we got so into the discussion. We had so much fun making this. I'm just going to say let's get into it.
Speaker 2:
And now the Uncharted Podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Asnd we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Stephanie “Part Two” Goss.
Stephanie Goss:
That was such a cop out.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I thought that was great. I was like-
Stephanie Goss:
I was like, what great song lyric does he have for this?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I know. You're like, ha, ha.
Stephanie Goss:
There's no.
Dr. Andy Roark:
He's going to have to get real creative.
Stephanie Goss:
This part.
Dr. Andy Roark:
For this part two.
Stephanie Goss:
Part two.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Episode of the podcast.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. How's it going, Andy Roark?
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's good. It's really good. Yeah, man. Holy crapes. A lot going on. We are in the swing of things now. We got a lot of stuff going on. Enjoyed talking with you earlier today about some logistics, some hotel management and a room arrangement for the Practice Leaders Summit, which is open to practice owners and practice managers only at the end of the year. That's right, it'll be only practice owners and practice managers. Those are the only job types that we're going to take. They're going to separate and have a day to themselves in only manager group and an only owner group, and then they're going to come back together and do a manager-owner working collaboratively type day.
It's going to be really good. Then there's some people who are like, “I work at a practice. We don't have a practice owner.” That's totally fine. We've got a work around for that, but that's going to be the idea is separate groups. My idea is to try to have too many conferences at the same time and then bring them together for this magical everybody back together taking what they used in their separate sessions and doing something awesome with it at the end of the event. So that's what's going to happen.
Stephanie Goss:
And my idea is that the most valuable time we spend out of the clinic is when we work together. So you're going to take your idea and my idea, and we're going to mash it up. We're going to do work time, and we're going to have separate group conversation time. We're going to make a new baby project. I am so pumped for this, and I imagine some of our listeners who are going, “Well, but I'm a practice leader, but I'm not a practice owner and I'm not a practice manager.” We hear you. We are working on practice leadership is you and I's jam, and we want to continue to create spaces. So this is just the starting point. In December, we are starting with our owners and our managers and bringing them together. But fear not, if you do not fall into one of those two categories, because we have got all kinds of stuff coming and I am so excited.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm super pumped. We're going to start. We are really bracing out, and we are going to go hard on our medical directors and our team leads. So we've got virtual events for them, and then next year we'll see what happens. I'd like to keep rolling people together.
Stephanie Goss:
We're going to be in Greenville in December as we do, which is beautiful. I love how Greenville gets into the holiday spirit, and you and I are getting ready to take our show on the road a little bit.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That's right.
Stephanie Goss:
So we've got some new events this year, one of which is happening in the fall. There'll be more info coming, but we are going out on the road. So if you're like, I haven't been able to get to Greenville, but maybe-
Dr. Andy Roark:
What? Uncharted?
Stephanie Goss:
I would like to do Uncharted on the West Coast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
What? On the West Coast?
Stephanie Goss:
It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I told you guys. This year, bonkers.
Stephanie Goss:
We're shaking it up.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh man.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay, so you called me Stephanie Goss, Stephanie “Part Two” Goss because we are picking up where we left off earlier today when you and I were recording.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
But I don't know how that shakes out with our episodes, but you and I recently did an episode because I got asked by a newer manager in our Uncharted community, “Hey, I would love …” Even though it doesn't fit your mailbag format, I would love to hear you and Andy talk about some of the lessons you wish you had learned before you became a leader or some of the things that you wish that you knew or learned with hindsight. If you haven't listened to that episode, you should go back and listen to it because we had so much fun and we got about a quarter of the way through. I think we both looked at each other. It's kind of weird how we can read each other's minds now at this point sometimes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
We both gave each other that look of like, “Oh, this is going to be two parts because we're never going to get through all of this.” So here you go, part two.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Here we are.
Stephanie Goss:
Here we are.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yes.
Stephanie Goss:
We're going to pick up where we left off and talk about some more of the lessons that we wish we had learned.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I've got one.
Stephanie Goss:
All right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I've got one. So just hear me all the way out before anybody reacts.
Stephanie Goss:
All right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay.
Stephanie Goss:
Is that me included?
Dr. Andy Roark:
That's definitely you included.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. okay I'm going to sit on my hands and zip my mouth.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That's 100% of you included.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay. I'm listening.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I could see you not liking what I'm going to say.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Ultimately I think you'll come around, but I think your initial reaction may be-
Stephanie Goss:
Challenge accepted.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. Caveat. You need to care about how your team is feeling, but not that much. Okay. Not that much. I say that not in like … okay. It probably depends on who you are as a person, but I would tell you again, I'm giving advice, things that I wish that I knew before I got started.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I always allowed myself to hear and internalize the feelings of my team and the people that I was leading. That is good because we want people to be heard, and we definitely want to empathize with the people that we're leading and understand them. All those things are true.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
However, for me, that led to wild fluctuation in my experience day to day. It took me a decade to realize that somebody is always going to be upset about something. If you internalize the feelings of everyone who comes into your office, you are going to be manic. You are going to be on this high and low rollercoaster all the time. Honestly, let's be honest, it's usually low to horribly low to terrified. It's usually fear to anger, to frustration, back to fear.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Because people are like, “Andy, I need to interrupt you and share my positive feelings with you.” That doesn't happen.
Stephanie Goss:
Once in a blue moon.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Once in a blue moon.
Stephanie Goss:
Somebody comes in and is like, “Andy, I'm so excited to tell you about this thing I just did.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right. But there's two reasons for this. The first one is if you just take in the feelings of the people that you're leading, you will go bonkers because it will just be this constant emotional rush. It's like if you were to internalize. I guess this is a good metaphor, it's like if you were to internalize the feelings of the pet owners you're taking care of. I think every doctor knows that's a bad idea because it's exhausting. It is a path to burnout. You cannot feel the euthanasia the way that the owner feels the euthanasia. If you do, I'm worried about your longevity of this profession because you just can't. You just can't put that on yourself every day. Can't. It's the same thing with staff.
Stephanie Goss:
That doesn't mean that you can't care.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Stephanie Goss:
Because a lot of people would go, “Well, what do you mean I can't care about my patients and I can't …”
Dr. Andy Roark:
No.
Stephanie Goss:
Hear you. That's not what you're saying.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that's why it's a good analogy, right? Because no one would be like, Andy doesn't care about the patients that he euthanizes. Anyone who knows me knows that's not true. I cannot internalize the emotions of those people and make them my own emotions or it will drown me. That's how I think everybody is. But I think that you put your finger right on it. It is a hundred percent possible for me to say I am not going to empathize, emotionally empathize, but I can still care, but I don't need to feel those feelings. So I think that that's key just because … part one is because of the volume of feelings you're going to get because everybody's got feelings, and they're going to have struggles and you can't … it sucks that throughout the course of the day, say half the team has some a negative experience, if every one of those experiences then comes together and gets handed to you, you're toast.
Because no one person should have those experiences just piled on top of them, but a lot of people do. So I had that experience just because it comes at you so fast. That's one. The other reason that I didn't understand until much later on is people react in the moment, and they get mad.they come and they bring to you this in the moment emotion. At least for me, I didn't cognitively put that together as a, “This is an in the moment motion.” Right? The truth is if your staff gets hacked off at the front desk, the texts are mad at the front desk. They come to you and they're like, “This is a disaster. Nothing is right. Nobody can get along. We're not communicating. They don't seem to know what's going on.” The truth is if you said, “Great, let's talk about this tomorrow morning. I'm going to make some notes. We're going to meet up tomorrow morning and I just want to sort this out.”
Tomorrow morning, they are not going to feel that way. They might have some of those ideas, and there might be validity to what they're saying, but the whole, “This business is crashing. Our practice is a sham. We say that we care, that we have compassion, and clearly we don't.” And blah. All the emotional stuff has generally gone away. But I was never good at that in that when people come to me and something bad has just happened and they're like, “I am so mad.” I at some level believe that they went home and continued to be mad. They were mad the next day. They just weren't saying anything about it. The truth is that's not how emotions are. People tend to come to you when their emotions are at their zenith. So you are seeing them at the height of their emotional output. That's not how they're living their life, but I thought that it was at some level.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I was like, boy, when I saw her, she was so upset. It's like, yeah, she was upset for about 10 minutes, Andy. Then she kind of moved on. That doesn't mean that you're going to not care about this. It doesn't mean you're not going to wade in and fix it, but this person is not going home and sobbing themselves to sleep in a puddle that you have to fix this immediately or else they're going to leave. I think I thought that it was at some level. Does that make sense?
Stephanie Goss:
It totally does. I think the other benefit of that too, so I have yet again, things that were not on my list, so I'll give you the one that goes to this and then I want to go back to where you started.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Stephanie Goss:
So going along with this, I think the reality for me was I had to create. When I was a young manager, I am … soaked up everybody's emotions very similarly to how you were talking, both clients and team. It was overwhelming for me at times. So I also have a very fiery temper. I have three brothers, and I am scrappy and I learned to fight early and often. So I have a temper. So one of the most painful lessons that I had to learn as a leader was to create the space for myself to have the 24-hour rule because I did a lot of being the person who tried to deal with the things, including my own problems in the moment, emotion like you're talking about.
When you're at the pinnacle of your anger or upset or frustration or sadness, whatever the emotions are that you're feeling and you try and deal with it, usually is not … you might get to the end result that you need to get to, but it is a messy winding road to get there because you're still processing in realtime. One of the most helpful tools that I learned, again better living through therapy, was this rule for myself that is hard and fast, which is I have to give myself the space of 24 hours.
What that means is I try and walk away from emotionally charged situations, whether it's someone else bringing me their emotionally charged situation or me bringing myself to the place where I'm going to deal with an emotionally charged situation and process through how do I actually feel about this? Because to your point, maybe I do go home and cry myself to sleep about it. Maybe I am that upset or maybe I go to bed and I'm just like … I wake up the next day and I'm like, I still want to shank somebody. I am that hacked off about it. That tells me that I need to deal with that problem. But if I wake up … To your point, if I wake up and I'm like, “I'm pissed off about it. I would really like this thing to change in the future, but I'm not screaming mad and ready to smack somebody the way that I was yesterday when I was in the clinic.” Right? I've moved past that place.
Getting to that point of resolution is going to be so much easier because I've dealt with that emotion. So the 24 hour-rule for me was really key. I think you taught me to one up that even more in terms of not only processing the emotional situations, but allowing yourself some time and space to let your team figure it out. Because I was always the one who was like, “Oh, they have a problem, like my job is to help them, so let me help them with the problem.”
You taught me the lesson of don't answer your phone. Don't answer the text. Don't answer the slack message right away and give them the time and space. It was amazing to me. I thought, well then I'm just going to have a whole stack of problems tomorrow, Andy, to deal with or at the end of my shift to deal with. What I found was that you were right. I did say that on record so you can keep that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm like, holy moly.
Stephanie Goss:
Dustin is going to create the best Easter egg I've maybe ever have given Andy. Andy Roark, you were right. That when you give them the space, a lot of the time they figure it out. They either calm down, and they have a more coherent like, “Hey, I need your help and here's what I need your help with.” Or they're like, “No, I got it. I figured it out, nevermind.” So giving myself the 24-hour rule and applying it also to the don't respond to every message right away was really key to me finding balance as a leader because there's always something.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Give them 10 minutes and text back, do you still need help with this and see what happens. Usually the answer will be, “No, we figured it out. No, I got someone else to take care of it.” Great. Okay, good. Yeah. It's funny, sort of wading back into this for a second. There's emotional empathy, and there's cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy is feeling the feelings of others. Cognitive empathy is understanding how that person feels.
So we were talking about euthanasia before, cognitive empathy is what we want. It's like, I understand the experience this person is having, but I don't need to feel it that way. I go back to that as far as you're talking about being an emotion sponge and soaking it up. I think that's really what I'm trying to put my finger on is cognitive empathy is important when you're leading a team is to say, I understand that this person is being affected.
I guess here's the other part when I said, “You should care about how your team feels, but not that much. You should care about what your team needs, and you should care about that a lot.” So when someone comes and they're like, I'm so mad because this happened, that doesn't mean when I say you shouldn't care too much. You're like, “No, I should get over it.” Like, no, you should look into this, and we need to figure this out. However, I don't need to take in that knowledge. I need to fix this.
With the emotions tied to it that this is horrible, and people are upset, and everything's on fire, and the whole team is going to boycott and leave tomorrow morning because they're not. I'm going to deal with this, but I don't need to have that fear, anger, frustration that someone else brought to me while I do it. So I think that's true. To your part, I like where you went with this as far as the 24-hour rule because I have emotions. I really like that too. I think what I would say … so I don't have a temper. I really don't have a temper. I don't tend to get mad. It happens, but I am not calm. I would not say I'm calm. I would say I don't tend to get angry. That's not usually how I go. Anyway, sorry. We'll take that again.
Stephanie Goss:
You're like, no.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No. Do you think I get angry?
Stephanie Goss:
No, I don't think you get angry. I don't think you-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. When you said you're really calm and then you didn't say anything else, I was like, “Am I?”
Stephanie Goss:
No. That's how I know. Because you don't get angry in the sense. When I get angry, I get loud, I get intense, I yell. I have brothers, I like to hit things. I truly have learned to manage my anger as I've become an adult. You, I can tell at least … I can count on six years of working together, I can probably count on two fingers the numbers of times that I've seen you actually where I think you were angry. You are very calm, which is abnormal for you. You are not a calm person.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I need quiet. Okay.
Stephanie Goss:
You get very serious and calm. It's just this is how it's going to be. I can tell that it's not like … that's the scary Andy. It's like, oh, okay. You're normally very expressive, like the opposite of that. So I don't think it's like, “Oh, you're a calm person.” I think that's how it comes out when you're angry.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, yeah, exactly right. You're spot on. But when you said, “Oh, you're calm.” I'm like, “Wait a second.”
Stephanie Goss:
He was like, “Has she ever worked with me ?”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Me? I thought you were being facetious. I was like, “Hey, is this me?” Anyway, no, you're exactly right. I'm glad that you say you can count on two fingers because it does not tend to happen.
Stephanie Goss:
No. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's not how I roll.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
However, I do … obviously .. that doesn't mean I'm a robot and I absolutely do get affected. So there are things that happen to me or something will happen to the team. Whereas other people might get really angry, I won't necessarily get angry, but I will be affected. I will ruminate on it in a way that's not productive sometimes. So I will fall into that. The 24-hour rule, I think it's really smart. That's why we talk about … when we talk about safe conversations, can you sit next to this person? Can you smile at them? I think it's right there.
The thing for me that I didn't … the skill I did not have when I was a young leader that I got later on that's really been valuable for me is the ability to get present in the moment. This is not going to be a sales pitch for meditation, but that is what some people do is mindfulness stuff.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
For me, I had to realize that rumination is not good for me, and I had to come up with a couple of things that helped me to get out of that trap of just fruitlessly burning my mental gas as fast as I could.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, because let's be real, you end up in a cardboard box in the woods, and so you need a coping mechanism to get yourself out of that box.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I'm going to talk about the cardboard box in the woods in a second, where that comes from, because that's a big thing for me is the cardboard box in the woods. But I do, but I have that coping mechanism to get out of that. So the big things for me, the first thing I would say is everybody's got to find their own thing.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right? Everyone's brain is different. So I'll tell you what works for me. It probably won't work for you or it won't be the best thing for you. You'll have to find your own thing. But every leader should figure out how to get present and set that stuff down. If you cannot set that stuff down, if you're like, “Nope, I get anxious. I get worried. I start ruminating. I get stuck in this toxic fake argument in my head, you've got to figure out how to get out of that.”
So everybody's got to find their own way. So for me, one of the big things that I came to was … there's definitely some mindfulness stuff. Right? Just taking a moment, getting present, paying attention to your breath, stuff like that is really good. But then I got into this series of questions that is helpful where I will just ask myself, “What am I doing right now? What should I be doing right now?” Then I will look at the problem and say, “Do I have a plan for this problem?” If I don't have a plan for the problem, then I will start making the plan. That switching into action mode is huge for getting me out of my head and moving in a productive way. So what am I doing right now? Do I have a plan for this problem that's clearly bothering me? If I don't have a plan, I'm going to make it.
If I do have a plan, then I'm going to say, “Am I doing the plan right now?” If the answer is yes, then I'm done. And that actually is my path out is, yep, I have a plan. I am doing the plan. I am having a meeting with this person tomorrow morning when they arrive at the clinic, and I have texted them. They said, “Great, see you then.” So the plan is set and I am doing the plan, which means there is no reason for me to continue in this head space. Do I know what I'm going to say tomorrow? If I don't, and that's bothering me, then part of the plan needs to be prepping for my meeting tomorrow, figuring out what I'm going to say. And I go, great. Then I take action again. I'm sure it sounds really dumb.
Stephanie Goss:
No.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But for me, it was just a big deal of, “What am I doing now? Do I have a plan for this?” Yes. Great. Then I should feel good because I'm doing the plan. If it's like, yeah, but now I don't exactly know what I'm going to say in this meeting, great, switch that back to action. But I have found that I can take action, make a plan, write it down on paper. Sometimes living in my head is not enough. I need to make it into something I can see.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, yes. Same.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But now I'm taking action and getting this out of my brain. Guys, that's just been a huge thing for me. Mix that with a little bit of mindfulness, some breathing, maybe a post-work exercise session, walk the dog, something like that. But I have gotten much better at being able to put that stuff aside and not just grind the gears and grind the gears and grind the gears when I'm troubled.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Yeah, I am two ways very similar to you in that regard. I am super hippie, for anybody who knows me pretty well. So a big thing for me besides the breathing, and that's actually been a challenge for me because I don't pause, and I don't slow down, and I don't breathe. So learning how to be intentional about breathing and some breath exercises was really helpful. But also I practice what's called grounding. So for me, what is really, really helpful is I go outside. I put my feet on the ground, I take off my shoes, I take off my socks. I don't go where we let the dogs pee, but I find some ground at the clinic and just sink my toes into the ground and just breathe. That makes a world of difference if I have the capacity to then go for a walk or get myself out.
But there's something about, even though we don't get a lot of sunshine in Washington, just being out in the outside and connecting with the ground, it's hippie woowoo. It's not for everybody, but it makes a huge difference for me. Then your other one was writing it down, and I found an outline or a template that was shared with a practice, a consultant that we worked at my very first practice, and I've kind of stuck with it.
It goes along with our safe, but there's a series of questions that I ask myself like, “What meaning have I attached to this problem? What am I trying to figure out? What am I actually worried about? What else could this mean? Is there information I don't have?” I forced myself to go through kind of a flow chart to write the things down, to figure out, okay, ultimately to land where you landed, which is what is my plan? How am I going to deal with it? Do I need more information? What do I need to be able to move forward? Is that moving forward with having a hard conversation? Is it dealing with an emotion? What is that plan? But the writing it down and getting it out of my head really makes a big difference.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I completely agree. Everybody, like I said, I love the know you talked about grounding. Maybe it's yoga. Maybe it's mindfulness. There's a million different kinds of mindfulness. I love your idea of grounding, but what is your thing that can get you out of your head and just present in the moment so you can let some emotions roll on by and then go on and not carry this stuff around with you? So I think that's huge.
Stephanie Goss:
I want to go back to where you started a little bit because one of the lessons, and again, this was not on my list, but I love where you went with it, so I'm going to roll with it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Stephanie Goss:
One of the most important lessons I think that I learned as a leader, I learned from Legally Blonde. I'm just going to put that out there because it's going to make you laugh, and it's going to give you fodder for teasing me. So in the movie, Legally Blonde, Elle's sorority sisters, they have a snap cup. It is bedazzled and jewelled. And the snap cup idea is that you write down positive things. I remember the very first time I brought the snap cup concept to my practice. I had the cup and I bedazzled it, and I glittered it because that's me. I brought it to my team. I was like, “Listen, we need to find the good.”
It was an uphill battle at first because I didn't have the tools to get team by. I didn't know a lot of the lessons that I know now, but I just knew that there was something so inspiring to me about the positivity of what is the good and where can we capture the good. When you said care about your people, but don't care that much, for me, it was your point about there will be something wrong for somebody all day long. If all I hear as the leader, it is very rare that the team comes, that I am one of the first people to hear someone on the team come to you and say, “Oh, I just learned how to do this thing or I just did this.” I got to the place where they wanted to come tell me those things.
As you get further and further up the leadership chain, you're removed from that, and so I wasn't there to celebrate those victories. I wasn't on the floor all the time, so I didn't see a lot of that. I spent so much time hearing the problems and none of the good. For me, this snap cup was a way for me to intentionally learn about what is good about our jobs and be reminded not only for myself, but to help the team remind each other about why do we like each other. Because it's really easy to get caught up in the, oh my gosh, the techs aren't doing what I need them to do, or oh my gosh, the CSRs are a pain in the today. It's really easy to get caught up in that frustration because we are people dealing with people all day long.
There will always be problems. There will always be conflict. There will always be emotion. It's really easy for any one of us, regardless of our position in the hospital to sink into that problem or the negative side. The snap cup really, really helped say what was a good thing that happened. What do I want to say thank you to somebody for? What made me laugh today? The more and more that we were intentional about it, the better I learned how to see the team and to stop seeing just the problems.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's another … I'm so glad you said that. I put that down with sort of the mindfulness part of getting present in the moment. Another part of that for me is knowing that we tend to remember the negative stuff. Right? It's called negativity biases sticks to us. Part of being mindful is like, what's going on right now? The other part is, “What is good today?” I think that part of that's getting present and putting things aside. It's really easy to not stop for a minute and say, “What was good?” I don't have a whole lot of woo woo therapy type stuff that I do, but I do have one thing that I have done for years, and it is journal. But it's not traditional. It's not journaling where I write in. All I do is the whole notebook is just the date and three things that were good today, and that's it.
If I have more than three, I keep going. But for the most part, I want three things. I have that notebook by my bed. I can just look and I look at that notebook, and I believe I have a good life because of all the things that are there. They're not the things that you necessarily think of. They're just things like, I had a great cup of coffee with Stephanie Goss today and really enjoyed our conversation. Man, if you look back at the end of the day and you are like, I had a great cup of coffee with Stephanie Goss, and I enjoyed the conversation. I went for a beautiful walk at lunchtime, and I had dinner with my family, and my daughter cooked it. You're like, that's it. That's a simple, stupid … I think you're living a good life.
To me, to be able to look back and objectively see, oh, there are a lot of good things here, that has been a big deal as far as me feeling good and just … I don't know. It's one of those things now at this point, I just kind of enjoy it. I flip back through that a lot because you'll look back at a date and you'll be like, “Oh man. About four months ago we had those people over for dinner. It was really wonderful,” or “Oh man, I remember the last time I had coffee with Stephanie was six weeks ago. We should do that again.” I don't know. It kind of fits in that whole sort of mindfulness and holding onto what's good.
Stephanie Goss:
Hey, friends. Are you a veterinary practice owner? No? Well, are you a veterinary practice manager? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, I want you to keep listening. If it's not, yes you can take a quick pee break or get some water before we head back into the podcast because I've got something for my practice owners and my practice managers. We are hosting our first ever Practice Leaders Summit. If you're not an owner or manager and you're still listening, and you're thinking, “But I'm a practice leader,” don't worry, we've got you. We've got more events coming, but this first one is happening in December in Greenville, South Carolina.
It will be decorated for the holidays. We are going to come together. Now we're going to come together, but we're going to be separate. What are you talking about, Stephanie? Well, Andy and I have planned a whole bunch of new content with our team, and we are excited to bring managers together to talk to other managers, and owners together to talk to other practice owners.
Then we're going to put everybody together, and we are going to get to work. That's right. We are going to work on our practices. Our ideal hope would be that manager and owner combos can come together, but we recognize that won't work for some practices. So we have plans to hook you up with other owners and managers, if you're coming solo on either side. So don't worry, but don't delay.
Head over to the website at UnchartedVet.com/Events because we want to see you there, and that means you have to sign up because this will sell out. Don't miss your chance to come work on your practice with your practice owner, with your practice manager. You can find out more information, including a letter that you can use to convince your boss if you are a practice manager or maybe practice owners, some reverse psychology to use on your manager to get them to come to Greenville with you. Again, it's all up at the website at UnchartedVet.com/Events. And now back to the podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Let's flip gears for a second. I want to talk about the box in the woods. So we joke a lot that my fear is always no matter what happens, it's going to go bad, and I'm going to end up living in a box in the woods. That's where all of this cascades. There'll be a one-star review, and there'll be a cascade of events that leads to complete financial ruin. I get divorced and my children won't talk to me anymore, and I live in a box by the woods or in the woods. That's where things go. So we joke about that a lot, but the box in the woods comes from a real place. It comes from here, and this is sort of a part of the leadership advice, stuff that I wished I had understood early on. We're all running a hardware system that was built a million years ago by our cavemen ancestors.
The way that our brains are wired, we are wired for survival 30,000 years ago. That is how we are wired. So there is parts of our brain that are just set up this way to keep us alive in a nutrient scarce environment.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Which is why, I call it the caveman. The caveman wants to drive. We all have a caveman or cavewoman. The caveman wants to drive. So if you let the caveman drive, you get wild behaviors that a caveman would like. My caveman believe … People are like, “Listen to your body.” My body believes that the pizza tree blooms once a year, and so we better get it while it's here right now today. My body thinks that famine could come at any time and completely ignores the fact that I am never more than 10 feet away from food throughout my entire day. It's like, “Nope, famine's coming.” It's like that.
So a couple of things the caveman cares about that I think are really important. One of them is status. Right? Status is important to the caveman. Status is important because in tribes, well, what happened is if you had a lower status, you had limited access to resources and to mates. If you were removed from the tribe because your status became too low, you were dead. That was it. A person by themselves without a tribe was dead. So status matters and being included in the tribe, it matters. I say that because for me, understanding the caveman means going, “Oh, my brain thinks that if I don't have high status with this group of people, I might get kicked out of the tribe,” and that's not true, but that's the emotional experience that we have is we're like, oh, I need to virtue signal at these people or I need to make sure my status is good.
All of the stuff when I say, “Oh man, it's important that people like me or I really struggle with making everyone happy or making people happy,” that's caveman pushing that lever, going, “Hey, we need some status here. We need to make sure we're in a good position in the tribe. Make sure everybody likes you because you're more likely to be able to eat first and to have a mate and to not get kicked out, to freeze to death.” So the caveman drives that desire for status is baked in. The fear, it's more important the fear of losing status is baked in. The other part of that that's related is in the caveman brain, for a lot of us, failure when you're a caveman means death, like you are dead. Our modern mind hasn't changed that much. So we still attach these 30,000-year-old stakes to modern events that do not carry those stakes at all.
So I joke about the idea that I'm going to get a one-star review, and it's going to end up with me in a box in the woods. That's not really what my caveman brain says. My caveman brain really says, “You are going to die.” That's what it says. If this fails, you are going to die, and that is so ridiculous. But at some level, basal lizard brain level, that's what my body believes. So when I joke and say, “I'm going to live in the box in the woods,” what's really happening behind my eyes is I am calling that out. I'm going, the idea is if I fail, if my employees decide they don't like me, they're all going to leave, and I'm going to starve to death and no one's going to like me and I am going to die.” That's what my caveman says.
You go, that's ridiculous. Of course when you lay that down and you call it out, you know it's ridiculous. Then that fear goes away. You go, that's ridiculous. None of that's going to happen. But boy, if you don't call it out, and you don't catch it, I have a hundred percent seen people reacting emotionally to basic HR situations as if their life, they are scared to the level that you go, “None of this is worth what you're talking about.” None of this is worth the weight and the fear that you're giving to it. I just say, I've seen doctors be like, she's really angry. I'm like, okay, what does that mean for you? Well, she might write a one-star review. I'm like, “Are you going to die from that?” No. She might file a board complaint. And I'll go, “That would be a crappy couple of months.”
Stephanie Goss:
But did you die?
Dr. Andy Roark:
But don't get me wrong, but you will not die. What if they took your license away? Seriously, what if they took your license away? Then you will do a different job, and you will not die. Again, I bring that up. These are all weird constructs that I have in my mind and things I've thought a lot about. I don't know if they're helpful to other people. I hope that they are. But the caveman mind of, “Andy, if this goes badly, you are going to die.” But that's why when we talk about me ending up in a box, that's shorthand for that type of fear of if this goes badly, all is lost. I'm like, “No, no, it's not.”
Stephanie Goss:
I love that. I think my last one, I'm going to piggyback off of your fear because I think this was a big lesson for me. So I came from the team. I was a CSR, and then became an assistant, became a CSR lead and then an assistant manager. So I wish I had learned the lesson much earlier on that there is a huge difference between love, respect, and fear in the team. When I stepped up above my peers positionally, I reached for the fear lever a lot because I was like, “Well, I want them to respect me, and I need them to understand that I mean business. And I can't have them look at me like their friend.” My immature management brain thought, “Well, I need them to be afraid of the consequences or they're not going to take me seriously.” You're laughing and it's like, now I look back and-
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, no, of course. Well, that's good to know.
Stephanie Goss:
Laugh at.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But I can see this. I know you well enough to say, okay, I can see this. Also I know you will enough to say, “This is so funny.” It's like the Little Mermaid has had enough, and that's it, Crab, I'm going to kick some butt if you don't get on board with this.
Stephanie Goss:
But it really was like … I was like, okay, I'm going to reach for the fear lever. Then there were times to the point that you and I have already talked about where you want to care about your team. So I leaned too far in the direction of I want my team to love me. How they view me matters so much to me, and I need to be loved and adored. I need to make them happy. As we've already talked about, you can't freaking make them all happy. Someone is always going to be pissed off about something that you did as a leader. That's just the reality of the position.
So both ends of that spectrum, I wound up screwing myself over leaning too much into either one of those sides. What I found and what I wish I had found much earlier on in the process because there was a lot of painful lessons at both ends of that spectrum is that the respect in the middle is where I want to be.
That comes with time and patience. It isn't a lever that you can pull. You have to earn it. Showing up for my team, doing what I said I was going to do, caring about them, but not caring too much, not being afraid to hold them accountable, but not being a dick either, that middle ground is what earned me the respect. I wish that I had known that lesson way earlier on because I burned myself. I burned some bridges along the way trying to lean into the love or the fear too much.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, it's so unsexy and so unrewarding when you say, “What is the answer?” Well, it's a little bit of both. It's kind staying in the middle. That is not the answer that people … people want to be like, “No, tell me how to yell at people so that they respond.”
Stephanie Goss:
Well, I can tell you how to yell at people.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Or tell me how to love them unconditionally and have infinite … it's like neither of … it's a case by case basis, and you're going to have to keep feeling it out. You're going to swing a little bit like a pendulum, and that's okay. But it's the middle path. It's finding balance. We talk about that every week on this podcast, but that really is what it's about.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I have learned. Sometimes I pull a little from both sides, do you need me to mom you right now? I've stopped yelling at people. I've stopped being the one that's like, “Let me make you afraid of me. Do you need me to mom? You? Do you need some accountability? I can do that.” Do you need a hug right now? Just like, do you need some love right now? Because I can lean into that too, but from the middle ground.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I've heard the question, do you need to be heard, hugged or helped? I'm like, no, nothing. Do you need to be heard, hugged or helped.
Stephanie Goss:
I like it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. There was this bit on The Office, and they asked Michael Scott, “Would you rather your employees fear you or love you?” He said, “Easy, both. I want them to fear how much they love me.” I'm like, I can relate to that. I get that. Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, it's some of that. I got my last one that I'll put down is again, I am still not a patient person, as you know.
Stephanie Goss:
You're not? I'm shocked.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Boy, I've come a long way. I have come a long way, but I had a long way to come. So yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, you have.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm still not a patient person, but I've gotten much more patient.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I did not understand the value early on of slowing down to go fast. I didn't believe it. I heard people say things like that, that slow is smooth and smooth is fast and as far as working with your team. Either I didn't believe it or I didn't really understand. The number of times that I have tried to cut corners and he's like, “Just tell everybody. Don't go through the process of asking what they think. We don't need to pre-wire. We don't need to have side conversations ahead of time. Just get them in there, and let's tell them what's up or what's going on. We'll tell them what the deal is and they'll understand.”
Those things have gone wrong so many times, so many times. It's taken me 20 years to get to the place where I truly recognize that sometimes slowing way down and bringing everybody together and having the conversation and listening and walking people through what the idea is is so much faster than trying to just tell them what the deal is and what we're going to do.
I just didn't get that. Also, in the same vein, I always wildly overestimated how much I could accomplish in a year. Always. I was like, this year we're going to do these things, and we're going to do all. I was always way short of what we could do. I would look at a team of 25 and be like, “We'll get them on board in a week.” No, we won't. No, we won't. There's nothing we're doing with 25 people in one week. It's just not. But I've come a long way in that regard where we overestimate what we can do in a year, and we underestimate the distance we can cover in 10 years. So getting my head into a more mature place of like, “You know what, we're going to think about what we're doing by quarter and say in three months, what are we going to fix? What are we going to do?”
Then the next three months, we're going to fix something else. People go, “God, that's slow.” I was like, “Yeah, but I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop. We are going to keep fixing things, and we're going to keep going.” Yep. We're going to take our time, and we're going to explain things to everybody, and we're going to pilot things and make adjustments, but we are going to keep going. I just didn't get that when I was young. I wanted to put the pedal down. I really thought that if you had great ideas and you had the right answer, people would hear you and know it was the right answer and get on board. That has not been true. I think there's this thing where people come out of meetings and go, “God, that meeting could have been an email.”
I've come to hear that and think could have been an email if you would read email. If you would read email, it could have been an email. If you could read email thoughtfully and deeply and then ask questions in response to the email, could have been an email, but that ain't happening. None of that is happening. Especially it's not happening across a group of 25 to 50 people. It's not happening.
Stephanie Goss:
True story.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So it could not have been an email. It had to be us all coming together, and walking through, and taking questions, and working together, and everyone doing the new process so they could see how it felt. That's the level of slow one foot in front of the other baby steps that had to happen in order for us to actually get traction and make this sink in and people to actually do it, make the changes we're talking about.
Stephanie Goss:
It's funny because we have been going through incredible growth as a company over the last two years, but really over the last nine or 10 months. It's funny because you and I have had some conversations about walking our talk. You and I have talked about how we talk about this stuff every day. You and I are teaching. We're doing workshops. We're lecturing. We're doing the podcast. We're talking to people. We're engaged in the community. We're having the conversations, and we're talking about these lessons. The slowing down to go fast is a really good example. We have to force ourselves to remember. We're talking about it, but this is hard work, everybody.
We are not immune to it. You and I have had that conversation and have grown in our relationship to be able to say, “How are we doing?” On a scale of one to 10, 10 being where we are listening to every piece of advice we would give a mailbag listener who writes into the podcast, and zero being it's a freaking free for all, where are we at? Having to look at ourselves honestly and hard as leaders and say, “Are we showing up the way that we want to show up?” The answer is not always yes. The answer sometimes is no. It's really hard work. So there's lots of times where people look at us, and they're like, you and Andy just … you always have great answers, and you know what to say. I'm like, “Oh, that's because we get it wrong sometimes just as much as we get it right.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I think a lot about running teams and running businesses is it's a lot going to the gym where, yeah, there is technique. You can learn the proper technique for lifting and things like that. You still got to pick up the weights, and the weights just get heavier. As you move up, they're just heavier weights. So you always … again, I'm working hard not to do crossfit metaphors.
Stephanie Goss:
I was waiting for it. I'm like, he's talking about the gym.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, I'm not doing it. We're not. We're just talking about a gym, a random gym. But it is that. Right? It's simple. That doesn't mean it's easy. Some days you're tired, and some days you just don't have it.
Stephanie Goss:
You want to cut the corners.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly right. Some days you cut corners, and then you're like, “Oh, I got to go back and fix this now.” Again, it's simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy. The unfortunate thing is, and I've heard this from the absolute top people in massive corporations, that you're like, “Those people are crushing it.” They're like, “It never gets easier.” I'll give you just a random example, I don't give my … I talked to Paul Pion, Dr. Paul Pion, who's the founder of Vin. And Vin is a huge company and a wonderful company. They do so much for our profession. I called Paul Pion one time. I was like, “Hey, I got this thing I'm wrestling with. What are you thinking?” I sort of talked to him a little bit. Basically, I was like, “Have you figured out how to make this problem go away?” He was like, “No, no.” I was like, “You got advice?” He was like, “Buckle up. It doesn't get easier.” That was it. He hung up the phone. Anyway, thanks. He hung up.
Stephanie Goss:
Andy's like, well.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It was not the pep talk I was looking for, but it also made me feel better where it's like, I don't know what the hell you're supposed to do. I've been doing this a lot longer than you, and it still bugs me. I'm like, okay. I found comfort. I found comfort in that well, least I'm not suffering alone.
Stephanie Goss:
No one's got it all figured out.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, exactly. Okay. That was it.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, this was fun.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh man. Thanks for doing this with me.
Stephanie Goss:
It's always a good episode when we end and we're both laughing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. It was so fun. I love this job.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I love this job.
Stephanie Goss:
Me too.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's not easy, but man, I do love it. I tell you, just turn it back real quick on Uncharted for a second. I was like, the best thing is being with people who have shared hardship. It's never easy.
Stephanie Goss:
For sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The weights are always heavy. As you get better, you just seem to find bigger weights. Then that's just what it is. So everybody's struggling, I think.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I think that's one of the things I love the most. What I love about your conversation with Paul is he could have leaned into the toxic positivity and been like, “Oh yeah, you'll figure it out and everything will be great.” But sometimes the best thing you can hear is like, “I get it. I don't have the answer. I got nothing. The suck doesn't go away.”
Sometimes just hearing that and just hearing … and I get it, I see you, the virtual hugs, that's one of the things that I love the most. I think is one of the hardest things to explain to people about a community like ours. It's just that shared connection of like, “Yes, sometimes you have all the advice in the world.” Sometimes it's just showing up for each other and being like, this does suck, and you'll get through it, and being the cheerleaders for each other.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. Well, there's that old story I like to tell about the person who falls in the hole and a bunch of people walk past him. He calls for help, and then they superficially try to help from up high. Then his friend comes and jumps into the hole with him, and the guy's like, “Oh, I really appreciate you jumping into this hole with me. But now we're both stuck.”
The friend goes, “Yeah, but I've been down here before, and I know how to get out.” You go, “Ah, that's really useful.” So it is kind of that thing with Uncharted is to be like, “I've been down here before.” Sometimes that's all you really need to hear is not like … there's problems we all wrestle with that you don't expect there to be a magic solution that makes everything go away. Sometimes you just want to hear from somebody else who's like, “Man, I had the same feeling. I got stuck in the same way. This is what I did and it took some time, but I called my way out of it, and you will too.” You go, “Okay, cool. So I'm not a doofus for ending up here.” The answer is no.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, have a great week, everybody.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, thanks everybody.
Stephanie Goss:
Take care.
Well, everybody, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for spending your time with us. We truly enjoy spending part of our week with you. As always, Andy and I enjoyed getting into this topic. I have a tiny little favorite ask, actually two of them.
One is if you can go to wherever you source your podcasts from and hit the review button and leave us a review. We love hearing your feedback and knowing what you think of the podcast. Number two, if you haven't already, hit the Subscribe button. Thanks so much for listening, guys. We'll see you soon.
Andy Roark, you were right.
