This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice management geek Stephanie Goss are in our mailbag to tackle a question from a practice manager who is wondering about fraternization. Now while Stephanie's mind immediately went to a specific kind of fraternization (and we do talk about that one!), the email was targeted at how to go about handling your friendship as a leader with only certain members of the team. They have tried to keep work and personal separate but are wondering how to handle things if one leader does hang out with someone(s) from the team outside of work. Or if two people working together do wind up dating! 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.
Do you have something that you would love Andy and Stephanie to role play on the podcast – a situation where you would love some examples of what someone else would say and how they would say it? If so, send us a message through the mailbag! We want to hear your challenges and would love to feature your scenario on the podcast.
Submit your questions here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag
Upcoming Events
Referenced Uncharted Podcast Episode: I'm the Boss, Now Can We Still Be Friends?
DON'T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO JOIN US…
October 25, 2023: Team Meetings That Build A Financially-Informed Culture
with Ron Sosa
Time: 12pm ET/9am PT – 2pm ET/12pm PT
Strike a balance between a money-focused environment and a culture that values more than just profits at your veterinary practice. Join our live virtual workshop and unlock the strategies to promote financial transparency, trust, and united engagement. Register now to foster a financially-informed culture and drive your practice toward greater success.
November 3, 2023: Supporting New Graduate Veterinarians
with Katrina Breitreiter
Time: 2pm ET/11am PT – 4pm ET/1pm PT
Are you ready to equip your veterinary practice with effective mentoring strategies for new graduate veterinarians? Join our live virtual workshop, “Supporting New Graduate Veterinarians,” with Dr. Katrina Breitreiter, DVM, DABVP & tackle hiring challenges at your practice through cultivating a strong mentorship culture, attracting top talent, & supporting your new graduates to thrive in clinical practice.
These workshops are free for our current Uncharted members and only $99 for the general public! Come join us.
Upcoming events: unchartedvet.com/upcoming-events/
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 taking a letter from the mailbag asking about a fun and, potentially, spicy topic.
But we don't go down the spicy rabbit hole as much as my heart would love to. The email is about fraternization in the workplace, but, even though, Andy teases me about where my head immediately goes, thinking about dating and other spicy things in the workplace, we focus mostly on the big part of the question, it has to do with enjoying spending time with coworkers, and becoming friends with people in the workplace.
Now we've done some podcast episodes previously, and we'll link them in the show notes about what it feels like, and how to make some decisions as a leader in a practice when it comes to being friends with your teammates, but this one has to do with really how to set the boundaries, but how to balance being friends with some people, maybe, and not others on the team. Some good questions into this one, and Andy and I had a lot of fun talking it through.
Let's get into this, shall we?
Speaker 2:
And now The Uncharted Podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
We are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Stephanie “I've been thinking about you” Goss. I've been thinking about you. I've been thinking about you.
Stephanie Goss:
I think you're showing your age again.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Again? Continuously, honestly, at this point. Just continuously.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. How's it going, Andy Roark?
Dr. Andy Roark:
It is good. It's good I think. It's ridiculously hot outside. Yeah. It's ridiculously hot outside. It should not be this hot in September. That should not happen but here we are.
Yeah. Overall, it's pretty good. Hip hop dance classes have started back. Yeah. I'm chauffeuring for that again. That happened last night. Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
How are your hip hop moves coming along?
Dr. Andy Roark:
They're coming along. They're coming along. They're coming along. Yeah. It's fun. There's a lot of sass at my house when hip hop dance gets done, a lot of very PG-rated rebellion that happens with hip hop dance.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah? Yeah. Okay. All right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You're in gymnastic season now.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. The fall sports have started, so we've got fall baseball and gymnastics and it's crazy busy. I just was looking, they posted their game schedule for fall ball last night and I was trying to figure out how do I be in two places at once, as a parent who often doesn't have backup?
Gosh, it takes a village and I am so grateful for mine, because I'm looking at it and I'm like, “Okay, I have to be 30 minutes away here picking up one kid and five minutes later be 40 minutes over here picking up the other kid.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
It's the downsides of rural living, but it's good. It's good. The fall is definitely starting to come to Washington, so we're starting to see some cooler weather but I sat outside in the sunshine yesterday on my lunch break and read a book still, and it's good. I cannot complain.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I got called upstairs a couple of nights ago, it was like 9:30 at night, and I was just downstairs working, reading, doing whatever. My wife is like, “Andy, I need you to come up here.”
I don't usually get summoned like that, unless I'm in trouble. I was summoned at like 9:30 at night, and I walked up there, and I walked right into this situation. I think it's quintessential for parents of teenagers.
There's my wife, and there's my 15 year old daughter, who has apparently just revealed that her theater program has rehearsals, and as a result, she will be missing the bus like every day, like basically every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then she has to be there on Saturdays, and so she won't be able to ride the bus, and so we will have to get her at like 4 P.M.-
Stephanie Goss:
Of course.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… which my wife and I both work.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
We work.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There we are, and it's 9:30 at night, and my wife has got her calendar out, and she's like, “I need you to get your calendar and we got to figure out how we're going to do this.”
Again, I've come a long way, so I was like, “This feels like disaster. Just from the very outset.” I'm not sure how it's going to go bad yet…
Stephanie Goss:
Sounds like a trap.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. 100%. My warning bells are going off all over the place, and my wife seems stressed, and my daughter seems stressed but everything seems largely cool, but I can feel it running up my spine like, “This is going to go sideways real bad.” It's like there's an ambush coming, and I feel it.
I leaned into my own knowledge and experience and skills, and I said, “I don't know that this should happen at 9:30 at night on Tuesday night.” I said that, and I stepped back for a second to see what would happen, and that's when my daughter started crying and my wife said, “It's due tomorrow. She failed to tell us until right now when she remembered it.”
Stephanie Goss:
Of course.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm like, “Oh, crap.”
Stephanie Goss:
You know you're going down the gopher hole.
Dr. Andy Roark:
We're in this now, and, again, I swear this ties back to leading and managing people, because I could 100% blow this up nine different ways. The easiest one is to say to my daughter, “What are you doing?”
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Why did you wait until 9:30?
Dr. Andy Roark:
“I'm sorry. I'm not doing this.”
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm not doing this at 9:30 at night, which will, of course, bring tears and upset and there'll be stomping and then I'm going to have to do it anyway.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And everybody will be mad at me. I'm like, “Okay, I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. I'm just going to …” It's funny. One of my big parenting moves is I'll just stop talking and just breathe.
My children have picked up like, “Oh, Dad's breathing.” The worst is when I have to stop and breathe, and then I tell them that I'm disappointed, and it's like that's high level parenting from Andy is like, “Oh, boy. He's serious now.”
Stephanie Goss:
He's breathing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
He had to do breathing and then he has told us that he's not angry, but he's disappointed. It's like, “Oh, boy. This is heavy.” I did not tell her I was disappointed, but, ultimately, we waded in there, got my calendar, my wife got her calendar, we talked back and forth, we said to our daughter, “There are some dates that we cannot do this for you, and you're going to need to go ahead and communicate right now that you're going to be absent on those days.” She was like, “Okay.” Then it was over.
We had gotten 80% of the time that she had to be there, something like that, and we had worked it out and nobody had gotten mad at anybody, and everything was fine, and so I stopped and I said to my wife, I said like, “Hey, I just want to pause here for a second and say that you and I handled this very well. Now it's 10 o'clock at night, we both feel good, we feel supported, we feel like we've got this figured out, and it's done and no one's night is ruined, and I want to toast you, cheers on this success.”
I would not have celebrated that … First of all, I would have detonated that session 10 different ways earlier in my life and my marriage, and then I would have pulled it off, and then not paused for a second-
Stephanie Goss:
Walked away.
Dr. Andy Roark:
… to say, “Let's just both own how perilous that journey was, and we made it just fine and everybody is cool. Let's just stop and honor the success that we just had.”
Anyway, there have been some fall parenting conversations at our house.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, that's funny. We're in that season too, and that conversation at our house is, “Okay, so there are three choices and you are going to make the choice, because it's not my life. This is the thing you want to do. You can learn to ride the public bus, and figure out how to get to and from,” which is what I had to do as a kid.
“You can get a ride from a friend or get a ride home, and I'm not going to call up …” “Can't you just call their-” “Nope. I'm not going to call someone's mom for you. You can do that, and you can ask them, the parent directly, not the kid, or you can just not go. Those are your three choices, but I can only be in one place at a time.”
I was just like, “Here's how it's going to have to work.” I feel you on that. It's hard. It's so hard.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, teaching those self-advocacy skills is important. This is life training, but it's like professional training I do with my kids. We always make our kids write emails to their teacher. “I'm not going to write it.”
Stephanie Goss:
You write it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You write it. We'll look at it before they send it or whatever, but if something's not going to work, they're going to be out, they're going to miss something, I make them write the email, and then we look at it and talk about it, and then we send it but it's like my wife's a college professor, and so through her and her stories, I know how many twenty something people cannot just do basic communications about their availability or expectations or concerns they have or anything. They just don't have those skills.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, I'm pretty sure Allison probably has the same kind of stories I had. I remember the first time that I taught a class at the university, and having students' parents send me an email. I'm like, “Absolutely not. Your kid is 18 or 19 or 20 years old. Absolutely not.”
It's just they need to learn how to parent for themselves. It's one of the things that I am actually really thankful for is that our gymnastics gym, our coach is amazing. I love her. She makes the kids have life lessons. We have kids who are six, seven, eight years old, and even the pre-schoolers, one of the first things she makes them do is learn to recite their parents' phone number at the gym, and if they don't feel well or they feel like they need to go home, that's okay. They have to call their parent, and ask for it. She will not call for them.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But then you get those germy kids using the phone receiver. You know what I mean?
Stephanie Goss:
There's Lysol wipes right there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There's a downside.
Stephanie Goss:
There is downsides.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's like when flu season hits the vet clinic. I'm doing Chlorhexidine spray on the receiver before I pick up.
Stephanie Goss:
Yup. There's Lysol wipes right there but they have to learn their parents' phone numbers. The team kids, if they have a phone, they have to call her, and call and leave a message at the gym. Your parents' message is not acceptable to miss practice.
It's been so good for my kids to learn, and even my daughter's the one in competitive gymnastics but her brother goes to classes, like obstacle course classes and stuff, and I'll make him call. I'm like, “Nope. You don't feel good. You're too tired from school this week. You call and leave a message for Kelly at the gym,” and it's amazing how much he's like, “Well, I'm not really actually that tired. I guess I could go.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Now that we've got all the non-parents to turn the podcast off, let's talk about what we really came here for and it's managing people who don't have kids. That's the episode. Ignore the title on the episode. We're doing managing people who don't have kids, and that's why we wanted to drive them off the podcast, so we could talk just to you parents who are left.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh my God. This one is going to be so much fun, so, hopefully, we have not lost people yet because-
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's juicy.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. It is juicy.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It is juicy.
Stephanie Goss:
We got a great question for the mail bag, so we had someone send in an email asking if we could talk about fraternization in the workplace, and when I first read the first line of the email, I thought I knew where this was going, and this is not where it was actually going.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You thought we were going to be doing pledging and talks about pledging?
Stephanie Goss:
No.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Fraternization? Sororitization and that practice?
Stephanie Goss:
No. No. But there is actually application for fraternity and sorority rules, Kelsey would agree with me, in veterinary medicine, but, no, I thought it was going to go along the lines of dating coworkers.
I was just like, “Oh, okay. This is going into the, ‘Do you have dating policies?” And it is not.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's funny, that's where your mind goes. When someone says, “I want to talk about fraternization,” you're like, “Oh, yeah. I know where this is going.” It doesn't always go there, Stephanie.
Stephanie Goss:
In my world, Andy Roark, that is where it always goes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
In my world, it's a funnel, it's always a funnel, right? Right down, right to there.
Stephanie Goss:
Andy's description of me, if you've never heard it, is that I am like a 15 year old boy with glitter.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Lots of-
Stephanie Goss:
It's true.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Those giggles are not always innocent giggles. I'll tell you that.
Stephanie Goss:
That's where the funnel goes, but then the email got better, and it was from someone who is struggling, because they really enjoy spending time with their coworkers but they are worried about the perception of favoritism, if and when they were to spend time with people outside of work, in particular, if they spend time with one group of people or one person, in particular, and not necessarily others, or they get invited to a party from someone and they go, but then they get invited to another party and there's a conflict and they can't go, are other people going to think that they're not going because they don't want to hang out?
Like all of these things, and I thought, “This is such a good one,” and so they were saying my rule for myself has always been if we're going to hang outside of work, I am going to go, if everyone is invited, so if we're doing a work thing and all of the coworkers are getting together, but they were asking us, in particular, because they were saying, “I have seen Andy do things where he's talking about hanging out with people from work” or from the community or you and I are hanging out and have put pictures on social media, and they were asking, “How do you balance having a life and being friends with some of the people that you work with with your work environment?”
Then it went where I thought it was going, with the fraternization, because then they said, “Then what happens if you do have a relationship blossom from friendship?” In particular, they were asking what happens if someone on the team starts dating somebody else or if you have coworkers that were hanging out-
Dr. Andy Roark:
What happens-
Stephanie Goss:
… in a doctor-
Dr. Andy Roark:
What happens when board game night becomes not board game night?
Stephanie Goss:
I was going to go … We might have to put a this is not a PG episode rating on this one.
Dr. Andy Roark:
We're going to keep this PG. We're going to keep this PG.
Stephanie Goss:
What happens when someone's dating, particularly, in a position of authority, and that's a question that I get asked as a manager a lot, like what happens if a doctor starts dating a support staff member or that kind of thing?
There were multiple questions packed into the email, and I thought it was so, so great, and so we've talked a little bit, previously, we have an episode about being friends with coworkers and it being lonely at the top, and we talked about what it feels like to be left out as a manager from the networking and the friendships.
I thought that this was a great different take on how do you figure out that for yourself? What does that look like? Because it fits so nicely into our, “Let's talk about Headspace.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. All right. Cool. I like this a lot. Let me give some background to this, and we'll lay it down. I have been doing more of this recently. I am very much, at this phase in my life, a huge believer in the power of interpersonal relationships, and so I have had a very wonderful career but I do not plan to lay on my deathbed, and think about, “Boy, that was such a wonderful career I had.” No, I plan to lay on my deathbed and think about my friends and my family, and the relationships I have.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that's what really matters. I really feel that way a lot, and this person even mentioned, “Andy, he does these things where he posts about them” or he talks about them.
I understand where they were coming from, when they said, “Whatever we do, everybody is invited.” Well, I wrote recently about the fact I was in the treatment room, and I was looking around, and I genuinely really like the doctors that I work with. They're great.
Now, that does not mean the techs I work with are not great, they are equally great, but I get to work with them. They're in the rooms with me and we're talking all day as a vet, I really like the vets I work with, but I will go a whole day and not speak to them.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Because they're seeing their cases and I'm seeing mine, and I'll slap them a high five or ask them how they're doing, but usually, they're half-distracted or I'm half-distracted or whatever.
It just resettled on me, and I was like, “Man, I really like these people” and, also, I would like to talk to them about doctor stuff, I would like to learn about where they went to vet school, I would like to talk about cases, and just-
Stephanie Goss:
They're things you have in common.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly right. The things that we have in common, and we have 10 doctors. We've got a ton of staff.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm not trying to organize an outing for 100 people.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But we can meet at the brewery after work one night, just an informal doctor get together, not trying to be exclusionary but just like, “Hey, doctor night. Let's have a round table and let's talk about how things are going, let's talk about everything except work, but let's just get to know each other and hang out.”
I did that, and I talked about it, because it was really lovely, and my goal is to do it once a quarter, because I just really liked it.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that's important, and I'm a big believer in that type of interpersonal relationships and hanging out and stuff, and so they called that out. That's why I'm like, “Okay, I am onboard with this, I am definitely not one who is like, ‘Nope, you should not do anything with someone from work unless everyone is invited.”
I get it, and I'm going to ask people to use their common sense here, and not be exclusionary, nobody likes to be left out and excluded.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But that said also, I think that if you and I have doctors get together, you want to have the CSRs get together, that doesn't need to be scandalous. There's common sense ways that you can do that, and not make people feel bad. You just have to be smart about it.
I think the larger question is it's not just do we do these things with people from work, but it is how do we control the perception of favoritism that comes along with that?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
How long is it until people are like, “What are the doctors talking about when they get together?”
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And, “When Andy goes out and hangs out with his two male technician friends, is that because they're his favorites?”
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And, “He's not going to ask them to do the crappy stuff, he's going to ask the rest of the techs to do the crappy stuff,” or, “He's going to get them opportunities that they would not get if they weren't his buddies, because there are some techs …”
Not exclusively male, but there's a couple of male techs and I like those guys, and we kick around and just laugh and hang out and stuff, and it's like, “Yeah, I get that. I don't want anybody to think that it's favoritism, but we just have a certain rapport.”
Anyway, I want to cue that pause, so anyway, the question is how do you do this? How do you do this and how do you keep it in balance? Right? I want to talk about three things to start off with, so let's talk about what favoritism is and why it's a problem, let's talk about work friends and what that means, and let's talk about our private lives.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Because I really thought a lot about this when I got it, and it's like, “Okay, let me lay this down, and make a fair case.” Okay, set aside.
All right. Favoritism, that's what we're worried about, so why is favoritism a problem? Favoritism is a problem for a couple of reasons, number one, if people start perceiving that there's unfairness, they get really upset, right? People are wired to pay attention to what is fair, and what is not.
I heard this great analogy recently. It knocked me backwards. Okay. You don't have to answer this out loud, but the question was what would you rather have? Would you rather have two weeks of vacation and everybody else gets one or would you rather have four weeks of vacation and everybody else gets eight?
Stephanie Goss:
That's a hard question, because the first place my brain went to was neither is fair, so it proves your point.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Neither is fair. Exactly. That's the point. Of course, we all hope that we would say, “Oh, well, obviously, the one where other people benefit, that's fine. I want four weeks, because it's more but in the studies that are done, a lot of people pick option one, because they can't stand the fact that everybody around them gets twice as much vacation as they do.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure. Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It would bother them. Anyway, as I said, you don't have to answer out loud, but I thought it was interesting, but it really highlights that immediate reaction to fairness, and so, so and so is friends with the doctors, so and so is friends with the practice manager, that can 100% trigger those feelings of unfairness. There's also that could escalate into feelings of hopelessness where it's like, “It doesn't matter what I do, because I'm not going to get the opportunity, because they like this other person more.”
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Again, that really goes to that unfairness but unfairness can turn to hopelessness when you're like, “It doesn't matter how hard I work.” That's another part of it is this perception your work doesn't matter.
You can give people a perception that they lack control, right? They have to respond to what you do with other people, meaning, again, it goes back to their skills don't make them who they are, their professionalism doesn't make them who they are, because the friend group is going to get first picking of opportunities, of cases, of development, of CE, of raises, of things like that, of schedule selection, and once people start thinking that there's an inside track for that stuff, boy, everything can really go off the rail.
If you start feeling like, “I don't have any control of my life, because really I get what the friend group doesn't want,” that's pretty crappy. There's a perception that I'm not going to be developed, because I'm not on the in group, because I don't get to talk to the doctor that much, and so I'm not going to grow, I'm missing opportunities, and I said I worry about information control.
This is a big one. It's like when favoritism dovetails with gossiping or gossip culture or worries about gossip, the idea is, “Well, the in group has the information.”
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
“The out group doesn't have the information.”
Stephanie Goss:
“And I'm going to be left out.” Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Even if there's not actual benefits to the in group besides knowledge, we all know that knowledge is power, knowledge is politics, there is definitely this power of information or access to information, and so all of those things are the problems that come out of favoritism, or perceived favoritism.
Stephanie Goss:
Now I think it's really important to acknowledge, because I suspect we'll have some people listening, who are like, “Yes, I see all of those things that Andy just mentioned,” and I'm worried about them for good reason, because it is something that I have seen on a personal level, sadly, pretty rampantly in veterinary medicine on both sides of the equation, right? The team member who becomes friends with team members as a manager, as a leader, and then there is all of the preferential or perception of preferential treatment that you mentioned or, on the flip side, with the doctor and their friends or support staff.
I think it's important to recognize that we're not saying that that all exists in a vacuum, like we totally recognize that it is a thing that happens, and the important part from a Headspace perspective is that you have to recognize that there is biases on both sides.
Yes, it is a thing that happens and, also, we recognize that it's harder to overcome when it has happened to you, because I have seen this, and have had to actively overcome my own biases to ask myself like, “Oh, okay, but is it rational that I'm thinking that way or am I thinking that way because of my prior experiences?”
I think that's an important piece of it, because when you talked about all of those pieces, I'm like, “Oh, yeah. I have seen that.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, yeah. Here's the important thing with managing favoritism, right? The question is not are you playing favorites?
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Right. It's what's the perception?
Dr. Andy Roark:
The question is does your team perceive that you're playing favorites? Because I have a lot of people who go, “I have this terrible problem and, boy, people are really angry, because my best friend is one of the technicians and I don't do anything,” and it's like it doesn't matter if you do anything, it's they're not going to act from what you do, they're going to act on what they believe that you do.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You have a perception problem, which can be just as problematic as having an actual problem. Controlling that perception is really what this is about, more so than even the actual behavior. You're not going to control their perception, if you're actually doing the thing, but there's a lot of, for managers, leaders out there, who have not been playing favorites but they're being accused of it, or people suspect that, or that's the rumor, and now they're having to deal with the fallout, and they're like, “I didn't do anything wrong.”
I'm like, “I understand. Sometimes we don't do anything wrong, but we still have to manage the perception or we have to fight a perception that's unfair.”
Anyway, I think that's the other point I want to make about favoritism is whether or not the sin actually happened, often times, you are battling the perception that the sin happened, which may or may not be true.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
[inaudible 00:26:40]. On a pivot now to talking about friends, talking about friends in the vet clinic, and you and I have talked about this before a number of times, because it comes up, and I think we see pretty eye to eye on this, but it's still controversial when I lay it out, I often say to people, “I don't think you can be friends with people in the vet clinic.”
I say that to get a reaction, but it really comes down to how you define your friends. Okay? Bear with me, if you have friend friends, just people out in the world, you would put that person over that person's employer, right? Like if they were like, “Oh man, I called in sick because I wanted to go hiking with you” or, “Boy, we stayed out late last night, and so I'm going to call in sick in the morning” or whatever, you're not going to call up Publix the shopping center, and be like, “Hey, I got to tell you about this employee.” You don't know those people. Whatever.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You might question the honesty of your friend but you would have a person that you knew and you cared about and then a faceless employer, and you go, “Whatever,” right?
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
If you have friend friends, then you would do what you could to help that person get ahead, right? If you could open doors for that person, you would. If you could help that person develop and achieve career aspirations, you would. If you could help that person get promoted, then you would.
All of those things are truths about our friend friends. If that person has a secret and they shared it with you, you would save it, you would keep that secret.
Now if you have work friends, and you're the doctor and they are the support staff or the CSR or whatever, you're the medical director and they're one of the associate doctors, there's some caveats to this relationship, because you do have a responsibility to this employer, and to the job, and I would say that your responsibility to the job comes first, in order to be fair to the other workers, right? It's not even about the company, it's about being fair to the other people who you are responsible for.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
If you go on a bender, and you call me and go, “Dude, I'm smashed. Not coming in today,” I'm not going to chuckle that off, because you just left me and the rest of the team shorthanded.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I don't care if you call Target and tell them you were on a bender and you're not coming in, or tell them that you're sick, because I don't work at Target, and I don't have to deal with the fallout but I have to deal with the fallout here, and I just think that that's important for defining what friendship in the workplace means, which means the friendships are fundamentally different. There are caveats in work friendships that are not in regular friendships.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Everybody should know that.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, because I think your life, as a human being, in the work environment, is when you are work friends, it's impacted into ways, you could have the impact on a personal side and there's a work impact as well, so if we're friends at work, and I am having something go on at home, right?
I can have a conversation with you, Andy, my work friend and tell you about that, and if we weren't working together, we could both go our separate ways and that sits with you as a friend, but it doesn't impact your ability to do your job.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Stephanie Goss:
If we're work friends, and I come to you and I'm like, “Andy, I got into a horrible fight with my partner last night and I am just in tears,” that's going to impact the friend piece in our conversation, and then also impact our work environment, because you're going to be affected by my emotions at work. We both are.
There is not that separation of the work person, and the friend person as easily as if you worked in two separate work environments, and so I think just on a human level, you have to think about the fact that you are considering that person as a person, and you are considering that person as a person inside your work environment.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that's a great example, so if you came to me and you're like, “I'm having this problem with my partner,” whatever, and we're friends, I'll be endlessly supportive of you, and if we work together, and you come to me again, again, again, and again, with problems about your work partner, I'll be supportive of you to the degree I'm able to be while still being fair to the rest of the team who has work to get done, and needs you to show up, and needs you to pull your weight, because we all have bad days and we all go through some stuff, but at some point, if I'm in charge-
Stephanie Goss:
You're not going to say to me-
Dr. Andy Roark:
I still am responsible for getting this work done.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
If I don't get the work done, everybody else is being punished, because I'm not saying anything to you about where we are.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
If I wouldn't do it for them, then we really got a problem, because that is favoritism. They're going to see it and they're going to be like, “Oh, buddy. If I came in, and was just out of sorts and didn't get my stuff done for five weeks, he would not be super cool and supportive to me.” That's the definition of favoritism.
Stephanie Goss:
I think that that's the example, right? I think that's why I said a lot of people are looking at this going, “Okay,” because it is really easy to fall into the favoritism trap, totally unintentionally, because you care about them, right? You care about them as a human being.
The best example I can give is is that personal example where someone comes in and they're having problems at home, and you give them a little bit of latitude, right? It's that shifting baseline where it starts as they're having one bad day, and you give them the latitude, the same latitude you would give to anybody else on the team, if anyone of my team came in in tears, I would just say to them, “Go take a break. Get yourself together.” I would do that for any one of the team.
If it happens a couple days in a row, I would probably also do it for anyone of the team, and when it starts happening over and over or someone starts being late, because they're having fights with their partner, whatever the example is, that behavior pattern, now it's becoming a pattern, and that's where we start to see the favoritism come in, because we start to see some people who are given latitude or grace, and others who are not.
I think that's why people are like, “But it isn't black and white,” and I would agree with you on that. That's where we get ourselves into trouble as leaders, when we find it really hard, because a lot of us struggle with conflict, and I have felt this as a leader who is friends with my friends, I have had to have the really hard conversation like, “I have to take off my friend hat right now and I'm putting on my boss hat, and we have to have a conversation, because if anybody else on the team was this is where we were at, this is the conversation that I have to have with you, because I'd have it with any other member of the team.”
There are a lot of people that struggle with that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I love the wording that you used, and, honestly, that is the exact wording that I would use to say, “Hey, I'm going to have to take my friend hat off here, and talk to you, because I would have to talk about this with anybody else on the team.”
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Then that's how you have that conversation, which is outside the scope of what we're talking about today but I really liked your wording, but it's true-
Stephanie Goss:
Thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, there's no scenario where I go to my friend friend and go, “Hey, I know this divorce has been tough, I'm just wondering, how's your work productivity?”
Stephanie Goss:
Did you finish your TPS reports this week?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Exactly right. What's your average scoring transaction looking like? Just checking on you. That never happens.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But we may get called, in all seriousness, we may get called to have those types of conversations with someone who works with us.
Anyway, my point here is to get your head around where I'm going, you have to, number one, recognize and understand what's bad about favoritism, what the problems are. Number two, you have to get your head around what work friendships look like and understand they're different from outside of work friendships, and you got to buy into that.
The last part is, you said I was showing my age before, I'm going to really show it now, I'm going to talk about keeping your private life private and just say, “There are downsides to making a habit of sharing your personal life on social media.”
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think a lot of that gets glossed over, and people are like, “Oh, yeah. That's what I do. I'm out and I'm posting.” Especially if you have friends at work or things like that, you should be mindful, not just about when you're out with these certain friends, because then it feels like you're keeping a secret, but there are some benefits sometimes to just not post a whole lot on social media, so that when you go to doctors night at the brewery where just us vets are getting together, people aren't looking at it on Instagram and being like, “What is this? Why wasn't I invited to that?”
Again, it's not a secret, I'm just not promoting it out to the world that, “Hey, here I am with all my buddies having this good time.” People don't need to know. It's just part of my life, in general, but, anyway, that may sound silly but it is amazing how often people are like, “Yeah, I understand favoritism or perception of favoritism might be a problem” and, “Here's a bunch of pics from the weekend with me hanging out with a certain subset of people from work.”
If you hadn't posted that stuff, it would not have been an issue but you did. You posted it all weekend long, and then something that should have gotten done in the kennel didn't get done over the weekend, and now people are really upset.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You could have 100% avoided all of that headache if you'd just kept your private life to yourself. Anyway, I'm not trying to preach at people. I hope it's not coming off that way, but, honestly, especially as a leader, in the practice, you should be mindful. I'm not saying don't use social media or whatever. There are downsides to making it a habit to share your public life out, so everybody knows what you're doing and what you do with your time, because you open yourself up to some critiques of how you use your time. That's not fair but it's just true.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The analogy I would use is, and it starts to think about other things in life that mirror this, and, again, it's common sense but if you remember a time in your life when you did something really small and really special for your birthday, like I remember for one of my birthdays when I was a kid, my dad took me to an NBA basketball game and he took one of my friends.
I was super into NBA basketball, but it was like, “Hey, the Charlotte Hornets are playing on this day, and we're going to go.” I took my one friend. It was like, well, that was well before social media, which is great, but if that was you and you were going, you would be mindful not to make your other friends who didn't get to go not feel like second-rate citizens, wouldn't you?
You'd be mindful of, “Hey, we're doing this thing, I don't want to make other people feel left out.” Again, I don't know. This same type of discretion I guess is what I'm thinking of here is just part of this is just being a nice person, and a person who has friends and doesn't want people to feel excluded, and, again, it's not something rigorous I'm thinking about here, but just a little bit of attention in this regard can go a long way.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. No. I agree with that. I think going back to my funnel, and the last piece of it is I think everything that you've talked about and that we've talked about so far from Headspace perspective, I don't think any of that changes when it is potentially a romantic relationship, right?
I think there still is the conversation about the perception of favoritism, and there still is the conversation about are you working at work or are you friends-ing at work, right? What does that look like?
There is the piece about is your private life actually private? Are you sharing details of your relationship? Are your peers at work seeing that and getting unfiltered access to that whether it's through social media or the way that you're interacting at work? What does that look like?
All of those things still should be thought about, and still should be filtered through when it is a romantic relationship? As a leader, I think there's an extra layer that you absolutely have to think about from the HR perspective, in terms of protecting the team, and the company, really, against things like favoritism and sexual harassment and all of those kind of things, and just the relationship piece of it, I think your filters that you laid out are applicable, whether it's a friendship or a platonic friendship or a romantic relationship.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I completely agree. If this escalates to a romantic relationship that we're talking about, the four little pieces I would say here is, basically, none of this that we just talked about before changes. It's all exactly the same.
But the big things I would lay out is remember your favoritism problems, they all still apply here if this is a romantic relationship, plus the fallout of any drama that gets brought to work.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You brought that. You've got to follow HR rules. That's beyond the scope of what we have time for today, but especially if this is a power dynamic, meaning, you have a doctor and a technician, again, I have seen many doctors and technicians going to get married, and it's a lovely, wonderful thing.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm not saying don't, don't, don't but I am also saying we live in a litigious society, we have all seen and heard of terrible, horrible things, you need to make sure that you don't have one person who has power over another person, organizational workplace power over another person, who is in a place where they could abuse that or take advantage of that person.
You need to make sure that you're following the HR rules, and if you don't know what the HR rules are, we'll have to dig into that another time.
If you bring out of work life to the office, then you'll have to deal with the consequences of that, which means you still got to get your work done, you should be held accountable for professional conduct, and that's just my belief is if you want to bring your stuff in, you're still going to be held accountable for the work job that we have to do. I think that that's really important.
The last thing is it's not the job of the company or the team to facilitate your love life or to deal with the fallout from it, which means just because you are dating someone does not mean the rest of the team should be inconvenienced by that, in any way, shape, or form. It also doesn't mean that they should have to deal with the fallout if things go bad.
Anyway, that's about being fair to everybody, and just balance across the team. Anyway, all that, those are some of my core fundamental building blocks here. Let's take a quick break and then we'll just get into the action steps, I want to put these things together into what do you do with all this, and then we can be out.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Hey, friends. You have heard Andy and I talking about some of the big things that are coming in the back half of 2023 for Uncharted, but we are not done. In fact, we are not even close to done with releasing all of the new fun and exciting stuff that our team has been working on.
I want to make sure you don't miss out on it now. If you listen to the podcast, you're going to hear about it but if you want to guarantee that you are the first to hear about the big, giant announcement that we have coming soon, so, so, so soon but not soon enough, you want to head over to the website, UnchartedVet.com/Insight. That's I-N-S-I-G-H-T. UnchartedVet.com/Insight, and sign up for the newsletter. That will get you on the list and guarantee that you have first dibs access to the big, big news that is coming soon. Don't miss it, I promise you're not going to want to miss out.
And now, back to the podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. We have talked about the things that are huge for me. We've talked about the problems of favoritism. We talked about the different kinds of friends and work friends are different, and then we've talked about keeping our private life private, and some benefits there.
You take those. The biggest ones, action step number one for me is sit down and think about those problems with favoritism, and make sure that you're conscious of them, right? Remember that the problem is not the problem, the perception of the problem is the problem.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Could it be perceived that you are being unfair because of your friends? That people are not getting opportunities because your friends are getting opportunities, that they are not getting developed, because you don't talk to them or they don't feel like you're approachable, because you're always hanging out with your buddies?
Just be aware of how favoritism can really get you in trouble, like what is the damages from it? Then ask yourself could I be perceived this way? If so, how can I modify what I'm doing to reduce those chances or to eliminate those chances? That's action step number one, and that's, honestly, the biggest action step by far in my mind, but how do you feel about that?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I would agree with that. I think the hard part is that you wish that you could go to the clinic and ask every member of your team and get a straight answer but you won't. You can't and you won't. You might get some information from them, but this is where I think you have to put on your imagination hat, and hallucinate in a way that I would suggest of take yourself out of the clinic. If you were in any other work environment, if you worked at Publix and you worked with a team of cashiers at Publix, and you went into work and this was the situation, as a team member, what might you be thinking about that boss or about that manager or about whatever the situation is? Ask yourself that question, and make yourself a list, because it's amazing how quickly our human brains get irrational.
When you do that exercise and you actually ask yourself to make that hallucination, I've thought of some really … It's been crazy, to me, the kinds of things that I have thought of and thought, “Wow. Would I really think that about somebody?” Probably not but I could see where someone could think that about somebody, right?
Because we're all filtering it through our own life experience lenses, and so I think if you're struggling with that, you might have people on your team who you could ask and just say, “Hey, how do you perceive me?” And actually get an honest answer, but most of us won't get that raw, honesty that we need, and so taking yourself out of the situation and imagining a team environment that you've been on, or a previous work environment, if you were just a member of the team and this scenario was happening, how might you think or feel?
On the flip side, if you were in that person's shoes, how might you think or feel? As the person who is in control.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No. I think that that's a great point. I think trying to get your head around that is key. I think probably a lot of people at this point are making the assumption that we're talking about limiting what you do with people, or you don't have to limit your connection with your friends, but, instead, it's about expanding access to you to everybody and making sure that people feel like they're being treated fairly, and, honestly, the answer might not be talking less to people that you like, it might be talking more to those quiet staff members, the people that you don't know as well, it might be about investing some more time into other people just so that you're not seen as having a core friend group, things like that.
Know that you're going to have favorites. We all have work friends. We all have favorites. You're going to have favorites, but you can't show it. But you can't show it. You're going to have favorites, but you can't show it.
In this case, we can make a lot of these perceived problems and the things that people worry about, we can make that go away with systems, right? Systems like pay scales, assignment rotations, where if there's a task that nobody wants to do, there's a system where it's fair and everybody gets a turn and it's not just, “Who does Andy point at today? He always seems to point at certain people and not at other people,” something like that.
If people have to stay late, if you take walk-ins that run past hours, it should not be, “Who am I going to ask to stay tonight?” Because that can be unfair in a lot of different ways, but if it happens again and again, you should have a plan for it. There should be a rotation for people to stay late. There should be a plan for what people get paid, how they request time off, who gets CE, how much CE they get, who has to do the crappy job that nobody wants to do, and all of those things.
If these are points of contention, the more that you can make of the transparent system and fair, the less people are going to point at you and say, “You're playing favorites. You never ask your friends to do this,” or, “This person got a raise because they're your friend.”
Just thinking ahead and setting yourself up for success in those regards makes a lot of these pain points go away.
Stephanie Goss:
I'm so glad that you said that, because I think just full stop acknowledging every human being is going to lean towards the bias of having favorites, and just acknowledging that and the piece about the systems and I have to speak to managers and the practice owners and the leaders who are listening to this, it is really important to recognize that if you make an allowance once, you have to consider the ramifications of that allowance always being made, because you will always be tempted, and I say this with total love and, because I have done it, where you have a rule, and I'm going to give you an example.
I have had a system for how people request time off, and then it was one person per small department, we had a smaller team, one person per department, because we struggled if we were down more than one person, and I had a longstanding team member who had put in a time off request, and then I had another team member, who was someone that I was close to outside of work, that had something come up that felt like to her a once in a life kind of opportunity, and I was like, “Of course, I want you to go to that thing” and I broke the rule, and I let them both be off, and I said, “I will step in and I will cover for you.”
The next time that happened, someone else had time off and they were like, “Well, last time this person got to take it off, and so can't you just cover for me?” I was like, “No, I can't do that.” Then I was in the position of I had set an example, I had done the thing, and now the expectation from the rest of the team was going to be that that be the case, and I did it to myself.
I think it's really important to recognize that, and recognize that there are always going to be life exceptions, and that doesn't mean we shouldn't make the exception, I'm not saying that, because if someone has a once in a lifetime trip opportunity or is getting married or whatever it is, your team are human beings and you love them and you want to celebrate them but as a manager, an owner, a leader in a practice, you can't make that decision in a vacuum, you have to consider the future ramifications of that and how you are going to deal with that in the future, because it will come up again.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I agree. Number three in my action steps after considering the problems and recognizing that you'll have favorites but you can't show it, so lean into systems, number three is be comfortable mentioning your desire to protect other people's feelings if you are out doing things with friends from work.
I don't have a problem saying to someone … I do a lot of board games and board game nights and things like that, and so sometimes I'll have people from work come over and they'll play board games or whatever. It's not uncommon for me just to mention to them, “Hey, I don't want other people to feel left out because we've only got so much space at the table, and so, yeah, if you don't mind keeping it on the down low, I'd appreciate it.”
That's not asking them to keep it a secret, it's not a secret, I don't mean for it to be a secret, but, again, I'd really appreciate it if people didn't come and start posting pictures all over social media of hanging out with this small group of people and doing this thing.
I usually don't have to make that request, if you're dealing with mature people who can understand, but I'm not opposed to just mentioning it, especially if I see it, I'll say, “Hey, we weren't able to bring everybody and I don't want people to feel left out, so if you don't mind keeping it quiet and definitely not in your face, I'd be appreciative of that.”
Then some people won't do it, some people, they will not go for it, and you should recognize that if you invite this person along, they're going to broadcast what's going on and it might make other people feel bad and maybe you're going to adjust how you spend time with that person or if you spend time with that person, I've definitely seen that done.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I think that one of those things that's worth considering goes back to part of what we talked about in the Headspace, which is that you have to consider what the fallout or the ramifications of living your life on social media, and living in a very public way, because I think before social media, we could do a thing with a small group of friends and the only way that other people were going to know about that thing is if we all talked about it, right? If we all came back to work the next day and we were like, “Oh my God. We had so much fun last night” and blah, blah, blah, then you open the doors and create the opportunity for other people to be jealous, “Well, how come I wasn't invited?”
That only happened if people talked about it, and now that people are living their lives through social media, we are inviting people in in a very, very different way, and so recently, this last year, I went on a trip with some people that I am friends with, who also are a part of our work sphere, and the Uncharted family, and we sat down and had a conversation and were like, “Are we going to document this on social media or not?”
We talked honestly about the fact that we don't want anybody to feel left out, and so we made the agreement that we weren't going to document it on social media. That didn't mean that we weren't going to talk about it, that didn't mean that we weren't going to be like, “I didn't do this thing.” We just were not going to broadcast it to the world, in a way that was like, “Let's invite you in, knowing that had the potential to have that ramification.”
I think it is something that is worth considering, and worth having the conversation, particularly, around that social media aspect, and I find that that feels like we have the conversation about does it feel like we're asking to keep a secret or not? Because we were talking about it in the social media context, it was like, “Oh no. We feel good about not putting it in everybody's face but it's not like it's a secret.”
That felt better, I don't know why, but I guess from a human brain perspective, it felt like, “Okay, this is not inviting everybody to the table with us,” and I think that that's what we do with social media, and so it's really easy for the team to get left out versus, “I'm bringing it up at work, ‘Hey, Andy, wasn't that girls trip that we went on, Andy, wasn't that so much fun?” We're not having that conversation in the [inaudible 00:54:19] room.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, the idea that we have to be so inclusive in our lives, that we can't do things that we enjoy with anything less than a full set of people that we work with, that's just not-
Stephanie Goss:
It's not reality.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's not reality, and I feel like we've painted ourselves into this corner in some way, but I think it's because we've given away a lot of our privacy, and so people go, “Oh, well, people will see this.” Again, I think it's time to start taking back some of our privacy and just how we live our lives, and none of this is meant to be secretive or duplicitous or anything, but it's just to say, “Man, there's nothing wrong with going out with a couple of people and just not broadcasting it to the world, so that other people feel excluded.” It's not a secret but it's having a private life is what it is.
The last thing that I would say, and this is kind of a weak one, but if we want to get together, we want to hang out, again, a lot of times, this is about perception and people imagining what's happening when you and your friends get together, and they're not there, it might be helpful to have things that you do that make it feel like you're not just getting together and talking about work, or people at work.
I think everybody is like, “What do they do? Do they talk about us? When the doctors get together, do they talk about the techs?” The answer is no. We tell stories of vet school and previous places that we worked, and just cases that we saw, and that's what it is.
It can be helpful if you want to get together and do stuff, having an activity, playing basketball, playing board games, going to a movie, doing ax throwing, going to Top Golf, playing video games, but something where you're like, “Hey, we come together for a purpose beyond just talking” but I don't know. Maybe that's a weird perspective but it always makes me feel better.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. I love it. Can I give-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Sure.
Stephanie Goss:
… an example? As you mentioned, you love board games and you are a nerd.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yes. It's true.
Stephanie Goss:
You play a nerd board game, you play Dungeons and Dragons with one of my best friends, with Jenn Galvin.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yes.
Stephanie Goss:
Jenn and I, Jenn's business partner, Erica, wants nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons and I could be in the middle, if you guys said, “Hey, Stephanie. We're going to play Dungeons and Dragons,” I'd be like, “I'll come hang out with you guys just to hang out with you but I have no interest in playing.” Erica's on the opposite camp, “I want nothing to do with it.”
Neither one of us feels left out. If you're like, “Hey, we're going to nerd together and play this thing,” because you're doing a thing, and we have the choice, and I think that that's why your point is so important, but there are going to be things that you do with people, potentially from work.
I, at a period in my life, was in a book club with somebody from work, and we had wine and we hung out, and other people were like, “I like the social aspect of that but that sounds super nerdy and boring AF, and I would have no desire to go sit around and talk about the Oprah Book Club of the Month.”
When people see the activity, and can filter it through that lens, it makes it easier for them to crawl out of the caveman brain, and not look at it from the jealousy perspective, because I think that we're just hardwired to look at it that way, and so I'm so glad that you brought that up, because I think it is really important to look at it, potentially, through that lens, and if you find that you do have people on your team who express an interest in that, then maybe it becomes about, “Oh, well, if you're interested in that, maybe I still have D&D night with my nerd friends, but maybe we also do a team D&D night,” so everybody is invited and everybody can experience that thing.
It doesn't mean that they have to be mutually exclusive, and I think a lot of us look at it like, “Well, if somebody else wants to join in on this activity, then I can never do that activity with this work friend again without having to invite everybody.” No, you absolutely can, and it can still be private time and you can create the space for everybody to feel like they're joining in on something or picking a different activity.
I think we go into that, it has to be one or the other and it doesn't, I don't think.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right. No. I completely agree. That's what I got on favoritism. I hope it was helpful for people. As I said, it's a little bit of a perspective check. It's about thinking about why this matters. It's about thinking about what it means to have relationships with people that we work with, especially people that we're supposed to be managing or leading, things like that, but it's something that's definitely worth paying attention to, it's a thing that you're probably always going to have to manage a little bit. It's not a set it and forget it sort of thing. There's a lot of things you can do to make your life a lot easier.
If you end up in a practice where you don't have clear systems, you don't have any transparency about what it takes to get ahead or how schedules are made or how raises are given or things like that, you're probably setting yourselves up to have some more challenges.
Stephanie Goss:
I think that's where we see a lot of it in the industry, and we see a lot of the biases in hospitals that don't have systems like that, and so people are wondering, “Well, are they getting paid more than me now, because they're friends with Stephanie outside of work or are they getting paid more than me, because they actually have skills that I don't have?” It's that lack of transparency, that lack of systems that often leads us to those places where the bias absolutely is present, and, again, we're not saying that it isn't, but it's happening because there aren't those systems in place.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yup. Exactly right. That's exactly it. Cool. Thanks, Stephanie. Thanks for talking through it with me.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. Have a great rest of your week, everybody.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Take care, everybody.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. This was a fun one. We really enjoyed it, and we hope you did too. If you enjoyed this episode, and you are a practice owner or a practice manager and you have not signed up to come hang out with us in Greenville in December, I want you to head over to the website at UnchartedVet.com/Events, and check out all of the information that's there about our Practice Leader Summit.
Now we've talked about it on the podcast, eventually the Practice Leader Summit is going to be open to a variety of leadership positions in the practice, but this year, we are doing practice owners and practice managers and I would love it if you both would come together but if you were in that role within your practice, and you want to come to Greenville, South Carolina, to work with me, Andy, Maria, the rest of the Uncharted team on working on your practice and not in your practice, spending time focusing on your relationship as leaders in the practice, and talking about things like today's podcast episode from the big picture sense, how do we run the practice? What is our vision? What is our values? Who do we want to be as a practice?
If that's your jam, don't miss out. Again, head over to the website at UnchartedVet.com/Events, and sign up to be there with us in-person. Don't miss out. It's going to be a blast. See you there, and we'll talk to all of you next week. Take care, everybody.
