This week on the podcast…
Practice management geek Stephanie Goss has invited her friend and coworker from Uncharted, Maria “The World is a Better Place with You In It” Pirita, CVPM to join her in a dive into our mailbag. Maria is a Certified Veterinary Practice Manager, Elite Fear Free Certified Veterinary Professional and former hospital administrator. In her work with Uncharted Veterinary Conference, Maria has presented to veterinarians and teams across the US and Canada on topics including feedback, coaching, team building, and positive work culture. Maria loves any activity that involves creativity or learning something new. This leads to an abundance of hobbies including crafting, traveling, cooking and aviation. Her willingness to be creative is part of why Stephanie wanted her to join in on this conversation, because it is right up her alley.
Stephanie and Maria are ready to tackle an email from a team leader who is feeling pulled in so many directions. They are struggling to find balance in the chaos of practice and wondering how to get their work done as a practice administrator AND get their work done as a manager – that is, making sure everyone else gets their work done. Let's get into this…
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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
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Episode Transcript
Stephanie Goss:
How many times have you called a client in the last three days, left a voicemail and then had somebody call back and say, I had a missed call from you not even having listened to the voicemail. Look, the data shows clients want texting. They want online and digital communication. So if your practice does not offer texting two-way with your clients, you are missing out in a big way and you're also in luck because our friends at SimpleTexting have done the research that one in three clients check their text notifications within a minute of receiving a text, one in three, and that goes up to 85% of all of our clients within the first five minutes after receiving a text. So if you're listening to this and your practice isn't yet texting two-way with your clients, you are missing out in a big way. And I don't want you to miss out anymore, and neither does Andy.
So our friends at SimpleTexting have put together a deal for you, our Uncharted listeners. That's right, they have got texting plans that you can try for free for 14 days, but if you go to simpletexting.com/uncharted, they are going to give you up to a hundred dollars worth of free credits when you sign up for texting for your clinic. There is no reason, none whatsoever today to not be texting with your clients. So if this is you, head over to simpletexting.com/uncharted, get your deal, check out all of the amazing options.
Hey everybody, I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. This week on the podcast, I invited my friend and coworker Maria, the World is a better place for having you in it, Pirita to join me. And we are diving into a letter in the mailbag from a manager who feels like they are constantly, constantly, constantly trying to split themselves in two. They're wondering if cloning themselves is an option to surviving as a manager. We'll dive into the details in just a moment. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2:
And now the Uncharted podcast.
Stephanie Goss:
And we are back. It is me, myself and I, Stephanie Goss this week. I am without my partner in crime, Dr. Andy Roark, but I have a much more beautiful and amazing replacement in my partner in crime, Maria, the clone, Pirita
Maria Pirita:
That's so cool. The clone.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Maria Pirita:
Whose clone am I?
Stephanie Goss:
Well, that is a frightening thought, two maria Piritas in the world is a spicy, spicy, spicy thought.
Maria Pirita:
It would be a totally different world. I don't know where it'd be at. It could be totally horrible or it could be great. I don't know. It could go either way.
Stephanie Goss:
I have a feeling that there would be a lot of excitement and there would be a lot of chatter and probably a lot of things getting done.
Maria Pirita:
One would have to be evil and one would have to be good. I don't know. I doubt that it would be the same. I'm going to get into this when we talk about cloning, I swear, but I don't know if the world, there's something with the world, it would not be the same. I just could see it now. Nobody clone me. It's a bad idea.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh man. How's it going? Maria Pirita, welcome to the podcast.
Maria Pirita:
Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. You know I love talking to you and I love this podcast. It's so good.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. So, you and I are talking for several reasons, least of which is because we have fun together, but we're going a little bit rogue because Andy is on vacation. And so I was like, I can do the podcast by myself. No problem. But you and I have something to talk about because we got a mailbag topic that I thought was totally in the manager wheelhouse and I heart Andy Roark, but also this is not his wheelhouse. And so we're just going to cut him out of the picture.
Maria Pirita:
Sorry Andy, you're out of this wheelhouse.
Stephanie Goss:
We're just going to cut him out of the picture here for a hot second while you and I tackle this one because we got an email in the mailbag that I thought was great because it was from a fellow manager who was just like, holy hell. How do you balance actually doing all of the work that needs to be done and managing or ensuring that your team is being productive and everybody is doing their jobs? And our writer said, “I feel like I need to split myself in two or clone myself, but obviously that's not possible.” And so when I sent you a message, you were just like, “Heck yes, let's talk about this.” And so I'm super excited to have you on the podcast and talk about it and get into it as we do.
Maria Pirita:
Thanks. This is so great because I want to first say that I'm sorry that cloning is not possible. I looked into it because I wanted to clone Stephanie Goss, and it's just currently, that's the answer is you can't clone people right now. You can clone maybe the cells and stuff, but it's probably when it is available only going to be available for the elite rich and it's going to take a lot of real human years. So it's not a good option. So how do you clone yourself is you don't or you can't.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Okay. So first off, a dose of hard reality, slap in the face, camp tough love visit. You can't clone yourself. So right off the bat.
Maria Pirita:
I didn't know if you guys knew that or not, but just making sure we talk about it first.
Stephanie Goss:
All right, so now that you've been the buzzkill,
Maria Pirita:
I know!
Stephanie Goss:
For everyone who was like, holy crap, uncharted is announcing that cloning is a real thing, human cloning.
Maria Pirita:
Well, I wanted to make sure because you called me to clone so I couldn't lead people into the wrong direction. And if you were excited about cloning as a potential, it's not possible. Just want to be clear.
Stephanie Goss:
Hashtag fun fact, it's not actually a thing. Okay, so a human cloning aside the real question is a good one, right? Because you and I have both faced this as managers that overwhelm. The question always usually comes from that place of overwhelm that you love your team, you want to help them, you want to make sure that they're doing their job. And the title manager implies that you are aware of what people on your team are doing and managing their work. And yet you also have a lot of things on your plate as a hospital administrator that are not directly managing people. And so how do you find that balance between getting the work done, especially those tasks that feel really time bound and important, like payroll, making sure everybody gets a check in their bank account on payday.
Maria Pirita:
Super important. You won't have employees without it, at least I don't think.
Stephanie Goss:
I mean, the one time that payroll didn't actually happen is still, I didn't lose any of my team, but there was a lot of sleep lost over that. That's a story, fun story for another day. But fun fact, nobody quit, I made sure they all had money in their bank accounts. But yeah, no, I mean it is true, right? There are things that we do as managers that are really important and very different from our team. And I think that the question a lot of the time, I know when I asked myself this question the most, I was coming at it from a place of anxiety because I was feeling like I was disappointing the team or they were needing things for me that I couldn't give them because I felt stretched too thin when I was asking myself this question.
And so I think for a lot of our colleagues, it's getting asked because they are feeling that pressure to like, okay, I need two of me. This is happening because there are not enough hours in the day. There's not enough space for me to spread myself even more thin than I already am. How do I solve this problem? And bless their hearts, ourselves included, I think our colleagues are people pleasers as managers, and so many of us just want to and try to do all the things and be all the things to all the people. And we think that this is a problem that we can solve if we just put our heads down and work harder and newsflash, it's not.
Maria Pirita:
Yeah, news flesh. That's pretty much what I was going to say too, is just in the sense of how much time we actually have, the only way to really actually split yourself into two and do both of those things is to work 80 hours a week. And that's just not doable. I'm telling you right now, it's just not doable. And some of us are trying to get out of that because we've put ourselves into that situation. And you're right, a hundred percent, it's from people pleasing, trying to do all of the things because we feel it falls on our shoulders as managers. And then also just trying to keep other people accountable. We feel like we have to be around to do that, which it just causes this big conflict of time because one thing's not happening, one of those things isn't happening at the end of the day if you're trying to do it all.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay, so let's start where we always start on the podcast, which is headspace. And you kind of dove right into this with the, okay, for me, the first piece of the headspace is acceptance, right? Acceptance of the fact that you cannot clone yourself. You cannot, for an extended period of time, work 80 hours a week. I would love to know if somebody has figured out how to be in two places at once because I have never actually figured out how to do that either.
Maria Pirita:
I'm hoping that technology's coming too, guys, but you know we'll be there. Uncharted will know when it's around because we will utilize it. But until then, it's not here.
Stephanie Goss:
So I think part of the headspace, and I'm laughing because it might sound silly, but it really is a big piece of it, which is you got to get to the zen and you got to get to the acceptance place of you cannot do any of those things. And that means acceptance of the fact that you cannot please everybody and you are going to have to make someone not happy. And so I think working your way through that piece of headspace, I know for me, that was the hardest part when I faced this last in my practice, I was asking myself this question because I was hearing from my team in the form of feedback that they were feeling like I wasn't available to them enough.
I wasn't on the floor enough, I wasn't seeing a lot of the things that were going on. And so I was looking at it from a place of emotion on my part from a headspace perspective because I was feeling the anxiety of disappointing them, feeling like I was working so hard, but it didn't feel like it was enough. And so working my way through those emotions and that Headspace territory was really, really important because believe it or not, I think you and I are probably a little bit alike in that we are both a little spicy.
Maria Pirita:
Who me? Never. Not once. People don't describe me like that anywhere.
Stephanie Goss:
No, I have a fiery Irish temper and I can only imagine that your spicy sassy Mexican self is like, listen, Linda right? And so my first reaction was anger, to be honest. I was angry at the team and I wasn't really angry at them, but the first emotional response was like, screw those guys. Don't they see how hard I'm working. I'm already working 60 hours or 80 hours. I'm busting my butt trying to be in two places at once and it's not good enough. F the world was honestly how I felt.
Maria Pirita:
Well, and it's the opposite of feeling seen, right? You're totally unseen. It's just you feel like, wow, you guys have no idea how hard my job is. You guys are not the ones making these decisions or having to put in all this work and having all of this fall on top of you. And it's like sometimes you really got into that space of like, oh, if you just did my job for one day, you would realize how hard it is and you-
Stephanie Goss:
You wouldn't even survive.
Maria Pirita:
Yeah, and you wouldn't even survive! And now I have to go around like nothing's bothering me just to make you guys happy. You could put yourself into that hole real easy because it all comes out of you're not being seen and therefore you're not being appreciated because you are putting in all this work yet it's still not enough. At the end of the day, you end up feeling unseen and you're not enough. And it really dives into your feelings. It's totally reasonable for that to be the first thing. And I think you're a hundred percent right. It's like the first step is really understanding that and seeing it and being like, I cannot, like right now I'm not happy because I'm trying to be all things to all people and I can't do that. And unless I continue to work 80, 90, 60 hours a week, whatever it is that is causing me to be unhappy, I can't do it. And we have to get to that realization. We have to get there.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I say this from a place of just real honesty. I remember vividly seeing some of the feedback that the team had given, and I remember my first inclination was not to be zen and calm and process what they were saying and try and look for the perspective. That was not at all the first inclination. The first inclination was to screenshot the nasty pieces of it, what felt nasty to me and immediately send it to my partner in crime at the practice, then commiserate and be like, can you believe the audacity of these you know, heifers for saying things like this?
So it was very negative and it was only after time and their actual legit therapy. And it's funny because I talk about work a lot at therapy because it's a good place, it's a good safe space and it's a neutral party and it's good to just sometimes talking it out loud and hearing yourself be like, Oh, well, I am sounding real spicy and real salty and maybe I need to take a step back and maybe I need to look at some of this with some honesty and say maybe I'm reading into it and I'm attaching emotions to it, feeling attacked, but maybe there is truth here.
And when Andy and I do the podcast and we talk about action steps and we talk about having conversations with people as follow-up, we talk about the SAFE acronym and we talk about F being how if I've been set up to failure, you're like what here is my fault? And I think when it comes to feedback, there is a bit of that required, there's a lot of that required as well because the reality is there's always at least two sides. And so we have to be able to look at it with that clear head and wonder, get curious and ask ourselves, what could I do better? What is my fault here? What could I take from this and turn it into a positive even when we're feeling negative about it? But that is really hard to do without stepping back and finding that zen and getting in a good headspace. So I think that's probably step number one.
Maria Pirita:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay, so we've got to work through the motions and figure that out and get past our spicy selves. We've acknowledged that we can't-
Maria Pirita:
We need a little sour cream for this spice, as we say. Sorry, I had to.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it so much. Okay, so headspace wise, there's emotions that we have to deal with. We have to disconnect from that. What else do we have to do to think about it and process and work through it before we can get to the space of, okay, the actual question that they asked is how do we get the work done? Which is all about the action steps, but what else is there for you from a headspace perspective?
Maria Pirita:
From a headspace perspective for me, besides getting into the actions of what needs to get done, I really want to ask myself in the sense of like, Okay, I've gotten to the point where I've taken the emotion out. I recognize that there's some issues here that I can probably work through, but the real answer is in what ways am I feeling like I cannot? In what ways am I feeling that I can't get the team to do things when I'm not around. Really diving into the why of why does it feel like I need to be around to get all of these pieces done? Because is this going to be a larger problem of culture or accountability or is this going to be a problem of do I need a team lead in this area? And so it's really diving into the area of what we're going to do next, but first the fivefold why of what Andy talks about like why are we here? Why are we truly here?
Stephanie Goss:
I love that. And I think that it's so important because when you look at the question that was asked, how do I ensure that my team is being productive and doing their jobs? When you think about it, in a perfect world, that part of our job should be such a minimal time commitment. We should be able to do a check-in with anybody who's directly under us and be like, how's it going? Are things on track? What do you need from me? Check the box, move on. And so many of us live in this place where we don't actually have the systems and the structure. And to your point, the underlying supports are not shored up enough. And so that role for us as the managers at the top of the pyramid turns into way more of a time commitment and way more work on our part to do it than it needs to.
Because the reality is, think about it, if I am really good at my job, I shouldn't have to spend a lot of time ensuring that my team is doing their job and productive. They should just do it and ask for the help when they need it. And I know that that sounds like pie in the sky unrealistic for a lot of us and myself included, but if that's the ideal, at one end of the spectrum, everybody knows what their job is, they're totally trained, they're well equipped to do it, they show up to work happy and do the thing and do it with passion and everybody goes home on time at the end of the day. If that's one end of the spectrum and planet perfect, then the other end is where you literally are doing people's jobs for them because they can't do the work and it needs to get done. And so you're taking it on yourself.
As usual. When we talk about things on the podcast, it's not one extreme or the other, but that's how our brains often process from a headspace perspective is we go to one extreme or the other. The reality is the answers for action steps for us really probably lie in that middle gray zone of how do we try and find some good balance between the two and find that sweet spot in the middle where maybe we're doing a little more when we have to, particularly when we have new team members or we're onboarding somebody or shifting roles around in our team, which let's face it happens in veterinary medicine all the time, but that's a never ending part of the job and it should ebb and flow. None of us as managers want to be stuck at one end of the teeter-totter or the other for any extended period of time.
Maria Pirita:
This is exactly why I was so jazzed about this conversation altogether because it really, I think when I look at this altogether in the sense of accountability and getting people to do what you need them to do when you're not around, and this question I think comes up a lot in different ways in our management groups. I'm a member of a lot of different management groups online and forums and things like that. And it comes up a lot too when I talk to people at conferences and I'm struggling to get this person, struggling to get them to do this, I'm struggling to get them to do this. And so you tend to find that a lot of people have a tool that they'll ask if they're using, for example, one-on-ones, Oh, are you doing one-on-ones? Oh, do you have a checklist? Do you have the system?
And every time I run into this, I always think it's not just about one tool in one system or one piece of all of these because your accountability in your practice, it's an entirely living breathing ecosystem. And it's just truly what I believe. You can't just have one piece and expect for there to be accountability. And so it's exactly what you talked about just now where we are moving into an area where things can intertwine with each other. And so it's actually what I'm talking about at the culture conference on October 11th at the workshop is the Accountability Ecosystem, which I just totally nerd out about this stuff. But the Accountability Ecosystem is actually a term that was used with citizens and governments, but it was really about accountability and it leaned into being about relationships and accountability not being linear. And so oftentimes when we think about accountability in our practices as linear, I feel like the advice you get at these groups or in a lot of these areas, which is not wrong advice, like what does your handbook say? Absolutely perfect.
That is a tool, absolutely.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Maria Pirita:
That is a very Stephanie Goss answer that I love and use to this day all the time. What does your handbook say? And then oftentimes you'll start to hear too the middle part where it's like, oh, well, is this a training issue? And then you start to hear more of like, oh, well, is this write up and get off the bus type of thing. And so those are all in that linear line, but I think we forget that accountability has to be an actual ecosystem where it's not just a line of handbook training, firing or write-ups when they can't get to what they need to be.
Each ecosystem in my area has major parts that I think about. And so the first one would be, for example, the expectation piece where you're setting the expectation for your team, but there's a ton of rules, I mean, sorry, a ton of tools that fall into that realm, which is your handbook being one of them, your training manual being one of them, the job description being one of them. You need to be able to lay out what the expectations are for your team from the beginning. And so that is just one section of the ecosystem that is then going to tie into all the other pieces. For example, if you ever do have to go into the write-up form, which obviously I think in my book write-ups are the least motivating format of accountability and usually your last tool.
Stephanie Goss:
But isn't it funny how often that's the first tool that's reached for?
Maria Pirita:
Yeah, I mean that's what we're talking about, the linear.
Stephanie Goss:
That's what we're taught. From a purely manager perspective. And let me be clear, I freaking hated being a manager. The managing part, I don't want to, look, I'm already mom to four-legged children and two-legged children. I don't need to follow around other human beings and make sure that they're doing what I told them to do when I told them to do it. There is zero interest for me as a human being in that job, and that is a piece of the practice manager role. It just is. There has to be some supervision. Now, my goal as a manager always was to get to a place where that is the smallest percentage of the role, and a lot of us get stuck in that place where I think by our own lack of knowledge, lack of skills, lack of support to really know how to do it any differently, because it's not something that you get taught about.
That's the tool that we reach for, which is like, let me follow you around, make sure that you're doing your job the way that I asked you to do it. And then when you don't, I'm going to smack you with the write-up stick. That is classic management 101. And your point is it's not wrong either because from an HR perspective, when I take a step back and I look at what I learned and how I learned it in school, it is important because when I started in veterinary medicine and I saw the huge gaps in the administration side in understanding employment law and understanding HR and understanding what we could do, what we should do, and how we can and could do it as employers, I realized that so much of veterinary medicine was flying by the seat of its pants, especially in independent practice because I think I was multiple practices in before I worked at a practice that had an employment attorney on retainer and had someone who had actual HR certification or training, a CPA, all of those things.
And so a lot of it is just you're figuring it out as you go and you're succeeding in spite yourself because you went to vet school to become a vet not to learn how to learn about employment law and HR and all of those things. And so I think for so many of us who grew up in veterinary medicine, we don't know what we don't know. And when you do actually take classes, that is the corporate structure because they have HR and they have legal departments and they have the people who did the school and did the training to advise them and tell them, look, you have to have the documentation. You have to have a handbook, you have to have a job description. You have to set the expectation, then you have to provide them the training, then you have to provide them the opportunity to do the job.
And when the job doesn't get done, this is what documentation looks like so that you get to the place where if you are having a problem, you can exit and get them off the bus without the least amount of consequence. That is not an invalid linear process. And yet to your point, it is absolutely not the first tool that we should reach for in the toolbox, but it's the first one that we're taught. And so I see every single day, you and I both in all the groups that we're in, that is the first freaking stick that anybody reaches for and it absolutely kills me. I'm like, why are we having a conversation about firing this person when clearly there is so much in the middle that either hasn't been done, where they have been set up to fail, or where we have failed as managers or where there is other opportunity to support, to use other tools to build out the ecosystem to your point in the middle.
Maria Pirita:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's exactly how we tend to organize our thoughts in the sense of, okay, we have this thing that's not getting done. Let's create this checklist and create a system. And then when this checklist is not filled out, then we have our other write-ups, but there's also so many other things in between there that can be done like we just talked about. And then the other thing is updating what we already have. It tends to be something that we forget to do, and I don't know if you've ever been there, but if you've had, for example, an old training manual and you're training and it's like, “Oh, that's not how we do that anymore. Let me show you how we do do it.” And so then it's like, “Oh, well this is how they tell you how to do it, but this is how I do it.”
And there's tons of funny videos online describing that phenomenon, but I think a lot of that comes strictly from you either don't have the buy-in on why this is being done the way that it's being done, or you haven't updated your resources, which is something that, again, these are tools that are in your ecosystem, but if we fail to update them or if we fail to have them, then your ecosystem is not working the way that it's supposed to be working. So it's so funny that there's so many different tools that we can use, but I think figuring out which tool needs to be updated and when each tool needs to be used is the tricky part, and I think that that's probably what we'll dive in a lot into the workshop when we'll go over that. So I don't want to talk about it too much. I don't want to give away all my secrets before the workshop.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. Don't give away all your secrets. Okay, let's do this-
Maria Pirita:
Don't want to give away all my secrets.
Stephanie Goss:
Let's take a break here because I think we've covered headspace wise, the basics. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and dive into the process piece, the actual action steps for how do we tackle it.
Maria Pirita:
Sounds good.
Stephanie Goss:
Hey friends, have you heard the news? We have got all kinds of virtual events coming your way in the back half of this year. If you haven't been over to the website lately, head over to unchartedvet.com/event and check out everything that we have got coming. We have got our Culture Conference, we have got a Medical Director Summit, we have got a summit specifically for Team Leads. Andy and I have been talking about it all over the podcast, but in case you missed it, I want to make sure that you have one last chance and hear about it straight from me because I want to see you there. They're happening this fall, so head over to unchartedvet.com/events, check out everything, you can register for it all now. We can't wait to see your face. I'll see you then.
Okay, so let's talk about action steps, right? We talked about the headspace. We know cloning humans is not actually a thing. We can't be in two places at once and we can't sustainably continue to work. And I'm talking to all of you managers out there listening right now who are a hundred percent guilty of working 50, 60, 70, 80 hour weeks. That's not sustainable. We can't do it and we need to stop it immediately. So how do we do all the things for all the people and make sure that we are doing the management part of ensuring that the team is being productive and doing their jobs?
Maria Pirita:
I think that the second step here after we recognize we can't clone and be all things to all people, is really going to be to ask yourself what can be delegated, if anything, and if you have the resources for another leader, and I truly mean this in the space of what kind of team leads do you have that you can lean on for some of the training perhaps, for some of the things that don't have to be done by you as the manager. Because in some cases we have to recognize that if you're paying yourself overtime halfway of the year, you might already have the budget for a part-time bookkeeper or a part-time lead receptionist. And so I think that's the second step is to solve your immediate situation. What part of it can be delegated to somebody and/or what resources do I have for another leader in my clinic?
Stephanie Goss:
I love that. What I would say for me comes before delegation is taking the step back and zooming all the way out and figuring out where am I at? Am I in this position? Has this been a year that I've been dealing with this and I'm just exhausted and burned out? Is this an ongoing problem? Is this a temporary problem because I have a bunch of new team members and I'm having to do a lot more supervision than I normally do. Is it because I had a team lead and they went on a leave of absence or left? Is this long-term, is this temporary?
Maria Pirita:
That's a good point. Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
The other piece of this is to your point about then delegating, stepping back and looking at your actual job description for you in your practice and figuring out what of this is actually your job and what of this actually belongs to somebody else in its existing form. Because I think a lot of us, you brought this up earlier and I think it's such a good point, because we are people pleasers and we want to solve all the problems and we want to make everybody happy. A lot of us, myself included, put things on my plate and put responsibility on my shoulders and guilt in my stomach and on my heart over things that are not actually mine. And I did it all the time.
Maria Pirita:
Yes.
Stephanie Goss:
And so I think for me, once you look at is this a long-term thing? Because if it's a long-term thing, the answer is different than if it's a short-term thing, right? Because the reality is our jobs will always require us to do, like I said, some piece of that managing, but the sweet spot is in the middle where that's a minimal part. If you truly are in a hospital, if you truly are in a practice manager or hospital administrator level position where you are thinking big picture, where you are budgeting, where you are supervising professionals like your associate DVMs, where you are big picture planning financials and vision for your practice, the percentage of time that you are spending on the actual day-to-day management should be very minimal.
Now, if you were a practice manager who is really a three quarters lead, CSR, tech, you're on the floor and you're doing more of an office manager role where you're doing inventory and you're responsible for some of the budget pieces, but you have somebody else who does payroll and you have somebody else who does your QuickBooks entry and all of that kind of stuff, those roles are very different and the expectation is very different for those roles. And so the first place that I would encourage everybody to start is if you don't know what your role is, starting there and figuring out and looking for yourself, what is actually your job? What belongs to you and in your practice at the moment, what actually belongs to somebody else? Because the chances are for a lot of us, Hi, I'm the problem, it's me, that I would take things on myself that weren't actually my role, they were somebody else's role because I thought that I needed to, or I thought that I would be disappointing somebody if I didn't.
And really what I was doing was not creating space to allow the leaders that I was trying to develop to grow and do the things that had been delegated to them and all of those things. So there's ripple consequences of that as well that go far beyond just actually working way more hours in a week than I need to. But I would definitely start there and then the kind of that baby step in the middle would be, okay, if this is where I am now, when you look at is this a temporary thing? Where do I want to get to, right? Because there's probably change involved.
This person is probably asking this question because they are in a place, whether they've been in it for a long time or they're in it in the moment because half their team is suddenly gone, how temporary is this? And where do I want to get to in the end? Is it that I am in a role where I'm supervising a lot more than I want to and I really actually want my boss to support me becoming a practice administrator? Because that's a really different question than how do I make sure that the team does their job? But that could be the reason why the question is getting asked. Does that make sense?
Maria Pirita:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you're right because we don't really have all of those details, right, of the role for this person and especially, I love that you said that about is this a temporary situation or is this long-term, like how long we've been in this situation. Because I vividly just got memories, flashbacks of being short a receptionist or two and being like, I can't hire because I'm covering the reception desk and being in that space of I need to stop. I am a very expensive receptionist for one. For two, I can't hire if I'm working the front desk-
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Maria Pirita:
So I'm sorry clients, I'm just going to have to turn off these phones and there's just going to have to not be a receptionist to put time away to hire my receptionist, otherwise I'm just going to be in here forever, continuously over and over again.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Maria Pirita:
So I love that you said that.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. Okay, so if we take this step back and we look at the job description and we do some of the work there and then we move to your, I loved your point about delegation, that was also on my list, and I think this is going to be like the camp tough love moment for everybody in the episode because I think if you are a manager listening to this podcast, I think you really need to hear me. Are you ready? Okay. Delegation is required as a leader. Practice it. And I say that with all the love because I sucked at this for a really long time. I still suck at it. Our team will tell you. I can think of people on our team right now who would probably say, “Stephanie sucks at this,” and it is going to always be a part of your job as a leader to delegate.
And not only is it going to be a part of your job, but it is a thing that you want to get really, really good at. Because let me tell you, when you practice this skill and you get good at it, holy hell does your life gets so much easier in so many ways it gets harder first. That's the rule of the snowball, right? You roll a snowball downhill to somebody, it doesn't stay the same size. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's kind of an avalanche when it hits you. So we need to do the things to prep for it so that it doesn't become the snowball that eats you and rolls you down the mountain with it, but it will eventually get better and we have to plan for it. And that requires practice. That requires time and energy to make a plan and actually execute that plan.
And so many of us, myself certainly included in veterinary medicine, are just rushing around to try and put out all the fires and make ends meet, that we don't stop and take the time to figure out what that plan is going to be. And then how do I, not only do I execute it in this moment, but how do I freaking practice it so that I keep executing and keep executing and actually improve my delegation skills over time? Because that's the only way that they're going to get better is to keep actually doing it. This is not a, oh, look, hi, I delegated, I can wear the delegation crown forever. That's not how this works.
Maria Pirita:
And also beyond the whole delegation making your job so much easier, what a great way to prepare for the future too. Because I think we forget that when we delegate, we're also training our team on other things that they can or should be doing. So when the timing comes that maybe you are growing, your hospital is growing and now you can have a lead in that role, or maybe your husband is moving across the country with his job and you also have to move and find a new job. And because you delegated before, you have somebody that's trained a little bit on some of the tasks that you needed. Not that happened to me around this time last year or anything like that, but it's setting yourself up too for the future in a great way because I'm a big believer of working your way out of your own position all the time. You delegate and you develop and they help you with your position. And before you know it, you're in a new role, even bigger than before.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I think that there's this fear mentality that I certainly faced a lot in practice of I don't want to give up too much because I don't want somebody else to be able to take my job, but the reality is we should want that, for exactly what you just said, which is not that I want somebody to take my job from me, but I should want to be able to grow and develop and move into a new job, whether it's with my existing practice or not. The point of development is growth, and I think so many of us are afraid of that growth that we hold on really tight and we find ourselves, and this was me at multiple points in my career, I found myself huddled in the fetal position in my office, clinging to all of the things that I wouldn't let anybody else help me with.
And I was falling apart. I was burned out, I was exhausted. I was working 80 hours a week, but I made that, that was a situation of my own making and it took a lot of time, it took a lot of work on myself on self-awareness skills, on emotional intelligence and a lot of therapy to be able to recognize that. But that's the hard truth is that we are doing that to ourselves and we are the ones who are in control of changing that as leaders and as people and humans. So I love your point about backfilling because so many of us look at that in a we are jealous, competitive kind of headspace versus a joy in developing someone else, in helping them grow and helping them develop. And I would love to see us make that shift in veterinary medicine where we look at it in a much healthier headspace when it comes to development. So if we're practicing delegation, then what else? From an action step perspective, you've got to delegate, you've got to get things off of your plate. What else can we do?
Maria Pirita:
I would also begin to start asking myself, where is it that I'm spending most of my time on the floor or what's taking up most of my time when it comes to making sure people are getting their job done? Is it one specific thing? Is it one specific department? What are we looking at here? Like you said, is it long-term, short-term? Do we need a system? Do we need an expectation? Do we need a protocol? None of those other questions are going to be able to be answered unless we find out what is taking the most time.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, I love that. That is a root cause analysis, right? Is like if this question is being asked for some reason, what's the cause? What is the underlying, this is a symptom. Me feeling stretched. Me having to manage or micromanage the team to make sure their work is getting done is a symptom of the underlying problem. There's systems missing, there's expectations missing, there's processes missing, there's people missing all of the above. Where is it breaking down? So then you can start to break that apart and create your plan. And that's where the plan's going to be different for everybody because in some hospitals it can be a training issue. It could be the fact that you had, for me, it was very much that space of when I was going through this most recently at my last practice, we literally at one point had 10 new people at one time. And so it was a holy hell, was it a hot mess? And it made sense that I was on the floor just trying to keep my fingers in the spouting neck wound because 10 people at once is a lot, right?
Maria Pirita:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
But for somebody else, it might be because they have a training problem or they are missing a person in a key position or whatever. And so I think this is where everybody's going to have to do some individual assessment, and there's not going to be any magic bullet plan in a box summary that Maria and Stephanie give you guys that's going to solve this problem. It's going to be individual to why is the question being asked? And I think if you can do the headspace work and the action step work to recognize why it's happening and what you can control in your position, then I think you'll be in a much healthier place to have space and capacity to look really truly at the problem and root cause analysis and figure out why it's happening. And then actually action plan. What am I going to do? How am I going to do it? And then implement that plan.
Maria Pirita:
You think on that strategy? Yeah, a hundred percent. And this is too where I would look into, I think actually this reminds me of a time that you and I met before hand and had reached out to one of my groups and I was like, “Oh my God, I need to hone in my training program a little bit. I need to just tighten it up because I'm realizing that it's just not realistic for it to take this long.” And so you had met me, which is obviously I was fan-girling like crazy. I was like, “Oh my God, I'm going to meet Stephanie Goss virtually for the first time ever and it's going to be great.”
Stephanie Goss:
Stop it.
Maria Pirita:
And you really opened up my eyes to something that I couldn't see because I was in the moment living the training world, and you had opened my eyes to this idea of, okay, we have your protocol and you have your training manual. Have you thought about having this training in multiple facets of the training protocol and then having the attached video and then posting it for everyone to see? And so it kind of revolutionized my training into this one step. And so it was a part of the ecosystem is what I'm getting at. It was a part of the ecosystem that I had in place, but it could have been tightened up a little bit better.
And so this is where really thinking about, like you just said, the root cause analysis of what is the real problem. And even if you have something and you're like, okay, I have all the pieces of my ecosystem, what can I strengthen in that ecosystem then? Which piece? Is it the training manual? Is it the actual training period? Is it the result metrics of what we're looking at? Is it something as simple as celebrating the wins and positive feedback and coaching and things of that nature? Because without having that root cause, it's going to be hard for you to diagnose and figure it out. But sometimes you have it in place and you just need to strengthen it. The other piece. That's what I'm getting at.
Stephanie Goss:
I love that. Okay, so they're going to do all of this work and then the first action step is they're going to go sign up for Culture Conference on October 11th because they're going to want to-
Maria Pirita:
Oh yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
…take your workshop and learn the rest of your thoughts on how to build out an ecosystem. When it comes to accountability, which I love as a topic, I mean you know this, it is one of my biggest pet peeves when we just reach for that disciplinary stick and use it like it's the only tool in our toolbox. So step number one, go to unchartedvet.com/events and sign up if you have not. Shameless, shameless plug right there.
Maria Pirita:
Yes.
Stephanie Goss:
And then I think for me, the last thing, action stepwise, is to give yourself grace. And don't forget, and I say this because this is a mantra for me. I literally have a post-it that hangs on my wall to remind myself that I do not want to over-promise and under-deliver. And it happens. We will all go through phases where we are trying to meet the bar. We don't even want to exceed the bar, we just want to meet the bar and we fail. But so much of the painful lessons, so many of the painful lessons that I learned as a manager was when I over-promised and under-delivered because we always overestimate what we can accomplish in a day and underestimate what we can accomplish in five days or a year or 10 years.
And so I think, because our people pleasing nature, we're just all in this rush to make everybody happy and do the things and say the things. And it doesn't help because people still get disappointed and they still get frustrated and there's deadlines that get missed. And when we have that under-delivering, there is an impact to that. And when it happens once in a while, we're just dipping into the trust bank with our team. No big deal. Nobody thinks about it, but when it happens over and over again, then we're taking bigger and bigger withdrawals out of that trust bank. And before we know it, we can find ourselves in a place where now it's not about missing a deadline.
Now it's about the team feeling like they don't trust what you're saying because it's repeated. And I think that that is, like I say, it is painful lesson and it's a lesson I'm still learning. I literally just had a conversation this morning with somebody on our team about this. And so I think recognizing it is a work in progress. We are all going to be works in progress as managers. Our job in learning and developing ourselves as leaders is never done. And give yourself some grace. Don't beat yourself up because we've done it. I've done it. Maria's done it countless times.
Maria Pirita:
Absolutely.
Stephanie Goss:
You're not alone.
Maria Pirita:
100% I've done it before.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, It's also why-
Maria Pirita:
I'm also really good at giving myself pats on the back so if you need help with that -give me a call.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes
Maria Pirita:
I'll tell you exactly how you can celebrate.
Stephanie Goss:
Maria is an excellent hype person, so that is a true story. Okay. This was so much fun. Thank you for talking through this with me.
Maria Pirita:
Thank you for having me.
Stephanie Goss:
It was so fun to have you. I hope this was a fun departure for everybody from listening to Andy and I.
Maria Pirita:
And even if it wasn't, make sure you tell Andy it was.
Stephanie Goss:
Truth.
Maria Pirita:
He'll love hearing it.
Stephanie Goss:
Maria Pirita loves compliments and she loves to know that she did a good job. And I will give you your first that this was great. It was so much fun. And also if you listen to this and you were like, I love this, thank you. Make sure to tell us on social, on the blog, because Maria will never say no to hearing from you all that this was helpful.
Maria Pirita:
Yeah, I love it. And even if it wasn't helpful, tell me because I'd be like, “Hey, now I'm going to talk about something else then that is helpful.”
Stephanie Goss:
I love it.
Maria Pirita:
Either way, it's good.
Stephanie Goss:
But definitely make sure to tell Andy that we are both the best and he-
Maria Pirita:
Definitely tell Andy that.
Stephanie Goss:
He should be very happy that we are on his team.
Maria Pirita:
Yes!
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. Take care everybody. Have a fantastic rest of your week.
Well, gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. And as always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbag and answer this question, and I would really love to see more things like this come through the mailbag. If there is something that you would love to have us talk about on the podcast or a question that you are hoping that we might be able to help with, feel free to reach out and send us a message. You can always find the mailbag at the website. The address is unchartedvet.com/mailbag, or you can email us at podcast@unchartedvet.com. Take care everybody, and have a great week. We'll see you again next time.
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