Our speakers are thoughtfully selected for each of our events. The Uncharted Veterinary Culture Conference will feature consultants like Carol Hurst and Bret Canfield, practicing veterinarians like Dr. Andy Roark and practice managers like Ron Sosa. These are people who have been in your shoes, and who know what it takes to work on the goals you have in front of you. They love to learn as much as teach — so get ready for interaction and discussions you don’t want to miss. Learn more about the speakers and sessions of the first ever Uncharted Veterinary Culture Conference, October 21-23, 2021.
Conference Session Information
Telling Your Purpose Story presented by Dr. Andy Roark
For veterinary medicine to make sense as a career, people need to see more in it than a paycheck. They need to believe that the hard work they are putting in matters, and that they are doing real good in the world. Too often, people lose the sense of meaning that work in the veterinary field can provide, and when that happens leaders need to remind them.
By telling YOUR story of why your team does what they do, you can revive their sense of purpose. You can give them a vision of where they are going and how they will get there. Your purpose story can build trust, motivate, and unify while providing a North Star that everyone on your team can see.
In this session, we are going to talk about what makes a great purpose story and how to tell yours in a way that matters.
The Eye of the Storm: Calm Compassionate Control in Vet Medicine
This interactive workshop will cover the challenge in veterinary medicine that the emotional burden of our challenges is disproportionately higher than our operations struggles, and give the attendees strategies, tactics and tools to develop and maintain leadership equanimity. With those skills they can lead, train, challenge and coach from a place of calm compassionate control.
Calm in Pure Chaos: How to Stop Drowning and Start Swimming presented by Bret Canfield
It's tough to learn to swim when you and your team are so busy not-drowning. We have been spending all our efforts just getting through each day. We're burning out our teams, minimizing training, and making ourselves miserable. This general session will discuss tactics learned and practiced from Bret's exposure to 300+ vet hospitals, including epic prototyping on the floor of one of the largest trauma centers in the US.
Culture Shift – Starting with the Foundation presented by Ron Sosa, CVBL, CCFP
The easiest way to overcome culture challenges is by starting with foundational tools of culture, philosophy, and what the company stands for. It's difficult to know where to start and the mountain can look too large to climb. In this workshop, you will cover simple form questions to answer, ways to schedule meetings and take on the mountain in small portions upfront so that bigger steps seem easier to face in the longterm.
The Elusive Exceptional Client Experience presented by Robin Brogdon, MA
This will be an interactive workshop with the goal for attendees to walk away with a fully fleshed-out plan that if executed well, will ensure an exceptional client experience – every time. We will break down dozens of steps in the visit process – before, during, and after, that should be clearly defined, mapped out, and practiced. Participants can expect to be able to immediately implement tactics that will better prepare clients for their visit, have them anticipating a positive interaction with the team, and leave them feeling as though they were treated as an important individual that has unique needs.
Help! I Need Somebody! presented by Carol Hurst, LVT, CVPM, CVJ, CCFP
There is no worse feeling than having a sense your team isn’t working together. This goes beyond a “front versus back” rivalry and tackles the more complex feelings of a lack of cohesion. Our goals are to have a team that it helpful towards each other, that sees the sharing of skills as a way to lift up the entire team and not diminish one’s individual value. This workshop will discuss common pitfalls that make our job bringing our teams together more difficult, the top strategies for how to overcome them and a method for follow-up. Attendees will walk away with a systematic approach that will allow them to diagnose, treat and follow-up to help make their teams a more cohesive unit.
Empathy: The Great Swiss Army Knife presented by Carol Hurst LVT, CVPM, CVJ, CCFP
Not the textbook definition, but what is it? At its base, empathy is the way in which we establish connections with other people. In our practices, it is one of the most underutilized skills that we aren’t training our teams on. Yet, it impacts almost every interaction we have. Angry client – you need empathy. Stressed out team member – you need empathy. Unhappy doctor – you need empathy. This may seem like obvious information but this workshop will bring this concept into the granular level. How, exactly, is empathy going to help us in the day to day and how do we cultivate it?
