This Week on the Uncharted Podcast…
This week on the podcast, Dr. Andy Roark is joined by the wonderful Dr. Amanda Donnelly. Amanda is a sought after-speaker, consultant, and author with over 30 years’ experience in the veterinary profession. She is a second-generation veterinarian who specializes in leadership, team development, and client communications. She recently birthed a new project – her own book! Andy and Amanda are talking about the book, about leading and managing veterinary teams, effective team training and much more. Let's get into this.
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Dr. Amanda Donnelly: https://www.amandadonnellydvm.com/
Buy: Leading & Managing Veterinary Teams CLICK HERE
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TEAMWORK MIND MELD: SETTING EXPECTATIONS FOR TEAM COMMUNICATION
You can overcome your concerns or fears over leading your team through team building/communication/accountability work! The simplest way is to learn about it and practice it within a supportive community. In this team communication workshop, we will cover a series of simple, easy-to-lead exercises that will allow you to walk your team from the very first “getting to know you” conversation all the way through the hard stuff and on to the dream work level of teamwork.
You will leave this workshop with:
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Episode Transcript
This podcast transcript is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the veterinary profession. Click here to learn more about Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at Banfield.
Stephanie Goss:
Hey, everybody. I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. I'm out this week, but Andy is here and he is sharing a conversation with all of you that he recently had with Dr. Amanda Donnelly. For those of you who don't know Amanda, she is a sought-after speaker. She's a consultant, and she's an author with over 30 years of experience in veterinary medicine. She's a second-generation veterinarian and she specializes in leadership team development and client communications.
Stephanie Goss:
I have heard Amanda speak on more than one occasion. I love her topics. I love her passion for communication, for managing and leading our teams. And you know that that is Andy's wheelhouse as well. So, I can't wait to listen to this conversation between the two of them. And they are talking about a new book that Amanda has birthed called Leading and Managing Veterinary Teams. We'll drop the link to the book in the show notes so that you can get your copy.
Stephanie Goss:
I can't wait to read this one, and I can't wait to listen to the conversation that Andy and Amanda had. Let's get into this.
Meg:
And now the Uncharted Podcast.
Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast. Dr. Amanda Donnelly, how are you?
Amanda Donnelly:
I'm great. Good to see you, Andy.
Andy Roark:
Oh, man. It's good to see you. First of all, I told you when you hopped on the podcast, you just look happy and radiant, and just, yeah, it just seemed to be live in your best life.
Amanda Donnelly:
Well, thank you.
Andy Roark:
You've got so much going on. For those who don't know you, I have known you for a long time. You have been someone that I have looked up to since I was in vet school, and you were a practice manager then. You've been the speaker of the year for practice management at VMX twice. You have DVM. So, you're a doctor, you practice. You have an MBA as well. You are a, what is it, certified, with the AAHA VMI. You are a-
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah, the VMI. I'm a graduate of VMI.
Andy Roark:
Graduate of VMI. You have your brand new book out, which you sent me a copy of, which thank you very much. And I have actually snapped some photos of some of the tables in here and texted them to people like, “Oh, this is what you need because there's such useful stuff.” And I'll just be like, “This is fantastic.”
Amanda Donnelly:
Well, thank you. Yeah.
Andy Roark:
So, your book is called Leading and Managing Veterinary Teams: The Definitive Guide to Veterinary Practice Management. I like this book a lot. This is rock-solid stuff. It is super practical and super useful. And I just wanted to bring you on and talk a bit about the book, first of all. But then, second of all, I want to get into some practice management stuff with you. I'm a big team training advocate and I'm seeing the world and now it's changing. And I want to unpack some stuff with you, and I want to look into your crystal ball about where you think the future is going and what our teams are going to look like. Sounds good?
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. Sounds great.
Andy Roark:
Tell me, just start out real broad high level, how did you get into management consulting and management writing and speaking?
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah, that's interesting. Well, the one thing you didn't mention, which is that I'm a second-generation veterinarian, grew up in my dad's practice. And so, from the time I was nine years old, I'm going with dad to see pets and whatnot. So then, I went on to veterinary school, and I did practice for about 15 years. Loved it. About half of that was general practice, and half of it was emergency medicine. And when it came time to leave emergency medicine, because that takes its toll on you, I had a short stint in corporate America as a professional services veterinarian.
Amanda Donnelly:
And then, I had this crossroads, and I loved emergency medicine, but all nights and weekends, that's not great. And I don't really want to go back to that. And I always had this love of business, and I think that really is because of dad, knowing, seeing how he ran a business and whatnot, so I had business. And I have to say, and I also have to credit my dad for this, which I did in the book is I did inherit his gift of gab and I love to speak. I was in speech and debate in high school.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, it was this natural evolution to go to speaking and training, and then pair that up with consulting. And then, of course, that also involves article writing and whatnot. So, that was the path to getting involved in practice management. And so, I was involved in practice management with all the practices that I worked at, but then ultimately starting my own business, I guess in, I'm going to say 2006. So, ever since then, I've been doing speaking, consulting, training, writing, all of the above.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. That's amazing. I said that's exactly, that I met you right at the beginning when you were doing some consulting stuff because I was in vet school coming out at that point, and you were well established and blossoming and I just remember being so impressed with you and stayed that way. I have stayed that way since then. Let's talk a little bit about the book. How did you get inspired to write this book? What led you to the place of like, “I'm going to sit down and write?” And I would say you say it's the definitive guide at 300 pages, I'd say, yeah, and they're large pages. It's pretty legit.
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. Well, originally, others asked me to write the book, and to be perfectly honest when I took this project on, I really didn't appreciate how mammoth it was.
Andy Roark:
It's huge.
Amanda Donnelly:
Because I write articles. And so, I'm like, “It's just like writing a bunch of articles.” It'll be these chapters and it'll end up being a book. And honestly, if it hadn't been for the pandemic, I don't know how I ever would've gotten it done.
Andy Roark:
That's amazing.
Amanda Donnelly:
And so, basically, what ended up happening is I knew I had a lot to say because I thought I could take all of my practical experience and knowledge and then of course do additional research and come up with a practical book. But it's just the time it takes to do that, I didn't really appreciate. But then, when the pandemic hit, it was this perfect scenario of like, “Now I'm not traveling.” And so, I had time to write the book. But the whole concept of the book was always to be practical, accessible, something that someone could read a chapter and have key takeaways, be able to do something.
Amanda Donnelly:
And so, the three themes of the book are culture, communication, and leadership. And so, the core of the book is all about that, but I don't feel like you can lead and manage a team if you don't understand some financial management, some operational management, and marketing. And so, those are those last chapters, hence the title, The Definitive Guide to Veterinary Practice Management. So, it is holistic. It includes chapters on all topics, but it's very much about culture, leadership, communication, and practical information.
Andy Roark:
Well, it's super practical. You've got recruiting and hiring team members upfront. You've got tables of legal questions and illegal questions, which are super useful. And people don't know them. And the things that I see happening in hiring sessions, you just go, “Ooh.” And then. as someone who's recently been hiring some employees, I'm like, “There's a lot that I don't know. And I would really like to just check.” But it's just broken out so nicely. I flipped to the operations channel and or operations channel, operations chapter, and you've got appointment scheduling. You've got discharge.
Andy Roark:
You've got leading effective team meetings. You've got writing SOPs. You have SOP templates. This is your brain processed and put down. It really is. In my opinion, there's not a lot of this content that people out there that people can get. And I see it all the time and people say, “What's your SOP for this and how do you do these things? And do you have training on how to set this stuff up?” And I'm like, “Man, this is about the slickest resource that I have seen that is just really down in the weeds.”
Amanda Donnelly:
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And it does come with, at this point, it's 16 downloadable documents, like you said an SOP template and a training checklist, and on and on. And all of those downloadable documents, people can go to my website. They just get the password from the book and go to my website and go able to download those. And my plan is anytime I want a new document, I'll just upload it to that page.
Andy Roark:
Nice.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, people will get more bonuses over time. So, yeah, well, thank you, I appreciate the feedback.
Andy Roark:
Well, no. Anyway, this is not a sponsored podcast. I'm not selling your book.
Amanda Donnelly:
I know.
Andy Roark:
I have no stake in it. I really am impressed with what you put out. I want to dig into the leading effective team meeting and team building with you because that's an area that you're talking about a lot. It's an area that I am hearing a lot about out in the world in vet medicine. So, let's go ahead and start to talk. What do you think? I have strong feelings on this but I'm going to let you unpack it first. Biggest challenges in the area of team building today for your individual practices?
Amanda Donnelly:
Well, now when you say team building, Andy, do you mean team building as far as the components of training that build the team so we have a train team, or do you mean simply team building in terms of bringing up everybody together and working well together? Because those are a little bit different.
Andy Roark:
Okay. That's a good distinction. I see challenges in both of them. Which one do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about cohesion or do you want to talk about training first?
Amanda Donnelly:
Let's talk about training first because I think that, well, I don't think. I know that has been one of the greatest challenges the last two years, because of all the turnover, being short-staffed, hiring new people. So, it's like, “Wait a minute. Now we have these new team members but they're not trained.” And training as you know has always been a challenge in our profession, and not something that we've necessarily done well in our profession. So, let's start there, which is how do you make training better? Because you can have a team that works well together, but if they're not trained to actually do their job, that's not going to go well.
Andy Roark:
No. And you see that. There's a lot of happy teams that people get along with. They're not running systems. They're stepping on each other's toes. What's funny is those people don't generally recognize that training is the issue. Do you agree with that?
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. I think that's true or they throw up with their arms maybe to some extent, because it can be so overwhelming. So, it's like, “Well, we need everybody to be trained, but well, who has time for that?” So, it ends up being a lower priority when in reality it should be one of the greatest priorities.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I completely agree with that. And I also completely agree with your challenges, the high turnover, the being short-staffed, the having so much work coming in. It's one of those terrible death spirals where you don't train because you're busy, which completely makes the fact that you're untrained worse, which then gives you less time to train because you're wildly inefficient, which makes you more frustrated and more burned out, which just leads us down this problem.
Andy Roark:
I really like your analysis of, it's scary and it's hard to get your hands around and know where to start. For those practices out there that go, “Hey, we're not may be working as well together as we could, or we're not communicating or using systems or protocols. Our people are trained like we want, and we're absolutely swamped.” What advice do you give to help people to get their head straight and start to unpack where they are?
Andy Roark:
Because again, I 100% can empathize with the idea that everyone needs some training and we need so many systems. I don't even know where to start, and I'm tired. Help me get my head around that. Help somebody start to take action in a useful way.
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. And that's the great question is what do you do? It's like, “Well, I don't have time to train,” and then everybody's not trained. Like, well, I don't have time to train, it's that vicious circle that you're referencing. And honestly, one of my biggest recommendations is that less is more, so it's counterintuitive. And so, what I mean about less is more is probably two key takeaways. One is to have short training sessions. It could be 15 minutes, which I can give a couple of examples. So, 15, 30, 60 minutes max, and for that to have a laser focus.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, what happens is, historically, we would do training perhaps at the monthly staff meeting. We'd have maybe lunch and learn from a vendor or somebody internally. One of the doctors might review a topic. And some practices don't even do their monthly meetings. So, the question is, well, when are we supposed to do training? So, what I've always advocated or particularly, now in these, in the times since the pandemic started is to, yes, you do have to make some blocks on the schedule, but it could be even just a 30-minute block and it doesn't have to be for the entire team.
Amanda Donnelly:
It might be just for these three new people or just the technical team, or just the CSRs. And then, we cover for those 30 minutes. And so, we have short sessions that we might only schedule, say three times a week, even twice a week. I was telling my clients during the pandemic, “Just 30 minutes to do some training twice a week. You'll slowly make progress.” But then, the second part of less is more is to have that laser focus. And that's about saying, “Well, what's our greatest priority? Is it exam room skills? Is it dealing with angry clients?”
Amanda Donnelly:
“Is it making sure that we have team members who know how to do a specific technical task,” whether that's radiographs, setting catheters, drawing, blood, whatever it is. So, we have a laser focus, and then that will start helping us towards making some progress. So, those are the first two aspects to chunk it down so it's not this overwhelming project.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, I like that a lot. Let's dig into the laser focus part a bit when people start to say, “But I don't know how to teach people, to deal with angry clients in 15 minutes.” What does that look like? What does a 15-minute training session… Because I think a lot of us think that more is more, and there's a lot to cover here. And so, it takes as long as it takes. And I know I'm completionist so I know I wrestle with that too. Help me get my head into a healthy place there to figure out what bite size training looks like.
Amanda Donnelly:
Right. Well, and I think it depends on the topic, because some topics will lend themselves to 15 minutes and some, we might say, “Well, that really takes 60 minutes.” So, for example, 15 minutes might be working with our new client service representatives on medical terminology.
Andy Roark:
Sure.
Amanda Donnelly:
Or something like, let's talk about vaccines for dogs and cats. What are the basic vaccines in dogs and cats? We could cover that, give them some handouts, do some oral quizzes or even a five-question quiz. We could do that in 15-minute chunks. Now, something like your example of angry clients, I think is going to take longer than 15 minutes. But the key there would be what's our training resource? So, when I approach training, I like to think about it as three major buckets. We have the organizational bucket. So, the organizational bucket is, how am I going to stay organized? I might have a checklist, for example, to check people off as they learn.
Amanda Donnelly:
I might have a schedule of, what they're doing week one, week two, or whatever. So, I have some organizational tools to keep to know what's going on with our team members. Then the second part of it is what is the actual training resource? So, the training resource could be, we're going to review an article. So, for example, and this is a little self-serving on my part that I have and as you have, and all the other speakers and consultants, all our friends and colleagues, we have all these articles that we write.
Andy Roark:
Sure.
Amanda Donnelly:
Well, most of these articles that we write have key takeaways and they could be used as a training tool. So, you could take an article. You could take a short video. You could take just a section of a book, whatever it is, or you could have somebody who has expertise in that area. Maybe there's that one doctor in the practice who can charm any client. They are great because they have skills in that area. Or maybe you do bring someone in from the outside. So, that's your resource, could be webinars and articles and books and podcast nerd. So, we have that, and that's the training tool.
Amanda Donnelly:
And then, on the last bucket is how are we going to measure retention? So much of what happens with training is we provide the training but then there's no follow-up to say, “Well, did this person learn it?” So, I love quizzes. Those were so super easy. We could do oral, Q&A with somebody. Obviously, there are platforms that have more robust measurements. So, that would be how you would get organized and keep that laser focus.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, you have to adapt the time element to whatever the topic is. But I think if everyone would look at it as 15-minute increments, all the way up to 90 minutes max and recognize that, it doesn't have to be the whole team. It could be one person. It could be a couple of people, and we're going to do that at least multiple times per month. And we are going to have to block some time off sometimes in the schedule.
Andy Roark:
I think that that makes a lot of sense. Also, I think you gleaned over something I think was really important is it seems so obvious, but honestly, when you first said it, I was like, “Oh, that's true.” The idea that you don't have to have the whole team there together. And I think a lot of us imagined because it's how we've been trained is like, “Well, the whole team gets together and you have a staff meeting. That's how you do it.” And you go, “It's fine. If there's three people that need to know how to do a thing, you can just get those three people and do the thing.”
Amanda Donnelly:
Exactly.
Andy Roark:
And I think a lot of us don't think that way. We don't pull people aside and do a group of four people training, and then go on, even though it's so much easier to fit into a day.
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. And don't forget standing meetings, Andy. I am a huge proponent of standing meetings. So, remember we have the standing meetings, like the daily huddle. I always advocate for a daily huddle, but you can use standing meetings for training too, as long as it is those 10 to 15… Oh, not 10, say 15 to 20-minute session, again, something that can, and even those can even be somewhat impromptu. But ideally, we would try to schedule those as well.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. That absolutely makes sense.
Stephanie Goss:
Hey, everybody, this is Stephanie, and I'm going to jump in here for one quick second and make sure that you know about a few things that are coming up that I'm pretty sure you're not going to want to miss. But before I do that, I have to say thank you. Thanks to a generous gift from our friends at Banfield Pet Hospital, we are now able to provide transcripts for all of our podcast episodes. And we have to just say, thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
Stephanie Goss:
Andy and I have wanted to make the podcast more accessible. And when we were pondering the idea of how do we make transcripts a thing, our friends at Bandfield stepped up in a big way and said, “Hey, we are striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the profession. This fits with that mission for us. And we would love to sponsor it.” So, the 2022 podcast episodes are all now being transcribed and brought to you by our friends at Banfield Pet Hospital.
Stephanie Goss:
To check out the transcript and find out more about what Banfield is doing to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the vet profession, head over to unchartedvet.com/blog. And you can find each one of the podcast episodes and a link to find out more about equity, inclusion, and diversity at Bandfield. And now, there is something coming up that you're not going to want to miss. And unlike Andy, I'm not just saying that because I'm the one teaching this upcoming workshop.
Stephanie Goss:
That's right. At the end of June, I am teaching a workshop for all of you, and I am super pumped about this. This is a workshop that I just had the chance to do with our Uncharted community at our April conference in person. And it is called Teamwork Mind Meld. We are going to be talking about setting expectations for team communication but goes beyond setting expectations for the team communication.
Stephanie Goss:
Really we're going to talk about exercises and things that we can do to intentionally get the team to know each other, get on the same page because when we're all on the same page and we know each other, having accountability conversations is a lot easier to do. So, if this sounds like something you would be interested in, head on over to the website@unchartedvet.com/events, and you can sign up.
Stephanie Goss:
It is June 29th, which is a Wednesday. It's going to be at 8:30 Eastern. So, 5:30 Pacific. And it is $99 for people who are not currently Uncharted members. And as always, it's free for our members. I really hope to see you there. And don't worry, we've got lots more coming later this summer. So, make sure to save the events page and come on back regularly because we've got lots of good stuff coming at you. And now, back to the podcast.
Andy Roark:
Let's switch this around a little bit. So, we talked about team building from the training side. Let's talk about team building from the cohesion side and getting people who are possibly burned out who maybe feel overwhelmed to come to a place where they feel supported, where they feel psychologically safe to talk about how they're feeling or how things are going, to get feedback to each other. How do we get into that head space, I guess, with our team today?
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. And I think that the first thing that jumps into my mind is that the question is what are you trying to achieve? I think we look at team building, people in general and it's not necessarily just our profession. I think we tend to look at team building two ways. We may look at it and say, “Well, we need to boost morale.” So, we're going to have a barbecue or we're going to have a night of bowling or we're going to have lunch and cake in the break room or whatever. We do those things.
Amanda Donnelly:
And then, sometimes people look at team building as something a little more involved, it might be escape room or a ropes course, or those things. And there's nothing wrong with all of those events. And they do tend to bring morale up and everybody feels better and gets together. And there's that sense of comradery, but there's no real purpose typically to those types of events. I think what you're going through or what you're referencing is how do we do team building to have a certain outcome?
Amanda Donnelly:
So, I think the first step is, well, what is the outcome we're trying to achieve, is that we want everybody to learn some communication skills, so how they can communicate better with each other on those stressful days so we're not snapping each other, and being defensive or maybe saying something unkind, maybe that would be a goal.
Amanda Donnelly:
Another team building might be literally figuring out roles and responsibilities, getting the team's feedback, and saying, “Well, where are our breakdowns and communication, and what systems do we need to put in place?” Not this big, huge, we're going to make this great system, but some protocols maybe. It may be one protocol that we need that would help us all work together better. So, that's what we want to figure out is what are we trying to achieve with the team, what does the team need in order to have more cohesion?
Amanda Donnelly:
So, I think that's the starting point, and then figuring out, “Well, what are the resources that we have for that?” And sometimes it's as simple… I think one of the easiest takeaways that I could give you for improving teams working together that requires no resources whatsoever that somebody could listen to this podcast and do within whatever time that, say a week or so, and they just have to schedule it would be group problem-solving.
Amanda Donnelly:
And so, I don't think people necessarily think, “Well, that's a team building exercise.” But if you think about it, really it is. So, when I do group problem solving, when I go on site with my clients, we'll take a topic and it might be client wait times, those are getting out of control, what are our solutions to decrease client wait times? It might be something like we can never find charts. That may not be as common because so many people are paperless, but we can never find the lab requisitions or the charts or paperwork, whatever.
Amanda Donnelly:
Whatever the problem is that the team is having, what would be the solutions? It might be something for training. Gosh, we've got these new hires, how can we improve training? So, what I do is I break people up in groups of, say three to six, send them to different rooms in the practice, and only give them 20 minutes just to come up with their one best idea, what's one idea that you could bring back to the group that we could implement? So, these aren't fully fleshed out, everything's being solved.
Amanda Donnelly:
It's really about tapping into the creativity of the team so that we can maybe get three or six good ideas rather than having group think takeover and maybe have a negative gripe session if we just did it with everybody together. So, the creative problem solving that can really work, what I will tell you is that I always make sure that I look at the makeup of the team. So, for example, we don't want all the CSRs together or all the doctors together because there's no diversity then to the team.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, if I know that there are any clicks within the practice, I'll break people up so that we have diversity and can get the best ideas and get people working together. So, that helps with team building in really in two ways, if you think about it. Because one way is we get these great ideas that gets the team working together better in terms of solving a problem. But the other thing it does is it gets people working together better in terms of how they're viewing somebody.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, it can break down some of the conflicts because someone can go, “Oh, well, okay. Now I see their perspective.” They have some good ideas, and generally, they'll come back to the center group with more than one good idea. So, that's a really simple way to do team building and not have to hire some fancy facilitator and [inaudible 00:26:36].
Amanda Donnelly:
So, the key really is what problem are you trying to solve, what does your team need most, and then, matching up the resources that you might be able to take advantage of to accomplish those goals.
Andy Roark:
You mentioned gripe sessions. I don't want to actually make up a gripe session. I know you hear this all the time. I think a lot of people have some fear that if they open these sessions up to their team and say, “Let's talk, let's collaborate,” they're going to hear about how people messed up and this isn't working and this is a problem. And clients always do these things that drive us nuts and blah, blah, blah. Do you have ways that you avoid these open collaborative meetings going in those negative directions? Because I know a lot of people worry about it.
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. And I have no problem avoiding a gripe session, but the key is whoever is leading the meeting does need to have skills in facilitation. And there are obviously millions of articles and books you could read about facilitation, but really what it comes down to is first of all, who's leading this meeting? And we want to make sure we have the right person leading the meeting. So, that's not necessarily a practice owner. Ideally, that would be the practice manager, but it could be somebody else. But whoever is leading the meeting needs to know how to facilitate such that we don't have a gripe session.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, what happens is they have to… What we do is we ask the team for feedback. Let's say it is client wait times. What do y'all think we should do to decrease client wait times? And so, then, what happens is everybody starts complaining about the clients. Well, as soon as the facilitator notices that that is going that way, where we're playing the blame game, whether we're blaming clients or each other or whatever, that's when they say, “Hey, Hey, wait a minute. We're getting off track here.”
Amanda Donnelly:
So, as soon as the team starts to go off track and they're either rehashing and recycling and saying the same thing over again, nothing new is being said, then the facilitator steps in and says, “I'm not hearing anything new. Let's get back on track.” Or you could even say, “Gosh, seems like maybe we're getting off track here and maybe in a negative space. So, I'm going to reign. I'm going to bring you all back in.” And then, what happens is we ask for more problem-solving. Let's come up with a couple of key solutions that we could agree on.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, it really is about facilitation because left to their own devices, people may go to complaining because they're hurting, because they're unhappy. So, it really is about facilitation. Almost any group, if you can facilitate, and facilitation is getting everybody's ideas. We don't want to shut anybody down. Now the other thing you can do that will help with facilitating and so it doesn't turn into a gripe session is to have people write something down before you ask them to share verbally, because then that forces everybody to participate. They have to write something down and then we can do a group share.
Amanda Donnelly:
Because if you just say, “Well, let's talk about client wait times,” then everybody's off to the races and nobody's written anything down. So, that is another way that you can help it from becoming a gripe session.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. What are your thoughts on a recent push that I have seen? And I get it. There's a lot of packages that I think, that are very much struggling with morale just because it's been a lot of work for a long time. And I hear it said a number of different ways. There's people who say, “What do I do to try to build a positive culture?” People say, “What do I do to help bring the team together and improve morale?” There's some people who say, “How do I train for resilience,” which I think is morale is what they're getting to
Andy Roark:
I don't know that they're really talking about resilience, but I'm sure you hear all that same headspace and questions. Can you speak a little bit to what effective team training and team building look like in that place where we're trying to keep people's spirits up in a time when a lot of people are tired? And I think that's true outside of our profession as well. I think everybody's tired.
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. And I guess first, what I would say is that is a big topic that doesn't have one single answer, I'm going to do this and everything's going to be okay. So, first of all, you're in it for the long haul. And what you have to remember when you're in it for the long haul is that fundamentally, we have to look at culture. In other words, there's no one fix, well, we're going to do this, and then our culture's going to be good. It's collectively, what are significant action steps that we could take? And it takes time to develop a culture. This could be a one or two-year project.
Amanda Donnelly:
Now, that's a little bit overwhelming. I appreciate. So, it's important then to say, “Well, what are specific actions that will get us where we want to go ultimately?” And I would say several things to think about. I do think that the leadership team, whether that's, it doesn't matter if you're privately owned, corporate owned, whoever the leadership structure is, the leadership team does need to avail themselves of outside resources, such as those from the AVMA that has invested quite a bit of money in time and energy into making resources available for veterinary practices. So, we have an actual well-being program.
Amanda Donnelly:
And that's where I think the resiliency and looking at, or do we have self-care for the actual leadership team, do we have self-care for the entire team, availing ourselves and saying, “Okay, this is our hospital program.” But then, individually we have to look at the team and say, “Well, what can we do on a regular, let's say weekly basis to keep morale up, to keep spirit up.” And I think sometimes we need to think about this, not only as the big picture, which is this culture and that's really a huge undertaking, but just whatever is really simple.
Amanda Donnelly:
It could be something as simple as taking five minutes in a standing meeting to do a quick debrief. Tell me what you're feeling and just allow people to have their feelings. It doesn't even have to be five minutes. It could be two or three minutes. It's like, “Oh, wow. This has been a really hard day. We lost scooter today, and Mrs. Jones yelled at us, and, oh my gosh, not everybody's here.” Do that five-minute pow-wow.
Amanda Donnelly:
It could be playing an upbeat song, the dance it out concept, joke of the day, having a whiteboard or poster board somewhere in the hallway that people can doodle and draw on. A lot of those were types of ideas that certainly I promoted and I think other people did, or in the first year of the pandemic and beyond. I think we have to remember that even though we're coming out of the pandemic relative to caseload and we're not doing all those protocols, there still these tremendous effects on us as a profession because we still have teams that are overworked, stressed, sometimes still understaffed.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, we still have to look at, on a weekly basis, what are those small actions that we can take to support people? And I think one of the biggest actions that sometimes gets overlooked is to give people a voice to allow them that avenue, maybe that's that 30-minute town hall meeting that we're going to do twice a month, where people are just talking about how they're feeling so they have that opportunity to support.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, it's that idea, I guess, Andy, of creating a sense of community within your own practice. I don't have a lot of easy answers, and I think some practices are going to have to try different action steps and see what works best for their team. I think that, also, we have to, as a profession, embrace that what happened when my dad was practicing and what happened when I was practicing doesn't work anymore.
Amanda Donnelly:
And what I mean by that is not allowing people to have… it's not so much about allowing, but letting it happen where people don't have lunches and they're expected to, “Oh, you don't have a good work ethic if you don't work 40 hours a week, “or whatever. I think those times are gone. And it's interesting, Andy. My father, I thought about this recently, had trouble with stress when I was growing up and actually went into the hospital because he had a headache that wouldn't go away for about two weeks.
Amanda Donnelly:
And after that, he started taking a day off. But what's really interesting for the entire rest of his career, he had a two-hour lunch hour, two hours, left the practice. And he was a solo practitioner. Sometimes, I imagine people would go, “Well, we could possibly do that.” But I'm thinking to myself, “We had a really successful, busy practice.” And for years, and he took, I mean there were occasional times when he didn't get his two hours, but he almost always got his two hours. And now we wouldn't even think about doing that.
Amanda Donnelly:
So, I think it's rethinking those strategies because we know veterinarians in particular do not want to work the same schedules. They want more flexibility. They want fewer hours and that thing. So, we do have to embrace all of these different action steps for self-care and resiliency. I do think even though I don't… I'm like you, and I don't always like everybody throwing around the word resiliency. It's like, “What does that mean?”
Amanda Donnelly:
It is a good word though, because resiliency I think is being able to navigate bad things happen, but I can still get through. I think we also have to realize we have limits. Most of us are not therapists, and I'm a huge proponent of therapy. But we're not therapists. I think a lot of it is about empowering the actual individuals that work for us and really promoting self-leadership, which I talk about in the book and accountability that people have choices.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. I think you and I are in the exact same place on resiliency and resiliency training. I think it's important. I think it's vital that we're able to shake things off and bounce back. At the same time, I think it's really critically important that when we talk about wellness and keeping people safe, when we talk about resilience as the answer, it's like, “I'm going to teach you how to suck it up while things don't get any better and management doesn't support you.” And I go, “Well, that's not what we're talking about either, of course.” It's a tool and toolbox.
Amanda Donnelly:
Exactly.
Andy Roark:
Resiliency should not be your only coping strategy. That's a bleak place to be.
Amanda Donnelly:
Well, right. Because it implies that it's a really deep topic because resiliency is something that people gain typically over time. I consider myself one of the resilient. Most people who are close to me and know me that I've been through a tremendous amount of grief in the last four years. And so, I consider myself highly resilient, but it was a process to get here. One of the things that I did not mention yet, Andy, that is a huge theme in my book that I always advocate with all of these different programs is not losing sight of what the core values of the practice are. Because the question is, why are we doing this?
Amanda Donnelly:
Why are we doing this? Why are we coming to work? So, that's about the mission statement too, but why are we doing this? What's it all about? Because it's all about patients and clients. That's why we do what we do at least, because if that's not your why of coming to work, then you may not be in the right profession. But all of the core values, and whether it's teamwork, integrity, compassion, whatever those are, if we can weave those into all of our programs, that really taps into the why we're doing this. And I think people, we need to continue to remind them why we're doing this.
Amanda Donnelly:
I just gave a presentation last night and talked about angry clients, and how do you dig deep? How do you really find that level of patience with somebody that's standing in front of you yelling? And it is about promoting and thinking about, well, why are we doing this? It is about compassion and the human pet bond and that thing. We don't want to just play lip service to that.
Amanda Donnelly:
It's about genuine, authentic. That's why those standing meetings and sharing success stories and keeping people connected to the meaning behind the practice is just vitally important.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I think that's a great place to end this. I think that's fantastic. Dr. Amanda Donnelly, your book Leading and Managing Veterinary Teams: The Definitive Guide to Veterinary Practice Management is out now. I'll put a link in the show notes. Are there other places that people can find the book?
Amanda Donnelly:
Nope. It's on Amazon. So, it's real easy. People, obviously, there's links on my website and whatnot, but no, just going to Amazon, whether you put the name of the book in, or just even my name, it'll come up real easy.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Where can people find you online to learn more about you and what you do?
Amanda Donnelly:
Yeah. Thank you. So, my website is amandadonnellydvm.com.
Andy Roark:
Perfect. I'll put a link in show notes as well. Guys, thanks a lot for being here, everybody. Thanks for listening. Dc. Amanda Donnelly, thank you so much for being with me, my friend. I appreciate the heck out of you. I love what you have done for the profession and what you continue to do.
Amanda Donnelly:
Back at you, Andy.
Andy Roark:
Thanks, guys.
Stephanie Goss:
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.
Stephanie Goss:
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.