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Technician

Oct 09 2024

Can They Do Homework On the Clock?

A medical director is having trouble navigating the balance between supporting paraprofessional staff in tech school and ensuring they have the necessary technical skills for their role. In this episode of the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast, Stephanie and Dr. Andy Roark discuss a specific scenario where a veterinary assistant, allowed to study on the clock, is struggling with skill development. The conversation turns into a thoughtful debate about trust, team expectations, and the challenges of leading a veterinary team with fairness and empathy. They explore how communication and adjusting expectations can prevent feeling like the “bad guy” while supporting staff in skill growth. Let's get into this episode!

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · 308 – Can They Do Homework On The Clock?

You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you have something that you would love Andy and Stephanie to roleplay 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: Hey everybody, I'm Stephanie Goss and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. And this week on the podcast, we are tackling a letter in the mailbag from a veterinarian who has moved into a lead chief of staff role in their practice. And they're really struggling because this practice has some particular quirks that they've inherited, including veterinary assistants who are quite in school being allowed to do homework on the clock.

This vet is struggling with not only wondering if they did the right thing with how they approached it. They're also struggling with the aftermath that seems to be happening within the team. This was a interesting one. We got a little spicy. Let's get into it.

Dr. Andy Roark: And we are back, it's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Stephanie, it's the end of the world as we know it, Goss. Oh man, how are you doing, today?

Stephanie Goss: I I thought that would might be what you were going to use, but I was waiting for you to sing it to me. And I was singing  it in my head. 

Dr. Andy Roark: It’s the end of the world. They kind of chant the song, which is good. 

Stephanie Goss: Yep. It's good for, it's good for your singing. 

Dr. Andy Roark: I love that old Tommy boy clip where they're singing it in the car and they get about six lines into it and then it just kind of runs away from them. That's my favorite. One of my favorite little, little, little clips.

Oh, man. 

Stephanie Goss: I am good. How are you? 

Dr. Andy Roark: I'm good. I'm good. Things are, uh, moving fast these days, you know, the fall has really kicked into high gear, 

Stephanie Goss: This year has just like. I feel like that's a sign that you're getting old AF is that every year you say, Oh, this year has just flown by. But I really feel that way about

Dr. Andy Roark: I mean, the fourth quarter of the year is right up on us. And again, now it's like Q4. I remember we were getting started. I was writing resolutions for the year and like doing predictions and, oh my gosh. Yep, another year in the books where I wildly, inaccurately predicted how the year would go.

Stephanie Goss: And all of the things that you didn't have on your bingo card at the start of the year. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh my gosh. This year has been completely bonkers in the world in general like in the world in general assassination attempts late candidate swaps for the election just absolute chaos.

Stephanie Goss: I had one, I had one this morning, like, it's so funny because so you and I both have over this last couple of years, but for me really in particular this year, I have really backed off of my consumption of social media and, 

Dr. Andy Roark: Good for you.

Stephanie Goss: and on, on occasion, I'm just like, let me see. And I, it's funny because I am very intentional about my choices and I'm.

And I'm old. So I'm not generally on the TikTok but I watch my things on the Instagram reel, like the boomer that I am. And, uh, I was watching some reels this morning and I could tell you, I did not have it on my bingo card. Just like I did not have that Snoop Dogg would be like the star of the Olympics on my bingo card.

I did not have on my bingo card this year that RuPaul would be teaching the young Gen Z's how to change the attire on their car and be a at home mechanic. I saw that, I swear to God, I saw it on the Instagram Reel today and I was like, I didn't have that on my bingo card, but that's freaking amazing.

Where did you learn how to change attire? Oh, a drag queen taught me. Like I just made me, made my, it was fantastic. If you haven't seen it, you should go and watch it cause it was amazing. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Was it demure? You know? Like, like I didn't That was also Didn't see that coming. There's other things like that that have come up on, online. Do you know who Theo Vaughn is? 

Stephanie Goss: No. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Theo Vaughn is this, Comedian, right? And he's from Louisiana and he rocks like a hardcore mullet.

You know what I mean? Like, 

Stephanie Goss: a mullet? Okay. Yep. This tracks. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Picture, jean shorts and a mullet You know what I mean? And like a little goatee. And, and he leans into that, like that's his shtick, right? And, he's, he's a comedian. I don't know where he falls on the political spectrum, but he's edgy in some ways, but I, I do a lot of comedy and stuff, so, so I, I tend to see a lot of comedians and stuff.

Uh, he's, he's interesting in, in that way. I saw him on the Instagram Reels. He has a podcast, right? So comedian, mullet, jean short podcast. In the last month, he interviewed Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. He's interviewing Donald. He's got jean shorts a sport coat and a mullet and he's interviewing the Donald presumably like Mar a Lago, and again, I don't want him this to be political or anything 

Stephanie Goss: We're sure. 

Dr. Andy Roark: The idea that this comedian again, no shade against him as a comedian. He's just he's like the um, 

Stephanie Goss: That’s so random. 

Dr. Andy Roark: He's like a modern Jeff Foxworthy like Uh huh. That's uh huh. Yep. Jeff Foxworthy interviewing the Republican presidential nominee, you know, like nominee.

He's not even the primaries and I'm just like And Bernie this and Bernie Sanders on the other side the week earlier He got Bernie and was like the idea that this is 

Stephanie Goss: Not on my bingo card. 

Dr. Andy Roark: .. what media is today. It's just had never would have happened when I was a kid, Bill Clinton was not talking to, you know, there's, there's, I say as podcasters.

Yeah. And it was just, again no, I don't, I don't know what that means and there's no shade or anything. But I, as I watched it, I was just like, 

Stephanie Goss: It means we're old. 

Dr. Andy Roark:  Goodness, gracious, the world is a different place than it was when I was young. 

Stephanie Goss: This whole intro makes us sound like the boomers we are is, 

Dr. Andy Roark: It totally does. I really wrestle with that. It's so funny you say that.

I was like, I feel like I'm becoming the old person who doesn't exactly recognize the world anymore. And like, I'm not that old, but I'm like, but, in my defense, I don't think the world used to move this fast. I think the difference between the world in 1960 to 1990 would be. And the difference between 1995 and 2025, I think those are radically different things.

I mean, that's, the pace has clearly picked up. But, goodness gracious, there's just so much change. But, alright, anyway, I, sorry, 

Stephanie Goss: Yes, yes, so the, take the takeaways, 

Dr. Andy Roark: If you're feeling like the world's changing, you're not alone. You're not alone.

Stephanie Goss: Go watch. Go watch RuPaul. Learn how to change a tire. Tire. Change a tire. Okay, so we have got we've got a great mailbag letter today though that I want us to dive into. 'cause it is a little bit of, is it the end of the world? So we've got a letter from a lead lead. Vet at a practice and, um, 

Dr. Andy Roark: a medical director?

Stephanie Goss: medical director, Chief of staff what have you. But they're, they're a doctor, right? And so they but they're in a corporate group and they have not worked at this practice location, but they have worked at several other local practices. They joined the practice and they learned that the paraprofessional team, in particular, they have some vet assistants that are going to tech school. And at this location, apparently previously the assistants had been allowed to work on schoolwork during their downtime. So they were allowed to the, they were in tech school, the school is being paid for in part or in whole by work as a benefit, which is something that happens sometimes, and they are also getting paid on the clock to work on their schoolwork.

And so, there is in particular, this vet is struggling because they have an assistant who is struggling with their technical skills. And they're getting close to being done with their program, and they still don't have all of the technical skills that this doctor would expect that a soon to be licensed technician would have.

And they're seeming to prioritize doing schoolwork over practicing and working on technical skills. And so, the doctor had a conversation with the hospital manager because they said, look, there's, I've been here now for a while. I've been watching all of the assistance. There are some gaps in their skill set that I would like to rectify so that we can improve our patient care, that we can work more efficiently, more effectively, all of those kinds of things.

So they had a conversation with the assistants and this one in particular had, it sounds like a meltdown and because they said that they felt threatened and singled out and said all kinds of, uh, things in the heat of the moment. And this chief of staff or medical director is like, what do I do with this?

It doesn't seem like, and none of the other hospital locations I've worked at ever allowed their staff to get paid to do school on the clock. These team members need to work on their technical skills. How do I enforce this, get them to work on this, but also how do I get them to look at themselves critically and recognize where they are lacking in skills? How do I get them to reprioritize their time? And most importantly, they asked, how do I earn the trust and respect of these team members who now are, for all intents and purposes, looking at me like I'm the root of all evil because I've told them you can't do schoolwork on the clock anymore.

And I thought this was a great one. I have some thoughts, certainly from the manager perspective, but I thought we could have some fun diving into this one.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Yeah. I have, I have, I have thoughts on that.

Stephanie Goss: I figured you might have some thoughts. Uh 

Dr. Andy Roark: You know, when you look at something from the outside and you see someone making mistakes that you made yourself like 20 years ago and you're like? and again, you like, you love the person cause you're like, I know exactly what you think. I know exactly why you think that, and I know exactly how this is going to go, because I did exactly what you're doing, and it did not go well, it blew up in my face.

Stephanie Goss: You're like, I I see that. I see that gopher trap because I stepped in it. 

Dr. Andy Roark: yeah, in a way it makes this, makes me really happy, because it validates mistakes that I made early in my career, and I'm like, oh good, here's someone else who had the same thoughts that I had, and the same explosion in the face is happening again.

alright, um, I think we're gonna go ahead and need to, we're gonna need the theme song right up front, because we're going to Camp Tough Love, 

Stephanie Goss: Camp Tough Love

Dr. Andy Roark:   Camp Tough Love. here. Here we go. All aboard. 

Dustin Bays: All  aboard! Get ready for a SAFE talk. You might need a stress walk. That's what we do at Camp Tough Love!

Dr. Andy Roark: All right. So Camp Tough Love. Um, I get yeah, so I get it. I get where we are and I say this to this writer with love and we're gonna fix this.

It's all good. We're gonna fix it. First thing we gotta do here is Flaming Raging Sword of Justice check and I get it. I get it You're there and 

Stephanie Goss: Maybe it's a little late for that.

Dr. Andy Roark: It's, it is late. It is late, but I just want look slowly down and off to your dominant hand and if there's a flaming raging sword in it you have pulled the flaming raging sword of justice and put it to use and I feel like where is a cleanup job from the flaming raging sort of justice is what I feel like this is and so okay not insurmountable all good, but I totally understand.

You're there. You're busting your butt. This person is not where they need to be as far as skills. It's probably frustrating to work with someone who doesn't have the skills they need and then you look around and are they practicing their skills? No, they're working on homework for a class that they're taking while they're on the clock.

I get it. And I think we can all, if you think about that for a moment, we can all imagine snatching the sword of justice and taking some heads, making, making the justice happen. We can all get it. However, the Flaming Raging Sword of Justice cuts both ways, and we've got some self-inflicted wounds now to deal with.

And so that's it. So I just gotta say that up front. Okay, from a headspace standpoint, number one, Flaming Raging Sword of Justice check. Number two, the way that we talk about decisions we make with our staff, it really matters. Okay. 

Stephanie Goss: Mm example I want to put forward is the difference in fees and discounts.

Dr. Andy Roark: If I run my vet clinic and I said to you, Hey, I'm going to charge you a fee to use your credit card. Or I'm going to charge you a fee to come on on the same day of the service. I'd probably make you mad. 

Stephanie Goss: Mm 

Dr. Andy Roark: I instead. said to you, I'm going to give you a discount for paying in cash, or I'm going to give you a discount booking further than one day in advance. You'd probably be okay with it. 

And it's amazing how that matters to people because ultimately charging fees versus giving discounts is often the exact same thing. It's the exact same thing.

Stephanie Goss: Mm hmm. Because how many people are still going to whip out their wallet and pay with credit card? 

Dr. Andy Roark: Plenty of them. Exactly right, but they're going to be really mad about it if they have to pay a fee, if you're upcharging a fee. If you get a discount for paying in cash, you're like, great, well I wish I had cash, I'd get a discount, but I don't have, I don't have, I can't get the cash discount. It's the exact same thing.

And, when we have when we have staff members that are taking advantage of a policy, It's important that we try to not make them feel like we're taking something away from them. Now, our writer says, none of the other hospitals in our group would ever let this happen. This is not supposed to be part of the job.

They're not supposed to be getting this. And I say, I understand, however, the mind of your team, they're not getting. They're not getting a perk. 

Stephanie Goss: Right, 

Dr. Andy Roark: is just what it means to work here. 

Stephanie Goss: right. It is what it is. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, exactly right. They're not, they have not been enjoying a benefit. They have been just working and now they're taking a penalty.

Stephanie Goss: Mm hmm. 

Dr. Andy Roark: And I think that that's really important to 

Stephanie Goss: Because you joined the team. 

Dr. Andy Roark: You join the team and now their compensation, if you think of it like that, part of their compensation is being able to work on their homework and get paid. That's a nice little perk. If you can get it, you should take it because it's a sweet perk.

You're taking that perk away from them. So you came in and they lost a perk that they were actively using. Just like the fees and the discounts, we can navigate this, but we need to get smart about how we communicate what's going to happen when it's going to happen, how it's going to happen, the iterations to get from where we are to there. But just remember that that's a big part of it 

Stephanie Goss: And I love that you put, I love that you put it in that headspace because the parallel that I'm sure some of my fellow manager colleagues listening immediately made because it's the parallel that my mind jumped to the second that you said it that way. And I hadn't thought about it this way previously.

I immediately jumped to the age old debate in veterinary medicine where the manager or the practice owner is like, Oh, I suddenly became aware that the IRS has rules about what we're allowed to discount and how we're allowed to do it. And so we're going to follow the IRS rules and the team loses their mind because they don't view it as you're trying to follow the rules.

They view it as you're taking away a benefit that they have had. And it's it's that same exact, it's, that same exact scenario. 

Dr. Andy Roark: It's exactly that. So I think that's, that's because that's the first part, right? The fees versus discounts, the way we talk about what we're giving and taking, it, it really matters. The idea about what the job is important. Okay. This is coming from a guy that has all remote employees.

An unlimited vacation in his company. And so you better believe that I have questions sometimes about how people are spending their time. I just do. There's no way you could run my business and not have some questions about what people are doing. And I still choose to do that. We don't have tracking software.

We, I, again, I don't. It's unlimited vacation. I shifted my mindset a long time ago to what are the outcomes that I expect from people. And I think that the mindset of This person is clocked in for this many minutes and they should be doing this and that. I think that's becoming increasingly sort of antiquated in some ways.

I don't want people to lose their mind thinking about that. But I do think it's hard in the modern workplace. And I think fewer and fewer people really look at it as I'm on the clock and this, these minutes are worth this. I think more and more our society is shifting to the idea of what is the work output or outcome that this person is being paid for and it was it was just interesting. 

I really think that when the pandemic hit and a lot of people went to working from home, that became very clear because what people found is that they could get their whole entire job done in less time when they were working at home.

And then the debate became well, I'm paying you for 40 hours. You should be working for 40 hours. And other people said, I'm doing my job. And I'm getting done in 32 hours, that should be fine. And it's really, and there's not right or wrong, it's really what have you agreed to, is the answer. What are the expectations of what have you agreed to?

I can imagine some people's blood boiling right now, but bear with me. There's nothing wrong with saying, this is the work I expect you to get done, and this is what I'm paying you for. Which is how we run Uncharted. Like I, we have work outcomes. That are expected and paid for. I don't I'm not tracking people's hours.

Other side is to say this is exactly how we're doing it. And your hours matter. That's what you're paid for. There's not a right or wrong. It's just everybody needs to be in agreement about what it is. And there should be clear expectations about this is how it looks when I was. When I was an associate vet, I was not a brand new baby associate vet, I had been a vet for a long time.

And I worked, I was working this practice years back, it's not the practice I'm currently at. But in this practice there were a couple of kennel kids, and I call them kennel kids because they were kennel kids. They were 16 to 18 years old, like they were high school kids, coming in and working. And they would come in and they would work, and they would wear their headphones and listen to music, and they would practice dance routines. I'm not kidding. They would practice dance routines together, and they would film them for social media. 

And they did it on the clock. That was just, you would go back in the back, and they would be hanging out filming each other, doing dances.

And it happened a lot. It came to a point where, it kind of bugged me, not really, I didn't, I was not relying on them to get my job or my work done, they were not really involved in patient care, but it does it catches your eye when you're busting your butt and you go into the break room, and they're there, cooking a meal in the toaster oven, and What are you guys, what are we doing here?

And so I, I actually said something to one of the owners. I was like, hey, you're being too soft on the kennel kids. You're being, I mean, you're being too soft on them, man. They're, they're hiding in the back. They're, they're goofing off on social media and stuff like that.

And he really blew me off. And he said he said, they're, he said, don't worry about them, Andy. They're fine. They work hard. And I, so I let it go. I said my piece. I said it to him. If it was my business, I'd appreciate if somebody said something to me of man, might want to look at this.

But not my business, not my circus, not my monkeys. And so he said that and, and, and I said, okay, fine. And I, I let it go, but I've thought back to it a number of times. And of course, it makes me go, am I the bad guy? In the 1980s comedy movie, he's like, oh, those kids should be working harder.

I don't know that I was, but I think, and I've sort of had some inferences here. I think that what he was saying was, we probably, he probably paid those people minimum wage. And I think that he saw that flexibility and that time with their friends as part of their compensation. For more information, visit www.

FEMA. gov And so I think he was probably fine for them to film videos and bounce around and then when the staff called for them on the overhead, they showed up and they did it and that was how it worked and I sat with that for a while and I think what I saw was I think the conflict in this letter, which is this idea of it.

These people are clocked in and they're getting paid. They should be working. Versus we know what the expectations are and they know what the expectations are and they're going to hang out on the clock and wait to be called and that's fine. And I know that as the employer and I'm writing their paychecks and I'm fine with that arrangement.

Stephanie Goss: Yes. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Then I think that that's got to be okay. You know what I mean? Then that's fine. It really comes down to what's the expectation. But that's when I was like, Oh, that's an entirely different way of looking at employees than how I have. And I think it's also fine to say, that's not how our vet assistants were treated.

And that's not how the front desk was treated. And that's not how anybody else was treated. But also, I suspect all those people were getting paid a different level than the young kennel attendants. 

Stephanie Goss: And I think, so I think there's a couple of things in what you said to, to unpack. One is, I think the key point there is that understanding on all sides what the expectation is, right? So, you as an associate in the practice, you're working hard, you're busting your butt. It's not your business.

So you don't know what he has worked out with them. And so you say something, but he could have clearly worked out with them. Look, I don't, as long as the pets all have water, they're walked regularly, they're cleaned regularly, they, like whatever those things are, and we, you know?

we call on the overhead and you, and you're paged and you come.

Then the rest of your time is yours to do with it what you want, right? Like, that could have been a conversation that happened with them. If he has that clarity and they have that clarity, that's great. Where it becomes a problem is when there isn't the transparency across the board. And I think that happens in practices more often than not, right?

Where, to your point, it's kind of like the pay piece. There may be some benefits that one group gets, but if there's not transparency across the board, of course it's going to create drama when another group finds out what they're getting if they don't understand the why, right? And so I think that's, I think that's part of the solution and the process here is to figure out how do you actually communicate the expectations. Both, to both sides, immediately involved, but to the rest of the team as a whole. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Totally. Yep. I agree with that. So it's, it is a part of it about, is about expectations. The other part here for me in Headspace is Phil Richmond, Dr. Phil Richmond says this really well. When he says when he has an emotional reaction when something makes him mad, the healthiest thing he can do is stop and say to himself, why am I reacting this way? I think that's a question I would put to our readers to say, I get it. I think I understand why, but why are we reacting this way? Is it about the lack of skills? Is it about this, the sort of a justice mindset of, if you're on the clock, you should be working for the company? Is it the fact that people at other clinics don't have this perk, and these people do have this perk, and there's an unfairness thing?

Dr. Andy Roark: Again, I 

Stephanie Goss: Do you feel taken advantage of? Like, what is the underlying emotion? 

Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly, but I think that that's really important from a Headspace standpoint to figure out what do you really need here and what's, what's driving this on your side. Because ultimately we need to put that flaming raging sword of justice down and it's hard to do that if we don't understand why we feel the need to pull it in the first place.

And so there's, there's that. I, so that's kind of that. I, I, those are, so those are sort of my, my, my big, Headspace here is bleeding into the action steps. But I think that's good for me, for Headspace.

Stephanie Goss: I agree with that. I think the bus trip to Camp Tough Love is definitely warranted. Like we've got to look at where you're at. And I love how you how you pointed out how Phil approaches that. Cause I think it's really healthy, right? Like asking ourselves the question, why do I feel like this?

And that's a question that only the writer can answer, but I think it's really important to sit with that because I think that's going to help. you figure out where you go from here and whether it's a productive path to walk down or not. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. And let me wrap up Headspace here by restating what I said, hopefully at the very beginning. I'm not saying that our medical director is wrong. I'm not saying like this could, is this totally valid? I mean, I think it's a totally valid thing to say is, no one else in the organization is getting paid to study on the clock.

And this person who's studying has got real holes in his or her clinical skills that are hurting our team. That's not a bad thought to have. That's not wrong. I think it's, I think most of it goes, yeah, it's totally, it's totally legit. Everything that we have laid out has been Trying to get the perspective of the other side in view and to start to get real strategic about what we're going to accomplish so I'm good with that for headspace.

Let's take a break and we'll come back and we'll get into action steps 

Stephanie Goss: Sounds great. 

Dr. Andy Roark: All right, so action steps here. It's easy–what are the sayings I've come back to recently a lot is the old environmentalist saying of think globally act locally right?

Stephanie Goss: Okay. 

Dr. Andy Roark: So I think that it's okay to think in a global sense about what is fair and what does it mean to be on the clock and have those thoughts but ultimately the action that we take is not at a global level like I'm not making employees across the country change I am working with Sarah who is trying to pass her courses, her high school courses, college courses, that I am working with Sarah who is trying to study for her exams, and I need to see her as a person, understand what is important to me, understand what's important to the clinic, and then go and engage with her in a way that does not involve the flaming raging sort of justice.

Okay? And so the first thing that I want to do here Is relax the tensions. I'm going to do that in two ways. Number one, I'm going to take the time component off of this. Listen, this kennel assistant VA, whatever, they have been doing this for some time now. The building is not going to fall down. If it goes on for another six, eight, 12 weeks, 

Stephanie Goss: Mm hmm. 

Dr. Andy Roark: This is how it's been.

Stephanie Goss: Right. How is it going to make a difference if you change this today versus changing it two weeks from now, two months from now, end of the year? 

Dr. Andy Roark: I mean, that's it. Yeah. End of the year. When, when the semester is over. It's not. There are some things. One of the things I've learned as a leader, I think I'm good at this. You always question if you're doing it right, but I think I'm good at this is, I have gotten to the place where I recognize mistakes I have made in my judgment.

And I have not grabbed the steering wheel and spun it to try to correct. I have taken the steering wheel, gently turned it, and rectified the mistake that I made over the next three months. You know? And that has gotten so much better. And been so much easier, and it has been so much better for people's trust in me, because my team does not feel like things are being snatched away from them.

They are being told that next year, we're not going to be able to do this anymore. So everybody just know that. And then we roll right on up, and I give them a reminder at the beginning of December. And then we change and everybody's okay. And there's maybe some grumbling, but it's not if I weighed in on the Wednesday and say, starting Thursday, there will be an organizational change that will affect all of you.

Stephanie Goss: It feels very, it does feel very reactive. And it also, when it's time bound like that, and it's urgent, it also is very easy, from a headspace perspective, assuming good intent on all sides, it's very easy for that to feel punitive, even if it's not, because it feels so abrupt.

Especially when something has been going on for a long time and that's the conversation, going back to what I said about the IRS, like that's the conversation that I have with manager peers all the time is well, how long have they been getting vet services for free at this clinic? And if they say, well, the owner has been doing it for the 20 years that I've been here, but I've, I know that we need to do this to be in compliance with the IRS.

Okay. That's not the best choice. If they've been doing something for 20 years and you want to roll up in and be like, sorry guys, we're going to change this tomorrow. There is no world where that doesn't feel punitive to somebody. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, yeah, that's 

Stephanie Goss: And it, it's not that that's the way you intend it, but that's still the way they're going to feel.

Dr. Andy Roark: Of course they are. Imagine that you're the only person who smokes cigarettes in your practice. And then suddenly there's a policy about what is required for every person who smokes cigarettes in the practice. There's no world where you don't say, Hey! This is a hundred percent aimed at me because then you're the only one smoking cigarettes. Of course the smoking policy is aimed at you like it is and like you're going to take it personally.

It's the same thing. It's the same thing here. There's only one person studying for tests on the clock She's gonna catch on when the test plus studying policy has changed 

Stephanie Goss: Well, and even if there's multiple, it still is going to feel punitive. You know, like that's just the way the human mind works, 

Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I mean, especially if you talk to the person. This is the thing, is if you go and you say, Hey, I've noticed this, I'd like to make some changes, and da da da da da, and you talk to them, and then you change the policy they really feel like they're singled out.

And again, I get it, I'm not saying that changing the policy is wrong. This is 100 percent about how it's being perceived by the team. Yeah, I have no doubt they feel singled out. I totally get it. And the truth is we are making this policy adjustment because of this person. And so they're not wrong.

Anyway, it's, it's part of it's that. My, my big thing here as far as removing stress is one, to try to lengthen the timeline on this and say, this does not have to get fixed today. I agree that it needs to be corrected, but as soon as we lean back a little bit, we can make this happen much more smoothly.

And so that's sort of the big thing for me is, that's sort of my, my first action step is to take that constraint off of yourself.

Stephanie Goss: I think that's really smart and I think you also can add to that because you can, there can be things that are time bound, right? So like you, as you said, okay, is it, what is it going to hurt if we go another, you know, three weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, whatever. If there are things that are life threatening level urgent, right?

Like we cannot have a patient on IV fluids where the pump is alarming and they're being ignored so that anyone can work on their school work. I don't think that there's any member of a team who cares about patients who wouldn't understand that rationalization and not, and be able to separate the personal feelings and the emotions from that.

So I do think that it is totally okay to, if you can, as, and it's hard I want to empathize with our writer because I feel like we've done a lot of pointing out, pointing the mirror in their direction and saying, maybe we pulled the flaming raging sword of justice a little fast, right? And that hurts.

Dr. Andy Roark: It's okay. 

Stephanie Goss: And in order to fix it, if you can get to the space where you can recognize, okay, there are things I can do to fix this. If you can let yourself get even okay, you may not love the idea of continuing to let them do it, but if you can get okay with it and try and find the middle ground, it is also okay to put some parameters in place to say, okay, Mike, you're in the middle of your program.

To be honest, if I was in this person's shoes, I could even be talked into a year long or even a two long, two year long period if there were some other parameters put in place, right? If the thing that was really bothering me was the fact that pets were sitting in soiled kennels or they were, you know, the alarm was going off and they were being ignored or if there were things that for a patient care reason felt urgent, if you came to me and said, okay.

“Hey, look. I feel like maybe I went a little too fast and I want to apologize for that. I really, you know, I really want to try and come to a middle ground. Here's what I would like to do, right?” And then you told me, Hey, I would, I would like to, eventually we're going to have to get to a place where this is not a perk anymore.

That's, if that's the decision you make, fine. If you tell me what the timeline is, and you give me a little bit of, you throw me a bone, and I give a little that's what compromise is about, right? It's about the give and take, and can we come to this from that place, if you can get to that headspace, it's, you're going to have a much better outcome as a leader, and it's going to be much more palatable to, the team as well, if it feels like there is give and take, because although no one wants to be called a dictator, no one wants to be told, you know, you're I think you're the root of all evil.

If you come down on them and you say, it's, this is the way it's going to be. I understand where they're coming from. You know? 

Dr. Andy Roark: Yep. I agree with that and that was on my on my list as well Is does this have to be all or none? Meaning are your two choices: this person studies and doesn't do their job or Studying is now banned fully and again, I don't think I don't think something being banned fully is a bad idea But does it have to be fully banned today?

And also I'm not convinced that you can't do anything today. I think the other part for me and again, this is sort of an action step headspace. But I think for the action step here as far as lowering the stakes to is I need to get curious and go Talk to me about what's going on with your classes. How much do you have left?

“What are you trying to do? What is your study schedule? What are you trying to accomplish? Because I want to I want to support you And I have some needs of things that need to get done in the practice and then maybe, maybe the arrangement can become, you can study, but only after these things are done Or, yeah, that, you can study after these requirements are met something like that.”

And that's fine. I would personally, I would take a position like that where I would say this is my immediate needs and then you can study around this and then know that you're not going to be able to study next semester. So we're going to let this ride till the end of the year. We'll get you through your fall exams,

Stephanie Goss: Current load. 

Dr. Andy Roark: and your current load because again, it's quite possible this person committed to their case or their 

Stephanie Goss: It's a class load. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, their case load, or their, what, class load, yeah their class load, based on the understanding that they would have time to work on it. And if you take that away from them, now they're hopelessly overloaded with classes. And again, they be paid to study? I don't, again, I don't know, but they made choices with the belief that they would be, and that belief was based on the fact that they were allowed to in the past.

And so I get it. Let's see if we can support them through the short term. And then this is one of the things we're going to correct over the long term. And so anyway get curious. Figure out if this can be somewhere between all and none. Think about an incremental phase out over time, let people know it's coming and then go from there. 

Stephanie Goss: Mm 

Dr. Andy Roark: The other alternative you have, and this might fit in with the conversation we said before, you can go forward and not really address the studying thing. If, and this goes back to, what are we really upset about? If it is, this person does not have the skills they're supposed to have. 

You don't have to tell them Take the studying away from them to just say to them, your clinical skills are not where they need to be.

And this is the, we need to figure out a program that's going to get your clinical skills where they need to be in the next 12 weeks. Let's figure out what that looks like. And you don't have to take away the ability for her to study. You just give her the requirements of what it's going to take to continue to be there and to, and to meet the requirements for a job.

And maybe she can continue to study that. Maybe she can just get significantly more efficient in other areas. And now she's doing everything she was doing before. Plus she's meeting your standards. Plus she's still finding time to study. What do you care? You're paying her the same amount. She's doing the thing that she, that she wanted.

Now we all know that's probably not going to happen. There's probably going to be some sacrificing of study time to get these things done. 

Stephanie Goss: I think it's that knowledge that it, that it is. Likely not to work out that way that makes people, that makes leaders tie those two things together. And this is where I want to say to our writer, like, you're not alone. Like Andy said, in the very beginning, this is a gopher trap we see coming because we've stepped in it.

And so, you're not alone in making that, that gut response to tie two and, two and two is equaling four in your brain. And in this scenario, and I think you're spot on, Andy, and if you approach it from a different perspective, and you let one thing set to the side, and you actually focus on what is the problem here. Is the problem that they're doing schoolwork, the root, like reading this, and again, we only hear one, see one side of the story, but reading this email, my thought was the problem is not the fact that they're doing schoolwork on the clock. The problem is that they don't have the skills that they need.

Those are two different problems, but it's the tying them together that as the team member who is involved immediately feels punitive. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah it's if I want my kids to spend less time on their cell phones, I have found it's much easier for me to sign them up for extracurriculars, take them to the swimming pool, yeah and, and have family movie night than it is to take their phone away. And like, They spend less time on their phone when we're on a hiking trip together.

And it's sort of like, I didn't take their phone away. I just gave them something else that we were doing that needed to get done. That doesn't lend itself to a phone. It's kind of the same thing for that. So anyway, I don't mean that to be manipulative. And I would go back to the whole thing of, maybe this person is really relying on this time because they thought they would have it from past precedent and I really don't want to screw them over. And at the same time, this is not a sustainable long term. 

So anyway, I think hopefully that comes across as a little trip to Camp Tough Love. As far as the way that we sort of approach it and the decisions that we make about shutting down this thing that they perceive as a perk.

And then a shift in mindset over to what do I really feel this way? What do we really need to accomplish? Can we meet them in the middle? Can we phase this behavior out over time so that they know going into next semester They're not going to have study time and that's fine? They knew it going into the semester like can we do some things that are not going to cause them to panic?

But are going to take a little bit of time and make this problem just go away And I really do think if we can take those if we can take that mindset and we can take those softer steps We can gently take this little perk away from the employees in a way that, that is not going to be a big deal because the vast majority of your employees, they're not doing this.

They don't care. We're just going to, we can support this person out, close the door behind them and lock that door. And honestly, guys, that's the way a lot of business gets done and it will make you happier and it'll make your team happier. There have been a lot of things in my career that have not worked the way I wanted.

And instead of just shutting them down. I let them ride out until some created deadline. Whether it was the, the first of the summer, the end of the year, the Thanksgiving holiday, the next conference that we were putting on, and then we're not going to be doing this anymore after that. And a lot of times it's just better to let this annoyance go on.

Until a natural conclusion point and then end it in a way that everybody's cool with than it is to try to squash this annoyance and then deal with the collateral damage that comes from that.

Stephanie Goss: I love that and I agree with that and I want to offer, like, where I want to end is, I want to offer some food for thought on the opposite. On the opposite side of that argument because I think what you, you know, you talked in the beginning about the world has changed and employees showing up and doing 40 hours of work versus doing the job that needs to get done in 32 hours and being okay with that.

I think that's really important and really relevant. And I also think it's applicable here. When I think about our industry and I think about the changes. We need credentialed technicians, we need qualified, rounded credentialed technicians. 

And so food for thought, just on the other side of the argument that I would offer is I know what it's like to be the manager who's trying to find a technician for years on end.

It's a really hard place to be in. And so most of us turn inwardly, right? Which is exactly what this practice is doing. They're like, Hey, we're going to grow it from within. So we're going to take our assistance and we're going to encourage those who want to go to school. And we're going to support them in ways that can look like them, paying for school or offering them the opportunity to do cases on the clock, whatever it is.

And I don't think that's inherently a bad thing. And I think as an industry, when I have talked to my peers as, and colleagues as a manager, there is this headspace as an industry that we look at it like. So negatively, like why would we allow them to do schoolwork on the clock?

Why would we create that environment? And I would actually argue that it is a way for us to help. It is a solution, not a what's the word I'm trying to say? Not a, not a negative, right? In the, in this, And if I, if I think about it and I think about my own practice, because that's how I used to feel like I, you know, I used to be that manager who, if my, myself included, went to tech school, if I left the practice, you know, within two years of working finishing my degree, then I would have had to pay my practice back.

And for a long time I did that and now my beliefs have radically shifted and I feel the way about this as well if we want to grow and develop. We know that our paraprofessional staff, most of, a lot of them are living, I won't say most, a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of them are vastly underpaid for the work that they do.

If we want to change that, we have to think about ways that we can impact that and make a big difference. And this is one of those ways that I have seen firsthand can make a big difference for team members if we can support them. Now, that's not to say. And please hear me when I say this, that's not to say that I don't still expect them to do their job.

Dr. Andy Roark: I heard Stephanie say that they get to sit at a desk and just do their school work and you’re going to pay them.

Stephanie Goss: No, no, that's not what I'm saying. And I do think that it's important to look at really being clear about those communications. And I think that's a step that we often miss. And thinking about what you said about the practice owner that you worked for. I love that.

the idea of a world, and I love it because this is a world in my own practice that I helped create, where I can have the conversation with the team members and the expectations are very clear. Here's the job I need you to perform. This is your first priority. And if we can accomplish this job, if you can have the skills that you need to be qualified for it, I have no problem with you spending, The extra time working on schoolwork within these parameters, right?

And it's such a, most of us think about it in an automatically just by default in a black and white thinking like, well, if I give them an inch, they're going to take a mile. And I think we have, I think that kind of mindset is very self damaging. I think we have to change that as an industry. And so on, I just want to put it out there because we talked a lot about, well, we can take this benefit away and that is one choice.

And it may be the applicable and the right choice to make in this practice. Again, we only see one side of the story that we get in the mailbag letter. And so I don't think there's anything wrong with doing what you said, Andy, and I agree with it. Like we can take it away. And if we do it, let's do it in a, in the way that we described.

And I just want to put it out there that there is another potential, which is maybe we create a world where we help provide more texts to an industry that desperately needs it by shifting our mindset as leaders about how we could approach a situation.

Dr. Andy Roark: I just, I think one of my, one of my fundamental beliefs, and I'll, I'll shut up after this, but one of my fundamental beliefs is there is no should in in, in any of this, in this life, there is no should

Stephanie Goss: Four letter 

Dr. Andy Roark: It's “what do the two affected parties agree on?” Eyes wide open, clear expectations.

And so, that's what we do in our company. As I say, you know, you're remote, you work at home, I don't track your hours, and you have unlimited vacation. I'm going to be clear with you about what your salary is, I'm going to be clear with you about what the deadlines are that we have coming up, and we're going to talk about the workload that you have, and if I don't feel like you're producing enough work, I'm going to tell you that gently, not in a mean way, and if you feel like you're being overwhelmed with work and your salary is not supportive of the level of work that you have, that you're doing, I expect you to say that to me and let's keep working on it.

And as long as we can come to an agreement, we both feel good about, then this just works out. And it's the same thing. Am I opposed to having, I don't know, let's say a kennel technician that makes Let's, I'm just pulling numbers out of the air. That makes 12 an hour and gets to study on the clock instead of a kennel technician that makes 15 an hour and does not study on the clock at all.

No, I'm not because the 15 an hour person is generating more work at the end of the day than the person who is spending part of their day studying. Basically it's, it comes down to, if I believe that this person, you know, that I'm getting one extra hour of work from the kennel person who's not studying, then I'm going to try to compensate that person for that hour.

And the other person that may be clocked in the same amount of time, but they're not doing the same work as the person who's not studying. And there's that. And again, now we're getting pay scales and stuff. There's a million ways to look at this, and it doesn't, again, It doesn't matter about what should be, but it really comes down to what do both parties agree to that it's fair and it needs to be in balance for the rest of the team, there's. 

It's not fair for one vet and the company to agree that Dr.Goss is going to make five times more money than all the other vets and they both agree to that. So that's it. It's there's some other parts of this, but anyway, it's a long way to go. There's a lot of gray here, but I hope we didn't come down too hard on the writer. I, again, I, I meant what I said at the beginning of, I laugh and I chuckle because I a hundred percent have been here.

I have lived this. I have had these thoughts. I have had sweaty palms about what people are doing with their times. And I, I get it. I totally get it. You gotta be careful and don't blow your face off here. By rushing in and ripping the wires out of the bomb that you see. It's nah sometimes we're gonna let this clock tick down for a while before we deal with it. And that's, that's okay. 

Stephanie Goss: Yep, I love it. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Alright, that's all I got!

Stephanie Goss: Have a great week everybody, take care! Dr. Andy Roark: See ya, everybody!

Written by Maria Pirita · Categorized: Blog, Podcast · Tagged: behavior, communication, culture, management, Technician, Training, Vet Tech

Mar 20 2024

Our Manager is Gossiping About the Team

In this week's episode of The Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and Stephanie Goss dive into a letter from the mailbag. It's from a kennel technician grappling with a toxic workplace culture. This dedicated individual is working tirelessly in the kennels for experience requirements for vet school. However, the atmosphere within the kennels is far from supportive, with the kennel manager engaging in gossiping and making side remarks. Despite reaching out to the practice manager for assistance, the situation remains unchanged, leaving the kennel attendant feeling frustrated and unheard. Andy and Stephanie provide valuable insight about looking at the big picture and how to navigate these kinds of conversations. Let's get into this episode….

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · 279 – How to Get What I WantYou can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you have something that you would love Andy and Stephanie to roleplay on the podcast – a situation where you would love some examples of what someone else would say and how they would say it? If so, send us a message through the mailbag! We want to hear your challenges and would love to feature your scenario on the podcast.

Submit your questions here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag


Upcoming Events

🚀🎉 Get ready to ignite your leadership potential!

Join Dr. Andy Roark, Stephanie Goss, Maria Pirita, CVPM and Tyler Grogan, RVT for an unforgettable experience at the Uncharted Leadership Essentials Roadshow in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 5th and 6th. Embark on a two-day journey packed with dynamic discussions and hands-on training tailored to YOUR veterinary practice. Atlanta in May offers the perfect backdrop for learning and growth, with its vibrant atmosphere and bustling energy. This isn't your typical CE event – it's a transformative adventure filled with insights, camaraderie, and actionable strategies to elevate your clinic's success. Don't miss out on this opportunity to align with your practice leaders and make a lasting impact.

🌟 Can't make it to Atlanta? No worries!

Elevate your leadership game with the Uncharted Leadership Essentials Certificate program at home! Whether you're aspiring to take on a management role or looking to fine-tune your leadership skills, this comprehensive program is your pathway to success. Tailored for veterinary professionals at all stages of their careers, the Leadership Essentials Certificate consists of seven essential courses designed to empower you with the tools and knowledge needed to thrive in your role. From understanding the trust economy to mastering strategic planning and communication styles, each course focuses on key aspects of effective leadership.

Upcoming events: unchartedvet.com/upcoming-events/

All Links: linktr.ee/UnchartedVet


Episode Transcript

Stephanie Goss: Hey everybody, I am Stephanie Goss and this is another episode of the Uncharted podcast. This week on the podcast, Andy and I are getting into an email that we got through the mail bag asking about how we can encourage change in processes and flow in the hospital.

This one was a really great question and it led Andy and I to have some conversation obviously about the question that we got asked, but as we do we may have sidetracked a little bit down a few rabbit holes and talked about our own experience with change, particularly change in our team over this last few years as we have grown and learned the hard lessons of what happens when a team grows and gets bigger and you have communication challenges and you have to learn how to work together without stepping on everybody's toes. It is super relevant to this example. Let's get into this.

Dr. Andy Roark: And we are back, it's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Stephanie Goss.

Stephanie Goss: How's it going Andy Roark?

Dr. Andy Roark: It's good. It's crazy. My life is radically changing by the day and I am holding on by my fingertips as things take off. 

Stephanie Goss: 2024 is a year of, is a year of change.

Dr. Andy Roark: It's like changing a bull rider on the saddle, and a bull rider not on the saddle, that kind of change is how it feels. I was traveling and I, my daughter came down to me, my oldest daughter, who recently got her driver's license, and I said to her, I'm leaving.

I'm flying away. I'll be gone for a week. And my flight is at 7am, and I have to leave the house at 5:30am, and tomorrow's the school day. And, if you still want to drop me at the airport, you can have the car while I'm gone. Otherwise, it'll be parked at the airport and she was like, see you at five, dad. And she did it. 

Stephanie Goss: All right. Look at her go.

Dr. Andy Roark: She got up and did it and she's just, she is living her best life. She's just living her best life. It's awesome to watch someone who gets great joy from being able to go to Starbucks and then consignment shop. And then just read things at the bookstore and come home and she's like boom freedom.

Stephanie Goss: Oh man. But also, I mean, how convenient to be like, Hey, we need some more milk to be able to make dinner. Do you want to go to the store and not have to be the one to leave.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Oh I have been looking for things for her to do 

Stephanie Goss: For sure. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Just to let her do them but is a hundred percent like I want A different flavor of toothpaste today. I need  you to go to the store.

Stephanie Goss: Go to the store. 

Dr. Andy Roark: And she does yeah, I should I have resisted the urge to send her looking for products that don't exist like I need a left handed toothbrush. Let's go ahead.

Stephanie Goss: You're  so mean.

Dr. Andy Roark: I need you to go, I need you to go get the the electric muzzles from the vet clinic. I don't want 

Stephanie Goss: They’d be like–

Dr. Andy Roark: I want the ones with the USB, I want the ones with the USB plug. Those are the muzzles I want. 

Stephanie Goss: Oh man, I can totally see their faces. 

Dr. Andy Roark: One time, 

Stephanie Goss: My dad is a big giant jerk.

Dr. Andy Roark: It would work one time. Yeah. 

Stephanie Goss: No, it is. it's a year of, it's a year of change. It's a busy year too. Like it started off with a bang and Oh we're rapidly coming up on our April conference and 

Andy Roark: we're reaching ludicrous speed here. 

Stephanie Goss: It is starting to reach lightspeed.

Andy Roark: It, we started with a bang. We rolled out the Uncharted Leadership Essentials Certificate at VMX and then everybody saw it, and then they were like, Holy crap! We've got two people that we moved into a management role who got zero training when they got promoted, and this is eight hours of the best Uncharted leadership content training stuff on demand, on their phone, whenever they want, This is, they should have this immediately. And also could they do the hybrid model where they do the uncharted cohorts so they meet in person as well? And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. And after the thousandth person I was like, We should assess we, do we, have the time to train all these people?

Stephanie Goss: Yeah do we even have the time to train because we're also, we're hitting the road and we've got our May road show. Everybody keeps asking me and it, that was so funny at VMX. Everybody was like, I heard you guys are hitting the road. Does this mean an Andy and Stephanie tour bus? Because I want to get in on that party bus.

Dr. Andy Roark: It is. It's a big, it's a big bus with our faces on the side.

Stephanie Goss: I was like, could you imagine an Uncharted party bus? it would be quite. Quite amazing. But,

Dr. Andy Roark: driven, it'd be driven by my 16 year old. Cause that's all that's in the budget. And it would be a death trap.

Stephanie Goss: but I'm excited about, we're going to be in Atlanta in May. And so I'm excited about meeting some local clinics. And it also sounds like we have some Uncharted clinics from out, you know, other areas that are bringing some of their team down to work on team training and, you know, kind of bulking up the leadership essential skills within their team.

So it's going to be 2024, man. It is. It is the year of change. Lots is happening.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, it is. It is. So, anyway, the boy, the April conference is right on top of us. Communicating in a sea of noise I think is a real good topic right now. It's a lot of tightening the screws, getting those client reminders on point, getting clients back in the building, keeping them engaged, because, like, boy, the floodgates that opened up during the pandemic are closing, and it's gonna start.

It's going to start being more and more important to, to engage those clients, get them back on the program, and like, this is what we did forever and ever, but I think a lot of us just, we just gave up on that because we didn't have to when, we were book solid all the time, and so, anyway, I think a lot of people are probably starting to panic.

It's not, you're not alone but now is the time. It's been great to ride this raging river, but now it's time to start paddling again but, start paddling before you come to a full stop is all I'd say. That's what we're doing in April.

Stephanie Goss: But going back to your, going back to your my least favorite lyric choice we've got it. We've got a good one this week because we got a mailbag from a kennel technician, which is awesome. I said to you, it's been a hot minute since we had something from the kennels. And this one is actually a really good one because it's a kennel attendant who is also working in addition to their relief in the kennel, they are working on their volunteer hours for vet school and their experience hours for vet school. And they are struggling because they feel like the culture in the kennels in their practice is pretty, pretty toxic. And so There is a kennel manager for whom this kennel attendant feels like they are acting fairly unprofessional.

It seems like they are gossiping with the other team about this person making side remarks. They're hearing things You know second hand from the other kennel team members about the kennel manager talking smack basically about them and they're super frustrated. You know, they said that they've talked to the, practice manager and it, they're getting reassurances that the situation is being dealt with, but it doesn't seem like the behavior is changing at all.

And so they're like, look, I don't like, I have too much stuff on my plate. I'm trying to get ready for vet school. I'm trying to get my hours. I don't have time for the drama and it's exhausting to try and do. My job in an environment where I feel like the rest of the team is being poisoned against me.

And it just seems like from everything that they shared, this is a pretty toxic environment. And so they are like, look, I know that this isn't good on my mental health, but I really need the hours for vet school. what, would you guys do? And so I thought this one was was an interesting one.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh we could totally–

Stephanie Goss: It could get a little spicy.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah, it's definitely, it's, I gotta, I don't know, I'll tell you what I would do. But, first, we gotta set up some headspace here. But, yeah, this is challenging. I sat with this letter when it came in a little bit, and I was trying to get my head around the perspective of the person who wrote to us.

And, often I'm like, okay, how do we get into this position? I wonder, and this is just It's just sort of, sort of thoughts in my mind, but when I look at this, part of the thing I wonder about, the first question I would ask someone who's looking at it is our writer, are they? Are they willing to advocate for themselves?

Because I see a lot of situations kind of like this. And I'm not saying it's the writer's fault at all. Don't get me wrong. But I'm kind of like, how did we get here and how did this shape up? And sometimes it's around self advocacy. Where if we're someone who goes along to get along, there are toxic dumps that we can end up in.

And it's just funny, I've just been thinking a lot about it. Life is interesting that way. Where, you know, I don't buy the idea that you should be the squeaky wheel all the time. And I don't really, I don't think that people who are the first to complain whenever something is not exactly what they want, I don't think those people ultimately get ahead.

I think that there's a lot of people who are quick to jump in and talk about they're unhappy and this is not okay. And at some point, if it's a rarity, you listen to them. And if it's every day, there's something they're unhappy about, there's something new. Those people quickly kind of get tuned out.

And so, I don't think that's the way we want to go. At the same time, if you're somebody who doesn't advocate for yourself, you don't stand up, you don't say, “I'm not doing this.” Oftentimes, people will just assume you're okay, and just Keep going the direction they were going, and sometimes that means not that you're stuck in a bad place, but you're in a place that's actively getting worse.

Like, whatever the water you don't like is, they're continuing just to kind of pour it into your bucket, because you haven't said that is not what you want. And so, so there's kind of that too. And again, I'm trying to put this on” the writer, but I'm just kind of rolling it around of “how exactly do we get here?

I think that there's a big question that I have here as well that I would put back to our writer also. The big question at Headspace for me is, What do you want? Like, what are you trying to do here? And I I had this really great conversation at a recent vet conference and this guy I know said to me, How do you assess your strengths and weaknesses, Andy?

I want to figure out where my weaknesses are and I want to work on them. And so how do you do that? And I sat there and I thought about it for a while and finally I said back to him, I think you're asking the wrong question. Like, I, that's, I don't think that's a good question. And I said, I really think that just thinking about your weaknesses for the sake of cataloging your weaknesses so you can work on the things you're not good at, I think that's a really bad strategy.

I think we all have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of energy, and working on something you're not good at just because you feel like you should, that's, I, don't think that's a good use of time. I said, I would not frame it that way. I would say to you, what the heck do you want to do next?

And then you tell me what you want to do next, and then we'll look at the personal barriers you have to getting there, and that's what I would work on. But cataloging your strengths and your weaknesses, that doesn't make any sense to me, really from a functional, practical standpoint. So that's been sort of my mindset of really, I think a lot of us need to be kind of pragmatic, and what the heck are we doing here, and what are we doing next?

And so in the case of our writer here, who says, I'm in the kennel, I'm putting up with this horrible situation. I've gone to the manager and it's not getting better, what do I do? I'll say, what's your next play? What are you trying to go, like, where are you trying to go? Because I don't know. Looking at what I'm looking at here, I'm going, I'm trying to, I'm struggling a bit to see how we get from where we are to someplace positive.

I don't know that I buy– and again, I could be wrong. You know, our writer says, I want to go to vet school, I want to go to vet school. I'm doing my internship. I'm getting my hours so I can go to vet school. And it's just, this is, I'm not saying they're wrong. And that may be what's required, but to me, that would be the picture of a stupid system where the hours I put in getting beaten up in the kennel are supposed to somehow make me a better doctor? That's ridiculous.

Stephanie Goss: I agree with you. And I think for me, from a Headspace perspective, like one of the first questions I think that if I was in their shoes that I'd be asking myself is what am I, to your point, where am I trying to go? What am I trying to accomplish here? Because if I want to get into vet school, I can check the box and say, I've worked 9,000 hours in a hospital, but if I can't. I'm going to bring some pretty damn good reasons why working 9,000 hours in the hospital impacted me on a personal, professional, developmental level for going to vet school that I'm giving the same kind of answer as the person who says, I've known since I was five years old that I wanted to be a vet, right?

Like it's, that everybody has to do something. So how is it setting you apart? And while diversity in your answers. Is very important and overcoming adversity is very important. You also have personal choice in this matter, whereas when you think about other circumstances of diversity not, you know, not being able to access the same kind of resources as your peers growing up in a foreign country and having to struggle with, you know, migrating to the U.S. to be able to accomplish your dreams. Those kind of examples of challenge and adversity are significantly different than saying, I had a job in a kennel, and it was awful and toxic, and I didn't do anything about it. Right? Or I chose to, or I chose to just put up with it because I knew that I needed my hours and I hated it and I learned about what I don't want to do.

But, you have freedom of choice in a way that others, in circumstances of adversity don't necessarily. And so I think for me, the headspace piece is, what are you, trying to accomplish? And what are your priorities? Because I do actually think that you have a lot of choice in this situation.

And it's really easy when you are in an environment where it's just sucking the life out of you to feel like you have no choice. I empathize greatly with the writer. Because I've been there in plenty of situations in my life. Where it's like, this is horrible and I feel like I don't have any other options.

Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I think that there's this old school mentality in vet medicine that you have to pay your dues. And I still hear people talk about that. You have to pay your dues. 

Stephanie Goss: It drives me crazy.

Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I mean, this is the classic example of paying your dues in that, here's this person, they're working in the kennel, getting knocked around, and it's like, okay, help me get my head around, if I'm on the admission board, how this person taking a beating in the kennel is, it means anything as far as whether or not they will be a good doctor.

And so I think that's, I think that's bonkers. Even taking the kennel part out of it and just being like, I'm putting my hours in the vet clinic. At some point, I'm skeptical of the value of this. All I can get out of talking to admissions groups for vet school is this, and I think this is valid.

A lot of people don't know what they're getting into when they say they want to be a vet. And it's a hard job, and you get your butt kicked a lot, and it's frustrating. And it ain't a puppy kitten business. It's a human being's business. That's what it is. And so if you get into vet school with the idea that you're going to snuggle puppies and kittens, and you're here because people are gross and you don't like people, I would say that was a failure on the part of the admission board, because you shouldn't be here.

Stephanie Goss: Those shouldn't be your only reasons, and if they are, you shouldn't be here, yeah, for sure.

Dr. Andy Roark: Correct. Exactly right. And so, I do think that you can make a strong case for looking more. I don't know, looking upon a vet school applicant who says, I understand the life of a veterinarian because I have spent a significant amount of time in the clinic. I have worked with clients.

I have worked with pets. I have handled the workload, the stress load. I have gone through the experience of going home and trying to unplug and I have coping strategies for those things. And I. understand the demands that are going to be put on me emotionally and from a time management standpoint as a doctor.

I do think I go, okay, well, that is a strong position for an applicant that it's hard to teach in vet school. And so to me, I go, yep. But I always thought that the reason to do hours in a vet clinic ahead of time is so that you can go into veterinary medicine as a doctor, eyes wide open. And so again, I circle back around to our writer and I go “I don't know how being in the kennel is necessarily helping you understand what you'd be getting into as a doctor” and again, I don't want this to be critical of a writer, but it's just, it's where my head is when I'm sort of thinking about what do we do here. So anyway, to your point about the, you said, well, you said, you know, well, I've got these 9,000 hours.

I think if you're going to go this route, and there are hours and things that you're going to try to get to go to vet school, at some point you check the box for having enough. And I think a lot of people miss that. I think a lot of people are like, Why did he get to go to vet school? I had 8,000 hours in a vet clinic and he only had 2,000 hours in a vet clinic.

And I'm like, 2,000 hours is plenty to know what a vet clinic is. and how it feels and how it works. I don't think you're scoring bonus points when you get beyond a certain number. That's probably in the low hundreds more than it is in the thousands, you know?

Stephanie Goss: Yeah, for sure. And, the other thing too that I think is important going back to what you were saying before this is that when you're looking at the length of time that you were in the clinic, I think that there's probably, it would be interesting– we should pick somebody's brain who's on an admissions committee or one of, one of the deans and ask them the perspective because I would think if I, just me as a, human being with my experience in vet med, if I sat on an admissions committee, for me, it would absolutely be I mean quality over quantity. I’m looking for someone who went into a clinic and had the opportunity to try all kinds of things. If you have someone who said, well  I worked over ten thousands of hours over the last, you know, five years, but I was in the kennel.

It was a super toxic environment. I learned a lot about what I don't want to do in veterinary medicine. My assumption, and I, we all know what assuming, you know, what they say about assuming, right? So I could be wrong, but my assumption would be. Oh, you didn't probably get a lot of other opportunities because if you were in a toxic environment, there's two pieces of play.

One is there has to be trust to allow for opportunities to happen in a practice. And so if you were working in a toxic practice, did you get opportunities to go work in the exam room with clients? Did you get opportunities to sit in on surgery? Or were you not given those opportunities? So from, the practice side of it, and the other part going back to the writer that I think sits on your shoulders when you are in a bad environment or you have something that truly makes you miserable. I think about it in the school context, like, I will admit I am a procrastinator my, my, ADHD and anxiety, like, I, I can procrastinate things, and I will tell you when I have a thing that I have, like, been dreading or that I don't want to do either because I don't understand it or I don't like it or whatever, I don't get a hundred percent return on the investment that I put into it because I'm so focused on getting through the awful thing that I don't want to do that I'm not looking at it with a whole and open heart and mind, if that makes sense.

And so I think when you think about our writer, if they are existing in this truly toxic kennel environment. How much are they actually absorbing from their experience in the clinic? Because they're probably dreading it. They're probably just trying to get their work done at a quality level that matters to them and get the hell out of there.

I would, if that was me and I was going to work every day and I, and someone, or multiple someone's were making me miserable, I would want to show up. Do the minimum that I needed to do to be professional and get the job done. And then I would want to go home. And so from an admissions perspective, I would definitely have to question that. And I would look at it from a quality over quantity perspective.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. I think the lessons here I like to put forward to people is beware of the implied shortcuts where people are like, okay, what, you want to go to vet school? You should get hours in the vet clinic. And my question would be, why? And so if I'm on the admission committee and you come in and you sit down and you say, I worked 3,000 hours in a vet clinic, then, all I'm going to say to you is, What did you do there?

Stephanie Goss: What did you learn?

Dr. Andy Roark: What did you learn? And you're like, I can mop a floor. Like, boy, you wouldn't believe the messes I know how to clean up. I'm like, I, that doesn't, it doesn't help. You know, but again, the only reason that you would ever buy into that is because you buy into the. paying your dues model, which is just, it's, garbage.

It's, and I don't really think it gets people where they want, where they think it takes them either. So I think there's a lot of people paying dues that nobody really cares about. And so anyway, I'm not trying to dunk on this other than to say, I think you and I are both in agreement about what are you doing this job for?

That's it. I think we're both probably asking the question of. If you have gone to the manager and you have said, this is going on and they say we're working through it, what is your incentive to wait it out? You know, because now we're starting to get into where we're going to go with that. Some action steps.

But for me, it's about there's going to be some cost benefit analysis here. And if you have said. This is what's going on and it's making me miserable and they're like, Hey, trust us. we're working on it. That may be totally true. They may entirely be working on it and it takes time to work these processes and they cannot be public.

They have to be private and that is true. And do not owe it to them to spend your life waiting. For them to fix it and that like, and I hate saying that as a business owner because there's lots of times when I say, Hey guys, we're working on something. It's going to take a little bit of time before it gets smoothed out and run smoothly.

If somebody was like, I don't owe it to you to wait like that would hurt. That would hurt my feelings. but also if you're like, Hey, look, I'm going to leave in three months and I don't think you're going to fix it in the next three months. And I don't want to be miserable for three months that, you know, that would change that math and so I don't know that's part of it as well as you've gone forward and you've advocated and now they've said we're working through it I want to say that's a very valid thing for them to respond and I think it's good to not have the expectation That they're doing they've done something wrong.

I don't think that's true. But also Let's call a spade a spade and look at where we're trying to go, what we're trying to do, what our timeline looks like, and, where we hope to end up with. You know, the last thing I would say too, is again, jumping back to our, what are you, trying to do here? I suspect besides getting the hours, they're probably hoping to get like a letter of recommendation and things like that.

Stephanie Goss: Sure.

Dr. Andy Roark: If you're in the kennel working with a kennel manager who hates your guts and is toxic and is terrible.

Stephanie Goss: Right. What kind of letter of recommendation are you gonna get?

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, exactly right. Now you're not even gonna get that. You know, I don't know. That's, that, those are all the questions I kind of have from a headspace standpoint, is really, what is the math that we're doing here?

I think to turn this to a positive way in Headspace, you've always got to believe that you have options. You've always got to believe you have options. You always have to believe that you have power to make your situation better. And sometimes that's by leaving, and sometimes it's by advocating for yourself, and sometimes it's modeling the behavior that you want to see in the culture, and being relentlessly Ted Lasso optimistic. Like, you always have power.

You're not trapped here, you do have choices. I just, I think that's kind of where I want to kind of leave headspace and say, okay, we've done these things and we're, I think a good deep thought about, what am I trying to accomplish here really? And, You've got to eject the sunk cost fallacy. The idea that I have stuck it out here for a year, and it's been terrible, and if I leave now

Stephanie Goss: I’m starting over. 

Dr. Andy Roark: and, then I'm starting over, and the vet, school's gonna ask me, why did you leave this clinic? And I'm gonna have to say I couldn't take it. And like, that's, catastrophizing, that sunk cost fallacy. If you would not start working at the clinic now, then I'm not sure that you should continue working at the clinic.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. Yeah. I think the last thing that I would say from headspace perspective, cause I, I agree with you on, that piece. I think the last thing that I would say is that there are right and there are wrong actions and sometimes managers do get it wrong. And so going back to what you said, I absolutely agree.

Like as a manager, I know that I can't tell the team all of the information, like navigating things on the backend from an HR perspective is hard and tricky. And it is my job as an employer to provide a safe workspace for every employee on my team and that includes being a psychologically safe workplace. And so if I have a team member who comes to me and tells me particularly about bullying I have a responsibility to do something about it.

Now that doesn't mean I have to tell them what I'm going to do, but if our writer went to their manager and they said, Hey, this is what's happening in the kennels. This is what the kennel manager is doing. I need help. If I was the writer and that manager didn't look at me and say, I'm really, you know, like, I'm really sorry that this is happening.

I want you to know that we're dealing about it. You know, we're dealing with it. we're working on it and I need you to be patient. If they didn't say something to you, like, I can assure you that no further bullying will be tolerated, especially if you have a zero tolerance policy in your handbook as a team member.

Like, if they're not giving you reassurance, if it's just an open ended, yes, we're working on it. It's okay for you to say, I. I need to, like, I need to know what are, is there a timeline? is there an active plan? So for me as a manager, my goal was always to not share details, but make the team member know what they could expect.

And so if I absolutely, if we had a zero tolerance policy against bullying, which it did in my practice, if somebody came to me in this situation, I would absolutely tell them. This is unacceptable. We do not tolerate it. We do not tolerate bullying. I, you know, I can't talk about individual cases and rest assured that this kind of behavior and using a specific behavior will not be tolerated.

Right. If I was that employee, I would feel I'm not really good about that, leaving that meeting because I would be able to walk away feeling the assumption that they are going to action what I just shared with them. And going back to your point about control, then the control goes back to me. So if I feel like nothing has changed, then I have a, then I have a choice to make.

Do I go back to them and say, “hey, you told me that things were going to change and they haven't.” Do you choose to walk away because somebody told you, Hey, they were going to change it and they didn't. There's lots of things that could go. It could go lots of different directions after that, but the control is still yours.

And so I guess I would say from that perspective, like If you have a manager who is being toxic and involving themselves in negative behaviors, like that's, wrong behavior from a man. It's wrong behavior from anybody's perspective. If it's a bull, if it's a bullying situation and if it's just toxic, it's still wrong from a  manager’s perspective.  

That’s where your point early on about asking for help is so important and I would encourage our writer, I would try again, maybe. But maybe you're also at the place where you're like, Pfft, I can't handle this anymore. Which is okay, you know, it's okay. No judgment. But I think that's important. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Just get out of my action steps. Get out of my action steps. Stop it. We're going to take.

Stephanie Goss: Sorry, sorry! It's like we're, it's like we're mind melding. It's 

Dr. Andy Roark: It's, it's kind of scary.

Stephanie Goss: We need a break. I can't handle it.

Dr. Andy Roark: We do need, we need a break. We need a break from each other. We're like, we clearly spent too much time together. Well, that's it. I will always…

Stephanie Goss: Well, let’s take a quick break.

Andy Roark: Well, we will, but I have to say now, I will always remember when Maria Prita came on to work with the two of us, and we would just look at each other, and a decision would be made, and she was like, I don't understand. No, we'd never discussed this. I was like, you were standing there when it was decided.

Stephanie Goss: It's just, this is happening.

Dr. Andy Roark: Stephanie said, well, I don't care. And then you raised your left eyebrow. And then we all started walking. I don't know what happened. Anyway, alright, that's it. Let's take a break.

Stephanie Goss: Hey friends, you have heard Andy and I talk on the podcast about our Uncharted Leadership Essentials Certificate. And because you have, you know that we designed it with every member of the team in mind, because we believe that everybody on the team should have basic, professional, personal business development skills in their toolbox to be able to help make, maximally effective, efficient, and excellent team.

And so we are bringing you one more way to have access to our certificate. That's right, you can take it asynchronously. our wonderful partners at NAVC are bringing it to you through Vetfolio. So if you want to take the certificate online, you can do that today.

​And if you are the kind of person who's like, I need my CE to be in person, or you have learners on your team who you think would do better going through it together in a group live. We've got you, because we are hitting the road. We are going to be live and in person in Atlanta, Georgia May 5th and 6th, and we are going to jam pack two days full of the entire certificate program, but it's going to be live and in person and we're going to do it Uncharted style, which means we're going to talk about your practices. And so, if you have been thinking about, man, I would love to do this certificate, but I would love to do it in person. Now's your chance.

Head over to UnchartedVet.com/ONTHEROAD. That's O N T H E R O A D, and, you will find out all the information about this upcoming road show that is happening in Atlanta, in May, and future dates and locations. And now, back to the podcast.

Dr. Andy Roark: Alright, let's get back into this. I've got a fairly tight little action plan here that I would put forward.

Stephanie Goss: Let’s see how much we're in each other's heads this

Dr. Andy Roark: Okay, do you want me to go first or do you want me to go tit for tat? Like I'll go, all right, here's my first one is make a contingency plan.

And I would do this for a couple reasons. Number one, it's always good to have a plan. Number two, it will make you feel better about your situation. If this is awful and you're out. What are you gonna do? And lemme tell you, I promise you, the path to vet school will not be closed because you leave a kennel job that's crappy.

Like I, I promise you it won't be. But you should have a plan so you're not just sitting at home playing Balder's Gate three on your PlayStation. And I don't know, I think people play that. I'm not allowed to have a PlayStation. It was when we had a…

Stephanie Goss: I was like, I don't even know what that is.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah, no, because you're not, you clearly don't hang out with the 20 year old male technicians like I do, and they tell me about their video games and I'm not allowed to have a PlayStation because it got taken away when we had a baby we had a baby, Allison also took my PlayStation away, I've not been allowed to have one again.

Stephanie Goss: No, my video game nerdiness is, Animal Crossing or Dreamlight Valley.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, anyway. Don't, not, that's not the contingency plan.

The contingency plan should not be to play video games.

Stephanie Goss: Don’t go play video games.

Dr. Andy Roark: It should not be that. It should be something different than that. Anyway, step one, make a contingency plan. Because, one, if the worst thing you think can happen is that you leave, or you If you quit or you get fired, we can make that go away real fast by making a nice little contingency plan of what would you do?

And so I think you should, you should Go ahead and lay that down. If you have friends that work at other vet clinics in the area, you might be time to go for some Starbucks. Uh, It might be time to get a beer and just sort of say, you know, I'm sort of looking around for my next opportunity.

I'm just kind of wanting to know if there might be other things I could do. Start kind of warming up that, the possibilities for you to go somewhere else. But that's the first thing I would start with.

Stephanie Goss: And, I think you know, we have gotten mailbag letters before from people who have shared details that, you know, we may not have talked about, but if you are someone who lives rurally, because I want to recognize the challenges. As someone who lives in a rural location, we still have a decent amount of vet hospitals and we have friends who are part of Uncharted who like the next closest vet hospital is like a two hour drive or a three hour drive.

So I want to recognize the challenges that go along with that. And sometimes there, we have gotten letters where people are like, there is no other option. if I, leave this clinic, there's no other option and I hear, that and I want you to feel like we see you and I would also say that this goes back to, and I recognize that, take this with a grain of salt because I'm not on a vet school admissions committee and I would say if as a professional, if you told me you had this experience, here's what you learned from it, And because you're located in an area and might have circumstances that make it so that you can't leave that area, there are still experiences, life experiences, and job experiences that you absolutely can get that are going to look as good, if not better, on a vet school application that show your dedication because you can speak to what you did in addition.

And so for a lot of us, like when a door closes especially if we were in love with the idea of like, Oh, I'm going to get a job at my local clinic and I, this is going to be great because it's five minutes from my house and I'll get all my hours when we fall in love with an idea like that. And then things change.

It can be really easy to feel like I have literally no other options. And so I just want to say to like, step back and think about that because you really have no other options. I don't think so.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yep. You and I met someone who just got accepted to vet school when we were in Orlando. And we went to Universal Studios to do the Jurassic Park Escape Room. And the person running the game was like, Oh, I

start vet school in the fall. Yeah, exactly. Like, I start in the fall. I'm like, Oh, well, she's out there running escape rooms at Universal Studios and got into vet school.

Vet school is really about– the best thing you can do is make yourself interesting. I think it's that. but anyway, we'll circle back to that. I think you're, spot on. So make a contingency plan. What are you doing? Where do you go from here? I think the next thing for me is, at this point, I would state my position to the management, and I would state it clearly.

I would go to them and I would say, look, we've talked about this. I know you guys are working on it. And then I would, not in a bold way, not in a threatening way, not in an aggressive way, but in a clear is kind way, I would tell them what I need in order to continue to be here. And basically at this point I would say, I need to move out of the kennel.

And be where I am closer to medicine so I can get the experience that I need. And where I cannot be in this environment because it's really, it's not working for me. And so I don't know if you have a position for me like that or if there's a spot for me. but I am going to need to if I'm going to stay with the clinic, I'm going to need to move out of the clinic, out of the kennel.

And I'm going to need to do it probably in the next week or two. And I would say it to them, and I, and that's the thing, I would mean it. I would 100 percent mean it.

Stephanie Goss: Yes. And taking one like half step back. The only thing that I would do first is I would probably just. Even if you think you did it clearly the first time, I would reiterate and address. Or if you didn't do it the first time, I would address the things that you know for a fact or that you have experienced yourself directly.

So in terms of giving them examples of behavior particularly with the manager and like the reason that you, you need to, make the change, like lay that out for them. So, you know, I came into work and I heard, you know, I walked in and I heard, You don't have to say who it is, but I heard two kennel team members talking about this.

And the only other person who had that information was this manager, Sarah. So I didn't tell them. And so the only way that they could have found out is through this person. And I really need your help addressing this because I feel however, you know, however it is that you're feeling, but like when you say to them what you need, and I love your idea of saying very clearly what you need to have change.

Like, make sure to talk about the things that you've experienced yourself and not just, like, relying on the stories of others, 

Dr. Andy Roark: I don't know if I would, I don't know if I'm with you on this one. Like, so, I hear what you're saying. So, let me talk through my thoughts here. So, I hear what you're saying, and you're saying, I'm going to go in and for the record, I want to state that this is what was said, or this is what was done, or these are the specifics of what is bothering me. And I can see value in that. I think that my concern walking in, and some of this is your communication style and what you want to do, I think. I think my concern is, if I was going to go have this meeting, I would have already done what you said, so I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but you're saying restate it, and for me, I'm okay, if I'm going to this meeting, what I don't want is for this meeting to turn into a debate about what happened in the past.

Stephanie Goss: Oh yeah. I was trying to say, if you haven't done that, I would do that now so that you are, you're addressing the issues so that when you ask for help and you say, hey, in order for me to stay here, like, I, this is really, you know, like, I'm not happy. And this is really impacting me.

I can't stay in this kennel position. So in order for me to stay here at the clinic, this is what I need. Like, if that comes out of left field for somebody, like as a manager, if you just said, Hey, in order to stay here, I'm going to need a, you know, a 20 an hour raise. If I have no context for that, I'm going to look at you and say goodbye.

You know what I mean? So like the half step back would be if you didn't do that the first time, and they may have when they talk to them, but we didn't get that information. So if you're in a situation like this and you haven't had that clear conversation with your manager, like I would absolutely make sure to have that conversation

Dr. Andy Roark: I can get on board with that, but I would be wary, I would read the room really well, as well as I could, and I would make sure that this is not turning into a debate or a, you know, a court case about what happened. 'cause at this point, I don't care. All I care about is I'm getting outta here.

I, and like, and at this point I would say. I'm moving, and that you've already told them that they were, you know, what you needed, and it's not happening. I want to move out of here. I don't want to be in the kennel anymore. And so I think that would be the statement I would make is I need to not be in the kennel.

And I will take another half step back and say, I would open up with talking about what I like about the clinic, how I think the clinic practices a good medicine, why I think the clinic is a great place for me to be, being grateful for the opportunity to be here, and I would say all of those positive things.

And then I would say, I don't feel like I'm getting what I need in the kennel. I'm not having a good experience. I, it's really, I'm becoming quite frustrated here and I've really decided that in order for me to continue to be here, I'm going to need to be out of the kennel. I'm going to need to move into the treatment rooms or work as an assistant or help with the front desk or whatever the other options are, but I'm going to need to move there.

But I, I think that for me, that's, very much it as I have to say to them, this is my position. And again, clear is kind and it's not. Threatening or confrontational and I would tell them all the great things about their clinic and why I want to still be at their Clinic and then you got to follow through and so if you say I need to move and they don't move you Then you need to tell them know that you're you'll be gone in two weeks Or whatever the exit plan is but to me It's not a negotiation if I'm this unhappy.

This is a, this is, yeah, it's not a threat, it's a promise. This is me saying, this is where I am and this is what I'm going to need. And if you can't give this to me, I understand. And I will always say good things about your practice, but I'm not going to be able to be here. And then I’m going to follow through.

Stephanie Goss: I love what you said about saying the good things about the clinic. And I think that is really important because I think every single one of us should have some sort of litmus test that allows us to say that it is, true or not. Like if you can't look at them in the face and say that you're learning things that are going to help you for vet school.

Like, what's the point? You know what I mean? Like, if you can't, if you can't do that, then I, for, on a personal level, then I, like, for me, I would be like, this is not the place for me. Like, that would make my decision for me. So, from a headspace perspective, on a personal level, like, deciding do I stay or do I go, one of the questions you know, we've gotten that question a lot in the mailbox, and I think this kind of falls in line with that.

If you can't. So if you don't think about good things about your experience there, then why are you there?

Dr. Andy Roark: Yep.

Stephanie Goss: You know, and it really, it seems simple, but like, that is the number one piece of advice that I share with people is like, take the time, sit down, you know, write yourself a list. And if you can't think of like, Three positive things, because sometimes, the answer absolutely is, it's a paycheck that pays the bills and meets my needs.

And that is okay. And if that's the only reason and you can't come up with at least one, if not two more other reasons that make being in that position worthwhile. Life's too short for me on a personal level. Like, I don't want to stay there. And so I, you know, I ask people like, sit down and really think about like, what are some of the positives?

And if you can't come up with like three, maybe take a look at that, is all I'm saying.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, it kind of related, related to that for me. The last step for me would be, if I decided I was leaving, I would sit down and I would write down why I was leaving. And I would write that for me, because I tend to have a, you know, I tend to have rose colored glasses later on or get nostalgic. And this is not about anything other than, I want to remember what happened.

Stephanie Goss: Yep, mm hmm.

Dr. Andy Roark: That away, and so I would write that down, kind of like, when you have a termination or you have a hard conversation with an employee and you document it. What did they say? What happened? but you never know when it'll come in handy and you'll want to be able to say, well this is what happened, or this is why I felt this way.

And so I would write it down. And then I would put it away, and then I would leave it alone for a couple weeks, maybe a couple months, and then I would come back, and I would pick it back up, and I would think about the time that I was there, and I would think about the reasons that I left, and then I would start figuring out how to tell the story of what I learned. So that when you go and you interview for vet school and they say, tell us about a time you dealt with adversity, or tell us about a time that you, or tell us what motivates you to want to be here. I would say, well, I worked at a place that and this is what happened, and this is sort of the hardship that I had there, and this is what I learned from dealing with it, and this is how I want to make vet medicine better, or these are the things that I would take forward when I wanted to create a place for, pets to come and for people to work.

And I just, I think that you can always make, well not always, but sometimes you can make lemonade out of lemons that life gives you. This doesn't have to be a mark of shame and I wouldn't, you know, I'm not talking about shaming a clinic or bashing them or talking about them by name even. But, you can learn a lot from working in a bad job.

And honestly, some of the best, some of the best leaders I know are people who got their butts kicked and don't want other people to have their butts kicked. Like we've worked with a number of, I mean, this independent practice, but a lot of the corporate groups, there's a lot of wonderful doctor mentors and chief of staff and regional leaders who came out of that school and got absolutely smoked and said, Ooh, I don't, ever want someone to have an experience like I had and so I'm dedicated to smoothing the way and growing doctors and making sure they have a good experience coming in and they're dead serious about it, but it's because of that exact story that I'm encouraging you to write down and that's where it comes from. So anyway, you can take that and turn it into something that's meaningful and motivating and something that you can talk about what you hope to accomplish as a veterinarian.Yeah.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah and I think from a leadership perspective, I think that is the mark of a good leader is that sometimes it doesn't go right. Like we want it to be a great experience, right? And like the reality is sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't go right. Sometimes it is an absolute shitshow and it's what you learn from the mistakes.

It's what you choose to make out of the situation. It's how you approach the adversity that matters in the long run. That's just like for me, that's a personal core, belief. And like I, you know, when you were talking about what did you learn from it? Like that for me, honestly, is a big part of why I do the educating that I do now, because I had a horrific experience in terms of leading in a practice and that was just a toxic, dysfunctional environment, and I look back and I wouldn't undo it, really. I wish that there was things that had gone differently, but I wouldn't, if I could do my life over again, because I learned a lot of lessons about what I– about what I don't want, what my boundaries are, what they need to be moving forward because they weren't in that moment, what I want from a mentorship position, what I want in a work relationship. Like I learned a lot of valuable lessons that maybe I would have still learned them otherwise, but that shaped me into who I am and so I wouldn't choose to undo it.

And so I think that I love your part about reflecting on it and really thinking about it because I know that helped me. Immensely as a leader, moving forward to say, I don't want my team to feel the way that I feel now. And so I'm going to do something about it.

Dr. Andy Roark: Well, the middle of success feels like failure, you know, and 

Stephanie Goss: mmm-hmm. 

Dr. Andy Roark: you’re not at the admission to vet school success. You're halfway there, which feels like failure a lot of the time. So yeah, that's all I got. I hope this helps.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. This was a fun one. Take care everybody and 

Dr. Andy Roark: Maybe we'll see you in April at the Uncharted conference in Greenville. We'll see.

Stephanie Goss: Or in Atlanta in May.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah. All right. See you guys.

Stephanie Goss: Take care.

And that's a wrap on another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. Thanks for joining us and spending your week with us. If you enjoyed this week's episode, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. It's the best way to let us know that you love listening. We'll see you next time.

Written by Maria Pirita · Categorized: Blog, Podcast · Tagged: communication, culture, management, Technician, Vet Tech

Feb 28 2024

Rec Letters That Work

On this week's episode of the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice management super nerd, Stephanie Goss take on a new kind of mailbag. This time, our listener struggles with writing a recommendation letter but not for the reason you might think. This person cannot stop gushing over their rockstar vet tech and is wondering what even makes for a good recommendation letter in the first place. Together, Andy and Stephanie give their tips for effective recommendation letters and how to politely decline if you may not be the right person to write it. Let's get into this episode….

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · UVP – 275 – Write Prescription Tips For Letter Of Recommendation For My Tech

You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you have something that you would love Andy and Stephanie to roleplay on the podcast – a situation where you would love some examples of what someone else would say and how they would say it? If so, send us a message through the mailbag! We want to hear your challenges and would love to feature your scenario on the podcast.

Submit your questions here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag


Upcoming Events

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As a leader, you have the ability to shape workplace culture, influence patient outcomes, and help veterinary teams thrive in practice. Developing the skills you need to succeed as a leader in today’s dynamic veterinary business landscape starts here.

An Uncharted Leadership Essentials Certificate provides you with seven crucial building blocks to lead with confidence at any level and achieve excellence in your veterinary practice. 

This new Certificate program offers 8 hours of CE in an on-demand format that will equip veterinary professionals to lead high-performing and collaborative teams. Our Uncharted members get special access included in their membership so there has never been a better time to join the community than right now!

COME TO GREENVILLE WITH US ONE LAST TIME BEFORE WE HEAD OUT INTO UNCHARTED WATERS!

The world is noisy. News. Content. Promotions. There are messages swirling all around us. In our inboxes, on our phones, on the radio, on the drive down the street. It’s message after message competing for our attention. And your business is caught in the current.

So how do you make sure your message is heard? How do you tell a story that gives your brand a unique voice? How do you connect with your community without simply shouting louder? 

It’s time to drop anchor and stand out in a sea of noise. This April, we’re bringing big voices in veterinary medicine and beyond together at the Uncharted Veterinary Conference to discover how veterinary brands can rise above the surface. Get ready to learn, share, and make waves at your veterinary practice. REGISTER NOW TO JOIN US IN APRIL 2024 at Uncharted.

Upcoming events: unchartedvet.com/upcoming-events/


Episode Transcript

Stephanie Goss: Hey, everybody! I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of The Uncharted Podcast. And this week on the podcast, Andy and I are tackling a question in the mailbag that at first blush seemed really simple. In fact, Andy and I thought this might be our shortest episode yet. Is this gonna be long enough for an episode?

Because we got a great but simple question from a doctor who was asking, “Hey, I've got a technician who is a superstar and they are applying to vet school and asked me to write them a letter of recommendation.” And their question was about not “what do I write” or “how do I write it,” but about this person is a rock star.

How do I keep myself from gushing about them? And I answered this question and a little bit more as we got into the conversation. This was a really fun one. So if you are in a position to ask for a letter of recommendation, if you are in a position to write a letter of recommendation for someone or you just want to hear some good advice about praising and talking positively about members of your team, this one's for you. Let's get into it.

Announcer: And now, the Uncharted Podcast. 

 Dr. Andy Roark: And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Write-This-Down-Stephanie Goss. Write this down. That's right, I switched it up this time.

It wasn't Stephanie, Write This Down Goss. It was Write This Down Stephanie Goss. Which casts you much more in an administrative light, I think, than our usual intros.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah, the ever attentive, like, trying to capture your every word, secretary, is absolutely not who I am.

Dr. Andy Roark: It's not, no, that's not who you are, but you are my devil wears Prada assistant. When people come up to me, you're like, that's Michael Slight. You met him three years ago at a conference and he told you he likes cats, but only if they have three legs. Hi, Michael, how's your three legged cats?

I'm, you are that person. You like, you have that memory. I don't remember, I'm bad with faces, I, and I meet a lot of people, you are the whisper in ear, Devil Wears Prada assistant.

Stephanie Goss: I've always been that way. It comes from years of when I was in high school, and then in, eventually in college, I was a camp counselor, and then I ran a summer camp, and when you have a hundred new kids every two weeks, and you have to learn faces and names so that you can yell at, kids to be safe you, learn faces and names real fast.

Dr. Andy Roark: Well that also, that background also explains why you remember the specific things you remember, cause it's really weird what you remember. You'll be like, that's Donna Watkins, she's allergic to shrimp.

Stephanie Goss: It is. It is true.

Dr. Andy Roark: I'll be careful about bringing it up.

Stephanie Goss: Totally true. It's funny because for years I told you that I wanted a crown and then you guys made my dreams come true when I got uncharted speaker of the year last year and my award was the crown. But I have my new goal in life is to be like the FBI or you know, and like, or a secret agent, and have the little invisible earbud in my ear and be able to just tell Andy, this is who's, this is who's coming, and just like whisper, to you when we're out, out places.

Anyways we're off the rails already. This is good. This is going to be a fiery episode. How's it going, Andy Roark?

Dr. Andy Roark: It's– my world got devastated today. I–my daughter, no, it was him. First of all, okay, let me tell you a Skipper Roark story from yesterday. I was doing a podcast with a very respected board certified medical genius. And there were other people on the podcast watching the recording. Like, they were like, oh, we're gonna sit in on this.

And so I'm recording, there's an audience, there's this. And he comes in, as he just did right now, And I'm in my basement recording and I hear this rustling and I look and he is standing up on his back legs and he has discovered where I keep his, like he has some rawhides, but you know, he gets an occasional little rawhide treat and I look over there at one point and he's leaving the room with a rawhide and I'm like, I guess there was one that was out.

And he's, looking at me as he walks out of the room like, what you gonna do? And, then he comes back and he gets another one and I'm on this recording and I don't want to be like, I'm sorry, let me pause this so I can go and deal with my bad dog. Only when I got done did I find the whole bag got smuggled out and torn apart.

He must have eaten a dozen rawhide, he's gonna poop for three days.

Stephanie Goss: I was gonna say.

Dr. Andy Roark: He's just, he's a ticking time bomb. He hasn't gone off yet, but I'm like, he's going to

Stephanie Goss: You’re weekend is gonna be spent walking Skipper for endless poops.

Dr. Andy Roark: The eye contact he maintained with me as he walked out of the room with the treat he wasn't supposed to have was just like, it was, like, bullying.

He just looked at me like, “Yeah, nerd. I'm taking this. And you're not going to say anything,” and I didn't because I was trying to be professional. And so that was Skipper Roark yesterday.

Stephanie Goss: It's, like when you, I remember when everybody tells you, like, when you have your second kid, it gets exponentially harder and you have no idea until you have more than one, like, what that actually means, and I vividly remember mine, my kids are fairly close together in, in age, and I remember, like, they were really, good kids when I first had Jackson, Riley went through a very mischievous stage and it wasn't anything bad like drawing on the walls or you know I have some friends that have horror stories of their toddlers, but she always had this knack like right when I would have Jackson in the bathtub or I was, you know, had just sat down for him to, nurse or whatever.

And she would just look at you in the eye and then like, maintain the eye contact and skulk off. And you just knew that she was going to go do something.

Dr. Andy Roark: I, 

Stephanie Goss: just like, Oh, I just kid,

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah. I, oh that,

Stephanie Goss: That's Skipper.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yes. Oh yeah, that I can 100% imagine. He's just like, yeah, I'm doing it.

Stephanie Goss: uh huh.

Dr. Andy Roark: I walked into the exam room yesterday and I had this kitten appointment, right? So brand new kitten, of course, they just came home in the car line, which is if you're a kitten, that's genius.

Go to the elementary school car line, somebody's going to pick you up, and then they're going to get in the car with you, and you are 75 percent of the way to a new home. You know? And sure enough, this little, probably six week old, you know, tabby cat has just walked up to the car line the kids pick up the cat and get in the car with it and mom's like great now we got a cat and so I walk in because the cat's there and scratching her head She's some ear mites and stuff and I walk in and there's the lady and she's got two kids with her, right?

And one of them is a baby. It's not a kid. It's a baby. She's got like the little headband with a big sunflower on it. You know I'm talking about just Absolutely, and she's smiling at me, like, just Gerber baby beautiful, you know? And, then the other kid's probably five years old, and he's on the phone, like, doing his thing.

And so I walk in, and I was like, oh wow, you decided to add a little chaos to your life. You know, holding this kitten, and she's like, oh, well. This is only part of the chaos. And I said, Oh yeah. And she said, yeah, my oldest is 15 and my second oldest is 12. And she said, and he's seven and she's just born and I'm 45. And I said, really? And she said, yep. Got a big surprise about a year ago. And I, it was funny. I was like, and so the kitten was an obvious choice. So, I don't know,

Stephanie Goss: I, I did that. I did that as well. I vividly remember the day because mine are like 18 months apart. And so I vividly remember the day Jackson was. It's a couple months old. He was born in July and it was November. I walked into the clinic with a toddler, a newborn and a puppy in tow that Santa brought for Christmas early in November.

He showed up in my house in a stocking and boy, let me tell you, that was one of the not so great decisions. And my team just looked at me and they were like, What in the hell were you actually thinking?

Dr. Andy Roark: It's like a moment of weakness and I’m like

Stephanie Goss: I was potty training a toddler, have a newborn, let's get a puppy! And let's get, and let's get a terrier puppy, who's gonna be bad and naughty.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. 

Stephanie Goss: You know, we don't always make the best life choices

Dr. Andy Roark: No! Yeah. No. Not at all. So, anyway.

Stephanie Goss: Well, this episode today is about good life choices. I'm actually kind of excited about this one. This one might be a little bit shorter than our normal episode, but maybe not. Maybe we'll go off on a tangent. We got it. We got an email that is so fun for a change. It's not someone who's like, I have this massive problem.

They have a problem, but it's a positive problem. And so, we had a doctor write into us and ask like, Hey, could you guys do an episode and talk about letters of recommendation? And the reason was because they have a superstar licensed technician who is applying to vet school. And they were like, I'm struggling with writing this letter because all I want to do is gush about this person because they are wonderful.

And I'm worried that it might not be effective if all I'm doing is stating the positives. Like what should be in a great letter of recommendation? And I thought this one was fun both from a, like from the HR perspective, but also from your perspective, having gone to vet school and gone through that whole application process.

Like what makes up a good letter of recommendation?

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh man. I love this. It's a super great. I love it when someone's like, I want to celebrate this

Stephanie Goss: Uh huh. 

Dr. Andy Roark: so hard

Stephanie Goss: can't stop talking about them.

Dr. Andy Roark: That, yeah, that other people are like, all right, she sounds pretty great. I, it's a great problem to have. And I think this person is really smart in the realization that everybody has someone gushing about them.

Everybody does. It might be your, it might be your mother. Might be, only be your mother, but you're gonna get a letter recommendation from my mom. And it's gonna say great things. So I think that's really smart. I always think it's interesting when people ask like, you know, what gets you into vet school.

And I do, I would say right here, I don't keep really close tabs on vet school admissions. Although I am always interested. I talked to, the dean of students at a vet school like last, it was in the spring– 

Stephanie Goss: Uh huh. Uh 

Dr. Andy Roark: it was in the spring. And one of the things I always like to ask the dean, especially the um, a dean of students And I said to her, Hey so people always ask me how to get into vet school and so what advice should I make sure that I have ready when people ask me that? And she said, don't quote me on this. That's why I haven't told you what to do with this. goes, don't quote me on this but tell them not to write a euthanasia story. And I was like, really? And she was like, I have read so many euthanasia stories in my life and like bonus points if you don't write a euthanasia story. And so again, if that's your thing and that's like what motivates you and you're like, yeah, this is, I have to be honest, then you should be honest. But also know that the I'm going to write about a euthanasia story that inspired me to go down this path, just know that it's going to be challenging to stand out because a lot of people are making that play.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. That makes sense. 

Dr. Andy Roark: I think that sort of, that kind of stuff is interesting. I, so I've got a little bit of sort of headspace in, in, in letters of recommendation. So I pride myself on letters of recommendation.

I think I write a pretty darn good letter of recommendation. I've gotten good feedback on that. And I'll tell you kind of what, the way I size it up and try to get some, pointers here. I think one of the things that, that we do when we're going to write a letter of recommendation, whether it's the vet school or anything else, we need to get intentional.

A lot of times what we hear is, rec letter is just write, just gush, about them. And I was like, okay, what are you trying to do here? Like what are you trying to communicate about this person? And you were like, they're awesome. And I go, that's useless. Right like awesome is too vague. It's too flowery like from this letter, which I totally appreciate. I don't need this information, but They used the word superstar and they used the word gushing.

They used the word fabulous and I'm like, I know Absolutely nothing about this person. You know what I mean? And I'm not sure that you know anything about this person. I will also say anybody who's out there talking about using chat GPT to write your rec letters real fast. One, love your focus on efficiency and time management to not.

It's not going to be the place. Maybe you could do a first draft and then get in there, but it's not the place because one of the things that chat GPT is not good at is specifics. It pulls and writes generic wording and generic wording is not going to get the job done here because you're going to make your person sound like a generic candidate and so start out.

What are you trying to communicate? Why like genuinely why would this person be good for vet school or for whatever you're recommending them for like what skills do they have? What attributes do they have? Tell me why, and you need to sit, and a lot of times, it's hard for me to write rec letters.

I don't just bang them out. I literally walk around for three days. And think about them and jot things on a, post it note in my pocket because I'm like, what, does this person do? 

Stephanie Goss: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Andy Roark: And start from there. And so the first thing to remember is what the heck are you trying to do? The second thing is, and I teach this in the exam room communication class.

And so, if you're like, oh, I'd like to hear more exam room communication from Andy, at DrAndyRoark.com, I have my exam room communication toolkit. And One of the 17 tools in there that we talk about is being authentic. And there's some, there's old, there's like seminal research. It's old.

It's like the 1980s. But it came out of Cleveland State University's business program. And. Basically, what they did in this program was they created two fictional job applicants, John and Steve, and they made identical resumes and identical letters of recommendation for the two candidates, with the exception of one line.

So both resumes were really good. Both of the cover letters or recommendation letters were glowing. Except for John, had one extra line in the middle of all the awesome stuff. It's like, he does this, and he rocks that, and he's amazing at this. Sometimes John can be difficult to get along with, but he delivers results, and bam, and more positive stuff.

And that was the only difference in the two in the two applications. And so then they sent the applications out to headhunting groups, like people who find jobs, and they said, please evaluate these candidates. And who scores better in the eyes of the headhunters? It's John, who sometimes can be difficult to get along with. Because that one wart made everything else real.

Stephanie Goss: Right. Sure.

Hey there, podcast listeners. I wanna take a second and talk to you about our Leadership Essentials Certificate. Now, some of you have heard, Andy and I talk about it on the podcast, but if you're new or if you haven't heard this before, I think it's really important, which is why I'm gonna share it with you now,

When our team sat down in the very beginning. We said, Hey, look, we really believe that there is a foundational truth here to build off of. And that is everybody that's a part of the Uncharted team, everybody that is a part of the uncharted community and finds us tends to believe that every single member of the practice has value and worth and deserves investment in.

That's number one. And number two is that everybody on the team is needed and needs to have some basic leadership, professional, personal development skills, and business development skills in order to help the practice and the team run as efficient, effective, and rockstar ish as they can. And so, um, our team sat down and said, what would that look like?

What would be some of those things that we would want every member of the team to have access to in terms of learnings? And after the last years of doing content for Uncharted, Andy and I pulled together the best of hits in terms of those foundational level content and workshop questions and discussion questions, and we put it together in one awesome, if I do say so myself, awesome, awesome package.

And that is our Leadership Essentials Certificate. And so if you were like, hey, this I would like my team to be maximally efficient. I would like them to be maximally effective. I would love them to learn how to be better communicators and how to work together as a team. We've got you. And if you're someone on a team listening to this right now, and you're like, Hey, I would like to do that.

We've got you to, there's the ability to take one module at a time. You can buy the whole certificate. You can take it online. You can take it in a hybrid version where you do some workshop in virtual cohorts, but you also asynchronously watch videos. You can even come and do the whole thing in two days live with our team.

And you can find out information about all of it at unchartedvet.com/certificates, that certificate with an S at the end, because there's more where that came from. And now back to the podcast. Oh, but don't forget to go sign up. 

Dr. Andy Roark: And who scores better in the eyes of the, uh, of the headhunters? It's John, who sometimes can be difficult to get along with. Because that one wart made everything else real.

Stephanie Goss: Right. Sure. 

Dr. Andy Roark: It made John real and you're like, when someone says this is the area I would like to see him develop in, suddenly you're like, Oh, this person's not just blowing smoke. They are genuinely telling me what they think, which means all of the other things they said, I believe are genuine.

And so I always remember that and talk about that and the takeaway of it is you should be yourself warts and all like you should be authentic about who you are. You should be authentic about who the person you're recommending is. Nobody believes in perfection. They believe in real people.

And so the first challenge in writing a letter of recommendation is capturing the person in an authentic way. And that will generally send them catapulting back the past the people who have just covered in fluff and, are not really believable as people. And so don't be afraid to say the, this is who this person is.

These are some of the memories that I have, these are challenges I have seen them overcome. This is some of the personal development that I have seen in this person. And that is powerful stuff that does not get talked much about but it–phrases like that articulate that this person is a learner and a grower and someone who develops and betters themselves and who you can probably assume is going to continue to improve and grow. And I feel like those are really important points that a lot of people miss in their letters of recommendation.

Stephanie Goss: Well, and from an HR perspective and from, you know, from my personal experience perspective. So prior to being in, in the vet field, I worked for the university and, I've read a lot of recommendation letters for the programs that I was involved in over the years. And I will also say that one of the things, as someone who has looked for candidates and looked through hundreds of candidates, like you mentioned, the Dean, and I don't envy that.

I don't envy that job because it's a really hard job. Because there is a lot of generic. And there's a reason why. Because I think a lot of people, whether they're applying for a job or they're applying for vet school, they think about who is the person who can give me the most glowing recommendation.

I think that's how a lot of people look at it. And there's nothing wrong with that. And I think a lot of people also look at it as. Who is the most well connected person that I know to write this letter? And I've had candidates ask me to write letters because they're like, Well, you are involved in this thing, and so you know people here, and so that will look good.

And It's not, they're not being shady about it, right? It's not with mal intent that they're looking at it that way, but they are, if you are trying to succeed, you're probably looking at all of your options. And at the same time, I think what I often. Do and we're, I'm going to get into this when I do action steps, but for me, I want to know why is it that they want me to write the letter?

Because I think that really, I think that really matters. And to your point, I love that this student asked their doctor that they work with to write the letter, because here's an opportunity for someone who, to your point, not only has had the opportunity to see them. Excel and flourish and can speak to that, but there's also the ability to speak to the depth of the relationship and why you're asking this person to write your letter.

And I have read hundreds of letters that it's very clear to me that this is someone that. The candidate respects, but there's no depth to the relationship. And I'm going to weigh that dramatically differently than a letter where it's clear that this person got a letter from their academic advisor that they've been working with for four years and they're speaking about the growth that this person has had.

That speaks to a depth of relationship and involvement in their life that is different. Right. it's the difference between you know, I, it's funny that the Dean said the euthanasia story, because for me, letters of rec, I would think, especially for vet school, there are hundreds of thousands of candidates who have known since they were five years old, that they wanted to be a veterinarian as a manager.

I can't tell you how many times I get cover letters from people who are like, I just think that working with animals would be the best job in the world. That's great. But why does that set you apart from the hundreds of thousands of other people who say that they've also wanted to be a vet since they're, since they were five years old?

Right? So, I think part of it, I love that you said what, you know, as the writer, what are you trying to communicate about the person? But I think that also goes both ways. If you are a candidate and you are asking someone to write a. a letter for you. I think part of it, the headspace for you should be, why are you asking this person?

Because I will tell you, as someone who has written letters for people, the best letters I have written have been able to be the letters where someone has come to me and said, I would like you to write this for me because I think that you can speak to my growth and development and overcoming challenges because of this, right?

Dr. Andy Roark: My communication skills, my ability to learn. I really love how you're taking this because you're putting power back into the student, or into the applicant's hands. And so I just, boy, I can't agree with you more strongly. I, the applicants, and it's funny, when you're asked for a letter of recommendation, the people who really have their stuff together, Like, you know it.

There's people who ask me for a letter of recommendation and just the way they talk to me, I'm like, you don't need, you do not need me. Like, you are gonna, you are gonna write your own ticket. And the person who can write their own ticket comes to you basically with a plan. And they're like, okay, I was hoping you could write me a letter of recommendation.

I thought because we spent this time together and we had these experiences, I was really hoping you could speak to this specific. you know, area of development for me. And what's happened is this person has looked at themselves and thought about the points that they want to try to make. And they have looked at people that they know and say, well, I think you know, I had a period, I really learned a lot about communication and motivating people when I worked at this job and this person was my manager there and they could provide that sort of insight.

And this person has actually seen me work with patients and animals. And maybe they could speak to my compassion and my thoughtfulness and my, you know, bedside manner, if you will. And, you know, but you, but when you go and you give, like, set the letter writers up for success. It's really hard. This is something that we do with training and Uncharted that blows people's minds.

And so it's funny if I say to you if I come to you and I say, I want you to think about a conversation you had with a client that's much harder. than me coming in and saying, I want you to think about a conversation you had with a client about dental care where the client had very limited resources.

Like, that second one is a much easier mental pull than “think about a conversation with a client” where you're like, I don't know. And so, anyway, the way we ask those questions matters. And so, I love that you called that out. I want, the next part sort of for me with this is, if you're writing, back to writing the letter, if you're writing the letter, remember that talk is cheap.

And we talk about this a lot when we talk about mission statements, when we talk about defining core values in the team.

And one of the mistakes that people make is they pick flowery words and they say at our practice we're about compassion and integrity and the highest inpatient care and I'm like what the hell does any of that mean? They're like, I don't know exactly. It's just you know, just theoretically these are the words.

Stephanie Goss: Well it looks good on the wall, right? Like 

Dr. Andy Roark: It looks good on the wall.

Stephanie Goss: And there should be part of that because you don't want it to look like a second grader wrote something, right? Like that's, and that's where people, they're coming at it from a place of good intention. Like we want this

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, yea

Stephanie Goss: We want it to sound inspiring and we want it to, And it's so easy to get caught up in the language of that and trying to make it sound good.

I know as someone who has both written and asked someone to write a letter, I have gotten caught up in that as well as like, Oh, let me use a bigger word or let me

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, oh yeah. That's, 

Stephanie Goss: the sound more flowery. It's because it's really easy to do.

Dr. Andy Roark: Well, and I'm not trying to dunk on people. I'm sorry if I come off as, as, mean here. Because I don't mean to be mean. it's all done the best of intention. But like, those, I see those flowery words, and I see them on the wall, and no one in the practice It, they're not motivating to anybody, but I'll tell you how to make a motivating really fast.

If you want to make a motivating and you've got them written on the wall, you need to gather the team around and you need to point at the words and you say, Hey guys, I want to think of times that you saw someone on our team living this value. Like I want you to think about a time that you saw someone demonstrating integrity.

I want you to think about a real time. That you saw someone, ideally in the last week, maybe in the last month, maybe in the last quarter, maybe in the last year if we have to go back that far. If we have to go back that far to find an

Stephanie Goss: It’s not one of your values.

Dr. Andy Roark: maybe, maybe other words that should go on the wall.

but you know what I mean? Like, but, say, integrity. Give me an example. Like, we have this on our wall. Tell me about a time. That you saw someone demonstrating integrity. And let the team tell you a story about one of their coworkers. And buddy, you will see the team start to come together. You will see them start to look at each other and go, you know what?

We do have integrity. And that's what it looks like. And you will see other people's behavior start to shift. Because they go, Oh, man. I'm surrounded by people who are doing this stuff. I could do this stuff. If they see real examples, if they hear real examples, especially, I mean, everybody loves to have their friends say, you know, I saw Andy do this thing.

And he didn't think anyone saw him, but this is what he did. And that demonstrates the highest standard of patient care. Boy, I feel like a million bucks and then also like, but that's, us convincing ourselves that these really are values that I tell this story and I talk about this because the same thing translates into the letter of recommendation talk is cheap and everybody writes these letters talking about fantastic leadership and initiative and work ethic and intelligence and knowledge and, you know, compassion and willingness to to go the extra mile.

Everyone says that. Speak in specifics. Talk is cheap. You don't have to write a ton, but tell me a story. Give me an example of the behaviors that you're talking about. And if you can't come up with any examples, I think you should think harder about the person. It doesn't have to, a lot of people are like, Oh, I need some amazing story.

You, it does not have to be an amazing story. It can be, I was working in the exam room, and this person was an assistant, or this person was a technician, and I remember we had this experience, and I remember the way that, that this person would advocate for the patient. And specifically, I remember one time that she did this and that was common for her and now I'm like, oh, I see what you mean.

I wrote a letter for a technician going to vet school that I'm so proud of, but it was someone that I knew fairly well. And she asked me to write the letter. I was kind of surprised. I was an associate veterinarian. It was, you know, it was not because I was well known at all. But she asked me for this and I really thought about it and I sat and I wrote about the way I had seen her teaching another technician just a couple of days earlier. And I just wrote that down. And I was like, you know, this is what I saw two days ago. And this is not abnormal, this is what she's like to work with. And I believe that being a veterinarian is about being an educator.

And that's why I believe this person would be an excellent veterinarian. One of the reasons. And it was a fairly short letter and she had applied like five times and this was a BAM and then this time, you know, she got in, but I just, I, to me, that's what a good letter of recommendation looks like.

And what that means though is it's not easy and, it's impossible to fake it, but that's why it works. If it was something where it was just like, use these big words and the person will get in. Well, that doesn't work. Pulling specific stories or examples is hard, but that's why it works. And so anyway, that's speak in specifics.

Remember that talk is cheap. I think that's my other really big part of putting together a good letter of recommendation.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. I think that's, I think that's good.

Dr. Andy Roark: If you do it, I mean, you know, try to be concise. Rambling on for three pages is, this is just one piece of an application. Length is not going to help. If anything, it's going to hurt. Like, you know, aim for a one pager. Which means you got to get in there and say what you're going to say and then get back out.

So, try to be concise, consider having somebody else read it, somebody that you trust to say, hey, what does this look like? Does this sound good to you? Because sometimes I'll write something that sounds to me like an obvious compliment and the other person will read it in a different way and says, oh, this person sounds like a micromanager.

I'm like, oh. She's definitely not.

Stephanie Goss: right.

Dr. Andy Roark: What made you say that? and they're just like, oh, well, it's just the way you, this turn of phrase that you used. Oh, I don't, I didn't think that. And I don't know if the person reading it would think that. But the fact that you thought that makes me think that there's a possibility someone else might think that.

And so I'm going to make that adjustment. And so just having somebody with fresh eyes read it is, always really valuable. The last thing I would say to sum all of this, or just bring this all back around, throw a little curveball here at the end is, I get the question sometimes, Andy, what if I don't want to write a letter of recommendation for this person?

Stephanie Goss: Okay. 

Dr. Andy Roark: And I think that happens sometimes. And I try to coach people. Sometimes we say, I think this person is great. I just, I'm not a good person to write a letter of recommendation for them. My wife is a college professor and somebody who took introductory biology with her three years ago, and they were in a class of, you know, 80.

And it's like, Hey, can you write this letter of recommendation? And she's like, I'm not a good person to write this for you. And my take on that is, you know, as Phil Richmond says honesty without empathy is cruelty. It's like, I don't want to be cruel to this person. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, I think you're great.

I don't know that I can speak in specifics. At a level that's going to help you. I'm afraid, like, I, my fear is I will write something that's pretty generic. I think there's probably other people that you should, ask. And that's a little bit of an awkward conversation, but writing a crappy rec letter for them, or, saying things that you don't believe in, like that's, probably not a good play.

And so hopefully that doesn't happen a whole lot, but often you can come back with questions and say, “What aspects would you be looking for me to write to? And then is there anybody else that could maybe give more specific examples than I could or has worked with you more regularly than I have in those areas?”

Stuff like that can help you gracefully bow out of these if you're not the right person for them.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. I think the other thing for me that this, and this goes to both sides, both to someone who's looking for a letter of recommendation and someone who's considering writing them is don't. Like I, I actually am a big believer in not ruling out not ruling out asking someone who has seen you go through challenge because I'll tell you one of my favorite letters of recommendation that I ever wrote, and I think it was one of the best letters that I ever wrote was actually for an employee that I had to fire.

And I had fired them already by the time I wrote the letter of recommendation. But I was happy to write the letter of recommendation because they were going through some challenges that made them at the time, not a great employee. Like it just wasn't the right fit for them. And I kept in touch with them and I watched them buckle down and find an environment that was better for them.

And I watched them flourish in the same role. And I watched them grow and develop and continue to face that challenge of, I mean, if you've been fired, like it's hard, it's embarrassing, you know, and then continue to go after the thing that they were passionate about and that they had, a dream about, you know, and I had I had an another candidate who was going through a lot of personal change and the, in their own life and really had a hard time at work.

They weren't getting along with their coworkers, but watching them. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a second, but I'm going to talk have the challenges with work and having gone through coaching them and stuff to your point about getting specific. Talk about being able to provide examples like you're sometimes John can be hard to get along with, right?

It's like, here's, an opportunity for me to give an example of where you've been a real human being. And you've recognized that you are a real human being and you've worked on changing it. And not only. Did you work on changing it? And as the reader, I'm just hoping that you figured it out. If you're able to say, here was a challenge that someone faced, here's how they, here's how they tackled it.

And here was the result. As a reader of that letter, that tells me that this person actually knows you and experienced growth and change and development in you. And that letter is going to stand out hands down. Against any of the other letters that are just the flowery, you know, this person is wonderful.

This person is great. You know, that, that is all, true. So I think on both sides, like I always tell people, think about what has shaped you and what has grown and developed you. And when I, when somebody asked me for a letter, I want to know, like, why are you doing, like, what are you applying for?

What are you doing? Right. Like, why, do you want this? And then also. What are you excited about? Because being able to speak to what, specifically what someone is excited about, like, why do they want to get into this field? For me to be able to talk to that point and then be able to say, I know that they want to become a veterinarian because, you know, growing up on their parents equine farm, you know, farm.

influence them from the age of two. And I've also seen the dedication that they have given to small animal medicine, because despite living on an equine farm, they worked in my small animal practice from the time that they were in high school. All the way through college, they came back on their breaks.

Like, I have the ability to share why the thing that is their dream or why the thing, what they're excited about for the opportunity, to share how that bridges to the specific experiences that I'm talking about. That's the kind of stuff that makes writing the letter so much more powerful. And so I, for me, the lesson that I have learned, to your point about you know, sometimes you're not the best person.

Like what if you don't want to write it? Even if I am a good person to write it for them, like I want to put it back on them and often do, which is I would be happy to consider writing this letter. I'd love to sit down and ask you some questions because You should never, if someone says, Oh yeah, I'd be happy to write a letter of recommendation for you.

And that's the end of the conversation, that letter is probably not going to be a great letter. It just isn't. And like, I mean, you and I have been, I've been working together for seven years now, but if I was going to go to vet school, or I was going to, you know, apply to get an MBA or something like that.

And I needed a letter of recommendation. I might ask you to write one, you're someone who's known, who knows me probably better than anybody else professionally, but I would also consider like, are you the right person to write this letter? Because what am I trying to achieve? And I would want to sit down and say, Hey, can you speak specifically to these things?

Because this matters. This is why our relationship makes you the best person to write this letter for me. And there should be some thought there, I think on both sides.

Dr. Andy Roark: Absolutely. I think it's great. Cool, man. That's all I got. I hope that's helpful. I hope that helps this person 

Stephanie Goss: So I think they, yeah,

Dr. Andy Roark: rockstar technician into vet

Stephanie Goss: I think the answer is gush, but gush with intention and, also have some balance, right? Like even our rock stars are human beings and both speak to the things that make them human and make them you know, make them the rock star, but also don't forget to like talk in a positive way about the challenges and how they overcome them.

Dr. Andy Roark: I don't know, it's funny, this has made me think about how I feel about, gushing, in that I've noticed this thing recently where there's, I think it's because there's so much noise in the world, but there's so much gushing of rock star, superstar, amazing, yeah, exactly, this play innovator. You know, all these sorts of big, you know, buzzy words.

It's all the words you see on LinkedIn. Just go to LinkedIn and scroll along and see what names people are calling each other. And like, that's the fluffy hand waving stuff. And I really think that we are coming into a time when less is more. 

Stephanie Goss: Right. 

Dr. Andy Roark: and speaking in specifics matters, because everybody wants to tell you about this 10x opportunity they have.

It's like, no, what the heck are we talking about? And then, can you speak less, speak in specifics, and communicate your point? And I really think that is the key today to cutting through the noise and actually getting heard. Anyway, that's it. That's all I got.

Stephanie Goss: All right. Well, have fun with the rest of the week, everybody. This was a short one, but we'll be back. We'll be back next week. Same time, same bat channel. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Take care, everybody. See you.

Stephanie Goss: And that's a wrap on another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. Thanks for joining us and spending your week with us. If you enjoyed this week's episode, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. It's the best way to let us know that you love listening. We'll see you next time.

Written by Maria Pirita · Categorized: Blog, Podcast · Tagged: communication, culture, management, Technician

Oct 25 2023

I’ll Admit It: Some Animals Make Me Nervous! With Amanda Schwarzwalder, CVPM, RVT, KPA CTP, VTS

This week on the Uncharted Podcast, practice management geek Stephanie Goss is joined by special guest, Amanda Schwarzwalder, CVPM, RVT, KPA CTP, VTS (Behavior). When Stephanie saw this letter in the mailbag, Amanda was the first person who came to mind to tackle this topic with. For over 20 years Amanda has worked as a veterinary technician in various capacities. Her interest in behavior led her to joining The Behavior Clinic in 2009.  A nationally recognized speaker in veterinary behavior and Fear FreeTM Approved Speaker,  Amanda enjoys teaching veterinary team members how to implement and develop behavior care as a team. As the Practice Manager, Amanda is often behind the scenes handling the day to day business of keeping TBC running, supporting our referring veterinarians, and working with the TBC team to assist our clients and their pets. With such a well-rounded resume, it makes perfect sense that Amanda has a whole alphabet soup behind her name.

Stephanie and Amanda are taking on an email from our mailbag that came to us from a technician in training who is worried about their comfort level with animals. While this might seem strange to some people in veterinary medicine who are lovers of ALL creatures great and small, Amanda and Stephanie talk through the concerns from a practical, clinical and personal level because there is a lot to this seemingly simple concern. We're not brushing it off, let's get into this…

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · UVP – 255 – I'll Admit It – Some Animals Make Me Nervous! With Guest Co – Host Amanda Schwarzwalder

You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

LINKS FOR RESOURCES MENTIONED IN PODCAST

Fear Free Coupon Code: FFROARK20

Low Stress Handling

Do you have something that you would love Andy and Stephanie to role play on the podcast – a situation where you would love some examples of what someone else would say and how they would say it? If so, send us a message through the mailbag! We want to hear your challenges and would love to feature your scenario on the podcast.

Submit your questions here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag


Upcoming Events

Are you a practice owner or a practice manager? Never underestimate the impact of a powerful partnership and DON'T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO JOIN US LIVE IN GREENVILLE...

The Wright Brothers. Venus and Serena. Han Solo and Chewbacca. Okay, that last one was (far) far-fetched… but there’s no denying that all of these rockstar duos made a lasting impression on us. They innovated, discovered, experimented, and explored the unknown, all to leave the world a bit better than they found it. Veterinary practice leaders can form powerful partnerships just like these. Collaboration in leadership might sound simple, but for any of you that do it on a regular basis, you know it can be anything but easy!

Every partnership (like every veterinary practice) is unique and faces very specific challenges. To be successful, you must identify your strengths and weaknesses as individuals and as a pair. By working to further your skills within your respective role, then coming together to work collaboratively with your partner, you can quickly break problems down into manageable pieces and move forward as a team. 

This December, The Practice Leaders Summit is here to infuse the powerful veterinary partnership of practice owners and practice managers with renewed energy and understanding. You both want a strengthened foundation to guide the practice (or practices!) you lead so that it can continue on to future success. Join us!

Upcoming events: unchartedvet.com/upcoming-events/


Episode Transcript

Stephanie Goss:
Hey, everybody. I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. This week on the podcast, I am very excited to be joined by an Uncharted community member, friend, and colleague. Amanda Schwarzwalder is a CVPM. She is an RVT. In fact, she has got a whole alphabet soup behind her name, as you'll learn as we get into this episode. I asked Amanda to come on the podcast this week for so many reasons, least of which is that she is a VTS in behavior.
We got a question in the mailbag from someone who is working on their technician license, and they had a question about behavior and pets. The first person I thought of was Amanda. I'm super excited to have her jump in and guest host with me this week, as we tackle this mailbag topic about being nervous potentially around some of our patients. This was a fun one. I hope you guys enjoy it. Now, let's get into it.

Speaker 2:
Now, the Uncharted Podcast.

Stephanie Goss:
We are back. It's me, Stephanie Goss, and I am joined this week not by Dr. Andy Roark, but by my friend and colleague. I'm really excited for you all to meet Amanda, because I'm not sure that all of you have had the opportunity. She is amazing. We have an Uncharted community member and a CVPM. Are you an RVT, LVT, CVT?

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
RVT.

Stephanie Goss:
RVT. Amanda has the entire alphabet suit behind her name, so I'm not even going to try and name the letters, because Ms. Amanda Schwarzwalder, who is here with me today, is a technician, practice manager. You are a VTS in behavior, which is why you're here because we're going to have a conversation about a mailbag thing that came through. I was like, “Oh, this is right up your alley.” Amanda Schwarzwalder, welcome to the podcast.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Stephanie Goss:
I am excited to have you, and I have to ask you a question, because I was looking at your bio and I'm like, “Okay, CVPM, I know that. RVT, KPA, what is that?”

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Karen Pryor Academy certified training partner. Yep. I've been through a formal trainers program to be an animal trainer, multiple species.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. CTP, what is that?

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
That's the certified training partner that goes with the KPA.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. Those two are the training ones, and then VTS in behavior.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yep.

Stephanie Goss:
You told me a fun fact when we were getting ready about the letters behind your name.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, so I also-

Stephanie Goss:
You have to tell everybody.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, so I have a few more letters, because I'm also a Fear Free Certified Elite. By the time you put all the jumble of letters together with my first name and my last name, I am only missing four or five letters from the alphabet. That's my new gig when I lecture is on the title screen, it's like, “these are the letters that are missing. If you know a credential that contains these, let me know.” Then I'll have the whole alphabet. It'll be complete set. That'd be great.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, my gosh. I love it so, so much. Tell our audience, because you are in the Midwest, and then I know you have done speaking, and our Uncharted community knows you, but tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah. I am a practice manager for The Behavior Clinic. We are a specialty behavior practice in the Cleveland area. I have two board of veterinary behaviorists that are part of our team, our business owner, and then an associate. Then we also have, I'm losing track, I think I'm up to five RVTs. I've got one other VTS behavior and then some other trainers. We're a team of 14 now, which has been crazy.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, so we do animal behavior. We do mostly dogs and cats primarily. Occasionally, we get horses, occasionally, we get birds. I've also gotten to do some really cool work with Raptor Rehab. I've also gotten to do wolves, and coyotes, and otters are my favorite.

Stephanie Goss:
Whoa.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
I love otters. They're so cool. It's been a lot of fun. We've gotten to help bobcats learn how to give blood, and do some consulting with zoos and things. It's been a really fascinating ride, so sometimes can't believe it.

Stephanie Goss:
I feel like we could just do an episode and hear your story, your stories about-

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
I think some of them might have to get legal permission from clients, but they're really funny. I've got some really good ones.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, gosh. That is so awesome. I'm super excited to have you on the podcast today. Y'all, I thought of Amanda immediately because I got a mailbag letter and when I first got it, I will admit, I was like, “I got to put this on the back burner, because it doesn't feel like it's right up Andy and I's alley.” Then I was thinking about, who would be someone good? We've been doing some episodes while Andy or I have been on vacation, where we've had guest hosts. I was like, “Amanda would be perfect for this one.”
We got a mailbag letter from a young technician intern who is working on their technician license, and they're about to do their internships. They are a little bit nervous and were asking about some tips for becoming comfortable with animals, because they said, “I'm reasonably comfortable around dogs. I've had dogs growing up, and I have friends with dogs in their homes. I feel like I know enough about the basics of canine body language, and I can kind of tell when they're uncomfortable.”
They said, “I've never had a cat, and I don't want one because our current dog has a prey drive,” and I was like, “Good for you, recognizing that. That's a step in the right direction.” They were like, “I have friends who have cats, and I don't feel like I'm as good reading their body language, but I'm a lot less nervous with them.” They said, “I feel like I'm really nervous around the larger animals, and I'm getting ready to move into the step of my program where I'm going to do my large animal internship and get experience with them.”
They said, “I'll pet a large animal, but I don't ever feel completely comfortable.” They reached out, were asking for tips on how to be comfortable around the pets that make them nervous. They said, “I feel like as a technician, I should know the basics of handling a whole variety of species, and not just necessarily dogs and cats.” I was like, “Oh, this will be a fun one. I feel like both Amanda and I probably can get into some stories about being a technician, and nerves and comfort.”
I told Amanda, “We're just going to dive into this one in true Uncharted Podcast fashion,” and we'll talk about some Headspace things with all of you, and then we'll do some action steps that Amanda's got some great resources. We'll have set links in the show notes and everything for everybody. I'm excited to dive into this one with you, Amanda.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah. Well, and I love that in the mailbag letter, that they were actually willing to contemplate willing to get a cat in order to learn more about cats. I'm just like, “You can't do that with every species.”

Stephanie Goss:
No, not at all, or you would have a zoo.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, you would have a zoo, but it's great that we've got that level of commitment, so I love that.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so from a Headspace perspective, I think you and I were talking a little bit before we started recording, I think both of us are in total agreement that I love this letter because this is totally normal. I think there are people who are going to listen to this podcast episode and see themselves in it, whether it's themselves now in their career, or themselves at one point in time.
I know that's how I felt when I read it. I was like, “Oh, I remember that point in my technicians program where I was like, ‘Oh, I'm afraid of these things.'” I've been honest on the podcast about things that I'm still afraid of as a technician. That's things that I have now put into my deal breaker category.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yep, yeah. There are so many things, and fear is normal. It's normal to be nervous. It's normal to be concerned. I love that It also comes from this person's writing, from this perspective of, “I want to know how to be better. I want to know how to feel safe and be safe in these environments,” because that's someone who's going to be a really great technician.
They're asking right questions before they get into those situations, whereas suddenly, they are in that externship and they're like, “Okay, today you're palpating a cow,” and having to go, “I've never touched a cow in my life. What do you mean?” It's great that they're thinking ahead. I love that. I love that they're able to, “Hey, this makes me comfortable and this makes me uncomfortable.” We've got a really good place of self-awareness and where their skills are right now.
I think that's the one thing, as a technician, you're in school. I love it. We're in school. We're in school to learn. I think that's the biggest thing is to remember that in that process, there are things you're going to get to, and you'll get there. It takes time, depending on where that large animal component is in your program, but at least we've got some resources, and lots of things we'll talk about a little bit later.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, and think about it. The possibilities in veterinary medicine, and I remember feeling this when I started my tech program, I was working in a small animal GP, so there were species that we were seeing in the practice every day. We actually had mixed animals. I knew that I was seeing that in the practice, so I was not as uncomfortable about that, but I knew that there's a whole variety of career options out there in vet med.
Thinking about my colleagues, at the time, I was in California in the Bay Area, and I had friends who were technicians for the, we had several zoos in the area. I had technician friends who were working at the zoo, and I thought, “When they went to school, they didn't have in school the learning opportunity with the species that they're now working with.” That's not a part of the curriculum. If it was, if we covered every animal species on the planet, we would be in school for 10 years.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Exactly, yeah. That's the thing, we have such a small timeline for veterinary technician education. It's a two-year program. Some places are 16 months, 18 months. Then we do have some of the four-year programs. I'm a specialist in behavior. The amount of behavior that I was given in that two-year timeframe was very, very little. That's, I think, a really good point of remembering that you're not going to get everything that you need to know in school.
You're going to have to go out and find education for yourself, especially when you've got passion areas that you want to invest more time in, or again, being able to self realize what you need more help with. For me, I'm a CVPM. I always need more help with finance. It's just one of those areas I just always need more help with, but HR, I'm good. You're always going to have to figure out where your weaknesses are and where your strengths are.
Then do like this person is doing and say, “Hey, who can I talk to? Who can I network with? What resources can I find?” Yeah. Yeah, I didn't get otter class in tech school and there was no Otter training course. No, missed that.

Stephanie Goss:
It's so funny, because I remember, I was excited to do this episode for a whole variety of reasons, least of all to get to talk to you, because you have great stories. I knew that our listeners would love you. I remember being a young technician, and I think I was maybe in my final semester of school, but I'm going to share a secret with all of you. I was terrified of birds.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
We share a fear.

Stephanie Goss:
I was terrified, and no one in the clinic knew my dirty little secret. We saw birds. We had a vet who saw small animals, but she also saw avians and exotics. It was a part of our everyday practice, and I had managed successfully to avoid getting on any of her schedule stuff. I knew that the day was coming where I was going to have to confront the fear. We had a client of hers who had a large bird. He was an Amazon parrot, and you'll find this funny, I think, ironic as a behaviorist.
He had some serious feather plucking issues, and his dad traveled a lot for work. He was boarding with us for an extended period of time. I think he was with us for about a month. His enclosure was housed in the office because it was the only place in the clinic that was big enough to put his cage.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
His house, yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, exactly. At the time, I was working on a big project for AVImark, and I was coming in at 3:30 or four in the morning west coast time to get on east coast time to talk to AVImark tech support. Every morning, I would get there and I'd be in the office, and I'd be on the server, and he would start talking to me. I sat on the far side of the office from him, because I was just even terrified to go close to his cage. Nobody knew my dirty little secret. He would just keep talking to me, keep talking to me.
I remember sitting there, thinking, “Maybe this is a sign. Maybe it's a time to try this and get over my fear.” We're going to talk about this when we get into action steps, but I knew logically, that when you have a fear, part of getting over it is only facing it, and then desensitizing yourself to it. I remember sitting in that office and being 10 feet apart from him, and literally being afraid he was going to get me, even though I knew that was illogical. I was just like…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
He has a key, he can open the door. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
I was just like, “Please don't hurt me.” I think this is totally normal, and I going to save the other half of my story for when we get to action steps because it has to do with facing the fear, but it's totally normal. I think everybody has that. Is there, besides birds, which seems like we may share…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Birds and snakes, I'm not really a snake fan. We had one client who used to breed boa constrictors, and so I had to start with the baby snakes. I'm still not a snake fan, but I can be okay. I actually married someone who loves tarantulas. When we started dating, Mr. Snuggles, a little pink toed tarantula that was the size of your hand, and it was Mr. Snuggles because it was the most friendly of his pets. Yeah. There was some chocolate involved. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. We're going to…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
He wants a much larger one, but I'm not to that point in my spider therapy, so yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. We're going to circle back to that, because there's some stories there.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Oh, yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
First piece, we recognize that this is totally normal, and I love your point about not only is it normal, and I so appreciate the writer who said this, because it's healthy. You said something to me when we were getting ready to start recording that I think is really important. We were talking about it being healthy, and you were talking about particularly in the context of large animals, why fear is a little bit healthy and important.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, it's healthy whether we're talking about large animals, small animal, bird, spiders, or even when it comes to doing things like getting in front of a crowd and speaking. You want to have some sort of a little bit of anxiety, because that's what's going to keep you safe. Your amygdala is there for a reason. It has a job. Its job is to keep you from doing things that are going to harm yourself.
When we're walking up to that bowl that's in the pasture, we want to have that little bit of like, “Okay, you need to be aware. You need to be watching. You need to be cautious.” When you're working with a large animal and they step on your foot, they can break your foot. They're just shifting their weight, but that's going to be a much greater injury that you're going to sustain compared to when you're working with a Great Dane in a room and they step on your foot. It's not going to take a whole lot for you to get hurt when we're working with large animals.
Again, a little bit of awareness of that, “Eh, this makes me a little cautious,” is good. It's the same thing when I'm coaching my technicians in our consult rooms. If you're ever to the point where you are not a little bit worried when you're seeing that dog that has a multiple bite history, and it's got a history of pinning technicians in the vet clinic and biting the doctor, you need to have that. That's what's going to keep you and your doctor safe while you're providing care so that pet can get better. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, it's not that you don't want to believe that they can be trusted, but you should always be aware. That's what I love about what you do is that the idea that we can learn new behaviors, and we can desensitize, and we can train away from behaviors that we may have learned. At the same time, that awareness is so, so important to always keep with you. It's so healthy for you. I love that you train your team on that. That's awesome.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, I spend a lot of time with that. It's the same reason when I'm lecturing, if I ever am doing something like the podcast, or a lecture, if I'm ever not a little bit anxious or excited, then I probably shouldn't be doing it, because maybe I don't care as much about what the outcome is. I want my people to care. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
It is so, so true. People, I think, are surprised when they actually learn, because this is what I do now for a living, and I do the podcast every week, and I am on stage, and I've spoken in front of hundreds of people, but the stage fright is real. Andy's very proud of me because it has gotten better, but I will tell people, “I still throw up before every time.” That's just my body's response.
It's the nerves, and the anxiety, and that excitement. Even now that the excitement outweighs the nerves and the anxiety about my performance, I'm like, “Am I going to trip and fall on my face?” I still have that energy, and it's my body's way of dealing with it. I'm okay with that.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, exactly. You need that. That's where it's like I did some time at Wolf Park in Indiana, and when you're going into the enclosure with a large wolf, you are definitely feeling not super comfortable, especially if

Stephanie Goss:
Even if you're excited about that.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
… they'll hop up on the log next to you, face level, you're just kind of like, “Okay, this is really exciting, but I might die.” It's a very different sort, but again, it's there to keep you safe. It's there to keep you from turning around, going, “Oh, hi, cute wolfie,” and smooching it on the nose, because that won't go well. Wolfies don't like that, it's not their thing. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
I want to, what you just talked about dovetails into, I think the next thing from Headspace perspective, which, for me, is thinking about my own career and my own experiences, I think about the things that I was nervous about or I was even truly afraid of. I think that some of the moments of greatest, the most moments of great achievement in my career, a lot of them, or the moments that gave me immeasurable pride, came from facing up to some of those fears and those discomforts.
I remember getting on stage for the first time in front of hundreds of people, and it was terrifying and also exhilarating. Walking into an enclosure with a wolf and having that experience, I would be terrified.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, it's terrifying, but it's amazing.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, but also, what a rush?

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
It is.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
It's a total rush. It's the same thing when you think when we start out as technicians, the first time you're learning to place a catheter. You're like, “Okay, how many zillions of pieces of tape do I need? This is really stressful, and am I going to hit the vein?” Like, “Oh shoot, now it's bleeding everywhere. What do I do with that? Where'd that darn cap cap go?”
Then you're getting that catheter on that little neonatal kitten that's super dehydrated, and it looks terrible, and you get it in, and you're like, “Score. I did it.” You get that big surge of confidence. Again, it's that fulfillment of you did learn it, you got the skill, and you nailed it.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, and pride…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
You're comfortable with it. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
… Is that pride of feeling like you've taken a skill, something that you've studied, that you've learned, because the skills, and this is my next piece, is the skill gets you so far. You learn, you have all the theory, you have all the bookwork, and it's one thing to know it in my head, and I can recite it backwards and forwards. I'll be honest, this is the kind of technician I was. I'm very book smart. The book learning came very easy to me.
The actual doing was hard. I had to really put time and effort and energy into the doing, because the skills come with practice. For me, when I went to school, I was working at the front desk. I wasn't in the exam room every day. I wasn't getting the hands-on day in, day out experience. Those skills were a lot slower in coming for me. To your point, I still get that excitement and that pride, even in the small things, like hitting a jugular.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
Most of us think, “Oh, my God, it's so easy to hit a jugular,” but when you don't do it every day…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
When you don't do it all the time, yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
It's that excitement of I have the knowledge, I know how to do the thing, and I have the skills to do it. That brings the achievement and the pride in what we, I think that's part of why we do what we do.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Right, yeah. Well, and we get the satisfaction that we actually help, we helped an animal. We helped them have a better life today. We helped them have better care. That's what I think a lot of what we do in behavior, especially because we do have these patients who are not, you've got a horse, and it doesn't really want the farrier to touch its feet, but if we don't get the farrier to touch their feet, they might get more damage over time and become lame.
Then we're into a big medical concern that is now more of a problem. It's going to cost the owner more. The horse is going to be in more pain and discomfort, because we didn't have the skillset to get there. That desire to help, I think, is a big thing that empowers a lot of us as technicians is we want to know that we helped the animal. We want to know that we did something to give them care. Most of us, I love it, my favorite question is always, how many of you in the audience love people? When I'm talking to technicians.
It's like, you get five people out of a few hundred. I love people, I love the people part, but I think that's the biggest thing for most of us is we're in it for the animals. Being able to do something that, yeah, we got that blood sample, so now we can treat this dog, and we can have the information to know what's going on.

Stephanie Goss:
I also think that I'm so glad that you brought that up, and I think it's such a good point, because I think one of the things that always stuck with me, especially when I was in school and learning, was I leaned into that discomfort and that fear to help the animal. What I mean by that is that there were definitely circumstances where either it was that I was learning a new skill, or it was a patient, a species that I was uncomfortable with.
I was never afraid to try a thing, but I was always okay to say, “Okay, I've tried it, and it didn't work. I would rather you, the experienced preceptor or whoever's with me, do the thing, because this is a critical patient, or it's more emergent or whatever.” Never, when they were healthy pets, it never worried me, but that comfort level for the patient was always at the heart of it for me. I didn't want my learning to come at their expense.
I think that that's something that a lot of us think about when we're in school, because we care about our patients and we don't want to harm them. It's really easy to practice on the dumb, dopey lab that just sits there, wagging their tail with their…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, take my blood, it's fine. Yeah. You got more cookies? Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
That neonate that you're just like, “This is critical. We need to hit this. Let's not cause it more harm or discomfort.” I think that that fear factor, that anxiety, spidey senses, it feels different for all of us. For some of us, it is a true fear.
I've talked on the podcast before about my fear over anesthesia as a technician, and I would always absolutely say, “Nope, I'm going to step out,” first thing. I never felt bad about it, because for me, I was putting the patient first.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Exactly.

Stephanie Goss:
It was truly a terror fear level. I also have other friends who, there were other things that I did, where it was like, “Okay, this is a little spidey sense tingling. I feel uncomfortable with it.” I think recognizing that that's going to come and go as you learn and as you develop skills, and sometimes it is the true terror, and sometimes it's just the spidey senses tingling, feeling like, “I'm a little uncomfortable in this situation.”

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, and I think that dovetails in really nicely with behavior, because oftentimes, I find when I'm working with vet teams and we're talking about behavior, no matter what species, everyone has that feeling, like, “Ooh, I was in the room with this patient, and I just got this weird feeling. They weren't comfortable, but I can't tell you why.” That's one of the things with behavior is that we talk a lot about, “Well, pin down the why. Why do you think that that patient is uncomfortable? Why do you think that this isn't going to go well?”
Sometimes we're seeing things that are actually clues that the animal's uncomfortable, or that they might display differently if we contact them in a certain way, or if we get into their space. We aren't very good at talking to each other about what that is, because sometimes we don't know, because again, we don't get that in school, but it's definitely something, “Okay, I'm approaching the horse in the paddock. I just have this weird feeling,” but being able to go like, “Well, okay, stop for a second.” Go, “Well, why do I feel this way? Let me look at my patient.”
Take five seconds, look at the ears, the eyes, all these different things. Then you can also have that, “Okay, I feel this way because this is what I'm seeing in the animal's body language.” Then that helps connect you with that. “Oh, okay.” Over time you go, “Ooh, I'm more aware of that. I'm seeing this as I'm approaching to the paddock, so that is telling me I already need to change some of what I'm doing, because I'm now aware of, well, why did I feel weird? It's because something in that animal's body language told me to be concerned. I just wasn't maybe paying attention to it before.”
That's something that's hard, because in behavior, we have a luxury of an hour and a half consultations that we're spending a lot of time-

Stephanie Goss:
I was just going to say, yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
I've got clients who send us video from home, and all sorts of things, versus when you're in a 15-minute appointment, or you're on a farm call and you've got to get through the barn has 30 horses in it, it's very different. You might be, you're going through faster, you're going, “I feel weird, I don't know, but we got to get this cat vaccinated, so let's go.”
Then later, you're going, “Oh, yeah. They exploded, and there was a reason they were really upset.” Maybe, hindsight's always 2020. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
I think that that's an important lesson, though from a leadership perspective, for me, learning to lean into that with my team and teach everyone, myself included, to trust our instincts. I love that as a field, we have become more aware about low stress handling and Fear Free techniques. You certainly can speak to this as a Fear Free Elite, but that was one of the things for me with my team is if your spidey senses tingle, listen to that.
It is always okay to pause and say, “I would love someone else's opinion here, or I'm just going to slow down and sit here with the patient for a minute and see what I see,” to your point, “And I'm going to observe the behavior,” or to say, “Maybe we should do some drugs, and come back at another point in time, even if it's an hour from now versus tomorrow.” I think I love that we as an industry are starting to pay attention to that, because I think it is just as important in your behavior practice as it is in the 15-minute appointment.
If we don't listen to that, that's when we find ourselves in the world, that I think you and I have both been in veterinary medicine long enough, I remember starting and it was, “Cowboy up, man. Just do the thing.”

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Oh, yeah. We got to get this done.

Stephanie Goss:
It doesn't matter.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Grab three more people. We got to get that emergency boardetella. Let's go.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, 27 years in the field, you're going to see a lot.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yep. I think that it's a big thing. I think that even coming from a management perspective, when we have someone like our writer, who's aware of their concerns, being able to express those concerns to whoever you're going to be externing with, is like, “Hey, I don't have experience with horses and cows,” is really big.
Then from the management side of that, is us going like, “Okay, I need to know that, because I need to pair you with somebody who is more experienced, to make sure that you can get some positive learning happening while you're here on this learning adventure of an externship.” Then also, if you aren't comfortable being able to empower them, to say, “At some point, if we're walking in here and you're not comfortable, you need to tell me you're not comfortable, so we can change what's happening.”
That's the same thing with a lot of our technicians that we do during training is if you feel like you're in over your head, it's okay, tap out. You are going to be in over your head at some point, and it's a lot easier to throw you a lifeline while we can still see you before you float away.

Stephanie Goss:
Right, yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that. Okay, so I said we were going to circle back to your relationship and the spider situation, and here's where we're going to do it. The last thing for me in Headspace is as a person in veterinary medicine, just but a person in general, is it's okay to know your limits, and it is okay to have deal breakers.
I heart you so much. Holy hell, I could not, spiders, arachnids are a deal breaker for me. It's so funny, because I did not know that about you, or your relationship, or your household, and I'm never coming to your house. I love you so much, but I'm never coming to your house.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
It's okay. It passed. I was 24, I don't know. They live for a long time. It's a big commitment.

Stephanie Goss:
Amanda's just talking about it, and I'm creeping out.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Stephanie's just shivering and shaking, creeping out.

Stephanie Goss:
Spiders are a deal breaker for me. In my, hi, Sylvester, in my first practice, where we saw avians and exotics, I have had that in every one of my practices, but our doctor, Dr. Shaefer, Marty saw birds and exotics. I remember vividly, when I was in school having conversation with her, and just being honest and saying, “I am terrified of spiders.”
I was also just like you, I was terrified of birds, and I was terrified of snakes. I said, “I think I can work on these two, but spiders are a deal breaker for me.” I said, “If you see spiders,” I said, “I'm telling you that it is so bad for me that I literally cannot be in the building when you are going to have someone knowingly come in here.” I was just like…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
“I'll be in the parking lot.”

Stephanie Goss:
“I will be in my car in the parking lot until you're done.” It was okay. She was just like, “That's fine, because we have,” we had a member on our team, because there's always one, who was the, I lovingly referred to her as the spider freak, who loved the spiders. She would be in on every one of those appointments if she could. It was just like, to your point, being able to tap out before you were underwater.
For me, I would have panicked, and then it would've been a worse situation for the team because the tension would be off the patient and on me as the panicker, and dealing with whatever comes from that. I've seen technicians faint, all of those things. Then the attention is not on the patient where it needs to be. I think just recognizing for our writer, and for anybody who is in this, just because it's all creatures great and small in veterinary medicine, doesn't mean that you have to love all creatures great and small, and that that has to be your jam.
It is okay for you to draw lines in the sand, whether it's with a type of patient, or whether it's for me, with surgery, that became another deal breaker for me. I got to the point in my career not to say that I didn't try it, that I didn't try and face the fear and work through it, and I think it is absolutely okay to know ourselves as human beings, and allow ourselves the space to say, “This is a true fear for me, and it is not a fear that I'm in a place to deal with and to face, or that I'm not equipped to face right now. This is a deal breaker.”
It might be a deal breaker for right now, but it also sounds like for you, might be something that you're willing to work on, and you're willing to… The relationship matters more to you than the fear of spiders.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah. That's something, if somebody is really passionate, “Well, I really, really love this job, and occasionally we have to see birds, what's my workaround?” It's like, “Okay. Well, we only book birds on the day when Cindy's here because Cindy loves birds.” Oftentimes, we can come up with some sort of options. You just have to be prepared that sometimes there are emergencies, where you might have to see the bird. That's what happened to me.
You had to see the bird, and it had bugs, and that was actually the part, beaks and the bugs are actually what bothered me more than anything. I ended up doing some work with the Raptor Rehab, and that was actually super helpful, because I'm like, “Raptors are way more dangerous than birds.” You get an eagle, that's much more dangerous.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, so to meet those little Sun Conures, they're just little sparrows compared to some of those other big guys out there. Great horned owl, those are cool, but yeah, not inviting him for dinner. Yeah, he can be outside. That's great. Yeah, it's just when you got to take the time, you got to feed their little mice while they're in recovery in the rehab. Again, you're dealing with wild animals. Again, you want to have that, I don't know about you, but it's, you learn over time.
If it's, again, if birds are your passion, fantastic. You've got the option to find a specialty practice that only does avians or exotics. That's the cool thing about our profession. If there's something that is a deal breaker for you or something you're really passionate about, on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have so many options, so many things out there that technicians can do. It's just been really fun to watch the profession grow and change.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I love that you said that, because thinking about my experience in school, and I know a lot of vets who say the same thing, if you ask me now, I could tell you zero of what I learned to take my boards about cows, zero. Cows, oh, they're so cute. Baby cows in the pasture. Great. Do I want to work with them? Absolutely not. Do I remember any of what I learned? Absolutely not, but that's because I chose a path that didn't involve cows.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Exactly, yeah. I remember, so I was on an AAHA committee for speaker chairs way back, just how long ago, nutrition wasn't a specialty. It was like me, Carol Burns, and Harold Davis. I remember, because I'm like in GP, learning all the things, and you're in school and you're so excited about all this stuff. Harold's just looking at me, he's like, “If you're going to specialize in behavior medicine,” he's like, “There's going to come a day where you're not going to know what vaccine your cat needs.”
He's like, “That's me. I do emergency critical care, and if you ask me about a vaccine my cat needed,” he's like, “I can't tell you. I know it needs one. I don't know what one.” I've reached that point-

Stephanie Goss:
I love that so much.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
… Probably about five years ago. I'm just like, “Oh, Harold was so right.”

Stephanie Goss:
Harold and Kara, they're amazing-

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
They're so fantastic.

Stephanie Goss:
… Human beings.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yes.

Stephanie Goss:
It's so funny, because I am unapologetically a fan girl and just as a human and in veterinary medicine, and there are people that I have learned from and looked up to, and when I get to see them talk, or I get to see them speak, and Kara and Harold are two of those, especially growing up with Harold, growing up in California, he did regular stuff at UC Davis, and I remember being very young grad student, Stephanie sitting in a lecture and going, “Oh, my gosh, he's so smart.”
I remember the first time at a conference, just standing there, having a conversation with my friend, Eric Garcia, and he's like, “Oh, there's Harold.” He goes over and talks to him. Afterwards, I remember telling him, “Oh, my God, I'm such a fan girl over Harold.” He's like, “Oh, my god, Harold is the nicest human being on the planet.” Like, “You should go introduce yourself.” I was like, “I can't. I'm just like the little technician fan girl in me. I can't do it.” I love that, of course, it would come from someone like him that would say…

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah. It's just like, you're going to get to a point where you're just not going to know, and it's okay not to know because you've gained all of this other knowledge. You have to, at some point, replace it. Yeah, I remember walking into my VTNE exam, and there were people sitting on the lawn. It was when you actually had to take it on paper back in the day, and they were like, “What's the normal temperature for a chicken?” I just remember going, “If I have to know the normal temperature for chicken for this exam, I'm done.”

Stephanie Goss:
You're screwed.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
“I'm cooked, because I don't know that.” 350 for 45 minutes if you're doing chicken breast? I don't know. I'm like, “Yeah, I can bake it, but I don't know what normal temperature's at.”

Stephanie Goss:
Are you sure?

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, it was a little bit challenging, but that's a good example of, again, you're going to learn so much stuff in school, but you're not going to retain it all. You're going to find other things you focus on. Other things are going to become more important to you, and that's okay. Definitely getting the education and learning more about this stuff is important, though.

Stephanie Goss:
I love it. Okay, this feels like a good place to take a quick break, and then let's come back and talk about action steps and things that we can do to address our concerns and our fears. I, like you, I agree, our writer asked some excellent questions. I want to make sure that we get to them. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back.
Hey, everybody, if you are a practice owner or a practice manager, listen up. I've got something for you. If you're not in one of those roles, take a quick break from whatever you're doing, and we'll be right back with the podcast. If you are, I don't want you to miss out, because our Practice Leaders' Summit is happening in December in Greenville, South Carolina in person. Registration is going to be closing. In fact, it is closing on November the 7th, 2023.
If you have not signed up and you have been on the fence, I'm going to give you a little bit of incentive. I'm going to share a coupon code here for you, and I want you to use it, because I want to see you there. Practice Leaders' Summit is all about working on our practices, not in them. This year, we are taking practice owners and practice managers specifically, and we are hoping to bring them all together and let them spend some time separately, so practice owners working with other practice owners, managers working with other managers, because the challenges we face in those roles are so unique.
We need time and space to be able to work together with our peers and collaborate, because no one knows what life is like for us in the clinic better than our peers. We're going to do that, and then we're going to bring everybody together. If you come together with your practice owner, let's say as practice manager, or vice versa, we're going to spend time working on your practice.
Don't fear, because if you come by yourself, you will still get the opportunity to work with practice owners or practice managers in small groups, so that you can spend the time at the end of the conference really working with myself, and Andy, and Maria, and the rest of the Uncharted team, working our way through, what do we really want 2024 to be about for our practices? We're going to tackle some of the big topics.
I'm super pumped about this, so we would love to see you there, and I've got a special code for our Uncharted Podcast listeners. If you go to Uncharted.com/events and you sign up before the November 7th deadline for PLS, and you use this code, it is SG, for Stephanie Goss, UVC, so SGUVC20, you will get $20 off your registration for Practice Leader Summit. If you've been on the fence, if you've been waffling, I haven't shared this on the podcast yet, but I'm throwing it out there.
Go to UnchartedVet.com/events, sign up for the registration, you can use the code to get it for yourself. You can get it for you and your practice owner, or you and your practice manager, but sign up because I want to see you there. Now, back to the podcast.
Okay. Let's get into some action steps. We talked a lot about Headspace, we talked about the main things. It's totally normal to feel this way. We feel a sense of pride and achievement when we try things that feel outside of our comfort zone. Our knowledge gives us confidence, and practice gives us skill. We don't have to have all the answers, and we're not going to know everything coming out of school, and we're going to have to learn a lot of things.
A lot of things we learn, we're going to immediately forget or forget over time, and it's okay to have deal breakers. Spiders are mine. Let's talk about some action steps, because the question our writer asked, I thought was a great one, which is how can they become more comfortable around the animals that make me nervous?

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah. I think the writer made a really great point of like, “Well, I have friends who have cats,” in speaking about that species. Really, that's one of the things that I think landed me in behavior was that I grew up on a farm. When you're growing up as a kid in the eighties, we didn't have all this technology, so what were you going to go do? Well, you're going to go play outside. I spent a lot of time watching animals, and I just found it was fascinating and fun.
Still, for me, there's nothing more relaxing than walking into a barn and listening to animals eating feed. It's just a very relaxing sound. We had pigs, we had sheep, we had horses, the neighbors had cattle. I was very lucky in that I got exposed to a lot of those large animals, but you learn a lot from just sitting and watching. That's one thing in behavior, we talk about the field of ethology, and ethology is all about sitting and watching. You're watching the animals interact with each other.
Then you're looking at the body language. What are the ears doing, eyes, tail? Does that animal, is it signaling that it's comfortable, or uncomfortable? Are they moving into a space next to someone? Are they moving away? A lot of little pieces, and it's fascinating. I know, totally geeky stuff, but…

Stephanie Goss:
No, I love it.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
That's a way to learn more about a species. You can start with your basics and your body language. That's the nice part about Fear Free is we've got the cat section of Fear Free now available. We've got feline body language, we've got canine body language. Then the new section that was launched recently is equine. There's Fear Free Equine. For people who haven't had much exposure to horses, there are videos in there. There are diagrams.
Similar crossover to what's already in there for dogs and cats, as far as looking at ears, eyes, tails, body posture, and positioning. It's for horses.

Stephanie Goss:
I love it.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
That's something else that's out there. There are lots of tools in that department, but just spending some time, if you have a local shelter and you're not super comfortable with cats, there are a bunch of shelters by us that would love for people to come in and clean kennels, or just play with kittens. We have a shelter less than two minutes from our practice, and I have a pass. When I'm having a stressful management day, I can go over and knock on the door, and go play with kittens for a little bit. It's great. Great therapy, but they would love to have you come.
Just like we have small animal rescues, there are large animal rescues. A lot of people don't really think about that, but there's a whole community for large animal rescue, where you can go, and again, get a chance to interact with some of those species in a different setting, that's lower stress than during an internship, or during class, where you're like, “Oh, shoot, this is my only chance to draw blood on a pig.” You can actually go out and meet a pig, pet a pig, talk to a pig, read a book to a pig.
You can have a different interaction and just sit and watch. We're really lucky by us, there's what's called Lake Farm Park, and it's a large animal sanctuary. They also have farm animals there for educational purposes for the community. When I think about it, even when I was teaching in tech school, I taught one of the large animal courses, and I love that class, because again, I'm teaching tech school in Cleveland. Most of my students had full sleeves, multiple piercings, ear space, all over the place.
We're going through, talking about tattooing large animals, and also doing ear notching, or putting tags in large animals. They're like, “well, doesn't that hurt? Do you do lidocaine first?” I'm like, “did you ask for lidocaine before you got your nose pierced, and your ears, and your full sleeve?” It's like, “Oh, it's the same process. It's just a different species.” It was really fun for them to go, “Oh,” because a lot of them didn't have any exposure.

Stephanie Goss:
Right, right.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
I did a really cool science camp at one point for, they were inner city youth, and it was a farm-based camp. They were all, kids who were really smart, but didn't have any exposure to farms. They got to come to OSU ATI, and they go through all of the, they got to play in the labs, they got to go out and collect corn samples, and then look at grains-

Stephanie Goss:
That's awesome.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
… Then look at milk. Their favorite part was the calves. That was their favorite part of the whole thing.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
It was looking at the whole science of where does your food come from?

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, that's awesome.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
How does science and math interplay with farming? It was really great time. Yeah, those kids, they had no experience with large animals. I think that's the thing we have to remember is most people coming into tech school anymore don't. The days when you have a lot of technicians who are coming from a foreign background, it just doesn't exist anymore.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes, yeah.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
You also probably are not alone, to our writer. There are probably other people in your class who have the exact same feeling. You can do a field trip to the large animal sanctuary together, and that can be a nice way to have some camaraderie, talk about your feelings.
You also get to see or talk about from someone else's eyes, “Well, what do you see? Does that animal look comfortable? Do they look uncomfortable? Did he like getting scritched behind the ear when you touch him? Is that okay?” I said, “Oh, I'll touch him too.”

Stephanie Goss:
I love that you brought up the idea of rescues and sanctuaries, and volunteering. That was going to be a step for me as well. I think Andy and I talk a lot on the podcast about how much neither of us is excited about social media anymore. What I would say is that social media is a great resource here, because there are so many, as we have seen the shift away culturally from funding for so many things, rescues and sanctuaries are one of those things. They continue to exist, most of them, I would argue, off of the generosity of patrons and donors.
Social media is a very powerful resource for them. Like you, we've got some awesome programs near me. There is someone who I followed for a long time on social media, and they have a farm animal sanctuary here in Washington, and it is On Alaska Farm Sanctuary. I love what they're doing, because they purely exist to rescue farm animals, which I think is awesome and different. They're a great example of lots of rescues are looking, and sanctuaries are looking, at alternative options for exposing people to what they do and what they have.
Searching social media for what's out there in your area is a great idea. The other thing that I have seen more and more of, which I think is so cool, and OFA is a great example here in Washington, is that rescues and sanctuaries that have actual physical spaces, I've seen more of them also try and generate alternative income by having an Airbnb, or a hip site camping site on their grounds. You can go, some of them offer work experience options, where you can go and help clean, to your point, and scoop poop, shovel, whatever. There's always work to be done in a rescue, in a sanctuary. You get the benefit of helping them out.
At the same time, the opportunities to just sit and watch. Like you said, I love that so much. I think, I remember back to being in school, but I've seen it more as a manager. I was always a little bit hesitant, because I was nervous of my own skills in school, I'll be honest. I was always, this will probably surprise some people, I was probably one of the last people to raise my hand and say, “I'll go,” because it was not, I was like you. People? Give me people all day long. The science was new for me. I had to really push myself out of my comfort zone there.
I see this trend in our technicians, and I've seen this as a manager, and I'm guessing you've probably experienced it, where we have more and more students who are assistants who go to tech school, and they want to skip from the learning immediately to the doing, and not only just the doing, but the being successful, because they think the only way to learn is to do.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Right.

Stephanie Goss:
I set everybody up as a manager with having the conversation, and I make it very clear: you don't skip the watching step in my practice, like watching, and observing, and listening. I'm not just talking about once.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Right.

Stephanie Goss:
I'm talking about over, and over, and over, because you learn so much. I spent two years at the front desk, working with someone who had a nutrition background, and I learned almost everything I know about veterinary nutrition by listening to her have the consults with clients on the phone. I wasn't getting to do anything fun or glamorous. I was literally listening to the same spiel over and over and over again, but I learned so much about dermatology, about dental care.
There was other facets of veterinary medicine that I learned so much about, and I was only getting that because I was observing the same things over and over and over again. I love your point about just sitting, especially when we're nervous, sitting with the patients from a safe distance.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yes, exactly.

Stephanie Goss:
Especially if you're nervous.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Not full time with them. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
Right, or not when you're like, “Okay, get a blood draw on this patient,” because you're in your clinical rotation, right? It's like, “Let's just sit and observe.”

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, let's just take some time. Let's sit and watch. That is a big thing. Even in training my team, you're not going to be touching a patient until you have done a lot of observations. Then we have video cameras in all of our rooms that are there for teaching. They're recording the consult. I love it, because again, when you set up video cameras, that you're using them for education, it's awesome.
My team will come to me and be like, “Hey, I think I missed something before that dog snapped. Can you pull the camera for me?” They will use that to, again, help learn to that next step. That's where video is another great way to learn. There's so much stuff online. Social media is great for finding those good positive rescues and resources. Then also, you can also find a lot of cool stuff that's out there for educational videos on horse safety, or I found a really cool one, it's called, what is it? Pasture IO, it's on cattle behavior.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Who knew?

Stephanie Goss:
That's awesome.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
There's all sorts of cool stuff out there. Then the RSPCA has a really cool website for equine behavior, and I like the RSPCA, because again, horses in Britain, it's kind of fun. They're everywhere. You just get on your horse, and you just go ride into town and have some coffee. There's a whole different vibe. The other thing is sometimes, Europe and the UK, when it comes to behavior, they're ahead of us. We're kind of behind in some things behaviorally here in the States, compared to things that are allowed and not allowed overseas.
Always, anytime you're looking at any of these resources, if you're out there looking for cow videos, or goat videos, or something, look at, again, where's that coming from? Always do a resource check.

Stephanie Goss:
Right, the source.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Check your sources, check who wrote it, what degrees do they have? You're looking for DMBs, PhDs, certified applied animal behaviorists, or associate certified applied animal behaviorists. Look at where it's coming from to make sure you're getting accurate information. That's always a big part. There's a lot of not good stuff out there, especially when it comes to behavior of animals.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Yeah, we could, I'm sure we could do a whole-

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, that's a whole other podcast. Yeah, that's a whole other time.

Stephanie Goss:
No, I love that. I think I said when we got to action steps, we were going to come back to this, because I think a big part of the final one, besides resources, and I have some, and we've mentioned several of them, like low stress handling, Fear Free, we'll drop links to all of that in the show notes for you. I expect we probably can come up with some coupon codes for listeners as well for some of that resource info.
We'll drop that. I love your links, and I'll pull those in. I think a big part of it, besides the observing, is just recognizing that we're not going to be perfect in a day. Even when we come out of school, and we are certified, and we have passed the boards, and we are technicians, and there is a measurable pride in that, you don't know all the things. Veterinary medicine is one of those things that it just takes time and exposure, and it is a journey.
That's what I constantly have to remind my team and remind myself, like you, I've been in this over 20 years, and I still learn new things. Recognizing that it's going to take time and exposure, and just repeatedly doing things. I told everybody, I would share the other half of my Willie Bird story. That was it for me was just every day, I was sitting in that office and I was like, “Okay, maybe now is the time to desensitize myself.”
I think part of it is just facing the fear, and owning it, and acknowledging that you have a fear. The other part of getting over the fear is either choosing to not face the fear, because it is a deal breaker, and it is okay to say that you don't feel safe, and that's a deal breaker for you, but if it's something that you want to face, then the desensitizing process, you got to try it. Sometimes that's baby steps leading up to it, and sometimes it's jumping all in and doing a thing, and trying it.
For me it was like, “Okay.” I was sitting 10 feet across the room, having a conversation with this bird every day. I was just like, and the other thing besides the feather plucking, was he was a biter, but he was talking to me every morning. I looked at him one day dead in the eye and I was like, “Listen, Linda. I'm going to let you out.” I was like, “But you have to promise not to bite me.” I remember being so nervous. The funny part is now, I would never do it, because I'm like, “What would I have done if he had escaped?” So many things could have gone wrong.
I remember sitting there, because I remember Marty telling me, “He's not going to really hurt you. It's fine,” but I just was so irrational in the fear. I started to lift the cage door, and I shut it because I was like, “Okay, I'm afraid.” Then I started to lift it and he could sense it, and he immediately popped his head out from under the thing and started to crawl up my arm. I froze. I was just like, “Oh my god, oh my god.”
Of course, being a parrot, he sensed it, and he knew, and he walked right the hell up to my shoulder, right next to my head, and I literally, shoulders up, I froze.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
I'm like, “Don't move, don't move, don't move.”

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
This is flooding. This is not desensitization. This is flooding. Let's be clear.

Stephanie Goss:
I was not intending. I thought, “He'll come out, and he'll sit on top of his cage, and it'll be…”

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
You had a conversation.

Stephanie Goss:
… he'll be out.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
He made a promise.

Stephanie Goss:
Like I said, I would never do this if I was doing it over. Then that's how Marty found me. Two hours later when the rest of the team came in, I'm sitting at our boss's desk, and I'm frozen. I managed to get over to the chair and just sit down. That was it, because I was like, “If I move, he's going to bite me. If I move, he's going to bite me.”
Then every day, and I would look at him and I was like, “Don't bite me,” and he didn't every day. I was still afraid, but every day it got a little bit… I was still stiff as a board, but every day, it got a little bit easier. I never really, I still now am not super easy around birds. They give me anxiety. I have to pep talk myself and deep breath, but I can, over time, I worked on restraint techniques. Now I'm like, “Okay,” and hearing you talk about working with the raptors, how cool of an experience would that be?
There's a part of me now, and young Stephanie would've told you you were on all the drugs in the world if you told me that I would be excited about trying something like that. Hearing you talk about it, that would be awesome.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah,

Stephanie Goss:
I would love that, and that only comes from facing the fear.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Right, exactly, yeah. That's where it's like, you don't always either start with raptors. That's the thing, when you're working at the rehab, they don't start you with the great horned owl.

Stephanie Goss:
Right, yes. Thank God.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
You're going in with like, “Okay, let's take care of the baby birds.”

Stephanie Goss:
The Conures.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
It's like, “The doves that fell out of the nest, here's some robins.”

Stephanie Goss:
Yes.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
That's the desensitization process is you want to start with something below threshold. You were way above threshold with your parrot.

Stephanie Goss:
Don't do what I did.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
That is learned helplessness. Yeah, but you're going to start below that threshold with things that are like, when I talk about it with my clients, I'm like, “Your dog is uncomfortable with other dogs or kids on bikes, so we're not going to start with kid on a bike. We're going to start with just a bike, or just a kid, but we're also not going to start with them within five feet of you. We're going to find, what's the point where they can see it-

Stephanie Goss:
Right, further away.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
… And not be panicked?” It's the same thing with me with the spider. That was kind of how, like, okay, I was not going to walk in there, open the top and put the crickets in. That was not happening after a couple of dates, so that's where it takes time. We had to have conversations about the spider. I had to learn a little bit more about the spider. Like, “Okay, well, this isn't an arboreal spider. This is a little bit more of a terrestrial spider. It doesn't really move that much.”
I had to do some watching of the spider to confirm that it really didn't move that much. Then it was like, “Okay. Well, it's not, isn't bad,” but then it's like, “Okay, going into the apartment and going into the apartment next to the room with the room with the spider,” and then there's good dinners that are happening, there's chocolate, there's jewelry.”
You need the positive reinforcement for doing these things. My husband's actually standing in the kitchen, laughing at me right now.

Stephanie Goss:
It's so much.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
It's not a big deal. Then I'm like, “Okay, she's got this kind of cool terrarium. I can be in the,” and then you would, and sit and watch her. I'm like, “Okay, what are you doing behaviorally?” She really didn't do anything. I was like, “Okay, you don't move? We're good.” That's okay.
Then over time, I was able to lift the top and dump some crickets in, because again, she didn't do anything. It kind of lulled me into a slight false sense of security, because then we got a second spider, and it was arboreal type.

Stephanie Goss:
I was going to say, hmm.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
They move a lot more, but yeah, but again, it was a lot of like, we got her when she was very small. She wasn't as big as the other spider. We were starting with the hand sized spider.

Stephanie Goss:
Right, right.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Di was barely the end of your thumb. She was tiny. It was like, “Oh, this is cool to start, a baby spider. She's pretty colors.”

Stephanie Goss:
Work our way up to hand sized.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Exactly, yeah. It was like, “All right.” Yeah, with her, she moved too much for me. That was a no-go until the day she got dehydrated. This is where I had a really hard time, because it was like, the technician kicked in. I can't let this poor little thing be dehydrated and not be okay. I'm not liking spiders, finding myself Googling spider nursing care, something I never thought I would do.
Again, it is about, okay, I got to find this information about this spider, and what do I need to do? There are things out there for spider nursing care if you have that emergency.

Stephanie Goss:
Who knew?

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Who knew? Yeah, so I had to get my little plastic containers, and I got my little paper towels all wet, and then I had to get her into a little box with the damp paper towels, and then to get her re-hydrated.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh my gosh.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
It worked. Yeah, because it was kind of that technician oath of like, “Well, I can't let her die,” kicked in. I'm like, “But it's a spider, and it's really kind of creepy,” but it was that…

Stephanie Goss:
That instinct took over.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
That instinct took over and I fixed the spider. Yeah, and she lived for a while, so she's cool.

Stephanie Goss:
You are a better human and a better technician than me. I could not do it.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, I don't know if I'll do it again. He's like, “Hissing cockroaches.” I'm like, “Yeah, I think that's my hard line. I know they're only like 50 cents, but no.” He's like, “You just spent $1,700 on your cat's mouth.” I'm like, “Yeah. Yeah, I did. He's a good cat. He's soft.”

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, my gosh.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Cockroach is not soft. Yeah. They are fascinating to watch behaviorally, but I don't know that I want them in my house.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, my gosh, this has been so much fun. I feel like I see more Amanda Schwarzwalder episodes in the future, because holy cow, we could talk forever.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
There are so many things. There are so many things.

Stephanie Goss:
This has been fun. I love your perspective. You are one of our Uncharted speakers. You are at our Team Lead Summit in 2023, and more things to come. Where are you, speaking of social media, are you on social media? Where can people find you if they're interested in behavior, the clinic, or any of that kind of stuff?

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
The clinic is TheBehaviorClinic.com, and you can reach me on there.

Stephanie Goss:
You're on there, the team page.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
You can reach me through there. Then people are always welcome to direct email me with any questions. I am always recruiting for the specialty. The specialty is ABBT.net.

Stephanie Goss:
Love it.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
That is a great way, again, we have a huge recommended reading page, which has large, small animal sources, exotics, bunch of reading materials there. If you want, again, more links, we got those. Yeah, you can always reach out to me directly by my email, it's RVTVTSManager@gmail.com.

Stephanie Goss:
I'll put that.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
I'm happy to answer any questions, because I would like to retire someday, and I can't do that without having another VTS-

Stephanie Goss:
Without more techs.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
… To take my place. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
I love it. I will put Amanda's email in the show notes as well. This has been wonderful. I hope everybody enjoyed this fun break from the two of us, and we will see you all back next week.

Amanda Schwarzwalder:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been a blast.

Stephanie Goss:
Thank you. Take care, everybody. Have a great rest of your week. Well, gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. As always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbag and answer this question. 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.


Written by Maria Pirita · Categorized: Blog, Podcast · Tagged: behavior, communication, management, Technician, Training, Vet Tech

Aug 23 2023

I’m Afraid I Suck as a Manager… and I Want to Go Back to the Floor

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast Episode 246 Cover Image

This week on the podcast…

This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice management geek, Stephanie Goss, are deep in conversation after reading a mailbag question from a licensed veterinary technician who feels Cursed By Promotion! That's right, they became a practice manager and are wondering if they should go back on the floor because they feel like all they do is put out fires and chase their tail trying to keep up with things. They haven't been able to do any of the big things they dreamed about changing and setting up when they took the job and the worst part for them is that they feel like their fellow technicians are getting frustrated and angry with them for not being able to implement change. I think this is going to be an episode that leaves a lot of listeners going “Hey, I have felt like that too!” Let's get into this…

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · UVP – 246 – I’m Afraid I Suck As A Manager… And I Want To Go Back To The Floor

You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you have something that you would love Andy and Stephanie to role play on the podcast – a situation where you would love some examples of what someone else would say and how they would say it? If so, send us a message through the mailbag! We want to hear your challenges and would love to feature your scenario on the podcast.

Submit your questions here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag


Upcoming Events

December 7-9, 2023: Practice Leaders Summit

Are you a practice owner or practice manager? WE WANT YOU! That is right, we are heading back to beautiful Greenville, South Carolina December 7-9, 2023 for our first ever Practice Leader Summit: Owners and Managers. We were inspired by our community to bring together practice owners and their practice managers into one space to collaborate with their peers and each other! In fact, you can join in solo if you are in one of those roles because the point is working together with people who get the challenges you are facing in your role and want to help collaborate and problem solve. Learn more about what we have planned and how you can get in on all the fun here.

All Upcoming Events


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 Simple Texting 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 Simple Texting 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 $100 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, Andy and I are back in the mailbag tackling a question from a licensed technician who happens to feel cursed by their promotion. That's right. They were promoted by necessity about a year ago and are really struggling with feeling like all they're doing is chasing their tail and putting out fires. I really loved having this conversation with Andy, least of all, because I immediately felt my heartstrings tugged when reading this email because so many of us, I think, feel promoted and then feel like we are learning trial by fire, and this technician asked some great questions and I had a blast talking this out. Let's get into it, shall we?

Speaker 2:
And now the Uncharted podcast.

Dr. Andy Roark:
We are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and the one and only Stephanie, I want to go back but I can't go back, I know, Goss.

Stephanie Goss:
Hi, Andy Roark. How's it going?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, man, it's good. Things are crazy. Yeah, it's good. So I've been traveling. I went and traveled with my daughter, my oldest daughter, and she went to Youth Nationals for Olympic weightlifting in Colorado. She did great, but that was not the highlight of her trip. The highlight of her trip was we went hiking the day after she did her competition. So we went to this place in Colorado Springs called The Garden of the Gods, which was amazing. It's just this crazy rock formation and just absolutely beautiful red rocks spiking out of the ground. It's absolutely incredible. There's nothing like it on the East Coast, nothing remotely like it. It's like another planet.
So we were there and we were hiking, and you're like, “Oh, she enjoyed the hiking.” She did not enjoy the hiking. She's not a cardio person. She has short little legs like Stephanie Goss. So us hiking looks like you and me at a conference where I'm striding.

Stephanie Goss:
… and I'm running, and I'm running to keep up.

Dr. Andy Roark:
You're running. I'm a good three meters ahead of you just going and you're just coming along, trucking, jogging behind, and that's how Jacquelyn and I hike as well. So we're hiking.

Stephanie Goss:
I feel Jacquelyn's pain.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, yeah. She's five-one. She's a pocket titan is what I call her. So anyway, she's trucking along after me. I love dogs as you know, but I do not love dogs like Jacquelyn Roark loves dogs. She is so into dogs. She loves dogs. There on the trail is a beautiful, dorky, happy golden retriever. Jacquelyn sees her and goes, “Oh,” and then she says, “Can I pet?” and they said, “Sure.” They reached down and they took the dog off the leash and they said, “Get her, Moose,” and so Moose-

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, God.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yes. Moose comes shooting towards her. It was like in the movies when the two people are running through the field arms spread towards each other, but it's Moose and it's Jacquelyn and they're running. I see her just swelling with joy as this dog approaches. Then as she goes to close her arms around this magnificent beast, he jukes to the right, goes right past her, and runs directly to me, who is not doing anything. I just want to be real clear here. I was not calling him. I wasn't like, “Ooh, I got treats in my pocket.” I did not do … I was 100% minding my business, watching the joy on my daughter's face. The funniest part was how close he got to letting her throw her arms around his neck before he bounced to the left.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, poor Jacquelyn.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, her heart just broke into pieces on the trail, and I laughed so hard, and the owner was like, “Oh, he loves dudes. Sorry. He loves dudes.” She was devastated until she came over to where I was, but Moose was so into me. A couple life lessons there. First one is you can't want it too much. That's a rule in life is you can't want it too much. The second rule is Moose loves dudes, and the third lesson is I'm awesome. I'm clearly awesome. So that's what we did. That's what we did on our trip.

Stephanie Goss:
Poor Jacquelyn, but she's amazing and she's badass.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, she's amazing. Yeah, she's amazing.

Stephanie Goss:
She competed at the Nationals, which is a huge accomplishment.

Dr. Andy Roark:
She did. She did really well. It was one of those things. You know when you … I don't know. I'm sure you've had this experience. There are times when you're not proud of your kid's success, you're proud of the toughness they showed in getting there, and it was … So she got there, and I won't go into Olympic weightlifting too much other than to say it's real hard. You only get to go three times. So you have to walk up there and you have to pick this bar up and there's two different kinds of lifts and each time you only get to pick the bar up three times. So get to do … and that's it. That's it. If you fail to pick the bar up three times, you don't-

Stephanie Goss:
You're done.

Dr. Andy Roark:
You're disqualified. You've got nothing. If you mess up, sorry, you just messed up, and that's a big part of it. It's like, “Oh.” It's so mental, so mental. She dropped the first lift that she did and I thought, “Oh, no,” because I knew she had been stressing. As we were flying out there, imagine the pressure when you're 15 of, “My dad is taking me to Colorado to do this thing.” I did not say anything about it, but it was … You try to downplay it, but it's clearly a big deal, and she dropped the first one. I was sitting in the stands and I was like, “Oh, no. This is bad. This is where the wheels can fall off.”
Then to have her come back and she accomplished all of her goals that she set for herself, and I was like, “The fact that she did it after she dropped the very first lift, when it could have easily just gone into pieces,” like, “Nope, that's resilience, that's toughness.”

Stephanie Goss:
That's awesome.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm so much more proud of the fact that she pulled herself back together than I am of how she ultimately finished. That's been interesting for me to reflect on.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, that's awesome.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, how about you?

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, it's been busy. It's been busy. We had also kid sports happening, although nothing is as cool as Nationals, but Riley went to gymnastics camp this last week, which was totally awesome. They do a training camp at the university here and the gymnastics team helps with it. Let me tell you, Andy, it's funny because I think doing what we do, I look at other businesses and other industries and I've always looked … You go somewhere and you go to a restaurant and you have really good customer service and you're like, “Oh, that was great customer service,” and you can recognize it. I feel like doing what we do, I go other places and it particularly impresses me when I see young people being leaders just like outstanding leadership because it's such a learned skill and it's always really impressive to me when I see it in young people.
I was just so impressed with the vulnerability and the honesty that these college gymnasts share with these young girls who look up to them and who just … You can just see the adoration on their faces watching these college gymnasts. They're like celebrities to these girls and they're so humble and so kind and so honest with the girls about mistakes that they've made and falls that they've had. Somebody falls off the bars and it's like, “I've done that too and this is how I picked myself back up and you try it again.” I was just so inspired by that. They could have been like, “It's okay. Dust yourself off and try again and stayed up on the pedestal,” but they didn't. Every single one of them chose to come down to the girls' level and talk to them and engage with them in that place of everybody makes mistakes and everybody falls and everybody screws it up and it's about what you do next.
I was just so, so impressed, and I had to be that proud mom, but I went up to the coaches afterwards and I just said, “I have to tell you, I work on leadership development for a living,” and I said, “I was so impressed with your team. They were just so kind and so vulnerable and honest with the girls and just really, really, really impressed.” It was an amazing group of young women. So it was a great experience. It was fun to watch. It's fun. Like you said, it's really fun to watch your kid really set goals for themselves and go after them.
I knew that that was a thing that I was going to get to see eventually, but I didn't know that I would get to see it so young. I see it in both the kids in very different ways right now and it's just fun to watch, but it's summer, it's busy. We finally have sunshine in Washington and we've been soaking up every moment of the sunshine. Life is good right now, but I am super excited about today's episode.
We got a mailbag question that I just thought was fantastic because I think this is probably going to be one of those episodes where there's a bunch of people going, “Wait, are they talking about me?” because it's something that I think a lot of us have felt. Imposter syndrome is real.
So we got an ask from a technician who said, “I really am afraid that I suck as a manager, and I think I might want to go back out on the floor,” and they said, “I've been a licensed technician for years now, and about a year and a half ago, our manager left and I was promoted by our practice owner,” and they were like, “I really want to do a good job. I don't really know anything about leadership or management. So I've been reading and trying to learn everything that I can and listening to podcasts like this,” and they said, “but I still don't feel like I'm good at it at all. I feel like I'm just chasing my tail and chasing people and trying to get them to do what they're supposed to do. I feel like I spend all my time putting out fires and it's really disappointing because when I took the position, I was really excited to make some changes and I told the tech team, ‘These are some things that I want to tackle and that I'm really excited about changing.'”
It's been long enough now that this person has been enrolled that they feel like the rest of the team is starting to judge them and grumbling about how they haven't done any of the things that they said they were going to do, and they were just like, “I feel like I'm drowning. I don't think I'm good at this. I don't think I want to do it. I don't feel like I can just quit and go back to my old job, but there's a lot of days where that's what I want.” They were just like, “Help. What do I do?”

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, this is a great question. I have heard a lot of people who were like, “I got promoted and I don't like it and I want to go back.” All right. Do you want to take it first? You've been a practice manager. You were a very good practice manager, but I'm sure there were days that you were like, “Why am I here?” You came off the floor and got promoted up into management as well. So why don't you open this up?

Stephanie Goss:
I did. No, I think, for me, definitely you're not alone. This is one of those ones where I think everybody doubts themselves. I think even people who choose it doubt themselves. So I think from a Headspace perspective, the biggest thing for me is just recognizing you are not alone. For me, that goes in two ways. One is doing the introspection and the work on yourself to just really look at how are you feeling and maybe why are you feeling the way that you're feeling, but the other goes to a solutions-based thing when it comes to headspace for me, which is you're not alone and it makes it easier to talk to other people.
So that's why I love this question because we should talk about this more because we are a field that promotes people who are really, really good at their jobs, but who are not equipped skill-wise for the job that we're promoting them into a lot of the time. So there are a lot of people out there who feel alone and isolated and feel like, “I am the only one who sucks,” and I think the headspace for me starting place-wise is you are not alone and you are not the only one who sucks and you probably don't suck as much as you think that you do.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, I like that a lot. It's easy to feel siloed away. It's very much easy. I'm going to tag onto that with another thing that I've been saying a lot recently, and I wrote about this in my newsletter. So if you like my rambling stories and stuff like what I'm going to say and you don't get the newsletter, you should go over to drandyroark.com and sign up for the newsletter. It's totally free. I write for it every week. Every week I write something. It's something I started months ago and I really love and I don't see me not doing it. It's a commitment in time, but I get a lot out of it. One of the things I get out of is sometimes I write stuff and then people will say words back to me that I know that that's where they came from and it means a lot.
So I had a friend two days ago reach out to me with a text and she said, “The middle of success feels like failure.” I know that she said that to me because that's what I wrote about a few weeks back is, “The middle of success feels like failure.” I think that whenever we take on something that's challenging, especially something that we're excited about, there's this excitement going in. There's planning because planning is just talk and we're writing things down and we're having ideas and there's this, “I haven't started yet, so I can't fail.” There's no objective measure of planning. You don't know if your plan is good until you try to run it. So you're just going to town and you're getting fired up and you're getting excited and that's super fun.
Then there's success when you're like, “I did it. I made the thing and it was wonderful and that feels great too,” but what we just skip over is the part where you go from the excited planning to the success and it is the sucky slog. I was thinking about this recently. In movies, we don't see the sucky slog because they just montage through it.

Stephanie Goss:
Cut to the happy ending.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. They montage. You know what I mean?

Stephanie Goss:
Yes.

Dr. Andy Roark:
You don't see the, I don't know, the super spy doing their stupid calisthenics training that lead … You don't see them going to yoga so that they can do the little poses to slide past the lasers. You get a clip of them doing some aerobics and then, bam, and then they montage past it. Rocky is the classic one, right? You've got this regular bum and he's going to fight the champ.

Stephanie Goss:
That's exactly what I had in my head.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Right, but it's the classic. You got this guy who's a street brawler who gets knocked out in his local little boxing bar, and then he's going to fight the champion of the world, and how do you get ready? You montage. He's chasing a chicken, he's pulling a sled, he's running and a bunch of kids are chasing him, and he's climbing the stairs, and he's doing … but they just montage through it and then big fight success, pull scene, end credits. We don't get to montage in life.
So this what seems like it should be a short sprint from planning to success is not, it's this huge slog and it sucks. The whole time you're like, “Why am I not getting better faster? Why am I not accomplishing my goals? Why are we not done yet? I never thought this would take so long.” God, if you're recognizing some of those thoughts as, “Oh, that feels like failure,” you're right. So the middle of success feels like failure. There's no way around that part. You have to go through the crappy part.
So part of this is when you move into a management role, oftentimes if you're in an individual practice, even if you're in a group practice, most of those practices don't talk to each other, so you feel alone, and then the middle of success feels like failure, which means you could be doing great, you're still going to feel like you're struggling for a long time.
I may really ruin your day. Here's the really sucky part is let's say that you pull it off and you're successful and everybody tells you that you're awesome, you're going to feel great for about three weeks, and then there's going to be another project that you're going to excitedly land and then you're going to be right back in the middle of the suck wondering if you're failing because you're working on the next project.
So I always thought that there was a place where I would be like, “Yeah, I'm so accomplished, I'm just going to plan it and then we're going to crush it, and then success,” and I can tell you, I've never found that. All that has happened to me is I have ended up back in the suck with more people around me, with more, I don't know, with bigger stakes and bigger projects and more people and resources, but it's still the same. There's the planning and there's success and in the middle it feels like failure, and I just think that that's true.
So anyway, but I wanted to get that out there because just because you feel like you're not a good manager, that doesn't mean that you're not crushing it. It doesn't. I'm not trying to talk … Some people are not good managers and that's okay. I think that's another part of it is that's not a mark on you as a person. I think a lot of times they wrap their self-identity up in it and it's like, “I'm not a good practice manager, so I'm a failure as a person.” No. I know I would not be a good practice manager. I know I would not be a good practice manager. I am just not detail-oriented. I'm a great vision guy, I'm a great cheerleader man. I can fire people up, but as far as the nuts and bolts of running the practice day, that's not my skillset.
We always say, “Don't ask a dolphin to climb a tree.” Man, I'm a dolphin. I'm creative and fun and can get people excited and things like that, but man, don't ask me to climb a tree. Don't ask me to put in the mundane org work that has to happen because I'm just not built for that. If I look at that, I can look at that and say, “Well, I'm not that good as a leader.” I go, “No, that's not true. That's just not who I am.” So anyway, that's two different ideas that sometimes you're great and it doesn't feel that way, and sometimes this is not for you and that's also fine.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, I think that's part of the headspace work for me in terms of the looking at yourself and doing some self-reflection is this is a person who clearly cares about their job and they want to do well. So when I look at what they sent us, they were concerned about not having gotten to do any of the big things and about the team grumbling about them not getting to do the things that they said they were going to do when they took the job. So I think part of the headspace is really looking at yourself because it is a hard question, and I agree with you. Not everybody can be a manager.
What the job actually is, I have yet, I have yet to see very many hospitals. I've seen a few, but it is very few and far between where they actually get it right when it comes to explaining to people what the job actually is. So I think that there are a lot of people who get, especially in this kind of situation, where they get promoted into the job, part of the job process is even figuring out what the hell the job is. So a lot of times, practice owners are like, “Hey, I need a manager and you're an amazing technician and everybody gets along really well with you, and so I'm going to promote you.” Well, what is the job actually? A lot of times the vision for what an owner wants and the vision that a manager has might not be the same thing. They might share some commonality.
So part of it is going through that headspace log of figuring out, “Okay. Have you been doing the job long enough? If you've been in it for a year, year and a half, you should know what is the job.” Then it's the self-work to look at it and say, “Can I actually do this? Do I like managing people? Do I like managing conflict? Do I like the day-to-day often mundane task-driven work that a manager has to do?” Is that your jam? If the answer is no, that's okay because it is not for everybody.
Some of it is about figuring that out for yourself, and some of it is figuring out for yourself if maybe you do want to do the job and maybe you are good at the job, and I would guess from the info that we have that this is a person who actually is in a position where it just hasn't gone according to plan, and so they're beating themselves up and feeling like a failure. That's a different plan of attack in terms of trying to address it. So I think from a headspace perspective, for me, part of it is sitting down and doing some of the self-reflection and figuring out what is actually bothering you.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, I think that's good.

Stephanie Goss:
Do you think that you're doing a bad job or is it that you're just feeling like you haven't accomplished the things? Because that's a different plan of attack.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, I still think that that's really hard because you never know. I say this from experience. There's so many times that I sit back and I go, “Am I …” I had this today talking to people who are good people and very smart and very capable, and I thought, “Am I not explaining myself well? Are they not hearing what I'm saying? Are they missing something? Am I not communicating this way?” I don't know. “Did I talk to a group of people that did not include these other people and I just assumed that they were … Did I have seven conversations with Stephanie Goss and assume that I had seven conversations with the rest of the team, but in reality I only talked to Goss again and again and again and thought I told everybody?” I could see that happening. Again, honestly, I trust these people and they're like, “Andy, this is news to us,” and there's more than one of them.
I'm like, “Okay. I know you guys and you are telling me I didn't communicate this,” but I don't know, and I'm like, “Did I not say it?” So I've been doing this a long time and I generally feel like I'm a pretty darn good communicator and I've gotten that feedback and yet still I go, “Is it me? Is it them? Is it some combination of the two?” I don't know. I don't think any of us … You never know. When you try to lead a group and you struggle, there's always this question of, “Is it them? Is it me? Is it communication between us? Is it unrealistic expectations, unclear expectations? What is this?” That uncertainty I really do think is a defining part of leading people. God, it makes it really hard to know, “I'm good at this,” or, “I'm not good at this,” because you'll always wrestle back and forth.
I was flying back right last night from Colorado and I was trying to change flights. So the guy was unloading one flight and he hadn't opened up the other flight that I was trying to get on. So I was trying to move me and J forward because we had a long layover and there was another flight and I was like, “Oh, we can get on that flight.” He was like, “Sir, I'm unloading this plane. I haven't opened up the other plane. I'll talk to you when I open up the other plane. It'll be about 12, 15 minutes.” I was like, “Great, no problem.”
So I stood there, and the number of times that I stood there and heard him say, “Connecting flights are on the board,” only to have two different people come up to him and say, “Do you know where my connection is?” He was like, “It's on the board right there.” It occurred to me how much of that guy's job was telling people something very clearly and then telling them again and telling them again. I don't think he was doing a bad job of making them aware that there were connections on the board, and there was signage and everything, and yet he still spent eight of the 12 minutes telling people about the board. I'm like, “I don't think there's anything wrong.” I think some of it is just what it means to work with human beings.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Well, it's like at Disney when somebody comes up and asks you, “What time is the noon parade?” “It's at 12:00 noon, ma'am, and it's going to happen right here,” and you say it with a smile on your face because that's just like … It is about communication and processing and being human beings and being overwhelmed and overstimulated. The airport's a great example of that where people are just they're overwhelmed and overstimulated and they're not thinking straight. Sometimes the things that come out of your mouth, there is a disconnect, and other times there's not.
So I think you hit on two things from a headspace perspective. For me, the communication piece is certainly part of it, but you brought up expectations, and I think that's really important because I think part of the headspace for this manager really needs to be looking at three sets of expectations. One is their expectations for themselves. I think a lot of disappointment can come from that. The other two are the expectations of their boss.
So for me, that goes back to what was the job. Are you on the same page? Does your boss think you're doing a wonderful job? Because their expectations of you are different from your expectations for yourself because there can be a lot of disconnect there. Then the third that they brought up in their email was the expectations of the team, and they were involved in that process because that goes back to your communication. So if they had conversations with their fellow techs, “Hey, I'm super excited because I really want us to be able to have regular flex … I want to be able to have flexible scheduling,” or, “I'm really excited to work on doing your staff schedules further out.” If they had those communications with their teammates, even if they didn't say, “This is a thing that I'm going to accomplish when I take the job,” having the conversation could have set expectations in the minds of their teammates, “Oh, hey, she's talking to us about this,” or, “He's talking to us about this. That must mean this is a thing that they're going to work on.”
We tell ourselves stories all the time. So it's entirely possible that their team is like, “Oh, she said this thing one time in conversation, and so if that doesn't happen in the first six months, she has failed to meet our expectations.” Well, did you actually set that expectation or was that a story that they told themselves in their head? So I think part of it is looking at what were the expectations that you set for yourself? What were the expectations that you set with your boss, and what were the expectations that you set for your team?
I think that one of the mistakes that I made over and over again as a leader was feeling like I started a thing and I set expectations, and lot of times I felt like I failed to meet those expectations and I would just slog through it and try and make up for it because nobody ever told me that this was a thing, but somewhere along the line, I told myself the story I couldn't possibly reset expectations. I don't know why that didn't occur to me, but there was just something in my brain that was like, “This is what you committed to doing, so this is what you've got to figure out how to deliver,” and it never occurred to me on multiple occasions to just say, “Oh, hey, wait a second. This has occurred. We're changing course, and let's reset the expectations.”
It's so silly because it's not hard to do, and I think for me it was a pride thing, I think, and also an integrity and a dedication and so much of my self-identity when I was managing was wrapped up in my work as a manager. So for me it was like, “I committed to this thing and if I don't deliver, I am failing.” That was the story that I was telling myself in my head when really I was setting the expectations in my head, they were not the same expectations necessarily as my boss or my teammate. If I had stopped and asked what was their expectation, I would've gotten a whole lot of clarity that would've saved myself a lot of heartbreak, but I didn't over and over and over again and I just bullheaded dove into it and was like, “I'm just going to fix this.”
I really wish that I had stopped on more than one occasion and said, “Wait a second. What were the expectations that were set here?” and said, “Okay. Hey, this was the expectation. Let's reset the expectation.” So I think that the expectation piece is a really important part of the headspace and asking that question, and if you don't know the answer, I think that's where the conversation starts is sit down and ask what their expectation is.

Dr. Andy Roark:
So I want to jump onto these because I really liked the way you broke this down, so expectations of yourself. The big things I would say is we just talked about sometimes you feel like you're struggling and it's because other people are hard to manage or you're not getting traction or whatever. I do think, and this is a screw job, the screw job is you cannot control other people. You can't.

Stephanie Goss:
True.

Dr. Andy Roark:
At the same time, if you really want to be good and you want to continue to grow, you should take as much ownership as you can, which means you are always saying, “Could I be better? Clearly, I did not communicate this.” I thought about that last night when I'm standing there and people are coming off the plane, I'm like, “What could they do?” because this guy's time is really being taken and it's not like the next flight's going to be better, it's going to be the exact same thing again. I'm like, “What could we do?”
So you should have those thoughts of, “What can I own here? What can I try to make better?” I think expectations of ourself is really important. I see again and again that people don't. They don't get clear expectations communicated to them from their boss, and that's sad. We only have limited control of that. So if you work with a medical director, say, you're a manager medical director team, and the medical director's like, “I don't know what you're supposed to be doing. I'm doing medicine with the doctors and you're running the techs and I don't know what you're supposed to do.” You go, “I can't work with that,” and there's nothing you can do there or your director's not giving you clear feedback or they're not there enough to give you that feedback. I see a lot of people there who are like, “I don't know what the expectations are.”
The truth is, the truth is the people who you're supposed to be answering to, they don't know what the expectations are for you either. They don't feel empowered to make them or they haven't put in the time to solidify them or whatever. So anyway, you end up in this place where you're saying, “What are my expectations for myself?” I go, “Well, the hard truth is you should always push yourself to get better.” A lot of us are going to have to figure out how to get intrinsically validated, meaning you have to figure out what it means to be a good manager and what is sustainable. Man, that takes some time. It takes some time to … You have to know what's realistic. So anyway, I really love your expectations of yourself, and I think a lot of people have to work on that.
The expectations of the bosses, I just want to validate you there as well is to say a lot of times we make assumptions of what people's expectations are. I've run into this many, many times in my career with people that have worked for me is that they make assumptions about what is important to me or what I want. These are good, hardworking people. Guys, a lot of times, sometimes their expectations are lower than mine. Sometimes they're like, “I thought you'd be cool with it.” That happens much less often than people who are like, “I thought you wanted this building built in gold in a week.” I'm like, “No, just wanted it done.”
I had a conversation with one of our teammates not long ago, a couple weeks ago, and she came to me and she was like, “I am failing,” and I was like, “What are you talking about? You're killing it. I'm not sure what metrics you're looking at, but you're employee of the month,” and she's like, “I failed you,” and I was like, “What?” She's like, “You make me self-conscious.” I'm like, “I wish I was as good as she is.”
It was just she had set these expectations of being all things to all people and doing superhuman work. I was like, “Good God, if I ever led you to believe that I expected you to be able to do all of these things in this short time, I'm so sorry. I've clearly failed you,” but I think the best thing she could do was come to me and say … I always said I pushed a lot of good people this way, and this is something I've screwed up is that I try to empower people and I expect a lot out of people I do and I'm like, “I expect you guys to work hard, do good work,” and I hire great people and try to give them the tools and support them, and I need people to push back sometimes because I can say I'm busy and I talk about what's important and you can get me excited about things that we could do and things like that.
I need you to come back to me and say, “Well, these are the things that I'm working on. What are your expectations? What are your priorities?” and have that conversation with me, but I have burned good employees out before, not by cracking the whip, but just by being excited about what they were doing and assuming that they would tell me when they were like, “Hey, look, I'm really at capacity,” or to say, “What do you want me to stop doing so that I can take this on?” I try to coach people to use that language like, “These are the things that I'm working on right now. Where does this fit into the priority list?” or, “What do you want me to put on pause in order to get this done?”
I expect people to do that, but I've had people who are great who did not do that, and I didn't realize how much they were doing or what they thought the expectations were until they were really burned out and then I kicked myself pretty hard about that and try to bring them back from the edge, but that's tough. So anyway, expectations of your boss, I think you're right.
The last is expectations of the team. There's that old saying that I really like, “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to make everyone happy.” There's a lot of truth to that. So managing expectations of the team is a skill that we have to learn. I have seen really good people shoot themselves in the foot by talking about what was going to happen and what they were going to do and then the timeline isn't what it should be.
I have been that leader. I have 100% talked excitedly about what we were doing and where we were going, and then life happens and you get bogged down in details. I'll tell you an example of this. I was talking to my daughter when we were traveling, so we had a lot of car time and she asked me, she's like, “What happens in Game of Thrones?” and I was like, “Buckle up because we got a long drive.” So I gave her the … I basically narrated Game of Thrones as I remember it, and I don't have a good memory, but basically narrated Game of Thrones.
The way I told her about Daenerys Targaryen, I was like, “All right, so she's got these dragons and she's freeing slaves and making the world better,” and then she just gets bogged down with a bunch of knuckleheads that don't want to listen, and they've all got their own stuff and they whine and they underscore, and she's like … Basically, she's got a toxic employee in there. “Finally, all she wanted to do was free the slaves and make the world a better place to be,” and J was like, “What happened? She went crazy and killed everybody.”

Stephanie Goss:
Set the world on fire.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Set the world on fire. Basically, that's the story of many, many modern managers. There's a lot of people who are like, “This is terrible, but also I get it. I get where she's coming from.” So anyway, sorry, I just ruined Game of Thrones for a lot of people, but that's-

Stephanie Goss:
I've never seen it and you did not ruin it for me.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Now, you'll watch it with a different lens. You'll be like, “There she is as the young bright-eyed manager-

Stephanie Goss:
Burning the world down.

Dr. Andy Roark:
She's got big plans for her practice, and that's season two. Season one's not as happy, but season two.

Stephanie Goss:
Here's the thing. I love what you said about setting the expectations with your boss, and I think that that conversation is really important. The other thing that I want to throw out is I'll use you and I as an example. A, we've both been doing our independent jobs in leading for a long time, and we've been working together for a long time, and still, we have to have those conversations sometimes. In fact, just before you were getting ready to leave, I was like, “Oh, hey, hi. I feel like we just had this team meeting and now there's all these things we're excited about.” When we're recording this, I'm getting ready to go on vacation too and I was like, “I have a very limited window of time, and now I feel like I have six weeks worth of work that I'm trying to cram into two days. What would you like me to prioritize on this list because I'm not going to be able to get to it all?”
You guys, I'll tell you, I've been doing this a really long time and I think Andy and I communicate really well. It doesn't mean that my palms don't get sweaty. It doesn't mean that I don't get anxious about having the conversation, and it doesn't mean that we don't stumble our way through it. That's one of the things you and I both like to talk about is the fact that let's talk about this more because we do screw it up and people will say to me, “You managed for a really long time and you have all the things figured out.” I don't have it all figured out. When I saw this letter, I thought about my last practice that I was in before you and I started working together full-time, Andy, because it was a practice that I walked into, and the expectations piece really stood out to me here because I walked into it and it needed a lot of work. It had been a little neglected, a little abandoned, but I was like, “I have the skills. I feel confident that I can tackle this,” and in my mind I was like, “This is a two-year turnaround.”
So I was really upfront with them. I was like, “This is going to be … Rome was not built in a day. This is going to take me at least two years to turn this practice around, and here's the list of things that are going to need to happen.” I set expectations from the beginning and I thought I set really good expectations, and I got into that middle and I realized, “Oh, this is a five-year turnaround. This is not a two-year turnaround.” I'm uncovering things, I'm unburying the truth. I'm like, “It's a little bit of a dumpster fire. It can still be put out and it can be pretty, but this is going to take longer.”
What I didn't do was go back and reset those expectations and say, “Hey, hi, here's where we're at and this is going to lengthen the runway.” I pushed myself and my team to try and hit that original goal and I made a lot of mistakes in the process. So I think the thing to keep in mind is that this is not exclusive to a new manager. It is not exclusive to … As someone who's been managing for a really long time, everybody faces this. So I think the headspace piece of you aren't alone in this, and it doesn't matter that you've been a manager for a hot minute or for 15 years, it's about setting those expectations.
I think that piece of it really resonated with me is you can stop. You can go back and say, “Whoa, time out. We're going to pause and let's reset the expectations,” whether it's with yourself, whether it's with your boss or whether it's with the team as a whole. To your point that sometimes you have those conversations with your team and people read that to be commitments that you weren't necessarily making as commitments, and so it's like, “Okay. Hey, I know we had …” and a lot of people are like, “Okay, but how do you do that?”
So when we get to the how to part, I want to talk about that a little bit because it is hard, but it also is really easy at the same time. I think it's hard because we build it up in our head so much to be like, “Ooh, I have to have this hard conversation and take back these things that I said I was giving to my team.” You don't have to take anything back. You can still commit to them to doing the things. It's about setting expectations and whether that expectation is for the timeline or what it actually looks like, it's about changing those expectations, I think.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I agree. All right. Let's take a quick break and let's bust into some action steps here because there's a couple I just want to lay down.

Stephanie Goss:
Let's do it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think we've talked through a lot of the headspace. I think we got into how you handle this, but I'm want to try to lay down some extra steps.

Stephanie Goss:
All right. Let's do it.
Hey, friends, are you a veterinary practice owner? No? Well, are you a veterinary practice manager? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, I want you to keep listening. If it's not yes, you can take a quick pee break or get some water before we head back into the podcast because I've got something for my practice owners and my practice managers. We are hosting our first ever practice leader summit, and if you're not an owner, a manager, and you're still listening and you're thinking, “But I'm a practice leader,” don't worry, we've got you. We've got more events coming, but this first one is happening in December in Greenville, South Carolina. It will be decorated for the holidays. We are going to come together.
Now, we're going to come together, but we're going to be separate. What are you talking about, Stephanie? Well, Andy and I have planned a whole bunch of new content with our team, and we are excited to bring managers together to talk to other managers and owners together to talk to other practice owners, and then we're going to put everybody together and we are going to get to work. That's right. We are going to work on our practices. Our ideal hope would be that manager and owner combos can come together, but we recognize that won't work for some practices. So we have plans to hook you up with other owners and managers if you're coming solo on either side. So don't worry, but don't delay. Head over to the website at unchartedvet.com/events because we want to see you there and that means you have to sign up because this will sell out. Don't miss your chance to come work on your practice with your practice owner, with your practice manager. You can find out more information, including a letter that you can use to convince your boss if you are a practice manager or maybe practice owners, some reverse psychology to use on your manager, to get them to come to Greenville with you. Again, it's all up at the website at unchartedvet.com/events. Now, back to the podcast.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. Let's jump back in, and we've got a lot of irons in the fire here. We talked a little bit about internal validation, setting expectations for yourself. Clearly, there's some communications with the practice owner and with the team to try to set some expectations because the first thing we need to do is figure out, “Am I bad at this? Am I not bad at this? How am I actually doing?” If you don't have clear expectations, you don't even really know how to get help.
So the biggest thing is I think we need to make an action plan. So let's start with an action plan here of what are we going to do. There is nothing wrong with being a year or two into a job and being like, “Hey, I would like to set up a meeting with my direct manager to discuss expectations, and I want to do an expectation,” whatever your corporate lingo is, level set, recheck, check in, whatever, “I want to review expectations.” I think that you can always sort of do that. So I think you'd make an action plan.
When you're looking at this practice, and this person said that they were new when they were coming in and they wanted to make changes and they wanted to do things, the way that I have learned to do this that I really want to emphasize is, and we talked before about the team expectations, all those things, the most common thing that I see is people get excited. I think you told a great story, which really resonated with me of, “I thought this was a two-year turnaround and then I get into it and it's a five-year turnaround.” That's okay. Sometimes we start with a plan and then we reassess.
The best plans are built on when I am going to take what I learned in this step and then set the next part of the plan. People hate that. They want you to say, “This is the plan from number one all the way to the end,” and that's lunacy. I fight with people all the time about it when they're like, “Andy, lay down.” Don't laugh too hard, Goss. They're like, “Andy, we need a plan for this project,” and I'm like, “You cannot make a plan until you talk to the team and figure out what the problem that's causing this issue is, and I cannot give you a plan that's worth the paper it's written on until I know why is this happening. Then when I know why it's happening, then I can give you a plan, but it's probably there's going to be a stretch and we're going to do stuff, and then we're going to reassess and decide what the next phase is going to be based on what we've accomplished so far,” but people, God, they don't want that. They want you to lay down two years that are not going to waver or change, and it's lunacy.
So anyway, the way that I have approached this, that I teach people to approach it, that it's really been life-changing for me is when you go in and you're like, “I am the new manager here and these are the things that I want to accomplish,” my question to you is, what does done look like? Explain to me what this looks like when it's finished. Really, and I'm serious about that question, if you immediately gave me an answer, you probably have not thought enough about this. I want you to really sit down and write down for me what does done look like, not what does perfect look like, and I have to hammer that on people's minds too. They're like, “There'll be this amazing thing, and blah, blah, blah,” and I go, “Look, if you can get to perfect, that's awesome.” Most of us are never going to get to perfect. The push it takes to get from really good to perfect, the juice ain't worth the squeeze. Get really good and then go fix another significant problem.
One day, you'll go, “I can maybe go from really good to perfect.” Most of us, it's not even worth planning that. So just what does good look like? Then once we get good, let's deal with the other things that are on fire. Then ultimately, we'll come back and try to go from good to great. Anyway, what does done look like? So figure that out, and then think about where you are now and think about done and make me some action steps that are going to get you from where you are now to done, and then take those action steps and put them on the calendar, knowing that you're going to have to figure some things out and that's going to take time.
If you do this and this process of going through the steps and then putting the steps onto the calendar, it makes you look at how much time this is really going to take, and it is amazing how many projects you're like, “This will take six weeks.” When you figure out what done looks like and you break it up in steps and you put those steps on the calendar, and this one can't start until the last one is done, it ain't six weeks, it's six months and you go, “Wow.”
The truth is nobody cares. Nobody cares it's six months instead of six weeks. They want it done. The truth is, when you zoom out and you look at your practice and your life, the difference in six weeks and six months is nothing and nobody cares as long as you're making progress. If they don't see progress happening, they'll start to care. Again, this is another thing where we have communication and say, “Hey, these are the expectations. This is the timeline we're working on.”
You can talk to your team about what you want to get done, and they do not have any expectation of time. We are all children. We're like, “I want it now.” When you say, “This is the plan and this is on the calendar and you can see that a year from now we will have made these strides,” they will go, “Oh, a year? Nah,” and then they'll get over it and they'll leave you alone because there's a plan and the plan is going forward, but guys, I hope that doesn't sound too goofy for you, but it is absolutely true. Take the time, lay down the plan, say, “This is what we're going to do in the next year.”
People will grit their teeth and then they'll let it go. As long as they see you making progress and they know that there's a plan, they will be happy, but guys, the number one way that we screw ourselves over is we say we are going to do it, and we don't set a timeline so everyone assumes three months is we can make magic happen in three months or we set a way too aggressive timeline, and then it doesn't matter that we're making progress because everyone views it as failure. You can do amazing work, but your three months pass when this project was supposed to be done and everybody thinks you're awful.
It's the same thing as when we deal with clients, and I say the number one way that doctors screw themselves is they get on the phone and they're like, “I'll call you right back.” It's like, “No, you won't, dude. You'll call before you go home at the end of the day. Why are you saying it?” “I'll call you first thing in the morning with the blood work results,” and it's like, great, if everything goes perfect, you will meet expectations. Why did you do that? Tell them you'll call them in 72 hours and then call them tomorrow morning and you're amazing, but we want to make people happy so we just say to them what they want to hear, which is, “I will get this done immediately,” and it's like, “Stop trying to make them happy and just be honest about what you're up against and set realistic expectations.”
So anyway, that is my number one thing. I use that tool all the time, but my life got a lot better when I started working backwards and saying, “This is the timeline that I'm looking at,” and you can show it to people and when they look at the timeline, they'll go, “Yeah, I get it. That looks right.”

Stephanie Goss:
The other thing that I would add on to that because that was very similar to my process in the clinic as well, and I used a big, giant dry erase calendar so that I could literally see all 12 months on a big sheet and work my way backwards. The other thing that you have to keep in mind is you have to leave space for the fires because if you jam the whole plan into the calendar and you leave no wiggle room, the fact is we're dealing with human beings. There is always going to be a fire. Someone is always going to quit. You are going to have a client catastrophe.
Something is going to happen, and if you make the mistake of jamming it over and over and over again, as we have said a million times on the podcast, you've created a new business model, and it is that you're leaving no margin for error, and that is a big mistake that I made repeatedly as a manager, particularly when I was a young manager, is to overestimate, to your point, what I could accomplish and how fast I could accomplish it because me by myself with no outside challenges could probably sit down and bang this thing out in two hours, but me trying to help the front desk and handle the angry client and then putting out the patient fire that happens can't accomplish the thing in two hours.
Then everybody's like, “Wait, you said two hours ago you were going to finish this and it's 4:00. Why isn't it done yet?” Well, I've set myself up for that failure. So some of it is looking at what does done look like, put it all on the calendar, and then step back for a minute and really force yourself to look at that calendar and make space. It's a fine line because as we know with scheduling, we can gate keep the schedule too much and leave too much free space, but there needs to be a happy medium.
So I think for me, that last step in the process, once you've got it on the calendar and you've worked your way backwards and you've put in the action steps is where are the gaps because I'm happy. If we can accomplish something faster than we planned, we can think up another project. There's always something that you could work on with your team. So you will always be able to put that time to good use, but leave yourself the space because you're working with human beings and it will change. The plan will have to change.
So that's why I think what we talked about in the beginning, it's about setting those expectations, but did you set those expectations or did you tell yourself a story in your head? So I think it's about stepping back and looking at that and then saying to the team, “Okay. Here's what we're going to do,” and we've built some room in here. We all know that summer in the clinic is always going to be insanity. Don't try and say you're going to accomplish 10 projects in summer in the clinic. That's just lunacy. Give yourself a break. Give yourself a buffer.

Dr. Andy Roark:
In that same vein, one of the big things that was a game changer for me was breaking things up into phase one, phase two, and phase three because I said at the very beginning, I said it's ridiculous. There's things we don't know and we can't … Life happens to us. I also said what does done look like and work backwards, and you go, “Well, how do you square those things?” Phase one is say, “This is what we're going to accomplish in phase one, and then we're going to reassess and see what we learned and where we are, and then we're going to go into phase two, which is this general approach.” So anyway, all of that is set to extend your timelines, but I think, again, most of us are wildly unrealistic. So yeah, I really like your point about trying to be realistic about what we deal with.
The other thing is there's a lot of things outside of our control and new things occur that have to get dealt with. If we work in phases, yes, we'll fall behind, but it's not like this whole project is a year past date. There's a mental part to it. For a speed round to wrap up, the big things I would say is remember your why. Remember why you're here, what you care about, and I just think that it's easy to lose track of your why. So just think back on that.
The last part is if you get into this and you really decide you don't like it and you're struggling here, know that it's extremely hard for bosses, managers. They really don't want to have the conversation of demoting someone back down. If you are struggling and you're unhappy, don't wait for someone else to come and talk to you about it because it is an awkward conversation that they're going to hate to have. If you really do want to put it down, you might feel like you're letting people down a lot of times they're going to say, “Thank you. I totally understand,” and so that door can be open. I think if the person who said, “I did it, I tried it, I don't like it, I want to go back. I think that feels like failure. I think that that's ridiculous.” I don't think it is. You say, “I tried this. I didn't like it. I want to do something different.” That's it, but honestly, the easiest thing is for you to have that conversation and be honest about where you're at.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah, because I think we think about it vertically. We go up, we can't come back down, and the reality is, I love what you just said, which is, “I tried something and I didn't like it,” or, “It wasn't a fit.” It's not up and down. It is okay to go sideways and kitty-corner. The career path is not a linear one. I think that's a mold we have to break in veterinary medicine, especially if we're going to continue to put people into positions that they don't necessarily have the skillset for. We have to recognize as leaders of leaders, I'm talking to my practice owners, to my medical directors, multi-site leaders, people who are in-charge of supervising other people, we have to recognize that it's not just the linear path, it's not just up, that there has to be space. If we're not equipping them ahead of time with the tools for somebody to do a job, try it, see if it fits, and if it's the wrong size, let them find the right size for them.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I completely agree. Good stuff. Well, that's all I got.

Stephanie Goss:
This was so fun. I enjoyed this one.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It's a good one.

Stephanie Goss:
I enjoyed this one. Take care, everybody. Have a wonderful week.

Dr. Andy Roark:
You guys, take care. Be well.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, everybody. That's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for spending your time with us. We truly enjoy spending part of our week with you. As always, Andy and I enjoyed getting into this topic. I have a tiny little favor to ask. Actually, two of them. One is if you can go to wherever you source your podcast from and hit the review button and leave us a review, we love hearing your feedback and knowing what you think of the podcast. Number two, if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button. Thanks so much for listening, guys. We'll see you soon.

Written by Maria Pirita · Categorized: Blog, Podcast · Tagged: fatigue, management, Technician, Training

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