How Do I Teach Accountability?

A manager with fantastic team leads—dedicated, hardworking, and aligned with the clinic’s mission—struggles to help these leads transition from being top team members to effective leaders who can manage and hold their peers accountable. In this episode of the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast, Andy and Stephanie break down the challenges of shifting from being “one of the team” to being the person responsible for enforcing standards and accountability. They explore why this transition can be so difficult and offer practical advice on how to empower your team leads, set clear expectations, and provide the right kind of support as they grow into their new roles. If you’ve ever promoted a team member to a leadership position and found they struggled with managing their former peers, this episode is packed with insights and strategies to help you and your team leads succeed. Let's get into this episode…

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 am Stephanie Goss and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. And this week on the podcast, Andy and I are in the mailbag because we got a letter from a practice manager who has brand new team leads that they have promoted. These individuals are wonderful and amazing at their jobs.

And this manager is wondering, how do I help them go from great team members to great leaders and specifically great leaders who feel comfortable and confident holding others accountable? This is a good one. Let's get into it. 

Dr. Andy Roark: And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and the one and only Stephanie, tied down with Battleship Chains Goss. Stephanie, you know, you know the classic Georgia Satellite song, Tied Down with Battleship Chains? 50 foot long and a two ton anchor? Something, something, love nobody but you? Like, that's, that's I'm sure they played, I'm sure they played the Georgia Satellites in Washington State. I'm sure they did.

Stephanie Goss: Well that explains what, that explains why I didn't hear it because I didn't grow up in Washington state.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, yeah? Alright.

Stephanie Goss: And you're dating, you're dating yourself,

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, totally. Oh yeah. Unless you want to, you want a deep cut. Remember the song about don't hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself. That's, that's Georgia satellite song. That was their big song. Battleship chains is their second biggest song, which came into my life when I was a young person and wormed its way into my brain. I still remember it today. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss: You're so funny.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh man. It's just. It's funny, when I go digging, it's like, it's like looking around my brain is like digging in the attic now. You know what I mean? I'm like, where did this come from? Why did I keep this in here? Oh well. 

Stephanie Goss: Who knows?!

Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly, it's lots of boxes and I'm not sure what's in them. But there we go. Alright. Well, how are you doing?

Stephanie Goss: You know, I am doing pretty darn okay.

Dr. Andy Roark: That's good!

Stephanie Goss: I have, I have achieved I have achieved a feat that I think few of us old people can say that they have achieved. So I. I have been shrinking, for the last couple of years. So I have lost a whole inch in hype.

Yeah. I did. I was a competitive cheerleader, this will shock no one. I was a competitive cheerleader. I did gymnastics and like they had said, okay, all of that, like repeated bouncing and pounding with your knees and your legs on, on the floor for years and years. Like my bones were getting compressed and I was like, okay, well, I just, I've been off though.

I just came back. I had a pretty major surgery and I am now a whole inch taller again than I when I went in. But let me tell you, imagine if for years, Your bones are in one position and your muscles are in one position and then someone goes in to your spine and stretches you out a whole inch. It hurts as much as you're thinking it would hurt.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, yeah.

Stephanie Goss: There has been lots of yoga with Adrian in my house.

Dr. Andy Roark: I love Adrian.

Stephanie Goss: We are big, we are big Adrian fans, we are big Benji fans in our house and so there has been lots of yoga with Adrian and lots of you know, adjusting, adjusting things like, you know, how I, how I sit and how, where I'm working and all of those things, but I am,

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, yeah. Now that, now that you're tall,

Stephanie Goss: Now I'm tall. I'm tall. I mean, I'm like as tall as, you know, LeBron James. I'm just, I'm, I'm up there.

Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly. 

Stephanie Goss: I'm down from the sky.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah.

Stephanie Goss: How are you?

Dr. Andy Roark: Congratulations on getting your back stretched. No, I'm good. I'm good. I'm glad that you're, I'm glad you're back from your, from your major surgery.

Stephanie Goss: It's a, it's a little weird. I actually, I was just having a conversation with our, friend Tyler Grogan. And I said to her, This is the longest in seven years that I've gone without talking to you.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah? Without talking to me or without talking to Tyler?

Stephanie Goss: No, without talking to, to, to you. Andy Rourke. I mean, I, Tyler and I talked to, talked to each other while I was gone, but this is the long I was thinking about it and I was like, this is the longest time that I've gone without talking to Andy, like in seven years. It's a pretty, it's a pretty, it was a pretty darn long time.

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah, you know, 

Stephanie Goss: I miss, I missed your, 

Dr. Andy Roark: When you put your out of office responder on, you're dead to me, just so you know. I'm, you're off the clock? I'm not, no it's not. it's because, it's because I, it's 

Stephanie Goss: He's like, thank God I got a vacation from Goss. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I'll tell you this, and so I'm sure other people sort of wrestle with this, right?

Is, you and I have a great relationship and we are friends, and our friendship is built on this business in a lot of ways, and basically, when I call you, we talk about lots of things, but it always circles back around to the work that we're doing. And it's just, and not in a bad way, I don't think it's a bad way.

It's just, you know what's going on, and you have ideas, and you know, and you know all the people at 

Stephanie Goss: It's like when you go out for drinks with people at the clinic after work and like, you're like, Oh yeah, let's talk about our, you know, let's talk about our relationships. Let's talk about our kids. Let's talk about the dogs. And then eventually it always circles back to work.

Dr. Andy Roark: And it's always weird for me, because I'm the boss. And so, it's like, if you and Tyler go out and you guys talk about work, that's a mutually consensual discussion of work. But if you and I are talking and work kinda comes up, I will always hang up the phone and question if I didn't just call you while you were out to heal.

And bring up work stuff. And I just, I, it's a thing. I'm not, I don't walk around terrified by it, but it's definitely on my radar. Because, for years, I did not have any boundaries like that at all. I would call, you remember that, there was early on, I would call you on Saturday, and be like, Hey, I'm just hanging out.

Hey, did you take a look at that email that came in? And like, I thought we were just having friendly conversations, and as I got a little bit older, I was like, this is not normal, Andy. I, I had I had a conversation with one of my dear friends and I, I said something to him like, Yeah, you know, I don't, I don't understand why people aren't more productive on the weekends.

And he said, You don't understand that because you're a psychopath. And I was like, really? Yeah. He's like, He's like, The only reason you don't realize you're a psychopath is because you're married to a bigger psychopath than you are and the two of you together just normalize each other. I was like, oh, and so since then I went on a journey to explore this.

I was like, is he, does, is he right? Aren't we? And yeah, it turns out from, from, the research I have done, yeah, I think he was onto something. I think the data supports his hypothesis. And so I've, I tried to adjust my behaviors to, to not be a burden on other people.

Stephanie Goss: I feel like it's pretty psychopathic when you're excited about getting a giant truckload of mulch dumped in your

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah. 

Stephanie Goss: Or.

Dr. Andy Roark: When I'm not excited about work, I'm excited about yard work.

Stephanie Goss: And, I mean, you are excited about, you are excited about working on the weekends. And so, I feel like that is, I feel like that is fairly psychopathic.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, I, yeah, I, yeah. It's funny, it was pointed out to me that other people don't feel the way that I do about about labor. And And I I'm, I'm still making, I'm, I'm making peace with that, but I am. Anyway, at, at some point, just removing myself from the situation is the best thing. And so I was like, look, we both know I don't have any self control.

If we get on the phone, I'm going to talk about whatever comes into my mind. And it will, eventually, we will talk about work. And so, I just withdraw. And it's like, if you wanna talk, if you wanna talk to me, you can call me. But you know, but you know where it's gonna go if you call me. And so, anyway, that's that.

Stephanie Goss: Oh my God, you're so funny.

Dr. Andy Roark: am glad you, I'm glad you, I'm glad you recovered, and I am proud of myself for,

uh, trying to lean back. Yeah, exactly! For my self restraint!

Stephanie Goss: I can't.

Dr. Andy Roark: Come a long way, baby. That's me.

Stephanie Goss: I can't with you.  

Dr. Andy Roark: This what growth looks like.

Stephanie Goss: Well, speaking of managing your friends

Dr. Andy Roark: Yes! Speaking of managing your friends!

Stephanie Goss: We've got a, we've got a mailbag. We have a, we have a manager who wrote in, who was like, Hey, can I have got team leads, and they are amazing. They are amazing hard workers. They are super accountable. They're vested in the clinic. They believe in everything that we're trying to do. And they have been tasked with being, managing the different aspects of the hospital.

So they have a front, a front desk. desk lead, they have a treatment lead, and they have a surgery lead. And part of their job duties are managing their peers on the floor in their perspective, in their respective areas. And so they, this manager is really struggling with getting the leads to manage their peers.

And, and I read it and I was like, okay, and then I read to the next line, which made a lot more sense, which is like, how do I get them to go from great team members to leaders of people who are capable of holding each other accountable. And I was like, aha, there it is. It's the accountability piece. And the hard conversations.

Dr. Andy Roark: Well, yeah. 

Stephanie Goss: So, how do we do this? 

Dr. Andy Roark: I see. I love this. All right, so, oh man. There's a lot of different ways to look at this. Okay. Managing other people and holding other people accountable. It's not easy and it's not fun. It's not fun to look at the person who's your friend and be like, you didn't get this done.

Before you left yesterday and that is not acceptable and I need you to do it first thing today, you know, or to say Yeah, I I need you to do that differently going forward it changes things. Everybody can imagine themselves being the boss when things are going well and we're all having a good time and I love my boss because things are things are happy.

Nobody wants to hold their friends accountable when their friends don't want to be held accountable or they don't agree with what's going on. And so, this is one of those things where we can delegate a lot to people on our team. I'm a big fan of delegating. I ask people to step up and tackle projects all the time.

And I do not give them a new title or a pay raise every time I ask them to do something. Sometimes, as we're in this together, I need some help. You are very competent and capable. I need you to take this for me. Can you tackle this and get it beaten into submission? Thank you, my friend. You're amazing. And, and I just do it. When you start asking people to hold their peers accountable, that is very, very hard to do if they don't have a title. And honestly, it's not fun, which means they should be compensated for that role. It's one thing, I'm kind of like, you know, everybody's a leader, and everybody is a leader. And, I don't think people should get pay raises for every single thing that they do.

Stephanie Goss: Right.

Dr. Andy Roark: When you transition from you're one of the gang, to you are holding the gang accountable, for me, that's a pretty significant change in I don't know, in comfort level, in the, you're asking this person to basically separate themselves a bit from their friends. That's really what you're asking them to do.

It's a big ask. If you say, I want you to lead from the middle and help me influence the rest of the staff, that's a different ask. You want me to hold people accountable? That's that's taking sort of the friendship card away from me in a lot of ways and giving me the boss of my friend's card and that's that's just a bigger ass than a lot of people think and so i'm not it sounds to me like this is not the issue at this clinic that's writing in it sounds like they they refer to these people as the treatment lead the reception lead like It seems like they are probably separated.

It seems like they are probably compensated. It seems like they have been set up to Actually manage and hold other people accountable And so I doubt that this is, this is the thing, but I just want to go ahead and start off by saying it is not super fun to hold your friends accountable. And so the first thing we have to do is as a leader, we have to own what we're asking people to do and then support them as they do it.

So I would say we start, start, start with that and go, Hey, just quick check. Has this person been empowered? Are they being incentivized to do this? Not fun. If the answer is yes, good, let's rock on. If the answer is no, then I would say, ooh, we might need to square that up first.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. Well, and it's funny that you started there too, because for me, the first thing that came to mind was both a headspace and an action step in, in one, which is, has this, have, has this person, has, have these people truly been empowered? Do they, do they understand what is being asked of them and do they feel empowered to do it?

And this is two parts. And then does the team understand what is being asked of this, these people and that they have been empowered to do it? Because I, I think that that's a step that let that communication on both sides is a step that often gets missed or messy.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Well, I would say this. Well, let me ask you this question. I'll frame this as a question. Do you think that someone has been empowered if the team does not know that they are responsible for the behavior of others? So can you empower that person and not have the team understand what that person's job?

I don't think so either. I agree part of empowering the person Is in messaging to the rest of the team. I don't think that you can talk to this one person here. You are empowered to manage these other people who do not know that you are now their boss. They don't have any idea. They'll figure it out when you start telling them what to do. Go go go go get to it. Like I agree. gotta be that empowerment part. 

Stephanie Goss: right? Like it happens in the practice where, where the, you know, someone asks someone to step up and be the CSR lead and it's like, cool. Yeah, you're on board. Okay, great, you know, go out and do the thing and then in that person's head I've watched it where they're assuming that there will be like a conversation.

That like announcement to the whole team. Okay, you know Sarah's now in charge of the front desk team Like this is what we're expecting and this is and then nothing happens And then that person is wondering like did they just talk to everybody individually? Did they send out an email like what did I what did I miss it?

Dr. Andy Roark: I, I, get it. I, I agree. No, it totally, and here's why, here's why it happens in my opinion and experience. What happens is, oftentimes, the idea of promoting one person up over other people is not, that's not fun. It's not fun to tell people, I'm making Stephanie your boss now. Like, Stephanie is going to manage you.

She is going to hold you accountable. You are going to report to Stephanie. People don't like getting a boss or especially having their friend promote it up And so I think a lot of times this is a sin of omission. Where someone says, you know what steph? You're she's great. Let's make her the lead. Tech I don't really you know the other techs.

I think they genuinely people like to take the path of least resistance and in the short term that is the other text they'll figure it out We'll just call her the the lead tech. We won't explain what that means, but they'll know they'll know You Oftentimes what happens is like, let's be honest, buddy, you're, you're, you're dodging, you're dodging this unpleasant part, which is empowering that person to the team and answering the questions in private when someone says, why is she the lead CSR?

Why wasn't I picked as the lead CSR? You have to navigate those things and hoping that if you don't bring it up, it won't be discussed. It's a terrible choice.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah, no, I agree with that, okay, so You We both agree there, they have to be empowered and there has to be a conversation and everybody has to understand the expectations and the, the job, right, and what, what they're, what they're doing.

Dr. Andy Roark: Totally. And it is sort of bleeding action, action steps and headspace together. So let's sort, let's pull this back out into headspace. So, headspace. Okay. Remember that delegation is hard. Remember that delegating leadership to someone else, it is not as fast as, Hey Stephanie, will you be in charge of the other techs? You will? Thank you. Great. Now we go forward. It is 

Stephanie Goss: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Andy Roark: It is the snowball we talk about where I have a job, and I can hold it in the palm of my hand like a baseball sized snowball. And if I want to give this part, which is leading other people, to Stephanie, I can't hand it to her. I have to roll it to her.

And the snowball, when it gets rolled, it picks up more snow. And so she's going to pick it up with two hands. Why? Because it is a job she's not familiar with the staff doesn't immediately respect her, they don't have a history with her like they do with me. All of these things are going to make it a bigger load for her to handle than it is for me to handle.

And so, remember delegation as a snowball. It's always bigger for the person you handle it, and it to, than it is for yourself. It's always going to have increased effort at the beginning. A lot of people like to think that delegation saves time and energy. No, it doesn't. It sucks up time and energy until the person is comfort, comfortable, and then it saves time and effort and energy.

But remember, the handing off is, it is a process. You are going to have to lean into it. It takes more energy than just doing it yourself. But the ultimate outcome is, you are able to give it away, but that is down the road.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark: Headspace for me is you know, I think getting some momentum is important.

Setting people up to get good wins. You know what I mean? Elevating someone and celebrating them and celebrating them to the team and putting them position where they get to bring good news to the team and and bring wins for the team before they start, have to ask for the team for things before they're holding people accountable.

That's just that's kind of action step. But honestly, for me, it's, if you're going to elevate this person, try to elevate them into a couple of quick wins that the team is going to like early on. It just gets them some momentum. It lets them build some trust. It, it, it lets people's nerves kind of calm down about having a new boss in a good way before we start to kind of make some changes.

It's kind of an analogy of, you know, I had a mentor and he always said, you know, when he bought a vet practice he didn't change anything for the first six months. And it was just kind of like, look, the change is, change is shocking. Don't elevate this person and immediately ask them to make negative changes or to hold people accountable or things like that.

It's just, it's gonna get them off to a rocky start and it makes their life a lot, a lot harder.

Stephanie Goss: I think for me, there's a headspace piece here for this manager, and that is, I think it's really important to look at what your plan is to make the leads. A, to educate the leads and B, to help make them successful. And the reason that I say that is a headspace piece is because I think that it requires thinking about who you're promoting and why you're promoting them.

And I, I'm sure that there are more reasons than what they gave us because they're, they, they sound like really great team members. So I'm going to assume good intent. I'm going to assume that there's lots of other things, and I really just want to pick out, and I'm not picking on the person who wrote in.

I want to point out something that we do all the time in veterinary medicine, and that is we take people who are amazing team members, who are really hard workers, who have accountability skills of their own, who are vested in the clinic, who believe in what we do. Those were the, those were the, the shining star reasons why these team members are being given this role.

Dr. Andy Roark: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Goss: What does any of that have to do with their skill set or their ability to actually be a leader of people? Right? We're not addressing anything that has to do with their management skills, with their understanding of accountability, and how does it work with their you know, both their, that from the educational component, and also like the personality skill set piece.

And so for this leader, I think part of this has to, and I'm going to, again, I'm going to assume like, You've thought about all of this and, and, but for those who maybe go into it and you're just like, this is my best technician. Of course, they should become the team lead. I think part of the headspace is stepping back and asking yourself the question of, okay, even if they are the right person for the job, what is my plan going to be?

Because I don't think you can take any action steps forward that are truly going to help them be empowered and successful at holding others accountable, let alone holding their peers accountable, unless there is a plan to assess and hone their skill set around leading other people and also for continued support in that regard.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. I think that, I think that's spot on, honestly. That, that's exactly how I'd approach it. I think, I think sort of the wrap ups for me in Headspace and I think the wrap ups for me in Headspace would be this. You should have a good attitude. Decide that you're going to be supportive of this person or these people.

If you have multiple people who've been elevated and having problems managing, that's probably a systems problem, right? If you've got one person who's struggling, maybe that person is having a problem. If you've got, if this is multiple departments and they're struggling, ah, we've got, we've got some sort of a systems problem here.

But try to, try to relax for a second. I, the reason I said I think you put your finger right on it is, managing other people, it is a skill, like placing a catheter, like doing a surgical procedure, like, like wrapping surgery packs, it's a skill, it's a more complicated skill, but it's still just, it's still just a skill, it's a thing that no one's born knowing how to do, and some people are innately more gifted at it than others, but it is a learned skill practiced skill that people have so it's just it's obvious that we just need to teach these people a skill and we need to train them in the same way that we would train them into into doing other things. 

It helps for me to think about training people to lead and manage and hold accountable. Other people on the team like teaching them to ride a bicycle. There's nothing you're going to tell them today and they're like, Well, I can just do it. I know I'm great at it. It's like, no, you're going to have to go out there. You're going to have to force yourself to smile, to be positive. If you start losing your, your cool and stomping around, the kid's not going to learn to ride a bicycle. You know what I mean?

Stephanie Goss: Mm-hmm

Dr. Andy Roark: Um, you need to go out there with that same attitude, that positivity, that encouragement. Expect to run along beside the bicycle, expect to be there, expect to pick people up and dust them off, off the ground. Yeah, there might be some skinned knees. That's not failure. It doesn't mean that we can't ever ride a bicycle.

Today might not be the day. Exactly. But it's the learning experience. And again, I think that that's the healthiest headspace to be in. It's like, hey, we're going to do this, we're going to train you to ride a bike, and you're going to get there. And we're just going to walk them through through training the skill just like, just like any other skill.

So I think for me, that's the headspace part right there, is like, yep, this is not any different. It's going to take patience. I'm going to have a good attitude, because I know that getting angry or frustrated, or trying to rush it, all those things are just going to amp the stress level up, and make this so much harder than it has to be.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. And I think you know, they, the biggest thing is, is that it's, I mean, you, you, when you are a leader, you know, it's a hard job. And so, from a Headspace perspective, remembering what it was like for you, especially if you're an experienced leader when you were learning, you know, it's, it's, it's funny use the bike riding analogy because how many times as parents are we grownups, right?

Holding on to the backseat of a bike that has a, you know, four, three, four, five year old perched on it, right? We're so far removed from where they are age wise and reality wise. And it's really easy for us to forget that, the fear, the worry, the excitement. It's hard to forget all of that. And so I mean, it's easy to forget all of that because we're so, yeah, because we're so far removed from it.

And so I think for the manager, like thinking about it from the perspective of it is going to be hard for them and they are going to struggle. And to your point, like you have to be prepared to pick them back up. And so leaning in with empathy and having a plan to follow up and support and encourage them both when things are going wrong and also when things are going right.

And so the plan to say, Hey, I saw you do this thing and you did a great job. That encouragement. It means the world. It may have nothing to do with holding people accountable, but if you're building up that confidence and those confidence muscles in other areas, it's going to bleed over into, into their confidence in, in all areas.

And so I think having a plan to give them a lot of support is really, really important.

Dr. Andy Roark: No, I think, I think you're right too. It's funny, the parallel I would give you is when I was a young doctor, I, I started writing and speaking, basically right out of vet school, I've been doing a lot of things and I immediately got picked up doing consulting and, and social media was blowing up and I was doing a lot on that.

So right out of the box I could, I had something I could sort of talk about with some expertise even though I was brand new veterinarian. And so I, I very quickly got invited back to speak at the vet schools and things like that. And I'm a, I'm a huge supporter of the VBMA. And also I've been done a lot with SAVMA, the student organizations.

They're both wonderful. And the first couple of years that I was invited to go speak at the vet schools, it was so easy to go in there and talk to them because I knew exactly how they felt. Because I had been looking at practice from vet school, you know, just, just right around the corner. And what I found was that about five years out, after you've been a practicing veterinarian for about five years.

At least for me, I was comfortable enough that it was getting harder for me to look back and remember how it really felt right before I came into vet school or right as I went in and now I'm 15 years out and I I just I'm honest I'm like I, I, I have to remember that it was just, it was very, very different being a brand new doctor just because I'm so far down the line that, that doesn't come into my mind as, as easily as it used to.

And so I think your point about, about trying to empathize, I think, I think that that really matters. I think the last thing I would say is one tool in your toolbox right now we have an Uncharted Podcast. It's episode 267. It was the one that Stephanie did with Maria Pirita and it was called Going From Being Their Friend to Being Their Boss.

And so, if you want to listen to that, you can. That may be something that you can forward over and say, Hey, this is one of my favorite episodes. And send them, send something like that. But I was just thinking about it before. I was like, I know we have an episode on. This is the actual podcast. Being the one who transitions from being the friend to the boss, and so it's something that could be passed on. Anyway, that's what I got for Headspace!

Stephanie Goss: I love it. That, the other thing that I, that I was going to offer in terms of support, get like, get out of my head. It's, it's eerie. I wasn't thinking about the podcast, but I was thinking about the fact that we have our Team Lead Summit coming up. And so if you are a manager that has team leads, especially like in this case, where they're new to the role if you are a team lead yourself if your team has leads And there's challenges for you as a team member with those team leads in any way, the team lead summit is coming up and it is the place to be because we're talking about ultimate support, we're bringing together people who are in that role and doing a one day virtual one day virtual summit.

To talk about the specific challenges, and this is probably, honestly, like when we've put together content for the Team Lead Summit last year, that was a big focus for us. One of the biggest challenges for people stepping into this role is learning how to manage their peers. Because for the majority of people stepping into this role, they were a peer first and now they're now they're the leader. And so that is something that everyone struggles with and I think there's nothing more powerful than being able to connect with your peers who are in the same position and talk about the challenges and brainstorm solutions and be creative and positive. So if you have somebody who is looking for it, You should send them over to our website at unchartedvet.com.

There's info under the events tab on the Team Lead Summit and it is happening. And I think when this episode comes out, they have one week left because the Team Lead Summit is happening on Wednesday, September 18th, and it's virtual. you know, send them over there and get them registered because we we would love to connect with them and connect them with their peers.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, totally. I think that's a great call. I saw a post on social media and someone asked like, what's your favorite vet conference and why? And someone wrote Uncharted and they said, It has the best sense of community and is the best for real world problem solving. And I was like, I'll take it. I'll 100 percent take it.

And so that's, I think that's, I thought that was a good summary of kind of the work that we like to do at Uncharted. Anyway, let's let's take a break and then we'll get back into some 

Stephanie Goss: Okay. Yes. Let's do it.

Stephanie Goss: It's time. Our Team Leads Summit is happening next week. It is happening on September 18th, which means you have just one week left to get your tickets. It is $79 for our internal members and it is $99 for our non-members. We have a great lineup of speakers and topics for you. If you are involved in being a leader within your practice. At the floor level. 

So that's my CSR leads. My tech leads, my treatment leads. My ICU leads my kind of leave. You name it if you are not yet a practice manager, but you are working in management in your practice. This summit is for you. It's virtual. It's taking place on zoom so you can, join us from home on your couch, in your pajamas. 

If you want. you do you, but we have got a great lineup of speakers. My cohost and friend, Dr. Andy Roark is going to be talking to everyone for our general session and really talking about how to Jedi mind trick and get doctors to do what you want and need them to do. We've got Sarah Parsons LVT. 

We've got Tyler Grogan, CVT. We've got Kelsey Beth carpenter. RVT and we've got Maria Pirita, CVPM. Between the four of them, they are going to be talking about positivity and boosting morale in the practice. They're going to be talking about conflict management. They're going to be talking about becoming the coach and not the referee. 

It is going to be a jam packed day. I will be there as your host and MC. I can't wait to see everybody. And so I would really love it. If you would head over to uncharted vet.com. Forward slash events. And you can find out all of the information for team lead summit and everything else we've got coming at you between now and the end of the year. And now back to the podcast. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Alright. Let's get into some action steps here. We, we had a little bit of bleed over into action steps from Headspace, but the big thing is you gotta start, I think, with assessing how, how are things really going? And, and, I would do this a couple of ways. First thing is I just want to remind everybody of our safe conversation.

So I would talk to, talk to my leads and I want to get safe. And so again, this is something that we use all the time. S, can you sit next to this person? Can you smile at them? Do not go and talk to your brand new baby team lead. The moment that you're angry, that someone, you know, broke the rules and didn't get caught for it, or, you know what I mean?

That, that, that we had, the afternoon exploded because someone didn't do what they were supposed to do, and I'm mad. And I'm gonna grab this team lead by the ear and be like, Why isn't this person being dealt with? Like, no, don't do that. That's terrible. Make sure that you can sit next to this person and smile at them.

This should not be a high stakes conversation. This should just be a check in. How are things going? How are you feeling, buddy? Conversation like that. Remember we're, we're coaching to ride the bike. A, assume good intent. Do not let yourself get into a headspace of this person clearly doesn't care about the practice.

They're not, they want to be friends more than they want to be bought. Don't get into a bad headspace. Assume that the team leads are doing their best. They're figuring this out. They're trying hard. They want to be fair and supportive to their friends. They want to be fair and supportive to you.

F! Has this person been set up to fail? What here is my fault? Again, Have expectations been made clear? This is all the stuff, Stephanie, I talked about at the very beginning of Has this, has the role been explained to the rest of the team? Have they, have they really been empowered? Have they been coached on how to hold other people accountable?

How have they been set up to fail? What can I own? And this is a great way to lower the stakes. Say, hey, you know, I feel like we did a pretty good job with onboarding. I think there's a few holes in our onboarding process into leadership that I probably, I just didn't anticipate. Or they're just things I should have thought of and I didn't.

And so I kind of want to circle back around with you and say, you know, now you're six months into this role. What are you, what are you seeing? What are the things you feel like you're struggling with? Where could you get more support? How could I, how could I have going back? How could I have, have helped you more?

And, and let's, let's do that going forward. And I think that's a really nice way of lowering the stakes. You know, softening up our conversation. And the last thing is the end result. What are we trying to do here? I would say, go in. I just want to understand what's going on. I, I see a pattern of behavior, especially if I see it across multiple people.

I would say, I would even say, Hey, this is not about you. We've got, you know, some of the other team leads have come up. And it's just, it's, it's an issue that I'm seeing across different people. And so I think clearly we've got a system problem, or whether it's training or, or the way that we're sort of working as a team.

I just, I just sort of want to understand, you know, How are we working? Where is this coming from? Are you worried about people being angry? Like what? Help me understand sort of where your head's at. Speaking specifics, I would sort of say to that too is, you don't want to go and say, hey look, you're really, you're really struggling to manage people.

That's terrible feedback. That, devastating to confidence, no specificity. They don't know what you're talking about. They don't know how to defend themselves. They don't know how to give you insight or feedback. It's just too vague. You have to say, tell me what happened with Michael. And, yeah, just walk me through that.

What was your conversation like? How did you feel like it went? Give me the download here.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. I think, I think that I, I love the safe piece of it. And I think honestly, one of the easiest things that we can do to make this conversation safe for team leads is that to, to really truly believe that this is a zero stakes conversation, like part of, part of getting a new job, part of growing and developing is that you're going to have to learn things.

And so for me, the easiest way someone lowered the stakes for me. was to say, Hey, when I was starting out, like I really struggled with the idea of managing my friends and my peers, you know, and I did some things right. And I also made some mistakes. And so I, you know, let's, let's just talk about how you're feeling because I know how hard it was for me and I would love to know how it's going for you because the best case scenario is that if they then tell you themselves, you know, yesterday when I was working with Michael, this is what happened, right? 

Because then it's a zero stakes conversation because they're the ones bringing it up. It's not you approaching them and saying, hey, I recognize that this was the thing that you were done wrong, and now I'm coaching you so that you know how to do it correctly next time.

Now it's a, you've related to them, you're strengthening the relationship between you and one of the members of your team, which is really great. And they're being honest about their own skill set as a result. And so that power of vulnerability is really, really huge. And it costs us nothing to shift our mindset and say, can I have this conversation in a way that is truly developmental and has nothing to do with. I'm frustrated, or I'm angry, or you did this thing wrong. 

Dr. Andy Roark: I I like I like that a lot. I think that puts you in a good mindset to also be in a coaching role as well, right? It's it's sort of that that being vulnerable and saying well, this is this experience I had Let me tell you about the way that I shot myself in the foot one time um this this sounds familiar I tell you i've done something that's that's Uh more more more troubling than what than what you what you got into  and here it is And then it puts you into the What do you what do you?

What do you plan to do from here? And it puts you into those types of questions of, if it was happening again, if, if, if we could jump back in time to yesterday and Michael walked up, what would you, knowing what you know now, like, what would you do? How would you do it? And that's coaching. That's just helping them get ready for the next time.

And Michael's not going to come back to them and we don't get to do it again. But it will happen again. And it's just that, it's just that coaching. I think it's always good To frame your conversation and you know, how can I support you? How can I, you know, what, what can I do to, to help make this easier for you?

Yeah, just, just things like that. It's not, you're not doing your job. It's help, help me, help me support you. Remember, remember your why and, and remember to, to bring it in. This is not comfortable. It's not fun to tell your friends what to do. There has to be a greater. There has to be a greater good.

There has to be a, a reason for this person to have a a leadership role. And just saying, well, that's what the raise is for, that's a terrible idea. It's not, it's not that, you know. Remember just to talk to them about the good that the practice is doing. What the practice is trying to be, what, what we believe in and, and, and how they're contributing to that.

Make them feel proud of what they're doing and what the practice does. Like I, I want people to be really proud of being on the leadership team and that means you have to share the credit with them and you have to make sure that they see the benefits that they're having and they don't feel like they're busting their friends chops so they can make an extra dollar an hour.

That's not, that's, that's not the, the motivation that, that we want to have and it's, and it's fleeting.

Stephanie Goss: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Dr. Andy Roark: Remember when we start coaching, we want to lean into developmental feedback. And so there's three types of feedback, right? There's positive feedback, there's critical feedback, and there's developmental feedback. And so positive feedback is, hey, you're doing a great job, and we make, want to make sure that we are doing a lot of positive feedback.

Don't get me wrong here. When they do something that is that is successful or that you think is a good approach, try to catch them and pat them on the back and say, Hey, I saw you do this. Nobody wants to get called in only when things go bad. I don't, I don't want to have a job where I just get busted if the people I'm supposed to manage drop the ball, but every time they don't drop the ball because I was there for them, coaching them.

Encouraging them, patting them on the back, pleading with them. I just hear silence. So it's silence, silence, silence, silence, crack. You let them drop the ball. I don't want that. So lean into your positive. Critical is, hey, you messed this up. And then developmental is, hey, let's talk about how things are going, and let's talk about where I'd like to see you developing in the next six months.

It is so much easier to talk to someone and give them a good review and say, Hey, these are the areas that you're really excelling in. And our writer says the team leads are great. They're accountable. They're productive. They're, you know, they're doing all of these wonderful things. It sounds like there's a ton of things we can give them good feedback on.

And then the next part is to say, let's talk about the back half of 2024. Let's talk about the Q4, Q1 coming up the area that I think I would really like to see you focus on for your development or the area that I think you will benefit the most from if you can develop in the the skills in is you know, it's going to be holding people accountable you know, having, having, you know, quality control conversations, whatever it is, but it feels very different to say I'm invested in you.

I want to see you excel. Let's talk about the coming months. This is what I want to work on with you, and I want to see you grow here. That feels so much different than Andy. The last six months, you have really not met expectations in this area. Like, doesn't that feel night and day different?

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. Radically different. 

Dr. Andy Roark: And so, we're playing the long game here. I don't want to take the person out to teach and ride the bike and say, boy, you really stunk at this last week. I really hope this week is better. It's like, nope. Hey, we have learned a lot. And I want to see you riding without pedals in the next week or two. And then I want to see you off on your own, you know, before the summer is here.

Whatever, you know? But it's that, it's that developmental feedback about what I want to see in the future, rather than, let's talk about what happened in the past. 

Stephanie Goss: One of the things that's really important, too, is to recognize that Accountability, but especially in this instance, accountability means different things to different people. And if you have three different leads that you have promoted, part of the training process developmentally should be to say, how are we defining accountability?

You know, what does that, what does that mean? What does that even mean? And what does it look like? And specifically, what does it look like here in our practice? You know, I think that that's, that is a part of the natural training. And so often as leaders, at least for me, this was a step that people forgot with me and also that I forgot with people, which is to say the thing that seems really simple when you involve multiple people, maybe not as simple as it seems, right?

Like I can ask the team to sweep the floor. If I've got five team members and I ask them to go sweep exam room one, I promise you it's going to look different every time I go in there because they're each going to have their own definition of what a sweeping the floor look like. It's no different here.

When, when I promote someone and I tell them part of your job is to hold the team accountable and everybody just sits there and smiles and nods because we think, okay, accountability. Like, I got that, that, that means getting people to do the thing that they're supposed to be doing. Well, but what the, what the hell does that actually mean?

What does it look like? How does it feel? Those are the pieces that we often forget or skip over and don't talk about enough. And so I think from an action step perspective, you know, you're, you're talking about the developmental feedback. It provides a perfect opportunity to say, okay, leadership team, like over the next six months, I want all of us to work on accountability because I want us to all be on the same page and I want us all to be working similarly.

And so I don't want someone to be able to come to me and said, well, when Sarah at the front desk, talk to me about this. This is what she said, but then when they talked to Becky in the treatment room, it was a different answer, right? Like you want to be all working in tandem, and that really only happens when you have those conversations and you work together as a team.

And so I think you can action step wise for this manager and totally frame it as like, let's have these conversations and let's, you know, let's get on the same page.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. No, I, I completely agree. I think, I think you're, I think you're spot on. I think we probably should have laid this down earlier on in the action steps, but I, I think it's good to to make sure that we have clear expectations now. The reason I say this is oftentimes, especially for elevating someone into a new position.

Let's say we haven't had a lead CSR before. Let's say we haven't had a kennel lead before, but we're going to make one. I would just tell you. I don't, it's not possible to create a position that has never existed before and to say to someone before their first day on the job, these are my expectations and they will not change.

There is no way that we are going to try this and I am going to learn a lot and you're going to learn a lot and we're going to say, Oh, this is not what we thought it was. That's ridiculous. 

Expectations change. Like, they change over time. The expectation I have for someone who comes in off the street to be a vet assistant my expectation for that person is going to be very different than when they've been with the clinic for five years and they are great and they are well trained.

My expectations are going to change because they're not the person who showed up. And when they go and they get their technician degree and they come back in their licensed tech, my expectations are not going to be the same as they were when you were a vet assistant. Like, I have new expectations because things have changed.

And so expectations, they can be adjusted. Let's just make sure that the expectations we have for this job are shared by everyone and that they are up to date and current meaning, well, maybe we said that we expected this, but do we really, that might be a bridge too far. That might not be what we really want.

Let's make sure that everybody's on the same page about what this person's job is. That means me as the boss. It means them as the employee. It means the team as the people reporting to  that person. And so if we don't have clear expectations, we should circle back around and and get it. And you can't hold people accountable if you don't have clear expectations.

I, I remember getting called in to the manager's office as a brand new baby vet because the surgery suite. was left dirty one afternoon. And I was like, I'm sorry, am I in charge of cleaning the surgery suite? And they were like, no, but the technicians who are working with you should have done it. I'm like, well, why aren't you talking to them? And they're like, because you're supposed to oversee them. And I'm like, I'm sorry. All of this is new information to me. Like, like I had, Noah, all the things you just said were all new to me. No one had ever communicated. I didn't know I was in charge of them. I don't think they knew I was in charge of them.

I didn't, I did not, you know, I assumed that it was done. I, you know, I did not know it was on the surgery team to clean up. Again, it totally makes sense. I just, I didn't, I didn't know that. It had never been communicated that that's what needed to happen. I thought if it needed to happen, the technicians would know they needed to do it.

But apparently they didn't know I was supposed to tell them but anyway, I was just like I you this is this is a whatever but it happened. I was like you can't hold people accountable if they don't know what the expectations are. That's ridiculous. That's just surprising people. And again, if you've ever worked at a place where you got in trouble without knowing the why?

You know what I mean? You would just be surprised and you thought you were doing great. That's not a fun place to work. You can't, there's no trust there. It's just nobody wants to, to live in fear that they're gonna get in trouble for something they didn't know they're supposed to do. That just generally sucks.

And so, anyway, just run a quick, clear expectation audit. Make sure everything that is, is good there. And then, that brings me to sort of the last action step. And I would do this kind of in tandem with everything else. Everything I said at this point is true. Coaching, positivity, help them ride the bicycle.

At some point, if they're going to be in the manager job, they have to be able to do the manager job. And, just like when I'm teaching someone to ride a bike, at first, I'm holding the seat. And this person is pedaling and I'm not letting them fall over. But then I'm going to start taking my hand off of the seat and let them pedal a little bit.

And it's funny, my, my kids when they learned to ride a bike, they did not try to balance because they knew I had the seat. They would just la da da, like they got elbows flying everywhere and you know, there was no emphasis on balance because they knew I was not gonna let them go. As soon as I started to let my hand go and they realized, whoa, this bike wobbles if I don't

Stephanie Goss: Right. Right. I have to. Yes.

Dr. Andy Roark: I do have to balance this. It's, again, that's, I was not going to let them fall, but I was going to let them feel like they might fall because, you know, we had, we'd worked on the skills. They needed to feel that so that they could step up. It's sort of like, I don't want people to sink or swim, but I do plan to give them swimming lessons and at some point, they are going in the water and, and they, at some point, they are going to sink or swim.

It won't be without lots of training and support and encouragement. And it won't be the first day out, but at some point they are going to have to sink or swim. And so, if we have done this right though, if we've done the developmental feedback, we have gone through our feedback model, we have coached, we have set clear expectations, we have empowered people, we have talked to the team, we have helped them to be successful, we have given them feedback in the moment as we went along, things like that.

At some point, the rubber is going to meet the road and they're going to have to do the thing or they're not going to be able to, to stay in that, in that role. And again, I do not want to say that early on. Remember, low stakes. But, at some point, I'm picking my poison, right? I can either let this person continue to flounder, or I can do the unpleasant thing of pulling them out of that role and putting somebody else in there.

But if I let them flounder, I'm going to have to keep dealing with the fallout of the rest of the staff not being managed or not being managed appropriately, and I don't want to work in a place where the staff is not managed, and there's sort of anarchy, and people are making mistakes, and my patient care is being damaged.

And again, the kindest thing for this person is not to let them continue to fail, it's to coach them and support them, and ultimately, if it's just not going to work, the kindest thing is to take them out of that spot.

Stephanie Goss: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark: But again, that's, that's down the road, but it, it helps me sleep at night because I don't, I don't want to lay in bed and go, this is not working, this is not working.

It helps me to say, in six months, if we are still having these problems, we are going to reevaluate this position. And then I put that on my calendar. I'll put it in code so that people won't be like, In six months, we're gonna do, I'll put it as something as like, I don't know, team lead assessment, something like that.

And then it will just be a note for me to say, okay, is this going? At the same time, I am going to be keeping my own little notebook about, just about things that are happening. It's, it's really important to deal in specifics. And it is very easy if someone. makes, whether it's a mistake on, on medicine or managing people or whatever, it's easy to get down on people.

It's easy to remember the negative things and forget the positive things. And if somebody has I don't know, an accountability type, management type mistake once a quarter, is that the, it's probably not the end, that's probably worth it. It's probably not the end of the world. You know, it depends on what it is, but probably not, you know.

But it's not fair for me to get to the end of the year and go, God, I feel like I was fixing your problems all the time. That's not fair. I want to be able to say, Hey, I, I saw you do something great and I jotted it down. So I remember this person doing great things. 

And then also we had these couple of problems you and I talked about them, but looking back at the last year, I know that we talked three times about different problems, but it also got a nice little list of things I saw you do that were really impressive. And so that's, that's how you do an accurate evaluation for people as anyway, is. You don't wait until a week before their evaluation and then try to remember what they did the last year.

That's ridiculous. You should just be keeping up with your people. So anyway, that's, that's kind of all I got in that regard.

Stephanie Goss: Well, and I think to, to your point about thinking about it down the road for this manager, I think it is really important if you haven't considered possibility that they may not be the right people if they were being promoted because of how amazing they were as CSRs and technicians. I think it is important to think about that, not because you want them to fail, but because you need to be, whether it's this time or sometime down the road, at some point in your management career, you will make the decision to promote someone into a role that they're not Um, and it's only, it is to, to your point about like, you don't want to be up at night.

It will do yourself good and it will do them good to be able to recognize that we have, we're evaluating people to step up into leadership roles in particular because of the actual leadership skills they have, not because they were great at the job that they were doing. And I think we'll change that medicine tremendously when we start doing more of that, because I'll tell you every time, you know, I talk about this and we're at a conference or something and I ask, okay, raise your hand if you were promoted because you were the best CSR, the best technician or the best kennel team member possible. 

The whole room of hands goes up and, and it's, it's like, okay, and how many of you felt like you were paired to do the job and all the hands go down because that, you know, and so we're, we're from a manager perspective, I think that's something important to think about and, and think about it in a positive way, which is like, it's okay.

If it happens, you know, it's how we choose to address it and it's how we choose to, to, to coach them and support them and help grow them because sometimes growth for someone looks like stepping up into a position and then realizing, it's not the position for them, whether you realize it or they realize it or both. But I've had team members step up into a promoted position and then go, Oh yeah,

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Exactly. 

Stephanie Goss: This is not, this is not what I want. This is not what I thought it was going to be. This is not what I want to do. This is, I'm not good at this. And it, and, and I've watched people and I have done this myself where you fight with them because you're like, but you're so great.

And I really want you in this role. They have to have the want to do it. Like the capacity for it is one thing and you can think they're so great all day long, but if they don't want to do it, if the desire is not there, like you have to stop and recognize that.

Dr. Andy Roark: I think you're, you were, you were right on. Anyway, that's just the other thing is it's funny. I think we've told the story in vet medicine that. There is one path upward, and it moves into management. And that's, that's ridiculous. You know what I mean? It's like saying, you're such a good chef, you should be sending emails and pushing papers.

You know, it's like, no, that doesn't make, if it's a great chef, maybe you don't want them to come out of the kitchen. And, you know, and manage the staff. Maybe you want them, yeah, maybe you want them just to be a great chef and, anyway, that's it. I, I hope that we'll continue to see upward medicine based paths.

I think we will. I think that VTS degrees are a good thing. I hope that there's more practices that are willing to support people getting them. I think that veterinarians being able to move into whether it's a specialty, a non-traditional residency to get a specialty, things like that, or whether it's just certification, advanced certification, advanced training.

I, I really like to believe that upward doesn't need to mean management unless you want it to mean management. And so that's it. But you're right. There's a lot of people who are really good at medicine, and so they get promoted into managing other people, and those are just wildly different skill sets.

And again, no, no, no shade on it, but some people, they want to advance, or a lot of times, this is what's really sad, a lot of times people want the pay raise. They really want the pay raise, and so they take the management job, and they don't like the management job, and now they are the person who took a job for the money.

Stephanie Goss: because in vet, in vet med, that's how it's, that's how it's structured, right? Like that's how you get, that's how, if you're a paraprofessional staff member, that's how you get more money And again, on more responsibility or you step up into a leadership role.

Dr. Andy Roark: Totally and I wasn't trying to throw shade on on people do that. You know, like man, if I'm if I'm a technician making, you know, a dozen dollars an hour or something ridiculous, you know, and then, you know, I get the chance to make two more dollars an hour. And do it. It's hard to make in me.

We know the number one stressor for our support staff is is the finances. So please don't take it as Andy says. You shouldn't have taken this job. It's not that I totally understand, but I do think it's sad. I think it's it's sad that that it Goes that way. And so, anyway, sometimes we have to make adjustments. Sometimes, sometimes people say, I've never been a manager. I would like to try it.

Stephanie Goss: Sure.

Dr. Andy Roark: That's great. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Oftentimes, they're not having fun either. It's an awkward conversation, but you guys can manage it. So anyway, that's all I got. 

Stephanie Goss: Oh, this was a fun one. thanks for chatting. Have a great week,

Dr. Andy Roark: Have a good time, everybody. See you later!

Stephanie Goss: Well, gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. And as always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbag and answer this question. And I would really love to see more things like this come through the mailbag. If there is something that you would love to have us talk about on the podcast or a question that you are hoping that we might be able to help with, feel free to reach out and send us a message.

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.