Josh Vaisman, cofounder of Flourish Veterinary Consulting, and Dr. Andy Roark discuss what it means to have a positive workplace, where most veterinary practices go wrong and what we can actually do to make our practices more enjoyable places to work.
LINKS
Uncharted Podcast on iTunes: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-…st/id1449897688
Charming the Angry Client On-Demand Staff Training: drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
What’s on my Scrubs?! Card Game: drandyroark.com/training-tools/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Josh Vaisman believes all veterinary professionals deserve to feel fulfilled by their work, each and every day. Through his company, Flourish Veterinary Consulting, he combines more than 20 years of veterinary experience, a master’s in applied Positive Psychology & Coaching Psychology, and education in Positive Leadership and Positive Organizational Scholarship and a passion for guiding leaders to cultivate work environments in which people can thrive.
Fun fact – Josh is also an avid beekeeper who teaches beginning beekeepers how to tend to their buzzing buddies.
Editor: Dustin Bays
www.baysbrass.com
@Bays4Bays Twitter/Instagram
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I love this episode. I am so happy with it. I am so excited about it. Josh Vaisman, this is my first time really getting to sit down and do anything with him. And man did I enjoy the heck out of it. I’m getting that guy back on the podcast for sure, because I could have talked to him all day. It was a fantastic conversation about what it means to have a positive workplace and to feel good about going to work. We talked about how some practices put numbers ahead of people and how that manifests and how that looks and how we do that differently. We talk about having compassion for the people we work with and still holding people accountable, and how you can do that. It just takes some balance. But man, such a good conversation. Guys, I’m not going to delay any longer. Let’s get into this episode.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
This is your show, we’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame, with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast. Josh Vaisman, thanks for being here.
Josh Vaisman:
Oh gosh, Andy, thanks for having me. I’m super excited to chat with you today.
Dr. Andy Roark:
My pleasure. So I met you at the first event I had been to in two years when I went back to Vegas for Western. And I had lunch with you because of our mutual friend, Dr. Phil Richmond. And man, we had a great conversation and I really loved talking with you and I wanted to have you on and talk some more. So thanks for making time.
Josh Vaisman:
Oh gosh, yeah. I appreciate the opportunity, and shout out to Phil. Phil is such a wonderful guy and he’s the ultimate connector in the veterinary community.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. If you don’t know Dr. Phil Richmond, you’re missing out. He’s doing so much for mental health in vet medicine and he’s out there just … He’s one of those guys that doesn’t make a big show about it and just does the work that helps other people. And yeah, I have so much love in my heart for that guy.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. Cool. Why don’t we just start a little bit with your background. Can you tell me a little bit about … So you are the owner and founder of Flourish Veterinary Consulting. Tell us a little bit about positive psychology and coaching psychology and what you do.
Josh Vaisman:
Absolutely. So Flourish was started with the goal of taking, what does the science tell us contributes to human thriving, specifically in an organizational context. So what are the kinds of things that seem to allow people to really thrive and get a sense of fulfillment in their work from a scientific evidence-based perspective. And then we try and bring that to the veterinary space in really tangible and digestible ways, so that we can empower leaders to cultivate that kind of environment in a veterinary hospital. And that’s the basic gist of it. So for me personally, how my journey got started on that, I’ve worked in the veterinary space since the late ’90s. I’ve done just about every role in a hospital, except be a full DVM. I like to joke I was once the right hand of a veterinarian for about two months when she broke her wrist.
Josh Vaisman:
And I did all her medical records and pretty much everything that required her right hand. But I found myself stumbling into practice management and ownership. And I did that in a couple small animal hospitals over several years, and went through a pretty significant bout of occupational burnout. I mean, depression level kind of burnout. Crying in my kitchen over scrambled eggs one morning for no apparent reason, as my shocked wife looked on and couldn’t figure out what was happening to me.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Josh Vaisman:
And going through all that, I had two realizations. One of them community based and one of them personally based. On a personal level, I recognized that I was, pardon my French, a shitty leader. I did not lead in the best possible ways. I had allowed myself to get into the habit of putting numbers ahead of people. And I don’t think that numbers are the leading indicators that we really should be after, I think people are what make things happen. And when you care for people, they care for outcomes. But I didn’t do a good job of that. And then on a community level, I realized that the veterinary space, we’ve gotten really damn good at taking care of others and not quite as good at taking care of ourselves and each other.
Josh Vaisman:
And I felt like there’s got to be a better way to do this wonderful, worthy work that we do so that it actually contributes to our individual and collective fulfillment instead of our depletion. And so that led me to go back to school and pursue a master’s in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology, because I really feel like that is the prism of science that can help us get there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. So the challenge of separating care for people from care from numbers, I think that that’s something that a lot of people don’t really appreciate or recognize. I don’t know how much you see it until you’re in a leadership role. And then a lot of people go, oh, yeah, obviously you care for people and not for numbers. And I don’t know that people really appreciate how strong there is a push to manage numbers. And let’s be honest, numbers are easy to manage, people are hard to manage. You know what I mean?
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And there’s all these phrases like, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And we need to make this objective so that we can look and have a dashboard and see how we’re doing, because it’s easy to lie to ourselves. And man, it is easy to get sucked into that vortex of looking at these numbers. And so when I hear that, I think most of us wrestle with that. I would say in my career, I’ve done a pendulum swing a number of times. And I think that’s probably what most of us do is where we get really focused on our people and taking care of our people and then we start to say, oh, I’m getting close to not making payroll. Or there starts to be behavioral issues and you go, okay, we need to quantify this so that we can really track it or we can start to have very specific conversations with people.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so then we start to track numbers and look at people clocking in and clocking out on time and absenteeism and things like that. And those are very valid reasons to get into looking at these numbers, but the staff sees that as well. And it’s just funny how our mind shifts over time and then it shifts back. So first of all, validate that struggle. Let me begin with that.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Let’s talk about positivity and positive work cultures in vet medicine. So what do you see when you look at most veterinary practices? Do most practices do a pretty good job, a pretty bad job? Just give me a picture of the general landscape. When you look at your average vet practice, what are the things that you feel like most of them do right and what are the things that most of them do wrong?
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah, that’s a really great question, Andy. And I do want to validate that struggle, because that struggle is real and it can feel like it’s pulling you in two diametrical directions. I think there’s an opportunity to navigate the space between both.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Josh Vaisman:
And I think that that’s what the hospitals that do this well, that’s what they do. They honor and recognize that there are pulls and pressures from both sides, and that we can find a way to live in a both and world instead of an either or. And the hospitals that have an opportunity to do better, which I would venture to say is probably the majority of practices, do find themselves being pulled in one direction or the other and really struggling with that. A positive environment. When I use that word, positive, I recognize that that word can be a little bit loaded.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, totally. It’s a fluffy, fuzzy word that means a lot of things. And it’s gotten a lot of use recently and that always makes me go, all right. The meaning of this is really getting distorted probably.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes. Yes. Distorted is a great word to describe that. Yeah. So when I’m talking about positive, I’m not talking about ice cream and sprinkles every day at work. I’m not talking about this fluffy, everybody is best friends and we all hug it out all day long and it’s kumbaya and roasted marshmallows. That is not a positive environment, that’s an apathetic environment. That’s an environment of learned helplessness, that’s an environment that is not fulfilling. When we think about things like meaningfulness and impact and contribution and fulfillment, we don’t imagine scenarios that were full of joy from beginning to end. We imagined scenarios that had challenges, that were difficult, that we overcame and that there was maybe an environment of support or help in. And I think that’s what the practices that do this well recognize.
Josh Vaisman:
One of the things that I talk about, at Flourish, we have a leadership framework. We call it the four Ps of positive leadership. It’s something we’ve been working on for several years. We’re actually writing a book about it for AHA Press right now. And there’s these four pillars. And one of the pillars that we talk about is the progress pillar. And the progress pillar is really what we think of as the connective tissue of the entire framework. I often, when I’m standing in front of large audiences of hospital owners and practice managers and medical directors and I talk about leadership, I say, really, I don’t have to talk to you for two hours or four hours or six hours here, I can sum it up in two sentences. Other people matter, leadership is relationships. If you can really, truly embody and embrace those two statements, other people matter, leadership is relationships, then you’ll be an excellent leader.
Josh Vaisman:
And that’s what it really boils down to. But that can also be taken to that pendulum swing that you referred to. That can be taken to the extreme side of, I will solve all your problems. I’ll cuddle you, I’ll take care of everything for you. And that’s actually antithesis to positive leadership. If you’re the kind of leader who finds that, A, everybody seems to dump all their problems on your lap, or B, you take on everybody’s problems. That’s not an effective way to cultivate an environment that contributes to professional fulfillment, because that’s an environment of learned helplessness. We have to create leadership through partnership. A partnership in where, Andy, I care about your success and I care about you as a person. And I care enough to give you the kindness of helping you be the best version of who you can be.
Josh Vaisman:
And sometimes that means calling out your strengths and where you’re kicking butt and where you’re doing great. And sometimes that means we’ve got to have these difficult conversations where you’re falling a bit short of my expectations, because that’s the kind thing to do. Sometimes we think of positive environments as the nice environment, where everything is nice and we never say anything bad. But actually, a positive environment, a positive culture, positive leadership is about kindness. And kindness sometimes means calling people out when they’re falling short.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, I like this a lot. So the big thing as we talk about the struggle that a lot of people have of say measuring numbers versus the compassionate relationships. And I look at this and I say, okay, other people matter, leading is relationships. I get that. I think the part that people have to wrestle a little bit to get their head around, and I had to wrestle with this for a long time.
Josh Vaisman:
Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Accountability is still a thing.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You know what I mean? And I think that’s the biggest mistake I see people make. Is they’re like, okay, got it. Relationships matter, people matter, I got it. So what I’m hearing is, I just take care of people and I make people happy. And I’m like, no.
Josh Vaisman:
No.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s flawed. And I think that that’s an important point, because that is the difference between sunshine and rainbows, a bunch of fluffy, fuzzy garbage. That’s not true. And people getting walked on and people not having personal boundaries. I think responsibility and accountability are things that we have to bake into being compassionate.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And you can do that. But to me, that is the middle path. That is the path that I think a lot of people struggle with. And so I very much like how you talk about relationships matter. And I agree with that as well. And I’ll say, relationships matter and relationships are built on trust, and trust matters.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
At the same time, anyone who’s ever worked at a business where people are not held accountable, or forget a business, a family. If you got people in your family who are not held accountable, you know what I mean? And who other people are just determined to make happy, those people are maddening. And I don’t have any of those people in family or extended family at all, ever. But you see those people … I make a joke, but you see people out in the world all the time who have never been held accountable and they’re not happy people.
Josh Vaisman:
Correct.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And you don’t want to spend a lot of time with them. And so that brings me to the other part of navigating this path, it’s balance, which means you do want to be compassionate to this person. But it is also your job as a leader to be compassionate to everybody else in the clinic as well.
Josh Vaisman:
Correct.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so if you are being a pushover and other people are picking up the slack because you’re not holding this person accountable, you know what I mean? Or you are not telling them the truth and giving them honest feedback and saying, hey, you’re kicking butt in these ways, but you’re not kicking butt in these ways and it’s causing frustration to Pam, then you are not being compassionate to Pam.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I like that. I suspect it probably threw some people for a loop when you said, oh, we’ve got donuts in the break room and sprinkles, and that’s learned helplessness. Unpack that a little bit more for me. When you say learned helplessness in the vet world, what does that look like?
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about learned helplessness and this idea that we can learn to be helpless. Oftentimes, it’s subversive and it’s not something that’s necessarily overtly conscious. But we have to realize, people, all of us, every human being, we’re driven by a lot of basic psychological needs. And when those needs are unmet, that’s when we get these deleterious effects. These problems in a team environment or the problems that you hear about at the front versus the back and all that kind of stuff. To me, whenever I hear problems in a team environment, what I hear is there are needs in this environment that are being unmet. One of those basic needs is the need for autonomy. Every single one of us needs to feel like we are in some way, shape or form the captain of our own lives. That we have a voice and a say in the direction that our life is going.
Josh Vaisman:
When you have a team environment where somebody in leadership is the be all end all, whether that’s intentional or not. And I want to clarify something by the way, Andy. I’ve had the opportunity over the last several years to meet and interact with thousands of people in leadership positions in veterinary medicine. I can tell you with complete confidence, I’ll take this to my grave, I can count on one hand the number of actually bad human beings in leadership in vet med.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Josh Vaisman:
Most of the people, the vast majority of people in veterinary medicine who are in leadership positions truly want to do the best they can for and by the people that they serve. They want to create this kind environment where people feel happiness at work and fulfillment and all that kind of stuff. It’s just that nobody’s really ever taught us how to do that. And so what we do is we revert to what we know. Okay, I need to take care of people and make them happy, so bring me all your problems. I’ll solve everything for you. Or, ooh, I’m in the leadership position now, so I’ve got to be the person who’s the strongest and has all the answers and knows all the right things to do. And I can’t ever show any weakness in my armor.
Josh Vaisman:
All of that creates an environment that tells people two things, you can’t ever be wrong, so get somebody who can be right. And if you can’t ever be wrong, you can’t ever lean into the discomfort of trying new things and learning and growing and innovating and creating. And so essentially you have to put on this facade of everything is always good and right all the time. That’s impossible.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Josh Vaisman:
But people lose the sense of empowerment. If you work for a leader who either expects everything to be right or takes all your problems on, you have lost control over the environment. You have given that control to somebody else or they have taken it from you, which means you don’t feel a sense of autonomy. You don’t feel like you’re the captain there. That human need is unmet, you’re going to try and find it somewhere else. And most of the time in this environment of learned helplessness, that’s the whispers and complaints in the corners. Most of the time, that sense of empowerment and control is ruminating with somebody else on the team who gets it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, that definitely makes sense. I hadn’t thought about the whispers and complaints as being a manifestation of autonomy. I think a lot about personal agency as a requirement. I think that that’s pretty much the same thing as what you’re talking about with autonomy. I don’t think that people can be happy when they don’t feel like they have some control. Right?
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Imagine playing a video game where everything was so on rails that you just, you couldn’t mess up. And you go, how fun is that?
Josh Vaisman:
Right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s some people’s jobs. And people say, well, my job is not a video game. And I say, well, there should be similarities. It should be challenging. It should be engaging. It should change. It should give you a feeling of accomplishment. That’s why people play video games, is to immediately have that engagement, that challenge, that quick hit of accomplishment. People aren’t too hard to figure out what entertains them in one way or entertains them in another way or what engages them in one way and engage them in another. So yeah, I think that that’s funny. The thought of, I’m the leader, I’m going to make this perfect to the point that my people don’t feel like they have any autonomy. I hadn’t really thought about that. I did think, when you were talking about the leader that doesn’t let people fail or that is there to solve problems, is the old Karpman drama triangle. The hero, villain, victim triangle.
Josh Vaisman:
I don’t remember that, please.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, you don’t. Oh, yeah, okay.
Josh Vaisman:
I love Karpman though.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, so here we go. The drama triangle is the hero, villain, victim triangle.
Josh Vaisman:
Okay.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And what it says is generally when we have conflict, we tend to have three roles. We tend to have the victim who is the person who has been wronged. And we have the villain, who’s the person who did the despicable deed. And then there’s the hero, who is the person who comes in and saves the victim, punishes the villain, writes the wrong and rides off into the sunset. And that is the drama triangle. And think about your vet practice, think about the victim and the villain who the victim comes and complains about. And then they want you to be the hero.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And the takeaway from the Karpman drama triangle and the thing I always hammer on people is, you don’t want to be the hero. Don’t be the hero. Because we have these people who are like, you know what, I am a professional hero. All day long, I’m a hero. And the problem with it is it makes you feel good. You’re like, yeah, I righted 10 wrongs today. And you’re like, you shouldn’t have had to write any wrongs, you should have done your regular job that you want to do and that you need to do. But you didn’t, you were protecting the victim all day. And so it really comes down to, don’t be the hero. Make the victim be the hero, empower the victim to be their own hero.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And now you’ve got people who have some agency. They’ve got some autonomy, they’ve got tools in the toolbox to fix their problem, and they can fix their problem and navigate the course without having you to be involved. Of course, there’s problems that come up that need to go up the chain, but that’s not most of the problems most of us deal with all day.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. I love that. The drama triangle. That’s awesome. The hero and the victim and the-
Dr. Andy Roark:
I use it all the time.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. See, I think that what we can also do to add to that is, we can shift our mindset around what it means to be the heroic leader. And see, I think that you’re right. I think that so many of us in this space, we try to be the superhero. The one who sweeps in and punishes the wrong doer and saves the one who’s been victimized. You’re right. I mean, it does feel good when you make that contribution to people’s lives. And it’s incredibly exhausting to be the hero all day, every day, and it’s disempowering to the people around you. You’re right, it removes any sense of agency. And when we lose agency, when we lose a sense of autonomy, we invariably become disengaged. We become demotivated. And that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to accomplish.
Josh Vaisman:
So what I think we can do is we can shift the mindset. We can create a new way of thinking of what the hero can be. The hero, rather than being the lifesaver, can be the kind of partner who sits down with people and says, I hear you. This is a struggle. I see how this is affecting you. How can we solve this together? And truly embrace that together part and be the partner. The person who can empathize, who can offer support and tools when people don’t feel like they have all that resources, and enable a sense of agency and autonomy. So they can actually, instead of being the victim, they can play a role as a hero as well.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. It’s the difference between trying to be Harry Potter and being Albus Dumbledore. Be Albus Dumbledore.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Mentor Harry Potter to handle his own problems.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Be Yoda, not Luke Skywalker. That’s where you’re doing the most good in the world. Right?
Josh Vaisman:
Totally.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I really like the idea that part of being a leader, part of being a business owner, because business owners are leaders, part of being a manager is growing people. And part of that is just because I find that deeply rewarding, to see people grow. And this is a big part of making people more competent, is not fighting their battles for them. God, this is the hardest part of being a parent. I totally want to fight my kids battles for them. That’s not my job and that’s not the best thing for my kids in the long term. But boy, those are hard muscles to work. No one teaches you how to coach. They think they teach you how to fix problems, they don’t teach you how to coach. And man, I think that that is one of the most undervalued skills that is out there.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. I totally agree. And that’s one of the biggest questions that I get. When I talk about these kinds of concepts, I think that it actually resonates with a lot of people. I think that actually the preference would be for most leaders is to have an empowered team that solves problems, that innovates and creates, that overcomes and is resilient, and that the leader is supporting in a supporting role instead of an overarching role. But then what they invariably ask is, well, okay, this sounds great, Josh, but I have no fricking clue how to do it. How do I do it? And you touched on that word. I think the very best leaders are leaders who coach up or coach out. But coaching is always essential to it, but coaching is an acquired skill and it’s not something that most of us naturally possess.
Josh Vaisman:
And so how do you do that? How do you have those kinds of conversations? See, I think when we get caught up in the day-to-day fires and we feel like it’s the 476 complaint that’s come through our door that day and I’ve still got a checklist of 74 items to get done by 6:00 and it’s already 4:00 PM and somebody comes in and complains about somebody, it’s really easy to fall into that habit of like, all right, Andy, I’ve heard what you’ve said about Diane and I’m going to fix it. And then just let Andy go. A coaching response would be, okay, Andy, I heard what you said about Diane and I can see how it’s affecting you. I’m curious, if you were in my shoes, what would you do?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. What options do you think that we have going forward?
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. Coaches ask questions.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. What do you think we could do to prevent this from happening in the future? There’s three pieces of this, I think. So not knowing what to say, I think that’s the first one. Right?
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So how do you coach, how do you ask those questions so that they figure out. When they come to you and they say, well, this is the problem. And you say, all right, what have you done to try to address the problem?
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So the first one is they don’t know what to say. I would say the second thing that I see a lot is this … And this comes from me. It’s this twisted self identity leader thing.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Where you are the leader and in order to be a good leader, you have to have the answer or you’re supposed to fix the problem. I do a little bit on this in one of my lectures and I put up a picture of General George Patton. And I’m like, I thought that this is what leadership looked like. And when you were a good leader, people didn’t question you because they trusted you. And they were like, oh, Andy knows the answer and he’s the boss, he’s a great boss. And so the great boss knows what the answer is and so we’re just going to do the answer. And I found that that does not exist outside the military. And if your people don’t question you, that’s a terrible thing-
Josh Vaisman:
Andy-
Dr. Andy Roark:
… because it means they trust you.
Josh Vaisman:
… I feel personally attacked right now. I mean, you have completely hit a nerve with me. That’s entirely the kind of leader that I was. I thought that I had to be George Patton.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I’m with you.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh yeah. So then my next slide is Kermit the Frog. I’m like, this is what a leader looks like. It’s like, Kermit gets questioned constantly about everything. And you know why? It’s because people trust him enough to tell him what they think.
Josh Vaisman:
Exactly.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And they think that he’s trying to do the best thing and he’s worth engaging with.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And the George Patton to Kermit the Frog leadership shift, dang, that’s hard. And it’s hard because I’m naturally Muppet. And so just owning that and feeling okay about it and being like, this is a good identity for a leader, is to be questioned continuously from people who are good at their job and who care. And they ask you because they care. And to be criticized because people feel safe enough around you to say, hey, I’m not sure that this is the best thing, or you should think about this. The self identity thing is a thing, I think, that holds a lot of us back. And the last thing that I think holds a lot of us back too is, like so many things in leadership, what is easiest in the short term is detrimental in the long term.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so, I’ll just fix it. You know what I mean? You got a problem, just tell me and I will go talk to the other person or I will send the email or I will call the pet owner and I’ll just do it. And today, that is by far the easiest thing to do to move forward.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The problem is, in the long term, I haven’t grown this person at all and I’m just going to end up doing this again and again. And so when you zoom out for three to five years, you’re going to say, that was a terrible idea. You could have had that person trained and empowered in the first six months. And then you would’ve had three and a half years of not having to deal with this crap. But you did what was easy in the moment and you paid for it in the long term. And so those are the three things that I see.
Josh Vaisman:
Oh, no., I think that’s incredibly insightful. I’m really grateful to hear that perspective from you, because I think you’re really spot on. You talked about the two additional things beyond what we were talking about, this idea of identity, self-identifying as a leader and the [inaudible 00:28:28] approach. And then you talked about what I heard as the urgency of the immediate and the urgency of the immediate seems to take over. And I’d really love to talk about those two things from a little bit of an evidence-based perspective. So there’s a researcher out of Wharton business school named Adam Grant, who I totally nerd boy over. I always like to joke, one of my claims to fame is I’ve gotten Adam Grant to exchange emails with me twice. So I feel pretty good about myself.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, give and take, [inaudible 00:29:01].
Josh Vaisman:
Yes. A little give and take. Excellent pun.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Thank you.
Josh Vaisman:
There’s going to be like three really nerdy listeners who are going to get that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
They’ll be like, wow. God. Okay.
Josh Vaisman:
Phil is going to be one of them, by the way.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Phil, that pun was for you, buddy.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. Hey guys, I just want to jump in real fast and let you know that registration for the April 2022 Uncharted Veterinary Conference is open. We are live and back together in person. Again, downtown Greenville, April 21st through the 23rd 2022, because it is the five-year anniversary of Uncharted. That’s right, in 2017 we kicked off the first Uncharted Veterinary Conference. Single best live event I’ve ever been to in my life. I got to tell you. I mean, I was among the people who cried when it was over, because it was that amazing and awesome. Guys, if you have not been to Uncharted, you’ve never seen anything like it. It is truly a special, wonderful event. Yeah, it’s hard to explain. It is all about running smoother, more efficient, more enjoyable practices. That is what this conference is all about.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s about getting things done and enjoying the process of doing them. Gang, if you are not an Uncharted member, you’ll need to be one to be able to come. This is a member only conference. There’s only 150 spots. The reasons for that are plentiful, but mostly they involve the fact that Uncharted is a conference that never ends. There is stuff that goes on before the conference, there’s stuff that goes on after the conference. It’s just unlike anything else that’s out there. If you’re like, this is crazy talk. What is he talking about? Head over to unchartedvet.com and learn more. Guys, I would love to see you in April. Do not miss your chance to get your membership and get your spot. Like I said, there’s only 150. Guys, I can’t remember the last time I was this fired up about a live event. It’s going to phenomenal. And I would love to see you there. Now, let’s get back into this episode.
Josh Vaisman:
One of the things that Adam Grant is really passionate about, which is one of the reasons why I totally adore the man, is this idea of psychological safety. And you talked about that a little bit, you talked about the safety. That as leaders, if we put on the persona of being George Patton, what we’ve essentially done is created an environment through messaging that says we only tolerate perfection here. And if you can’t be perfect, keep it to yourself. The problem is, no human being is perfect, we’re all fallible. We all fall short. We all stumble. Nobody has all the answers and all the skills and talents. The only way that we can achieve the higher purpose of our work together is if we do it together. Collectively we are so much more resilient, more creative, more innovative, more able to accomplish things than we are as individuals.
Josh Vaisman:
But the leader sets the tone for that. And psychological safety is essentially this concept of in a team that it is safe. It is safe to say, hey, you know what, Andy, the way you did that, I’m not sure that was the right way. And I know that you’re not going to lash out at me or freak out or I’m going to get punished in some way, that we can actually have that conversation. So Adam Grant did some work in the Gates Foundation. He’s friends with Melinda Gates. And so they wanted to see what they could do to enhance psychological safety in the Gates Foundation. One of the typical approaches is we train managers on that and we tell them, okay, you know what, maybe you need to go have these vulnerable open-ended conversations.
Josh Vaisman:
And certainly, when they go through that training and then they go try it, when you measure psychological safety scores a week out, two weeks out, you do see an improvement. But the improvement doesn’t last because more often than not what happens is these managers say, okay, I’m going to have this vulnerable conversation. And then they get feedback that they don’t like or they don’t agree with. And then they’re like-
Dr. Andy Roark:
They’re telling me the truth, damn them for that.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. Damn them for that or this is the total waste of my time, and then they stop doing it. So they tried something a little bit different inspired by … Oh gosh, who’s the late night host who does the mean tweets thing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, Jimmy Kimmel.
Josh Vaisman:
Jimmy Kimmel. Yeah. So they had executives, including Melinda, who’s at the very top of this huge organization, do mean tweets videos. Where they took feedback that they had received and then on video they talked about it through the mean tweets kind of approach, but then also talked about what they learned from that feedback and how that feedback was valuable to them. And then they talked a little bit about constructive feedback that they’d gotten in the past and the value they got from that. They did not see the same immediate boost to psychological safety scores that they saw with that initial training. However, a year later they saw significantly higher psychological safety scores than they saw with the initial training. You see, doing this kind of thing, being the vulnerable leader, the kind of leader who says, this is not an environment of perfection, this is an environment of growth. This is where we learn and I have to learn too. And this is some constructive criticism that I’ve gotten and this is what I’ve learned from it.
Josh Vaisman:
This is what I’m trying to work on now and I’d really love to hear from you all now how I can be better here, starts to create that kind of environment long term. Which then leads to that second point you made, the urgency of the immediate. We do, we get caught up in the urgency of the immediate and we lose the capacity to think in long term. But the truth is, and there’s some really vibrant research on this too, when we put an immediate, sometimes painful but intentional investment into the long term. For example, in this particular piece of research I’m thinking about, where they implemented one-on-one programs that were nothing to do with performance evaluations, they were all about the employee. Where do you need more autonomy? Where do you need more support? How are you doing? What are you struggling with? How can I help you? Kind of meetings one-on-one with direct reports for a minimum of one hour a month.
Josh Vaisman:
So most of these teams, we’re talking like five, six, seven, eight people that the manager is sitting down with for an hour every month. To most managers, you share that and they hear, wait, you want me to work another full day just to sit down with my team and talk about these things? They did that for 18 months and they saw a double digit percentage increase in productivity and job satisfaction. They saw reduction in turnover, retention rates went up, all of this kind of stuff happened. And at the end of it, they asked the managers qualitatively, how did this impact your time doing this an hour per direct report every month? Did you find that you had to work more to get that done? Did you find that it didn’t really impact your time? Or did you find that actually it increased the amount of time you had available? The average response from these managers, I found I had an extra seven hours every month to get my work done.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. We do a lot of that stuff. So I run a group called Uncharted, and so we do conferences and we have an online community and stuff. And one of the struggles for me personally, when getting Uncharted up and going, was there are things like that that I just believed deeply in that I would say to people. And I would say, hey, we’re going to talk about having effective one-on-one, so we’re going to talk about getting your leadership team on the same page with you. And we’re going to talk about strategic planning and we’re going to talk about these different things. And the pushback from so many people is, I don’t have time to do strategic planning and I don’t have time to do one-on-ones.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And God, that’s probably the biggest trap that I see. Is there are some of these things that are so transformational and people go, I don’t have the time to do it. And I’m like, but if you did it, you would have the time. You know what I mean? It would open up so many other things. And it’s that first painful thing. So just the path of what’s easy and convenient right now in the short term hurts the long term. That is the greatest trap in life, is how many things are easy now. Think about how much we use social media. I’ve got five minutes to kill. The easiest thing for me possibly is pop out Instagram and scroll through it. But then the problem is, I got five minutes to kill again and again and again. You look at the end of the week and I “killed” three hours over the course of the week.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You know what I mean? And had I popped my Kindle app open, I could have read 10 chapters of something actually meaningful and that helps me be a better person, however I want to be, or that I would remember. Instagram is just like, what did you look at today? I have no idea. There was dancing, there were people jumping and then they were in a different outfit than they were before.
Josh Vaisman:
There were kittens.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There were kittens. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or it’s like, there was that dog running in circles. That’s the most memorable thing I saw. But yeah, it’s that way. But it’s not like the one-on-one and stuff like that, it’s really trying hard to cajole people to do the thing that’s not easiest in the moment.
Josh Vaisman:
Especially when you don’t get that immediate feedback of the value of it. When it doesn’t feel like it’s making a difference now, it’s really easy to let go and lose motivation for those things. We did some work with the hospital. We started working with them about a year ago now and they came to us … Large practice, over 150 employees. They came to us for a lot of the same reasons that a lot of folks are coming to us these days. We’re struggling, we’re overworked, we’re under-resourced, we can’t find help, the caseloads are through the roof. It’s insane, what do we do? People are leaving and we need to help them. And so we conducted a large discovery process. We did some wide sweeping surveys and really touched base with the team and the leadership to get a good idea of what was going on. And it’s interesting, one of the clear themes that emerged through this process was people really crying out for connection.
Josh Vaisman:
We feel disconnected, we feel so overwhelmed by the work that we’ve lost touch with each other and we just need to touch base. So that screams for one of these effective one-on-one programs that you’re referring to. But of course, you can’t really go to a team like that and say, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to cut out seven hours once a month where you’re all going to meet and sit down. That felt like way too much for them, a quantum leap. So we thought, well, gosh, how could we do this incrementally? And this is what they came up with, which I thought was genius. They said, hey, what if we just recruited people to conduct these mini check-ins and we’ll make it no more than 10 minutes once a month. We’ll divide the team up so that everybody has no more than five or six people they got to check in with and we’ll create a standard framework for how this is going to work.
Josh Vaisman:
We’ll create a small committee, we’ll put these three people in charge of overseeing a program and being of support. And we did, we implemented that. We did a coach the coaches kind of training and I sat down with these … By the way, 34 people in the hospital volunteered to conduct check-ins, which was amazing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, that’s great.
Josh Vaisman:
And we just trained them on coaching concepts and how do you conduct a check-in from a coaching perspective and talked to people in that way. And then we implemented that program. Eight months later, we redid the surveys and we looked at some of the quantitative scores. And one of these things was a measurement on just the team’s self-perception of resiliency. We saw those resiliency scores. So we divide them into categories of how we view people in terms of their perception of their resiliency. I feel like I’m doing pretty good despite the challenges I face or I’m struggling or I’m just getting by. We saw the low end of that. The people who said they were really struggling at the beginning of our work with them was at 12%. Eight months later, we had cut it down to 4%.
Josh Vaisman:
The people who were in those, I feel like I’m actually doing pretty good despite the challenges I’m facing, went up by 17%. All by just doing this little check-in intervention. And that was through a period of time that by the way I think you would agree as somebody who’s in practice. From last October to this October, have things gotten easier in veterinary medicine?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Not remarkably, no.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. So I mean, that I feel like is a tangible in our profession. Something that shows that this stuff, it really does matter. Putting a small, incremental investment now into a long term relationship with your team will pay dividends.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, I like that a lot. Two comments I think that I want to make. The first one is maybe a little dicey here, so I’m going to be careful how I say this. I think that one of the mantras I hear on social media that always makes me cringe a little bit, I think that there’s this idea that’s out there that I’m tired. Let me start with a caveat. I think a lot of us struggle to understand how we really feel and what we really need. I think most of us don’t really know. If I said I’m not happy right now and you said, Andy, what do you need? I don’t think I can tell you like … I’m not going to be able to list three things that I need.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s not the case for me at the moment, but there have been times I’ve been unhappy and if you said, what do you need to be happy? I’d be like, if I knew that, I would’ve done the thing that I needed to be happy and this would’ve been over. And so I think a lot of us struggle with that sometimes. We know that we don’t feel good or we know that we’re not enjoying our work like we used to, or we know that we seem tired. And it just seems like that part of that is a human condition, it always comes in waves. But I think we’re generally pretty craptacular at putting our finger right on what we need. And so I see a lot of narratives that say, we need more time off, we need to rest more, we need to relax more.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And again, I don’t know the specific circumstances, it’s very context specific. So in some cases that may be true. I think for most of us who say we’re tired, it’s probably not really about the hours that we’re working. It may not even be with the speed with which we’re working. It’s often something else about how we feel about our work, how we feel about how other people see our work, our appreciation level. A lot of it is, we feel like how successful we are. We’ve all done things before where we’re like, I’m doing this and I suck at it and it’s terrible, versus I’m doing this and I’m doing a thing and I’m great at it. And I’m scoring points and people are like, damn, you’re killing it, buddy.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You know what I mean? And I’m like, I can do this all day. Because I feel like I’m doing a good job and there’s this rewarding thing and I’m getting positive feedback. And so when you talk about moving to these types of check-ins, things like that where we connect with each other, I think for most of us, finding things like that really does so much good. And again, I’m not trying to downplay other people’s concerns when they say, oh, I need time off or I need to rest. That may very well be true. But I think for our profession as a whole, I think most of us really do benefit by thinking more deeply about, how do we connect? What makes us feel appreciated? What do we need to have psychological safety here? And things like that.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I like Adam Grant’s stuff for sure. I really think the power of vulnerability and leadership is really important. And I think it’s really scary for a lot of people. They go, I don’t know how to be vulnerable because I don’t want to lose credibility. And so there is this thing too of like, I don’t want to see my boss as a crying, sobbing mess.
Josh Vaisman:
Correct.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Not as a regular thing anyway.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But generally, I do like to feel like my boss is confident and still being open. And so there’s a balance in this. I think for a lot of people who have maybe not led with vulnerability or never been comfortable with before, I think right now is a really good opportunity. And I’m curious what you think of this, but as far as trying out vulnerability and flexing the leadership muscle, I think a lot of people right now are dealing with tired teams.
Josh Vaisman:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I think a lot of people are starting to see some maybe negativity in their practices that didn’t use to be there. Maybe not overt, but maybe just some eye rolling, maybe just some snarkiness. And it comes from fatigue, I think. And I think those types of problems are the best time to flex your vulnerability muscles as a leader. And you can go to the team and you can say, guys, I’m noticing that we’re not getting along as well as we used to and I don’t know what to do about it. And honestly, I know that I’m having some grumpy days as well and sometimes I’m not the nicest person to be around, but I don’t want to be that way and I don’t want our team to be that way. And I want to talk to you guys about why this is happening and mostly more importantly, what can we do to write the ship? What can we do to get along better and to feel more supportive of each other? And I like that as a 101 level vulnerability conversation.
Josh Vaisman:
Totally.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But just saying, I don’t know what to do and I own the fact that I’m probably part of this problem. I’m sure I’m part of the problem, but I don’t want to be and I want to work with you guys to figure out what we can do.
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I just feel like a lot of practices are struggling with that problem right now and I really think that vulnerability is the key. You might be able to roll out some appreciation program like, guys, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to have smile books and-
Josh Vaisman:
Smile books.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But yeah, you may have a great thing, I don’t. I got to go to my people and say, I don’t know what to do.
Josh Vaisman:
No, I love that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But I love you guys and I want to be happy here. And I know you want to be happy here.
Josh Vaisman:
I’m listening to you describe this opportunity for vulnerability and how you would talk to your team, and I’m thinking to myself, I think I’m going to send Andy my book manuscript and just have him revise it. I mean, that is spot on what positive leadership is about. I think one of the challenges that people have … because you’re right. Again, this is like what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, that sort of being pulled in two directions. And it’s really easy to teeter-totter between the two poles, the extremes. And I think there’s an opportunity in between, the both and. That’s where that both and lives. That tensional space in between two polls is where often the most vibrant and effective approaches live.
Josh Vaisman:
And what you just shared was between the approach of action and vulnerability. See, I think that a lot of us, when we hear talk about vulnerability, we hear what Brene Brown talks about, we hear what you’re talking about, what I’m talking about, a lot of us can’t help but hear only the vulnerability piece. And that feels like, well, I can’t show a kink in my armor, I’m the leader. They won’t believe I’m credible. They won’t follow me anymore. It’s not vulnerability by itself. You can’t stop at vulnerability.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, quite.
Josh Vaisman:
There also has to be action. And that’s what you just said. It’s vulnerability to sit down with your team and say, guys, listen, things are not going well right now. And we are overwhelmed and I’m probably just as guilty of the shitty attitude as I’m seeing around us. And that’s not okay, I don’t want it to be this way. We got to be better together because we’re in this together. That’s vulnerability. But if you stop just there and that’s all you ever do, yes, the team will eventually see you as the person who doesn’t know what they’re doing and doesn’t have the answers. And why would I trust that person?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Josh Vaisman:
What you just did was, you followed it up with, okay, let’s talk about why we think this is happening. And perhaps more importantly, what we can do about it together.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Josh Vaisman:
Because we are in this situation and scenario, these are the tools and resources we have, things are not going to just change on their own. Caseloads, they’re not going away.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Josh Vaisman:
The staffing shortages that we have, it’s not like Santa Claus is going to deliver a whole bunch of veterinarians and technicians.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Josh Vaisman:
That’s not going to change. So given that we’re here together and we want it to be better, what can we do?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. That’s right. I think this is such a good workout tryout for a vulnerable approach, because it does lend itself to, what are we going to do going forward? And that’s why I said, why is this happening? More importantly, what are we doing in the future? I think a lot of people get tied up in dissecting what’s going on. And really, the truth is, what’s done is done. It doesn’t matter why we felt crappy two weeks ago, what matters is how we’re going to feel two weeks from now.
Josh Vaisman:
You just touched on something that is very, very important to me. It’s not a mindset that I always had. I had to develop this mindset. But when we get fixated on dissecting the problems, what we’re doing is we’re trying to make things better by eliminating. And eliminating problems never contributes to innovation, to new ways of doing, being, or feeling or any of that. To loosely steal Dr. Martin Seligman’s words, the absence of mental illness is not necessarily mental wellness. Often, when I talk about this leadership stuff, I paint a picture. Just imagine the scenario, you go to bed tonight and a miracle happens. And overnight all veterinary debt disappears, everybody in this space gets triple the pay, you never have to work a minute over 35 hours a week, you never get double booked and every client also got triple pay.
Josh Vaisman:
And so that means that every client is now ready to say yes to all your recommendations. Glorious scenario. Sounds amazing. And I watch people’s eyes light up. And then on next slide I say, do you think in this miracle scenario that everybody in veterinary medicine with a snap of a finger would be happy and fulfilled? And everybody in the room shakes their head, no.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No way.
Josh Vaisman:
Because we all know that elimination of problems is an important thing, we have to work on that stuff. But elimination of problems alone does not create fulfillment. Fulfillment is cultivated by adding things into the environment. And that’s what you’re trying to do with that conversation, that vulnerable conversation with your team. You’re looking at the problems, you’re honoring that, you’re giving them the space to share and looking what we can add to make the best of the situation we have.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Josh, I love that. I want to unpack that more with you. I think we’re going to be out of time for now. So will you come back and talk with me more about that in the future?
Josh Vaisman:
I’d love to. Andy, this is a joy for me, to chat with somebody like you, who just clearly gets this.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, thanks. I enjoyed this as well. Where can people find you online? Where can they learn more about Flourish Veterinary Consulting?
Josh Vaisman:
Yeah. So our website is just flourish.vet, F-L-O-U-R-I-S-H.vet. You can find me on LinkedIn, I’m pretty active on there. We’re on Facebook as well. And then just at various conferences and things around the country.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Awesome. Thanks, Josh.
Josh Vaisman:
Thank you, Andy, appreciate you.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that is our episode. Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I hope you’re like, ah, I see why Andy said at the very beginning that this was a good episode, because it was. I really enjoyed it. Guys, if you enjoyed it, leave me an honest review wherever you get your podcast. That’s a nice thing that you can do and it means the world to me. Other than that, guys, I don’t have anything else for you. Have a wonderful day. I hope this gave you some really good food for thought. Hope you’re enjoying your holidays. Take care. Be well, bye.
