As veterinary medicine continues to wrestle with its burnout problem, an emphasis on engaged and positive workplace cultures is on the rise. In today’s episode, Jeff Thoren visits to discuss the power and importance of minding our thoughts.
LINKS
Uncharted Podcast on iTunes: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-…st/id1449897688
WORKSHOP – What Vet Med Can Learn From Improv:
unchartedvet.com/product/what-vet…arn-from-improv/
WORKSHOP – Loading the Bus w/ Dr. Andy Roark & Stephanie Goss:
unchartedvet.com/strategic-planning/
UNCHARTED APRIL CONFERENCE:
unchartedvet.com/uncharted-april-2022/
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
Jeff Thoren is a husband, father, cat parent, and avid road cyclist who values uniqueness and lightheartedness.
His career highlights include:
– Founder of Gifted Leaders, LLC an established executive and team coaching company.
– Clinical Assistant Professor of Veterinary Communication at Midwestern University in Glendale, AZ
– One of only five veterinarians in the world who also hold a credential from the International Coaching Federation (PCC)
– Board Certified Coach specializing in leadership and team development
– Over 300 hours of accredited, coach-specific training and continuing education
– Extensive individual and team coaching experience
– Founding member of the Extraordinary Teams Partnership
– Co-Founder of the Enlightened Rebel Alliance
– Co-Author of a featured column in Today’s Veterinary Business
Jeff is committed to helping build engaging, innovative, and humane workplace cultures characterized by collective leadership, self-directed teams, and a spirit of partnership.
He has experience in private & corporate veterinary practice, industry, operating his own coaching/consulting business, and, most recently, academia!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This podcast transcript is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the veterinary profession. Click here to learn more about Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at Banfield.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome, everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I think a lot and I write a lot and I talk a lot about what we put into our minds and why it matters so much, because it does matter. It matters a lot. We are the thoughts we choose to have, in a lot of ways. And that’s what I want to bring on and talk to our guests today. Our guest is Jeff Thoren. He’s an author at his regular column for Today’s Veterinary Business, which is where I was reading some of this stuff. He is the founder of Gifted Leaders and established executive and team coaching company. He’s a clinical assistant professor of veterinary communication at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona. The list goes on and on. I’ve known Jeff for years and years and years and he’s a thinker when it comes to positive psychology and how we choose to look at our profession. And that’s what we talk about today. So guys, without further ado, let’s get into this episode.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to have you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast. Jeff Thoren, thanks for being here.
Jeff Thoren:
Hey, thanks, Andy. Glad to be here.
Dr. Andy Roark:
My pleasure to have you on. I’ve known you for years. And I’ve always really enjoyed our conversations. And you’ve done so much sort of facilitation that I’ve seen over the years and your work on communication before communication was cool in that matter. Take that the right way. Don’t take that as a Jeff Thoren is old. Take that as Jeff Thoren was ahead …
Jeff Thoren:
I was ahead of my time. I was ahead.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s exactly right.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
For those who don’t know, you are the founder of Gifted Leaders, which is an executive team coaching company. You are a clinical assistant professor of veterinary communications at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona. You have your board certified coaching specialist for leadership and team development. You do a lot of things. And I’ve been wrestling with something that’s very much in your wheelhouse. And so, I’m really glad that you agreed to come on and let me pick your brain a little bit.
Jeff Thoren:
All right. Sounds good.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Here’s what I wanted to talk about today. I’m really big on this kick right now of the stories that we tell ourselves matter. And I am looking at this from a wellness and mental health standpoint. And I’m definitely not taking a toxic positivity position or the everything’s a panacea if you just choose to be happy idea. But I really believe that if we want to have a healthy profession, if we as individuals want to have a healthy career, the stories that we tell ourselves matter. The thoughts that we choose to allow ourselves to have about our job, it really matters.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I am deeply concerned, when I look at the media and social media. And the voices that get amplified there are generally … There’s Chicken Little sky is falling voices in some cases. In other cases, it’s just, people are having legitimate problems or really legitimate struggles. But those voices get so amplified. And there’s so many people who have legitimate struggles, that if you look at the profession, it’s very easy to feel that everything is bad. Everyone is struggling, the profession has set us up to fail and to struggle, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Everything is darkness.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I go, “I’m sorry. I don’t believe that that’s real.” And I’m trying to understand, I guess, how we choose our thoughts. Am I right on this? And what do we, as a profession, do about that? So anyway, that’s just to sort of set the table and say, “Thank you. Thank you for coming, Jeff. Here’s a tiny little problem that I want to present to you.” We’ll have this done in five minutes and we’ll be out of here.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah. Wow. I’m thinking yes, five hours, we’ve probably not even start to scratch the surface. But I think I agree. And I think as you were kind of framing your challenge, which is not just your challenge, obviously it’s my challenge, it’s our profession’s challenge right now. I’m thinking back to when I first started to get into coach training. And there’s a quote which I will not remember perfectly by Viktor Frankl that says something along the lines of between stimulus and response, there’s a space and in that space lies our power to choose and really lies our happiness.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Jeff Thoren:
And it speaks to the idea, the important power of choice and when stuff happens, we can choose to tell one story. Or we can choose maybe some different stories. So I think you’re exactly right. That got me thinking amongst lots of other things that I read and was exposed to as part of that training. The questions we ask, the stories we tell, whatever our narrative is, what we focus on becomes our reality. And that is, I think, what you’re alluding to is there’s a lot of focus on what’s not working. And when we focus on what’s not working, we see more and more of what’s not working.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Jeff Thoren:
And you’re right, it’s not about being Pollyanna. It’s not about saying, “All is good, nothing’s wrong. I’m just going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m just going to ignore it all.” It’s really about acknowledging that there’s maybe some challenges, but choosing to focus more on what can you be grateful for in that challenge? What’s there to learn in that challenge? Instead of asking what’s wrong? Who’s to blame? Which is our predominant media, right, it’s really about, it’s your fault, Andy, you did this. And if you just do what I think then everything would be better.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. This person is making my job hard. This person is awful or they’re making this bad. And I’m being negatively affected by them and they should stop doing this thing.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah. Yeah. And then try externalizing it and not taking responsibility for the fact that it’s a dance, right? It’s a two way street. Yeah, I think, focusing on blame, focusing on what the other person is doing wrong, just keeps you in that space. And so, there’s a way to shift out of that. Actually, you really want to get to the point where you’re asking, what’s here for me to learn? What am I being called to step into or step up to that maybe I have been ignoring or I’ve not been paying attention to.
Jeff Thoren:
So really, shifting to more of a what can I learn from this? What’s useful about this? What little tiny thing related to this challenge might I be grateful for? What strength internally can I build on? Those are all part of a coaching process, really, where we all have issues and we all have challenges and we need to figure out how to kind of shift into getting more what we want.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Jeff, unpack that for me a little bit when you talk about what strengths can I build upon? That’s an interesting turn of phrase, what do you mean when you say that?
Jeff Thoren:
Well, it could be a lot of things, right? It could be, oftentimes, when there’s challenges, we get lost in the external pressures, we get lost in the external expectations, we kind of lose ourselves. And I think a big part of moving forward in the age of uncertainty that we’re in is really being clear on who we are, what our gifts are. So it could be certain passions that we have for certain things, it could be specific gifts, strengths, things that we’re really good at. It could be values. It could be things that are purposeful and valuable to us or important to us. So, qualities of being. I think that’s often a place that we forget about because we’re just responding to, again, all this external stuff and trying to just make it go away or whatever we’re doing. But, yeah, coming back to a place of stress, it’s a centered place, right? It’s about a place of strength and we all have strengths, we all have weaknesses. We need to embrace all of that. I don’t know if that’s getting us off track, but.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, no, it was definitely not. I feel like this is the groundwork into the larger question, right? So when we say, our thoughts matter, you go, well, where do these thoughts come from? If we’re not going to be Pollyannaish, because it’s not what we’re talking about, when you’re not going to just pretend that everything is great. But instead, you want to have a productive mindset that’s based in reality. I think a lot of people, I guess, that was going to be sort of my question to you next was how do you get there? And I feel like you’re starting to lay the groundwork for that and sort of say, well, if you’re going to build a healthy perspective, it has to be built on something of substance.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so knowing yourself, knowing your strengths, knowing your values, knowing your weaknesses, that feels like fairly firm substrate on which I can build a grounded perspective.
Jeff Thoren:
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Well said, I don’t know that I can add much to that other than that it’s often the work that I think we forget to do. Because we, as a professional, you and I know as veterinarians, right, it’s really about competing to get into that school. And it’s about basically performing and developing skills and competencies. It’s a lot about doing. And I don’t remember, at least in my training, and I’m trying to bring that into what I’m doing at Midwestern in the communications program is, I need to balance that with, well, who’s the person that’s bringing this, right? What are the unique gifts? What’s the difference that I can uniquely make that you can’t? And then, how do we put our collective gifts together for the greater good? We tend to, I think, it kind of boxed into it’s a solo, we’re all doing our own little heroic thing and it all depends on us.
Jeff Thoren:
But really, we need to depend more on each other, which is one of the challenges we’re seeing in society right now is there’s a lot of polarization and people aren’t appreciating each other and the gifts that different people bring and are not even open to listening to that, so.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I like your point a lot about the way that doctors are educated. I do believe that we’re all brought into this. It’s a purely academic system, for the most part, and academic achievement is what is rewarding it. It’s getting the right answer, it’s doing the right thing on the test. And then, we’re kind of turned out into this profession that does not have those black and white answers and no one comes along and gives you a gold star. And there is no right answer when the client is unwilling to do the “best thing.” There is no right answer. It’s only what is possible here in this situation with these very specific circumstances.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I don’t know that we’re really trained for that. And so, now that you’re saying this, I go, what is the best training for that? Again, I think, you’re right to just say it’s this base, this understanding, of ourselves and our values and our skills and our self-worth and our weaknesses. So, you, as a clinical professor, you’re working with veterinary students now, how do you help them start to unpack that for themselves? I think there’s a lot of us who have probably not even had these thoughts. And honestly, I know, I talked to the most gifted and talented and wonderful people. And I’ll say to them, “What do you use your strengths and your weaknesses?”
Dr. Andy Roark:
And they look at me with just a blank stare, and they’re like, “You want me to tell you what I’m uniquely good at? Or what my specific patterns of struggle are that I do encounter over and over?” And I say, “Yes.” And they’re like, “I can’t. I have no idea.”
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
How do you help people start to have this discovery?
Jeff Thoren:
Oh, man, Andy, this is …
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, this is a huge question. Lifelong journey is what it is, but for people who just go, I don’t know how to begin to understand myself this way. Where would you even point these people?
Jeff Thoren:
Well, there’s a lot there, obviously. And I think I want to come back to, we’re talking about kind of being very clear on who you are, what your gifts are, what difference you want to make in the world. And then there’s also, and I don’t want to lose what you brought up before about being comfortable not knowing which is very, like you say, in our academic background, that is a very challenging thing for us to be able to go into a place. But I think they go hand-in-hand, it’s being clear on who I am and then being able to go into a situation that’s uncertain, that’s volatile that I can’t control and there is no right answer, at least not one that I can provide. Maybe there might be an answer that collectively we can come up with.
Jeff Thoren:
So I think it’s a combination of both those things. So on the front side, I’ll come back to that, because that’s the question you just asked. And then, this not knowing side is really about being present. I think it’s about mindfulness. It’s about developing that capacity so we can circle back around to that. But I think to answer your original question, self-awareness, well, number one, you and I are still working on, right, we haven’t figured it out.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, exactly.
Jeff Thoren:
And we have our blind spots, unconscious biases, we have all those things. And it’s, I think, number one, it’s being open to constantly learning about yourself. And then of course, there’s a bazillion ways to do that. Read reading books, getting a coach or a therapist, if that’s something that’s needed. It’s lots of assessments. There’s a great assessment called the VIA Survey of Character Strengths that you can Google. And that is a model that came out of the University of Pennsylvania, Martin Seligman’s work. That’s basically it looks at kind of key core values that we all share, but we all emphasize and prioritize in different ways. So knowing, hey, this value is really important to me, this is going to be something that’s important. In any situation I’m in to honor that, that can be very useful. Strengths Finder …
Dr. Andy Roark:
I was going to ask you about that one. That’s one that I’ve really liked. It’s pretty easy to get your head around. I found that to be a great introduction. I first did it probably 15 years ago and those are still my strengths. And I still go back to them. Yeah. That’s what I’m good at.
Jeff Thoren:
Because those are the things that, yeah, historically, if you can play to those strengths, you’re going to enjoy whatever it is that you’re doing more, and you’re going to be able to contribute in a way that is most fulfilling for you.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I’ll put links to this stuff down in the show notes for people who are interested in checking them out.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah. And actually, the Today’s Veterinary Business column that Trey Cutler and I co-write, we’re at the next article, I think, that will come out, which is probably a couple months down the road. Or a subsequent article anyway, is going to have some information along these lines too.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Cool. Yeah.
Jeff Thoren:
Some links to those two specific assessments.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Today’s Veterinary Business, if you guys don’t read it, I’m so impressed with the writers that they line up. I don’t say that because I’m one of them, although I am one of them as well. But I pick it up and read it just to make sure that they spell my name right. And then, I am always sucked into the other columns that are there. So, I don’t think that that publication gets enough spotlight, there’s just such good stuff in there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So let’s circle back, talk to me a little bit about being present in mindfulness. What does that look like in the day in the clinic, right? Basically, I don’t have time to be present. I’m getting swamped in cases. I think those things are almost counter to each other. But I hear a lot of people who are too busy to be mind.
Jeff Thoren:
Well, mindfulness, as you know, is really about just being in the present moment, without judgment, and just being with what is, right, not trying to change it or do anything about it. It’s really about acceptance, which, as you and I know with our improv backgrounds, there’s a key tenant in improv that really about saying yes, right, it’s just being open to what’s there. And whether it’s useful or not useful or desired or not desired, it really starts with just being open to it and not resisting it, working with it versus against it. So I think that alone can be very useful in a busy practice setting because oftentimes, I know for me, I get triggered, I get reactive, I start resisting things, I start pushing back. I start emotionally reacting and not in a good way.
Jeff Thoren:
And those things can really get in the way of success interpersonally and many other ways. So, I think, it starts with kind of that mindset. There are some obviously, some practices of mindfulness. Breathing is one of the ones you hear the most about. But just getting used to just being present in the moment and not letting time travel, which could be catastrophizing what’s going to happen and coming up with all kinds of stories around that, and or replaying the past and kind of getting stuck in, running old tapes over and over and again.
Jeff Thoren:
So it’s really about kind of being able to get rid of some of that stuff that’s not useful and just focus on what’s right there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah [crosstalk 00:18:44].
Jeff Thoren:
So back to the quote about between stimulus and response, there’s a space. It’s really about becoming more aware of that space, and then being able to be a choice as far as what you do with that space and not just operating off autopilot, which might take you down a road that’s not going to end well.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. The book that I sort of stumbled onto, that I think is so great for people who are in practice and kind of feeling overwhelmed, and they’re not really familiar with what it means to be mindful or the science behind or things like that. It’s called Unwinding Anxiety and it’s by Judson Brewer. It’s written for people who have anxiety. And so I sort of picked it up at a time when COVID was hitting and cases are blowing up and people are … I’m trying to see people in their cars and some people don’t want to be there. It’s sort of a very science based perspective to dealing with high stress situations. And I picked it up and, honestly, Jeff, it was the best presentation of mindfulness from a very pragmatic standpoint that I’ve ever seen. If you’re someone feeling overwhelmed, I really love it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
As far as just coping strategies working with the team and working in that mess and you put your finger on one of the two biggest ones in my life is improv comedy. Improv is one of those things where you do it. And what you don’t realize is that you’re building muscles that you use for so many other things. And I found a number of things like that in my life where I go, “I’m here and I’m doing this thing, and I’m doing it for the sake of doing it. And oh, by the way, I happen to get a lot better at other things I use all the time.” I mean, just basic communication, relationship building, all of those things. So improv comedy is making up theater on the spot, for those who are unfamiliar. And Jeff and I sort of picked it up at different times.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And just the idea of walking out, especially being on stage, I think, that replicates the pressure of being in an exam room quite nicely, where you go, “Oh, I’m being watched while I do this. And the words that I say matter and I’m being judged on what to say.” And that replication of that feeling, I know they’re very different, but in the same way, that pressure is the same for me. And I think that that really helped me get more comfortable in the exam room. And working in uncertainty, I don’t know what the other person is going to say or where this is going to go. But I’m not going to resist them. I’m going to lean into where they go. And ultimately, I believe that we’ll get to a good place.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I’ve just found that skill and practicing it, doing it and getting it, so, so valuable. The other resource for me that I would recommend to young vets all the time is Toastmasters International, the public speaking group. And so, Toastmasters, if you Google it, you’ll find their website and they have chapters everywhere. But it’s a public speaking thing and it’s fun. You go and you prepare a little speech and you do it and you get feedback on it, and you get feedback to other people in their speaking. But I will just tell you, as a young professional starting out whether you’re a manager, a CSR, technician, being comfortable formulating your thoughts, and then communicating the things that are important clearly and concisely. It’s a skill that you just don’t learn otherwise, man, that investment paid back in spades, it really did.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah, a couple things that come to mind back to kind of the awareness piece. And you mentioned the Judson Brewer book, I would also add to that list, Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan. I don’t know if he’s still with Google, but he’s a Google engineer and he basically writes a lot about emotional self-awareness, which again, in our profession, we’re heady people, right? We’re rational. We’re trained kind of in left brain kinds of stuff. The right brain emotional stuff is a little bit less, we’re less familiar with that.
Jeff Thoren:
And so this book is a nice way, again, evidence-based, that kind of bridges that gap and helps us realize the importance of being aware of our emotions as data, our thoughts are data, our emotions are data. And then, how does that all fit together? So, that and then plus one for your comments about improv. There’s a great book there that got me into thinking about actually getting on stage. And it’s called Do Improvise by Robert Poynton, P-O-Y-N-T-O-N, that just kind of connects the dots between the basic principles of improv and how to show up and be present in the moment with what’s there and not knowing not being able to control things. Those are incredibly important.
Jeff Thoren:
And then, two other points in improv is you talked about the exam room. And the exam is all about relationship centered care. It’s all about partnership. And improv is all about the ensemble, right? You’re up there with a group, right? The group succeeds based on everyone contributing versus not having one hero kind of take the scene and make it funny. So, it’s really an ensemble sport. And that’s what being in the room with a client is, that’s what working as a team in a veterinary practice is all about. So, those things all blend. And then it’s not about being fun. It’s not about being on stage and performing. It’s about being present and just offering your gift in the moment as it’s appropriate.
Jeff Thoren:
So, people kind of think, “Oh, I can do improv because Wayne Brady goes up there and they give him a song title and the genre and he makes up jokes on the spot.” I could never do that. Well, no, no, I could never do that. However I can learn to get more comfortable being in the moment with what the client has given me, which may not be what I want the client to give me and being able to respond in a way that’s in the spirit of partnership and the greater good for me, the client and the pet.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. So, I’m going to put links to all the resources we just talked about down in the show notes, we’ll have that. I want to switch gears a little bit here. In your coaching business, when you’re working with professionals, you’re working with veterinarians, are there recurring problems that you were seeing a lot today? Are there things that you feel like are on the upswing as far as what people are wrestling with and how they’re wrestling? I guess, I’m sort of looking for common perspective struggles that doctors or technicians are having.
Jeff Thoren:
It’s all individual. I would say that the challenges that people face are probably typical of the challenges that our culture are facing. And I think as a profession, obviously, one of the big things right now his staff shortages and having to change and being able to do that effectively.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Jeff Thoren:
So pivoting, being more responsive and adaptable, whereas COVID basically forced that, so …
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I love the old saying, people want change, they don’t want to change. I was like, oh yeah, we’re all ready for something different. But I don’t want to …
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah, you go first.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, exactly.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah, yeah. So I think it’s really kind of, I would say, Andy, it’s a reflection of just some of the things that we’re facing as a profession. Certainly, burnout is an issue, I think, there are some serious things, again, what we focus on becomes a reality. But we don’t want to just brush aside the fact that it’s challenging for new grads to come in and meet the demands and to work at a pace that some of us that have been in practice expect. And I think there is more of a need to balance being and doing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Jeff Thoren:
And so all these things are kind of all coming together and different people have different things that are important to them. But there’s just a myriad of struggles. And a lot of it comes down to just being open to having a conversation and talking about, well, what do we want, right? Again, shifting the conversation away from, well, this sucks, and this isn’t working, when will it end? To, well, what would we want to create together? And how would we do that? And how would we use each of our individual gifts to contribute to that? The conversation, I think, is overall, I’m kind of straying away from your original question but …
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, no, that’s fine.
Jeff Thoren:
In coaching, the conversation, again, it’s about the narrative, right, and what do you want that narrative to be? I think, on a larger scale in the profession, what you’re doing is great because you’re bringing up this idea of is the conversation we’re having helpful or is it, you’re keeping us stuck in the place that we don’t want to be stuck in.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I mean, you put your finger right on. That’s exactly my concern. I see good people working very hard to try to make the profession better. And I go, is this the way that we need to work? Yeah. Are we working on the right thing to move us forward? And again, I don’t have the answer. It’s really deeply kind of what I’m searching for.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah. It will involve change and will involve us … We’ve been pretty comfortable as a profession. We’ve been very successful as a profession. The world’s changing around us. The workplace is changing as far as what people want out of it. We’re all going to have to be open to building something maybe a little different together, which hasn’t been the norm in the past.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, so here comes the hard question. What does that look like to you, Jeff Thoren? Where do we go from here?
Jeff Thoren:
Well, how much time do I have to [inaudible 00:28:53]? What do you think about that? Well, I think it’s been said, it’s really first being open to the cheese has been moved, to quote a very old management book about having to be open to change. I think it also means, again, this is from my perspective, it means kind of us redefining leadership and it not being top down and not being one group kind of controlling things. It really has to be more of a collective approach. We need to create a dialogue that everyone is equipped to have, where we can talk to each other without going into one camp versus the other. There’s just so many things but there needs to be kind of a collective dialogue that we all have together that moves us forward versus expecting the AVMA to come up with answers or putting unnecessary burden on practice managers and practice owners to have all the answers.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s a good one. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Jeff Thoren:
Really, I think, it comes down to this is something we all have a stake in. And so, how do we get all the stakeholders to talk together about what could be, right? Not what is and how do we preserve our old sacred cow ways of doing things, but what do we want and then how do we move towards that?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, that makes sense. I guess one of the things I hear you say here, the idea that someone up the chain is going to make us happy. I think that’s deeply flawed. I think that’s a recipe for ongoing frustration. Like the AVMA is not going to make us happy. It’s a balance, right? I would say that practice leadership, practice owners, practice managers, they do have a responsibility to provide a fertile ground for a healthy, satisfying career. They do have power that the individual doesn’t have. The struggle I see here, right, is I see some people who put too much emphasis on the practice owner, practice manager, medical director and say, “Well, they’re not making me,” or yeah, “They’re not generating the culture that’s forcing me to be happy or putting in a position to be happy every day.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I really do think that that’s an easy choice to make is we think, well, the people higher up the chain, they have the power, they need to make this happen for me. And I think that’s the problem. The other problem, though, that I do see is the idea that personal boundaries are the answer to everything. I don’t buy that either. I think going to the technician and saying, “Oh, you’re burned out and stressed out and tired, because you don’t have good personal boundaries.” That’s ridiculous. When the person doesn’t have options, they don’t have agency, they’re following the policies that have been put forward. They’re working through their lunch break, not because they really want to, because that is the unspoken expectation that’s being put on them.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so the idea that, personal boundaries and it’s all in the individual, I don’t buy the either. But I think that that balance is really important. I think the more personal responsibility we take for our own happiness and our own position, I think, the better off we’re going to be. And part of that personal responsibility is being honest about where you’re working. And if you’re working in a place that’s not going to allow you to be happy or successful or not going to take care of you, you need to use your personal agency, and you need to go somewhere else, because it’s pretty easy to find a job right now.
Jeff Thoren:
Yeah. A lot of these, a lot of the things you’re talking about are symptoms of kind of the traditional parent-child dynamic, leader-follower, boss-subordinate, that kind of comes with the territory is the kids basically do what they’re told or not and get in trouble. And they depend on the parental unit to make all the decisions but we need to level up the playing field, which is I think, what you’re talking about, what you’re calling for, is it needs to be an adult-adult dialogue, and more of a level playing field and a level conversation.
Jeff Thoren:
Sure. I do agree with you that positional leaders have the responsibility of facilitating that process. That’s why they’re in that role is really not to be the boss and tell people what to do. But to facilitate the conversations that often don’t happen, that need to happen to address some of the challenges that we’re facing. And to also, I think, be someone that is appreciative, is modeling the idea of what you focus on becomes a reality, right? So not centering the conversation around what’s broken and who’s to blame, but more around, here’s our collective challenge team. What do we want to do about that? And what will each of us commit to, right? It’s really about, like you said, personal responsibility.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Jeff, where can people find you online? Where can they learn more about your sort of your teaching and writing? And where can they dig deeper into this conversation if they want?
Jeff Thoren:
Well, number one as you mentioned Today’s Veterinary Business. So, the Go With The Flow column that Tray Cutler and I co-author would be a great place because there’s a lot of content along these lines of what we’ve been talking about today. They can certainly just check out giftedleader.com. And that will provide a link to my LinkedIn profile. If they want to reach out directly just have them email me at jeff@giftedleaders.com.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here, my friend.
Jeff Thoren:
Yup. Thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that is our episode. Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. As always, the best, kindest nicest thing you can possibly do for me if you liked the episode is to leave an honest review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast episodes. It’s how people find the show. It gives me some guidance about what people like and it keeps me encouraged to keep doing the episode, so I really appreciate it. Guys, take care of yourselves, be well. I’ll talk to you soon.
Editor: Dustin Bays
www.baysbrass.com
@Bays4Bays Twitter/Instagram
