Josh Vaisman joins Dr. Andy Roark on the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast to talk about positive psychology and purpose driven leadership. Together they look at both sides of purpose, how it can be motivating to a team and how it can also be weaponized. They also touch on how purpose should not be prescribed and why it shouldn’t be set in stone forever.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Josh Vaisman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-vaisman-mappcp-pgd-8371877
Flourish Veterinary Consulting: https://www.flourish.vet/
Lead to Thrive Book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lead-to-thrive-josh-vaisman-mappcp-pgd/1143946758
Uncharted Veterinary Conference 2024: https://unchartedvet.com/uvc-april-2024/
Leadership Essentials Certificate: https://www.vetfolio.com/learning-paths/uncharted-leadership-essentials-certificate
Charming the Angry Client Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: https://drandyroark.com/store/
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Josh 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.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I am here with Josh Vaisman, who You get to hear my thoughts on Josh Vaisman in just a minute. I really like him a lot. I don’t tell him that in this episode. I tell him the opposite and you’ll hear why.
But I like Josh a lot. He is a really interesting person. He’s a really deep thinker. Boy, I throw hard curveballs at him today. I asked him about motivating people. And then when he tells me that purpose is important, I tell him. What my concerns about motivating with purpose are, and then he breaks them down into things, ways that we should not motivate people with purpose or use them to drive our culture.
So we talk about weaponizing purpose. We talk about prescribing purpose and we talk about purpose and me. And so he sort of breaks out in these three different, different components and we go through it and I press him for examples and push him to see if he can convince me of his ideas and man, he does pretty darn good.
But this is something I’m really interested in so he gets the full court press in this because I really well I put him through his paces because I wanted to ask him about some stuff that I’ve tried to figure out and things that I wrestle with a little bit, you know in my own job and my own teams and so anyway, that’s it.
But he boy, it’s a great episode. So, all right guys, that’s enough from me. Let’s get into this.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: (singing) 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. How are you?
Josh Vaisman: I’m doing good, Andy. How are you today?
Dr. Andy Roark: Man I am sick of your face. That’s where I am. I am so sick of you.
Josh Vaisman: Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: I tried to hold it back and I just, I didn’t, I made it this far in the podcast before I have to tell you. My employees think that you are so great. They are so enamored with you.
And the number of times I have had to hear about what Josh Vaisman thinks, and what Josh Vaisman says, and what is in Josh Vaisman’s book, I just, I didn’t know that I could get through this podcast, and I can’t. I just have to tell you up front. I can’t take it anymore.
Josh Vaisman: You know, I get it. I think you need to add your name to the list of people whose nightmares include this.
Dr. Andy Roark: Josh’s face. Oh, no. It’s I– it’s one of those things I was like, ah, I have to go talk to Josh now because clearly his book is phenomenal and people like I, my employees are literally passing a copy around and like someone’s like, have you read Josh’s book? And she’s like, no, I’m going to get it when Tyler’s done.
I was like, You can have mine. Like, he sent me one. Like, he gave it to me.
Josh Vaisman: It’s true. It’s true.
Dr. Andy Roark: And they’re like, No, I’ll wait for Tyler’s. It’s annotated now. I’m like, Oh, you gotta be kidding me. So,
I’m like, I, I write stuff, and they’re like, it’s not like Josh’s book. You don’t. And so, anyway, that’s my personal hell. I’ve heard from years, like, practice owners say, You know, I tell my team this, and then you come and say the same thing, and they listen.
I’m like, I had that experience at a staff meeting. I was like, well, guys, I, this, I really think this is what we should do. And they all sat in silence, and one of them said, That’s what Josh Vaisman says too. And they’re like, oh, okay, let’s do it. And I was like, oh, you gotta be kidding me. So, anyway,
Josh Vaisman: Andy, that could be your new in with the team. The next time that you need them to do something, you just say, well, you know what Josh suggested.
Dr. Andy Roark: You know what Josh Vaisman says? Let me, I’ll quote you, I’ll enter into the quoting Josh Vaisman contest.
Josh Vaisman: Just make up a quote and just tie my name to it. And, you know, yeah,
Dr. Andy Roark: As Josh Vaisman says, working an extra hour on the weekends is good for character. No,
Josh Vaisman: There we go. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: Anyway, that’s not it. Let’s talk about your book because it’s all I hear about in my team.
It’s called Lead to Thrive, The Science of Crafting a Positive Veterinary Culture. And so, Talk to me about a little bit, lay down some background of kind of how you settled into this, what your objectives going into the book were, like, when you were like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna write a, as opposed to doing a speaking tour or a course or whatever, like, I’m gonna write a book.
What were you hoping to do with this book?
Josh Vaisman: I was hoping to somehow have the opportunity to make your every day a living hell at work.
Dr. Andy Roark: I knew it.
I knew that’s where you were going.
Josh Vaisman: I, Andy, I, gotta tell you, I often share with people, and I really do mean this, I’m, I truly am being serious here, I was a failed leader in veterinary settings. I had a wonderful opportunity to be a managing partner in a couple veterinary practices, the on site hospital director, thinking that I was showing up with great intentions and leading well.
And the reality is that I didn’t do a good job of it. In fact, I didn’t do a good job of it to the point of actually causing unintentional harm to other people and myself. And going through an experience like that, I had this sort of realization that I only could do the best that I had with the tools and the skills that I knew.
And no one had ever taught me a different way to do things, so I defaulted to what I thought I knew, and it wasn’t working. I wanted to make sure that no one else had to have that kind of experience. That no one else in a leadership position in this wonderful profession that we’re in ever had to go through the kinds of trials and tribulations that I went through.
I wanted them to have a set of tools so that from day one, they could be the kind of leader that they aspire to be.
Dr. Andy Roark: I love that. When you start sort of laying out your book, you start talking about sort of positive psychology and what it is and what it’s not. And, one of the things that I sort of picked up, I wrestled with this early on in running my team and stuff. Because a lot of things that you talk about are, I think are, real, I mean, the book is really good.
It’s a really good book. The things that you talk about, they’re absolutely important. And I have felt, sometimes in the past, like when my team talks about positive psychology, psychological safety, things like that. At some point, as the person who has to kind of make the sausage actually get made, I’m like, guys, we can’t, it can’t all be good vibes and warm, fuzzy feelings, as much as I want it to be.
Like, I am a very positive person. We’ve got a very good culture on our team, and I feel like we have for a long time. And also, there are some parts that are not fun, and sometimes people are uncomfortable, and that’s not failure. And so I wrestled a bit with this, positive psychology means that it should be good feelings, good vibes, comfortable all the time.
And you sort of start off your book talking about that sort of idea. Can you sort of lay out your thoughts on that?
Josh Vaisman: Oh, absolutely. I appreciate you bringing that up, because it’s actually a very important distinction to make. Positive psychology and this approach to positive leadership that I’m trying to convey in the book is absolutely not about happy, joyful unicorns and rainbows, feeling, you know, cuddling with kittens and puppies all day.
It should not be that way. In fact, that’s in some ways the antithesis to the message. What positive psychology and this approach to positive leadership is really about is a recognition that the work that we do in veterinary medicine, regardless of what role we’re in, whether you’re a small animal practitioner in a local general practice.
You’re a solo equine practitioner out in a truck. You work in industry. You work in pharmacy, you know, pharma. Whatever you do in this profession, you are facing daily stressors. This work is deeply purposeful, and it doesn’t always feel meaningful. Positive psychology is an approach to taking difficult things and finding ways to make them fulfilling so that even though we’re doing hard things, we still find joy and well-being in the overall trajectory of where we’re going.
Dr. Andy Roark: So, you say this profession is purposeful, but it’s not always meaningful. Par parse those apart from me a little bit.
Josh Vaisman: Sure. Yeah. So, I’ve done this activity in front of audiences where I’ll ask them, tell me what you see as the purpose of veterinary medicine. And Very quickly, people come up with things like we all know intuitively in our mind that the work that we do has a purpose to it. I have a good friend, a colleague of mine, Zach Mercurio.
He’s a researcher and a speaker and consultant out of Colorado State University. And Zach often talks about the difference between the purpose of work and the purpose in work. So the purpose of work is how people tend to respond to that. You know, I hear things, Andy, that you’ve probably heard similar things.
You know, veterinary medicine exists. To celebrate the human animal bond, veterinary medicine exists to give voice to the voiceless, veterinary medicine exists to make sure that our, you know, our food net is safe. You know, all of those things apply to veterinary medicine. There’s a why, a purpose that drew us to do this kind of work.
But there’s a thing about purpose of work. Purpose of work can get diluted over time. So you become a veterinarian. I imagine if you think back to, you know, your first day on the job in practice, it was probably a mix of excitement and terror, but you really felt like you were doing the thing that you meant to do.
You know, now I finally made it here. My why and the what I do are intertwined. And now years in, for a lot of us, what happens is that day by day, the why and the what start to separate. And the why just becomes what we do every day. It’s sort of like the water around a fish or the air around us. We don’t really notice it’s present until it’s gone.
The purpose in work, that experience of meaningfulness, so meaningfulness you can think of it as purpose activated. It’s when I have an acute experience that to me I perceive as positive, purposeful, and significant. So I’m doing something right now that feels like, wow, this is meaningful. That’s purpose activated.
That’s that why and that what slamming back together in a singular moment. So we can be doing work that is imbued with a deep amount of purpose, being a veterinarian. And it doesn’t feel purposeful in that moment. When the client is standing in front of you and they’re in a bad mood, and you feel like, you know, you’re shorthanded in the team, and you’re overwhelmed, and things aren’t really going right, and you lost a patient yesterday, or whatever might have happened, in that moment it doesn’t, you don’t feel the purpose of your work.
You know it’s there, but you don’t feel it.
Dr. Andy Roark: So, are you saying you don’t feel it because it’s not the purpose being activated, as you put it? Like,
Josh Vaisman: Yes, there are things that we can do that can activate purpose and there’s things that we can do for ourselves. But what I like to encourage people to think about– and that’s what the book is really about is– when we’re in a leadership position, we have an unbelievable opportunity, a gift, if you will, to be able to increase the opportunity for meaningfulness in work.
We can take the purpose of work and activate it into purpose in work for others. And that’s the key thing. If you think about the definition of meaningfulness, that it’s positive, purposeful, and significant, that’s significance. That’s almost always involving another human being. It’s an impact on the world, right?
If we can show people their impact in, in, you know, meaningful, intentional ways, it activates moments of purpose. It activates moments of meaningfulness for others.
Dr. Andy Roark: So, when you talk about leading with purpose, leading with meaningfulness, what I’m hearing you say is that this is a focus on activating these moments, right? To making sure that we have these expressed moments along the way. I am very much about purposeful leadership in that I always, I, have a mission, we have a higher purpose, we talk a lot about what is the mission, what are the values, what are we trying to accomplish, what does done look like, and I talk a lot about that, and I talk to people about what are their motivators, what do they care about, how do they feel appreciated, and I talk about those things a lot.
Is there a is there a double edged sword here? Is it possible that we talk to people about purpose in a way that they ultimately I know this sounds a little bit strange to say, but one of the things I’ve run into in my career at certain times is I’ve always been very good to get people to focus on the meaning and the purpose.
I have seen frustration come back when people say, well, we talk about the purpose, and now We have to meet these sales targets that are coming down from, you know, from corporate, or we have to do these other things and this is incompatible with my purpose. And for me, it’s always, it’s, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten a little bit less likely to talk about purpose as directly as I used to.
In that, I still weave it into what we do, and I very much talk about it. But it also, I’m, I get a bit wary that when we, when we navigate the difficulties of practice, not every day is going to be a celebration of the bond with the pet owners. Because some days we’re just going to have angry people.
And then people go, “God, I’m here for my purpose, and I did not achieve my purpose, today was a failure.” And I go, No, it was a success in so many other ways, but we can kind of get myopic about defining this goal almost too tightly. And so I don’t know if that makes any sense when I say that, but, do you ever have that kind of balance idea of how we talk about purpose?
Can you lean so far that you’re just dogmatic about what the purpose is? And then people say, This is all that we care about, and I just, I’ve never been able to actually work in clinical practice because there’s always, it’s a mixed motive game, and, you know, the group that we work for has got motives, and I’ve got motives, the things that are important, and the client’s got motives, and so, Yeah, so I don’t know.
Do you parse that apart? Do you just continue to lean into values? I know this is sort of a hard question, but I’m really asking you to insert these are things that I struggle with is I’m on board with purpose. Don’t get me wrong, but at some point we’re playing at a very high level of motivating people in difficult challenging changing circumstances and I go how tightly do you hold the wheel on this Josh?
Josh Vaisman: Yeah, I think it’s a really important question to explore. There are 3 things that were coming to mind as I was listening to you describe that, that experience that you’ve had around purpose and, some of those other things and, especially that that, that marker that you landed on of, like, not Every day is going to feel like a celebration of the human animal bond.
And that’s just the reality of our work. So three things, I’m going to say them out loud, and then I’ll kind of come back to each of them. The first one is this idea of purpose being weaponized. it’s never helpful to weaponize purpose. The second. Yeah, I’ll come back to that. The second thing is purpose being weaponized, the, oh gosh, I just had it in my head and now it’s escaping me.
The third one is, um, it’s, uh, purposeful to me, or meaningful to me is one thing to do. Oh, and then the second one that I was thinking was about purpose being prescriptive. We don’t want purpose to be prescriptive. And those–the second two kind of relate. So let me come back to the weaponization thing. There’s actually some really interesting research in, circles of research around purpose and meaning and work and things of that nature. Around the dark side of a calling. So, you know, we often talk about veterinary medicine, especially for veterinarians and technicians, is, you know, “I felt called to this work.”
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. I don’t like that. I don’t, it’s not popular, but I’ll push back against that sometimes. I feel like it puts so much pressure on people.
Josh Vaisman: A hundred percent.
Dr. Andy Roark: If you’re called to something, you have zero exits. You know what I mean?
It’s like, it’s like the only option is come, is failure or to continue down this path.
And I go, Oh, yeah. God, why would you hem yourself in? And it’s the story we tell ourselves. But I know that some people go, no, it is a calling. And a lot of people say that to us in a very kind way. They’re like, oh, this is a calling. And I’m like, it’s really not. It’s just a job.
Josh Vaisman: It’s just a job.
Dr. Andy Roark: Hey guys, is your clinic slowing down? Are you having more open appointments than you had in the past? Are you wondering a little bit about what you need to do to get clients to, one, come into the building, and then, two, listen to your doctors and your staff when they get there? Well, you, my friend, might need to head over to the Uncharted conference in April.
That’s right! It’s in Greenville, South Carolina. It is April 18th through the 20th. This is the granddaddy of the Uncharted Veterinary Conferences. This is the one that we started with. This is our marketing and strategy conference back to our roots. I love this stuff! The theme of this conference is ‘Standing Out In A Sea Of Noise’
It is all about strategic communication. It is about getting heard. This is going to be a lot about your brand identity is understanding the modern consumer who is getting more price conscious because things are getting more expensive. We are going to need to up our marketing game, our communication game, our client bonding game, our trust building game, we’re going to have to turn the volume over on that stuff.
Guys, we didn’t have to do that for the last couple of years. People have been coming in, the pandemic was a surge in business. A lot of us are trying to keep our head above water. It’s not going to be that way going forward. It’s time to re-engage with our clients in a motivating, educating way to get them coming back into the building.
Guys, Uncharted is not a bunch of lectures. You are not going to come here and sit in lectures. You are going to work on your business at this conference. You are going to be surrounded by butt-kicking, positive people who love that medicine, who love pet owners, and who want to create a great experience and make a wonderful place for pets to get the care that they need.
They want to have a positive workplace. They want to have a place where people smile when they come to work and they’re working on making that happen. And so if that sounds like you, or if you want to be surrounded by those people, you got to come to the April conference. Also, this is the last time for a while that the April Uncharted conference is going to be in Greenville, South Carolina.
This is our birthplace. It’s our home base. It’s our nest, this is kind of a big deal for me, at least. I, you know, I, I have loved this conference in Greenville. I still love it in Greenville. I think Greenville will always be our home, but guys, we’re spreading our wings. We are going to be moving out and doing new things and going to new places.
And it is going to be amazing. But if you want the original Uncharted experience, if you are like, man, I’ve heard so many people talk about Uncharted in downtown Greenville and how the conference just fits into that community and how amazing it is, this is your chance. You want to be here. Also, if you have been an Uncharted member, if you’ve come to our conferences before, if you loved it, you always thought there’d be a chance to come back to the old Westin Poinsett and downtown Greenville you should grab a spot.
I think that there will probably be a chance in the future, but it won’t be for a while. I think there’s going to be a lot of people coming back because they want to do it one more time at the Westin before we move on and check out some new places and do some new stuff.
So I do expect this event will sell out. Guys, go ahead, head over to UnchartedVet.com and grab your registration spot right now. I’ll put a link down in the show notes. Again, you do not want to miss it. This is an investment in yourself and in your practice and your future. It is an investment in skills that you will have and use again and again, and it’s an investment in connections.
You are the average of the people you spend time with and you’re about to be surrounded and spend time with some really amazing people. Anyway, let’s get back into this episode.
but it’s just a job. And I have, I’ve gotten more and more willing to say that. not to pet owners who are being nice, but to our colleagues. Cause I really, I don’t think that’s good headspace for us.
Josh Vaisman: I completely agree with you. There’s a veterinarian here in Colorado. She’s a friend of mine and she’s been advocating for exactly what you just said. She is on a lifelong mission to encourage people in our profession to embrace the phrase as a positive. It is just a job.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s just a job. Yeah.
Josh Vaisman: Her name is H. Howells, by the way and H is shout out to H. She’s doing some really, great stuff out there in the world.
Yeah. You know, when there’s a risk to viewing work as the sore, the sole source of your identity or the sole source of your sense of purpose or meaning in the world, there’s a risk because it can become exploitative.
Whether people intend it to be or not, so the research that I’m referencing here was on zookeepers and what they found was that there seemed to be a very strong relationship between their sense of calling, how they thought of their work as a zookeeper as a calling, and all sorts of deleterious outcomes like burnout, overwork, all those kinds of things.
So we never want to weaponize purpose. We never want to make purpose these, like, a thing that we’re using to coerce or manipulate Others. We got to be very careful
Oh. So, so, so let me give you an example here. So it sounds like what you’re saying is The old, I mean basically it’s the old, If you really cared, you would do this for free, or I thought you loved animals. How could you charge me money for this surgery that you know have? And that’s very much weaponizing purpose and uh, they’re guessing about what your purpose is, but if they’re right, boy, they’re, that, but that’s why vets get so upset about that particular barb is because it is weaponized purpose. You know, it is, it is, weaponized morality. And so, it,
it really, it hurts. It stings.
Another version of that may be a bit unexpected. It’s certainly a bit more subtle when you referenced those days where like, listen, it was just a shit day. Everybody was mean to us. Nothing really went well. We’re all ragged and overwhelmed and feeling a bit crusty. If I walk into that space as the leader in that practice, the medical director, the lead technician, the practice manager, and I say, “Hey guys, I know today was tough, but let’s talk about how we lived our purpose today.”
That can also feel like weaponization. That can feel dismissive to people. That can feel like Not always, but there are times where
Dr. Andy Roark: Tell me more about that. So, okay. Yeah. Paint, paint me a more clear picture of this, Josh. So, so, so it’s been a crap day and I walk in, I say, guys, today was a bad day, but hey, we really lived our value, we really pursued our purpose today. Tell me why you don’t like that.
Josh Vaisman: I’m not saying I don’t like that. I’m saying that we need to be cautious about how and when we use that. So an example I’ll give you, you’re married, you have a wife, your wife, you come home from work and your wife starts telling you about all of the things that were bad in her day. And your first response is, well, something must’ve gone well today.
Tell me what went well. How is she going to respond to that?
Dr. Andy Roark: I Get that. Yeah, that’s like the old I love the phrase choose happy and I have a hundred percent seen choose happy used to dismiss people of well You got to choose happy Like at some point you’re like I got screamed at they look spittle on my face and “well, you should choose happy”
Josh Vaisman: There’s a reason for that.
Dr. Andy Roark: Like okay.
Are you serious? Okay. I got ,now I’m on board with this. Okay, I got
Josh Vaisman: Yes. So when we walk into a space where our team is completely downtrodden from a terrible day, and our immediate reaction is to try and pull the purpose back to make them feel better or to make them see that what they’re doing is meaningful, you can’t force purpose on somebody.
You, you have to, there’s an in between phase that we call empathy. And that has to happen first, right? Before you can start tying it back. So that’s one of the, I mean, there’s, very clear examples of weaponizing purpose and where we literally exploit people. But there’s less subtle ones that we need to be aware of.
There’s also the prescriptive side that we have to be cautious of. Your purpose is not what I tell you it is. I don’t get to prescribe that for you, right? I don’t get to, I don’t get to go in my little back office and decide, okay guys, these are going to be your values now. Now go live them.
It has, there has to be some sort of communal you know, collaborative effort to activate purpose.
I can’t tell you that things were purposeful. I have to show you that what you did was purposeful. That’s different. That means I have to understand what you talked about earlier. What are your motivations? What are the things that really seem to matter to you? When do you light up and how can I tie what you’ve done to that?
For you, because sometimes we can’t do it for ourselves. So we got to be careful about it being prescriptive.
What was the third one? I forgot what the third one was now.
Dr. Andy Roark: Purposeful to me.
Josh Vaisman: Purposeful to me. Yes. Thank you. Sometimes the experience of meaningfulness is not actually activated through that quote higher purpose that we think of in our work.
Sometimes it’s simply through human impact. So there’s a tool you’ve probably actually heard of this. I would be willing to bet because I know you well enough that you probably already do this on a regular basis. But there’s a feedback tool that we often try and teach folks. The acronym for it is SBI.
Maybe you’ve heard of it. Situation Behavior Impact.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah.
Josh Vaisman: Sometimes that tool is used for corrective feedback, but often it’s a really, yeah, often it’s actually a really nice way to meaningfulness in somebody. Andy, when You asked me the question about purpose and how I think of it from my book, right?
So that’s the situation and your behavior. Gosh, it really made me feel like you really did actually take some time to read through what I wrote and you took it seriously and so seriously that you put some thought into it and threw me a question that actually made me think. Gosh, what an impact that had on me.
Thank you for doing that.
Dr. Andy Roark: I did not do that, I’ve just a book that’s been quoted at by members of my team and until I know it, I just know it. I can quote pages to you.
Ah, right.
I did. But no, I love it. We teach a very similar model at Uncharted the company I run, which is basically an engagement sort of question or statement.
Dr. Andy Roark: And then the behavior statement of this, we. when you behave this way, when you said this, is what the outcome was. And the last thing is, what would I like you to do with that? Would you keep that up? Thank you very much. Or, could we do that differently in the future? But yeah, it’s, but it’s, you’re right, on it.
It’s very much about that, you know, I would say, you know, people are simple animals and I don’t care how many degrees you have. And we know how training works and it’s generally positive. And it’s about being clear about the behavior that you see and that you’re trying to recognize and reinforce.
And so, anyway, I just think, I think that’s, I think people, when they think about feedback, they immediately think of negative feedback. And I’m like, but why? We don’t, that’s not how we, that’s not how we do training.
Josh Vaisman: So, so I think of that day that you mentioned, that day where it doesn’t feel like anything tied to our purpose of, you know, celebrating the human animal bond. It was that horrible day. Now, imagine that I walk into that space and I say, guys, today was awful. And I gotta be honest with you, I don’t know that
I felt at times that I was going to make it through the day, but you know, Andy, earlier, when you jumped in with that cranky client, when you could see that I was like at a loss for words, and you jumped in and you made those two statements that you made, not only could I see the impact it had on the client, but gosh, that actually made me in that moment feel like maybe I can get through today.
So thank you for doing that. That is activating meaningfulness. That’s showing that Andy, that thing that you did in this God awful, horrible day, it was positive, purposeful, and significant for me. So thank you for that.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, I, love that. This, fits into, you know, one of the things, the reason I always love talking with you is because there’s a lot of practices that I’ve come up with or that we’ve come up with Uncharted and we use. And then I’ll talk with you and you sort of lay down the science behind them.
I’m like, oh, that’s, I love it. I knew, I know it works. We’ve done it, you know, for years and hundreds of times. So one of my big things, I’m not a big mission statement guy. For, just logistical reasons mostly, but I am a huge core values guy, and so I, I love core values from teams, and and I love for a team to come together and say these are our values, and then one of my favorite, in order for, to make core values work, they have to be real, because talk is
cheap, and so one of my favorite things is the example exercise, where I say, you know, we we’ve got our core values painted on the wall today was hard, you
And I’m wondering if any of you saw anyone on our team living our values.
And then somebody says, well, I saw integrity as our core value.
And I saw this person talking to a pet owner who was trying to sort of be manipulative and she was very kind, but she did not bend the rules. She said, this is how we do things. And to me, that’s acting with integrity. And it’s just,
it’s this beautiful thing, especially if you take it to the team, because then they’re reinforcing each other. And
Josh Vaisman: Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: I don’t want to build a culture where the culture is the leader, Andy the leader is amazing. And so that’s why we’re here. that’s not a culture. That’s like a cult, you know, and like I want them to appreciate each other and to create that experience for each other.
So I really love how you kind of laid that out. But to me, those examples of values, I think are kind of right, right in line. Let me ask you this. I know we’re gonna, we’re sort of running short on time, but, this is something I’m just really curious. So one of the things I’ve sort of come to believe is that one of the things you have to do if you want to have a team that runs on values is you have to hold those values kind of loosely and be open to recreating them as the team changes.
And so what I do so I’ll say I, I don’t have a problem putting the words on the wall. But I still think you have to be willing to paint over those words and paint new words every couple of years because my, what I have seen is exactly what you were saying is if I bring people in and I say this is our culture, to some degree that works, especially it works if it’s one new person coming in and they sort of integrate into that culture.
But over time, if I have people leave and I have new people come in, which is not failure, by the way, that’s just. That’s growth and development and life and how things
go is the
Josh Vaisman: Agreed.
Dr. Andy Roark: impermanence of our world. And so they come in at some point, it’s probably good. I think to step back and say, let’s take a blank slate here and let’s come back together and talk about what we really believe in.
And I find that process of laying down the values is such a bonding process for the group. I’m not interested in having, you know, the, holy values and purpose that don’t change because that’s not really what the, what everybody’s feeling. And so, so to me, I’ve just kind of bought into the idea of everybody can hold this up, but also know that this is going to change as we change and the world changes.
So let me pause there and just ask you that question, Josh, when you think about the purpose and you think about getting the team on board. How permanent is that purpose in your mind? How, how sacrosanct is that? How untouchable is it versus this thing’s play dough. And I don’t think we want to change our values every week, but I, but anyway, I’ll just, so let me stop talking there and just to say, how does that mesh with sort of your thoughts?
And you could feel free to tell me, I think you should push harder to keep your values, Andy. I don’t know. What are your thoughts?
Josh Vaisman: No, I don’t think I’m going to do that. In fact, I’m going to ask if I can come work with you so that I can also join in quoting my book on a regular basis. No, I really love this. What you’re talking about is a sense of community around why we’re here. So, you know, one of the things that we often ask when we’re working with organizations is, you know, when we’re trying to do this sort of organizational identity work, like really define who are we and who do we want to be in the world, right?
There are questions that need to be, ah, that need to be answered to really get to that. and we’ve tried to sort of simplify it into three questions. Why us? Why now? Why here? Right. And if you, those questions, you’re, you may have very different answers to those questions five years from now than you have right now.
And it’s actually worth consistently revisiting those questions. Culture, organizational identity, core values, purpose, mission, vision, all of those things should be as organic as we are. They should be as shifting as we are. They should change over time if we change over time. And the only way that we’re going to know if they have to change is to ask the questions.
Hey guys, you know, a year ago we sat down, we had this conversation and this was the conclusion that we all came to. Does this conclusion still work for us today? What doesn’t work anymore? What do we need to evolve? Where do we need to pivot? What do we need to renovate? But that word renovation is something I’ve been playing with a lot lately.
I think about like, you know, in this house, my wife and I have lived in this house that I’m sitting in right now talking to you from for 15 years. And every couple, three years, my wife gets an itch. She looks around at something that we’ve, you know, that we did a couple, three years ago, move some furniture around or painted the cabinets or something.
She says, you know, I think we could do that better. And then we launch some new renovation project in the home. That’s kind of the reality of living in a home. It’s very uncommon that we move into a space and keep it exactly the same for 50 years. Something changes over time. Our workplace environments should be the same and we should be able to evolve that.
So I love that you do that and I love that you include your team in that effort.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, it’s just something, so first of all, if you want to motivate your team, you want them to own the purpose and the values.
Josh Vaisman: Yes. Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s funny the number of people who come to me and say, Andy, I have a purpose. Help me to indoctrinate the team into this, they don’t say it that way, but that’s what it is.
It’s how do I bring the stone tablets to the team in a way that they’ll. Pick them up and honor them, and I’m like, I don’t know, buddy, I’ve been doing this 20 years, and I’ve never been able to pull it off I, but I’m pretty good at getting the community to come together, circle up, and we can hammer, you know, some cool stuff into some tablets together, and then it’s their tablets, and they’ll, be all about it.
But we can do that. But I just think that’s sort of a fundamental thing. And so if you buy into that, I’m not bringing the tablets down the mountain. We’re gonna circle up and create our own guidelines. I think you have to buy into the ideas. If you believe in that,
then you probably also have to believe in the fact that it’s not Once you make it, it’s not permanent.
You’re going to have to make it and remake it. There’s also sort of the It’s almost well, what have you done for me lately? Idea, too. We’re just because we were all excited about this purpose five years ago. Maybe that’s not what we’re feeling today, you know, and we should have a different purpose.
But anyway, I don’t know I really enjoy these conversations. I think it’s fun to just think about what we’re doing and what really matters But I think that’s
something that We need more of in that medicine. It’s so funny because we’re so innately purposeful. Like we do such meaningful
Josh Vaisman: Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: But we just don’t talk to our people enough about like hey, what are you really doing?
Maybe I don’t know if you think about what you think about this but maybe it’s because we make assumptions about what people’s purpose are
Because such a strong purpose. You know, we’re like, you’re here for the human animal bond. And like, I don’t know, maybe they’re not here for that.
Maybe they’ve got other reasons. So, anyway, Josh Vaisman, thanks so much for being here. I don’t care what my team says. I still think you’re okay.
Um, Just okay.
And, uh, your book, Lead to Thrive, The Science of Crafting a Positive Veterinary Culture, I’ll put a link down in the show notes for that.
Where can people find you online? Where can they follow your adventures and learn more from you?
Josh Vaisman: Before I respond to that question, you know me enough by now to know that I have to leave with some sort of complimentary remark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Are you Canadian?
Josh Vaisman: No, but I’ve
Dr. Andy Roark: Honorary Canadian.
Josh Vaisman: Yes, I’ve been to Canada. So, I feel like I absorbed a little asmotic. Andy, I You and I had a conversation before this episode started, and then we’ve gotten to talk for the last 25 or 30 minutes in this episode.
And you know, one thing that is really emerging to me is you have this beautiful way of being very confident in your beliefs, but also being open to revising them. And that is a very special mix. That I think back now in my career in vet med and just watching you and in the work that you’ve done, and I think you’ve actually had that mix for a long time.
And you’ve sort of set the stage that this is possible in our profession. That really means a lot. And I really appreciate you sort of opening those doors for the rest of us to walk through to be able to do that as well. So thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, you’re very kind. Thank you.
Josh Vaisman: Where folks can find me flourish.vet is our website. That’s where you can find Flourish Veterinary Consulting.
We’re pretty active on Facebook and Instagram as well. And then I personally like the sound of my own voice a lot in written form on LinkedIn. So if people want to read my musings, that’s a good place to find me as well.
Dr. Andy Roark: That sounds great. Thanks a lot for being here. Guys, thanks for tuning in everybody. Have a great day.
And that’s our show. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thanks to Josh for being here. Gang check him out. If you’ve not picked up a copy of his book, I’ll link it up in the show notes. Definitely go and grab it.
I’m not kidding when I say my team loves it, and they quote it, and they talk about it, and they kick it back and forth, and it’s just it has been something that they have really liked, and it Pushed me to go back and I get, everybody sends me books. When people in vet medicine write new books, they generally send me a copy and I love it.
But I get a lot of books and his has absolutely stood the test of time and it has been brought up again and again. And so, anyway, if you are looking for something to read and you like positive psychology, like the idea of running healthy, productive teams, there’s a whole lot worse resources you can find than that.
So anyway, maybe take a look at it. I’ll link it up for you. Take it easy guys. Talk to you later. Bye.
