Dr. Michael Miller joins the podcast to talk about the downside of leaders eating last. He and Dr. Andy Roark discuss what happens when servant leadership turns to martydom, signs that practice leaders are “giving” in an unhealthy way, and what to do about it. This episode is perfect for anyone who is pouring their heart and soul into practice and feels burned out and used up at the end of the day.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Leaders Eat Last: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others-ebook/dp/B00DGZKQM8
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
What’s on my Scrubs?! Card Game: https://drandyroark.com/training-tools/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Michael W. Miller is the co-owner of a four-hospital small animal practice in the far southwest suburbs of Chicago, seeing patients at Lakewood Animal Hospital in Morris, Illinois. In addition to dogs and cats, he has a special interest in reptiles which led him to start a wildlife rescue at his practice for hit-by-car turtles. He currently serves on the Illinois Veterinary Medical Alumni Association executive board. After being a contributing author to the DrAndyRoark.com and UnchartedVet.com websites, he started his blog called Harry Potter Vet, where he uses comparisons to the wizarding world to help veterinary professionals and himself discover the magic in veterinary medicine. Recently he has started sharing that magic through speaking engagements – most notably the AVMA Veterinary Leadership Conference and the Uncharted Veterinary Conference. Outside of vet med, he also is discovering the magic of parenthood as he and his wife raise their two young sons.
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 am here with my friend, Dr. Michael Miller. This is a fantastic episode. Boy, I could have talked to Michael for another hour.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Listen, should leaders really eat last? I mean, I hear that there was a book, that it’s popular, and leaders eat last and servant leadership is the way to go. And I have said these things myself, but let’s be honest, I think a lot of us are out there struggling with the idea that we pour our heart and souls into serving clients, into serving our team, into serving our practice, into serving our community, and we eat last. And at the end of the day, we go home and we’re starving, because we haven’t gotten to eat ourselves, and we are empty, because we have poured everything out of ourselves to give to everybody else, and we’re not happy. And we’re thinking, “Oh, well, I’m lifting everybody else up, but I only get to live this life one time and I am burning out and I am not happy and this is not working for me.” If you’ve ever had thoughts like that, this episode is for you. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Man, I got a ton of ideas out of this. I have been sitting and thinking since we recorded it. This is a really good one, guys. I hope you’re going to really enjoy it. Let’s get into this episode.
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. Dr. Michael Miller, thanks for being here.
Dr. Michael Miller:
It’s great to be back.
Dr. Andy Roark:
He says that because I forgot to hit the record button and we talked for 10 minutes and I was like, “Oh, no.” And so now I’m going to reintroduce Michael Miller in a much more streamlined way because I know where this is going now, and so we’re going to kick this thing right off.
Dr. Andy Roark:
For those of you who don’t know him, Dr. Michael Miller is a practice owner. He has written many things in a variety of outlets, including drandyroark.com, that did very, very well. He writes under the moniker the Harry Potter Vet, which I think is a wonderful way to approach this. He makes a lot of analogies between the wizarding world and the vet world, and I think that’s a refreshing way to look at what we do, and it’s also a neat way to kind of visualize problems, and it makes for great metaphors. So Michael has championed that. This is his third time being on this podcast and/or the Cone of Shame Podcast. He has done a number of lectures and he’s got some stuff that we’re working on with him in the future. It’s kind of in the incubator for him to do some more workshops and things with us. But Michael has got a fantastic perspective on something that I really want to talk about. So Michael, first of all, thanks for being here.
Dr. Michael Miller:
It’s great to be here. We’re going to hit the time turner and go back and relive.
Dr. Andy Roark:
We’re going to relive.
Dr. Michael Miller:
And just like in Harry Potter, it’s not always the same thing when you do it the second time, but it’s meant to be and it’s going to happen.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah, totally.
Dr. Michael Miller:
It’s also not the first podcast I’ve been on that this has happened. Not with you, I was on a different one, so I’m good to go. We’re rolling with the imperfection and we’re going to be fine.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, all right. It’s the second time. And I’ve done like 500 podcasts, this is the second time I forgot to hit record. And so the other time, I had multiple guests and we recorded, we went for an hour, and then I was like, “Oh, no.” This was like 10 minutes in, I feel much better about it than the last one. But hey, we all make mistakes as human beings.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, let me lay this back down again, and I just want to talk about the reason that I was really excited to have you on. And it comes from a story… Honestly, it’s a story from yesterday. And so I talked yesterday with a veterinarian who I really like. I think the world of her. She is a practice owner, she runs a large vet hospital. And I just talking to her and I was like, “How are you doing?” And she was like, “I’m holding on.” And I was like, “Well, what does that mean?” And she told me this story.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So here she is, she’s a practice owner. They can’t hire help in the kennel right now, they just can’t find people. And so she’s seeing appointments and doing surgeries, and then running back to clean kennels and feed pets and do these things that need to get done in the kennel when people no-show her or if people call out sick or stuff like that. So she’s working her full vet job, plus she’s the practice owner, plus she’s doing everything that she can to keep up the kennel. And she’s got little kids at home. School is about to start, and so she and her spouse are running around and they’re doing all of these things. And she had just gotten chewed out on the phone by an angry pet owner who’s really mad because her pet was vaccinated for canine influenza while boarding.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Now let’s be clear, the pet owner had signed a document saying, “These are the vaccines that are required. I understand that these vaccines will be given,” blah, blah, blah. We have a canine influenza outbreak right now in the southeast that we are going through so this is not pie in the sky. This is like, “Hey, we have canine influenza in our area, cases being reported. This is what we’re requiring. You were told this before you dropped off.” And of course the pet owner is screaming, using profanity, telling her that she’s over vaccinating and blah, blah, blah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I’m looking at my friend and she just looks tired and sad. And she’s giving everything to the practice, to the clients. And I’m going, “This…” I’m struggling kind of with how to talk to her and of say, “I don’t think this is how it’s supposed to go. I don’t think this is healthy.” And so let me just leave that story with you for a second and say, how does that sound when you hear it? Does that sound familiar? Do you see this in other people?
Dr. Michael Miller:
Oh, I definitely felt that during the last two years of the pandemic. But even before that, this is a thing that happens to practice owners in vet meds. So people who are listening that maybe have not experienced that, I feel like that happens all the time. And to take one of your sayings, when it happens all the time, well, then that becomes your business model. And so how do we get out of this loop? How do we escape from this situation that we keep putting ourselves in? So it’s not uncommon, and it is something that we need to think about as a profession.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, yeah, I think the position I found myself in was interesting was I was talking with her and I was thinking about what she was going through, and I ended up feeling like the crotchety old vet who was like, “This is not working. Somebody else can call that client back.” And when I heard myself say, “I don’t think you need to be the one to call the client back to deal with this angry person,” then I had this internal conflict of, “Wait a second, Andy, if you’re practice owner, shouldn’t you be the one to call the angry client? Shouldn’t you be the one to handle these sorts of things and deal with the one-star reviews where you are the one who needs to respond?” And blah, blah, blah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I think in my idealistic mind, yes, that’s what it means to be the practice owner, that’s what it means to be the servant leader, to lift up the other people. At the same time, I’m looking at this pragmatically and saying, “My friend takes this a hell of a lot harder than the practice manager would,” who is a great practice manager and very caring, but it’s not her baby. She’s not feeling emotionally punched when people say, “How dare you do this?” The manager is like, “These are our policies, and you signed the form saying that you agreed to them, and that’s all there is to it.” And my friend is hearing this as someone’s calling her baby ugly is kind of how it is; she’s feeling this.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So I felt that conflict of I feel like I’m supposed to say, “It’s important for us as the practice owner or the leaders to be the ones who have the hard conversations. And you lead by example, by jumping in and doing this, and being the first one to jump in and clean the kennels because that shows that we’re the servant that people want us to be.” And at the same time as I’m looking at my friend who’s overwhelmed, and I know other people are overwhelmed and shorthanded, I go, “Michael, this is not sustainable,” and so help me with that. I mean, how do I get out? How do I resolve this internal conflict? I mean, where does this go?
Dr. Michael Miller:
Yeah, I think that is the key point. And that was something when I started talking about servant leadership that somebody after the lecture came up and said, “The part that resonated with me the most was when you made me realize that I am being a leader for my team in a way that demonstrates that nobody else would ever want this job. Nobody else would want to serve the way that I’m serving right now.”
Dr. Michael Miller:
And I think that’s something as a profession we need to look at because there’s a shortage of doctors, there’s a generation of people that don’t want to be practice owners. Well, if your example are people that are only working for three or four years and then burning out and moving on to something else, then I don’t want to do that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So are we setting this example where the next generation is seeing us create something that’s unsustainable and they don’t want to do it? And to be honest, that was me. I remember very clearly as a pre-vet student being so excited when I got into vet school and one of the doctors that I worked with said, “Well, get ready for your life to be over.” And I was like, “What?”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, that’s terrible.
Dr. Michael Miller:
I mean, I still, to this day, think about that moment and think about, that’s my goal is to prove that doctor wrong, that I can be a veterinarian and also feel like I have not given up everything else that makes me a person. And I think that’s the part of servant leadership that I felt like I was failing. I’ve got two little kids at home, and I would come home from work and was wiped out. And suddenly, the two kids want to play and I have no energy. I’m like, “That’s not the way that it’s supposed to be. There’s got to be something wrong here.”
Dr. Michael Miller:
And so I started, as I do, as a person who drank the Uncharted Kool-Aid, that I went to Uncharted for advice. And right there in the Uncharted core values is servant leadership, and so I thought I knew what that was, but what I was doing was not working. And so I had to start to look into more of, what is this servant leadership and am I doing this wrong?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Okay, so tell me about that. So you start to look into it, where does that go? Because everything you’ve said so far feels very normal and in alignment to me. Like I said, I would definitely not criticize the heart of my friend. And at the same time, you kind of blew my mind when you’re like, “No one’s going to want that job.” And I was like, “Man, this is a big, financially very successful practice,” and I was like, “she couldn’t have given it to me yesterday.” I was like, “No, I don’t want that job.” Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, cool. So talk to me about this epiphany. You say, “I’m tired. I’m burned out. I’m serving everyone to the point that I’m not happy and I don’t have anything left to take care of my family and do the things that matter to me.” I think that is a very relatable head space, and I think a lot of people are feeling that way right now. What’d you do about it? How do you make peace with this and how do you figure out how to get out of this hole?
Dr. Michael Miller:
So as somebody who identifies with Hermione, there’s my Harry Potter reference for this episode, I ran to the library, or this online store, and ordered a book.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right. Okay. Right, right. Made a Kindle appear, yeah.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Yeah. So one of the things that was recommended to me was Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. And right off the bat I’m like, “I hate this title. I hate this title of this book.” And I realized that when I was single parenting for my two little kids, the days that I was in charge of them, I would spend all this time trying to make a meal for them, and then put it in front of them and they would refuse it. And then I would end up eating some leftover fast food or something unhealthy just to shove food in my mouth and move on to the next thing, and felt like, “This is not working.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
And you feel demoralized too. I mean, hey, I’m right there with you. I cooked a lot of meals for little people, who they would say, “It’s spicy.” I’m like, “It is not spicy.” But yeah, I feel that. And then you feel demoralized. I’m totally with you.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So then I decided, okay, I’m changing this. I am cooking food that I want to eat as well, and I’m going to sit down and eat with them. And anybody who knows sort of child psychology and behavior, that’s one of the recommendations is eat with the kids so they can have a family meal and that will help them to eat, and they started eating. And oh, by the way, I was also eating and wasn’t starving through the whole time.
Dr. Michael Miller:
And so maybe it isn’t that leaders eat last, maybe the leaders need to eat with. And so I thought, “Well, wait a second, if this is working at home, maybe that’s the type of thing I need to rethink what I’m doing at work. And instead of being the one who is making the staff happy and making the clients happy and making the pets happy and then ending the day unhappy, maybe I need to rethink that and figure out, how do I find that balance?”
Dr. Andy Roark:
I’m really loving this metaphor because I think a lot of us see ourselves as the cook. We are working our butts off in the kitchen trying to serve clients and our staff, and we feel good in a way, and it can be deeply rewarding. And we all know people who show love through cooking, meaning they jump in and they serve, and other people enjoying what they do makes them happy until it doesn’t. And when you’re the one and you’re like, “I’m working so hard on serving these other people that I, myself, am not eating, I, myself, am unhappy, and I’m feeling rejection when people don’t want to eat what I’m serving them,” I think that that’s common. But I think that that’s a great metaphor.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Stephanie and I talk a lot about balance, and I think that’s kind of what you’re getting to a lot. I think one of the big mistakes that a lot of people make, especially in business leadership, is this idea that, “I’m going to make the clients happy, I’m going to make the staff happy, I’m going to make the practice profitable. And then if there’s anything left, I’ll be happy, or those things will innately make me happy,” and I have not found that to be true. I have not found making clients happy… Actually, I saw a study, I can’t remember off the top of my head where it came from. It was an interesting study, but, shoot, I’ll have to find it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Anyway, there was a study I saw that actually looked at the correlation between customer satisfaction and veterinarian happiness. And it’s not linear, boys and girls. It is not like, “Hey, the happier you make clients, the happier you are.” In fact, what they found is that veterinarians who consistently score the highest in customer satisfaction are not happy. And yeah, this inverted bell curve of like, “Oh yeah, there’s a problem with that. And it does not mean that the happier you make other people, the happier you’re going to be.” That does not work. And it was just really interesting way to see there’s a lot of vets who don’t have any personal boundaries, who give everything they have to the clients, that do everything the clients want, they make the clients happy at any end, at any length, and they’re deeply unhappy. And I go, “Man, I see that all the time.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
One of my favorite sayings is you can’t pour from an empty cup and you can’t feed from an empty cupboard. And how many people do we know in this profession who came in and did everything they could and served from the bottom of their heart for five years and then burned out and went to industry, or decided to stay home with their family, or, honestly, went into equipment sales, or just said, “I’m going to go”? I mean, I have a friend that I went to vet school with and she does equipment sales for human medicine. And she’s a veterinarian and she sells equipment to physicians in a completely different field. And she’s like, “[inaudible 00:16:43], I love it. I did vet medicine for a couple years, I worked as hard as I could, and this is actually great. I make just as much money and I don’t have to deal with these constant calls for support at an emotional level.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
So anyway, I really like this metaphor. So that makes sense to me. I like where your head’s at. I like the fact that you’re like, “Hey, I’m the practice owner. I’m going to cook dinner that I’m going to eat and everybody wants to eat with me. And I care what you guys want to eat and I will factor your preferences into the meal choice, but at some point I’m going to make this thing so that we all sit down together as a team and eat and I get to eat as well.” How does that look when you start to implement that idea into your actual life?
Dr. Michael Miller:
It’s a good question, and I think part of it is the pivot of, it’s not just serving the clients, it’s serving your employees. As the team leader, now it’s not just cooking the meal for the pet owners, I bet you would have that same bell curve, or inverse bell curve, if you looked at the practice owners and the happiness of their teams. So I tell a story about how we got an ice cream truck one year as a staff appreciation thing. And the first year it went great, everybody loved it, it was one of my golden snitch moments of the year highlights. And then the next year, we did the same thing. And at the end of the day, I felt horrible and I couldn’t figure out, “Wait a second, I did the same thing last year. Why am I feeling so bad on ice cream truck day? I should be happy on ice cream truck day.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I was going to say, ice cream truck day makes me deeply happy. I don’t understand this. What’s going on?
Dr. Michael Miller:
And so I realized that it reminded me of Thanksgiving dinner with my grandma where, in the farmhouse, we had the buffet set out, she did all of the cooking or oversaw all the cooking, and then stood there until every single family member went through the line. And then by the time she got food and sat down, most of the people were done and out of the dining room and onto the next thing. And I always felt like, “That’s so horrible that grandma didn’t get to enjoy the meal with us.” And then I realized, the ice cream truck day, they got me ice cream, I had ice cream, but I missed seeing them get ice cream.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Michael Miller:
And I suddenly understood my grandma.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So it was this sort of moment of, the ice cream wasn’t what filled my cup, it was watching them get the ice cream that filled my cup. And we went long on surgery that day, so I was stuck in surgery and I sent all of my team outside while I was recovering the patient thinking that, “I’m serving my team, it’s ice cream truck day, I’m doing this for them,” and I didn’t take care of myself.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh man, that hits hard. Oh, buddy. Yeah, I have to process this sort of story. This makes so much sense. Oh man, that makes a ton of sense when you say it that way. We can do great things and take care of the staff, but we got to feed ourselves. Creating a meaningful, purposeful place for other people to work sounds awesome, but it’s got to be meaningful and purposeful for you as well. And creating a happy workplace, where everyone around you is happy because you have sacrificed so much, but you’re unhappy, that’s not the goal.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so I really like this a lot, and so let me say this back and see if you agree. So pushing back against leaders eat last, I’d say this is really leading from the middle is what we’re talking about, meaning I’m going to be in the crowd. I’m going to go through the buffet line with everybody. We’re going to figure out, first of all, how to move the buffet line along so that everybody gets to sit down and eat together, that’s what we’re going to do. But I’m going through and I’m going to sit down with everybody else and eat as well. And I don’t think that that’s selfish. I think a lot of us may feel like, “Oh, that’s something wrong.” Here you are, as a veterinarian, and you’re the owner, you’ve signed on to be the one to lift others up. And I go, “Boy, this analogy feels weird.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
But I do think, honestly, Michael, as you’re saying this, I’m going, “That’s the answer to wellness in vet medicine and longevity in vet medicine is that we need to be sitting down and making sure that everybody feels like they’re a part of this thing we’re trying to create, as opposed to being the practice owner who nobody wants that job.” I’m really kind of enjoying sitting with this a bit. I’m going to have to keep working on it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, so I love that. So you did that. Did you talk to the team about it? Did you go back and say, “Hey, guys, we’re going to do this differently”? Did you set up something different the next time you did the ice cream truck? Where did you go with this? What adjustments did you make?
Dr. Michael Miller:
So the next year, I made sure that we had a staff meeting scheduled so we did not schedule surgery that day. And we had it that it was very clearly that everybody will be done and everybody will be having it. And actually, this last year, I had my wife bring my kids, so they came to the ice cream truck.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh man, that’s awesome. That’s really fantastic. Again, this is a simple thing. We’re talking about the ice cream truck. It’s not the ice cream truck that matters, right? Although I think more of us should be doing ice cream trucks things; I’m very excited about the ice cream truck. But it’s a-
Dr. Michael Miller:
It was not as expensive as I thought it was going to be. Compared to just a regular lunch, it was not that much more expensive. So just throwing that out there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Hey, I’m feeling this. This makes some sense to me, so hey.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Although I will say we also learned, though, that you don’t have the ice cream truck come at the very beginning of lunch. You let them eat lunch first and then you have the ice cream truck come.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Because we made that mistake the first year.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure. Because then they eat sweets and they don’t want to eat their lunch and then, oh, it’s that whole thing again. No, but it’s not about the ice cream, right? It’s about the idea. It’s the metaphor of making this thing happen so that we can all come together and enjoy this. And I think you take that, I’m not talking about team building things, I’m not talking about celebrations, I’m talking about practice itself of saying, “Hey, I need to get what I need out of this.” And I’m not talking about the fun stuff, I’m talking about the work stuff, “I need to feel like I’m doing work that I’m proud of. I need to feel like my bucket is getting filled up and that I am doing the things I got into this profession to do.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
And there’s always balances, right? This does not mean I’m putting myself first and I’m going to be happy and the rest of you peons are not, because that’s like grandma cooking Thanksgiving dinner then eating it by herself and being like, “All right,” and then leaving. Grandma gets in, drives away, and she’s like, “That was the best meal I ever had,” and everyone else eats cold food. It’s not that. It’s 100% about saying, “I want to be a part of this positive work experience that we are creating.” And if I’m creating a positive work experience that is not positive for me, that I am resentful of, that I don’t like, that’s burning me out, then that’s not success. And I don’t care what Simon Sinek says. I feel this really deeply. I really like the way that you’re putting this together.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Hey, everybody, I’m just jumping in with two lightning fast updates. Number one, if you have not gotten signed up for the Get Shit Done Shorthanded virtual conference in October, it’s October 6th through the 8th, you need to do that. If you are feeling overwhelmed in your practice, that you want things to go smoother and faster, if you do not want to watch webinars, you want to actually talk about your practice. You want to do some discussion groups. You want to do some workshops where you actually make things and work on things and ask questions as we go along, and have round table discussions, and things like that that’s really going to energize you and help you figure out actionable solutions that you can immediately put into practice to make your life simpler and more relaxed, I got you covered buddy.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But you don’t want to miss it; go ahead and get registered. Mark yourself off at the clinic for the time so that you can be here and be present and really take advantage of this. I don’t want it to sneak up on you. I know October seems like a long way away; it’s not. But go ahead, I’m going to put a link down below, and then when registration opens, we’ll let you know it’s open and you can grab your spot. But you do not want to let this sneak up on you. Check out our Get Shit Done Shorthanded conference. It’s going to be a great one.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The second thing I’m going to tell you about is Banfield. Thank you to Banfield, the pet hospital, for making transcripts of this podcast available. You can find them at drandyroark.com. They are totally free and open to the public and Banfield supports this to increase accessibility and inclusion in our profession. It’s a wonderful thing that they do. Guys, that’s all I got. Let’s get back into this episode.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So does the team notice when you’re doing things like this? Do they understand why? Is there a reaction from them when you make these sorts of changes? What does that look like?
Dr. Michael Miller:
It’s a good question and I’ll be completely honest right now, I do not have it figured out. I am constantly figuring this out. You like an analogy about a spiral staircase, like reach for the landing. And the next year, the ice cream truck comes and there’s a whole new thing I didn’t think about that we have to deal with. And that’s part of the freedom of it is realizing that I’m probably never going to get it exactly perfect. And by the time I do, things are going to change.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No.
Dr. Michael Miller:
And I keep evolving with that because that’s the veterinarian pressure.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Absolutely.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Did I get 100% on that test? I know it in that moment of time. You give people that same test five years later and half of those answers are wrong now. And so trying to apply that to leadership… So when I went into my sort of evaluation of servant leadership, I was looking back at servant leadership over time. And the one that was the most impactful for me was something from 1970, which was the original work. And when I looked at that compared to then there was one that was 10 Characteristics in the ’90s, and then in the 2000s there was something about Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership, and there were things from the initial work that started to drop away. And one of them was self care.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Self care is in the initial stuff for servant leadership, but in those later works, that’s not spelled out explicitly. You can read between the lines and find it, but if you’re doing the Cliff’s Notes version of the servant leadership work from when I was trained in leadership and sort of gaining my skills to be a leader, that’s not there. And it’s also, then looking back, it’s reflected a little bit in pop culture too. So the first thing I went to was Harry Potter. And spoiler alert.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, of course.
Dr. Michael Miller:
If you haven’t read Harry Potter, spoiler alert, hit the ahead 15 seconds, whatever. A lot of leaders die in Harry Potter.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yes, that’s true.
Dr. Michael Miller:
And I love my team, but I do not love my team that much.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So again, here’s this sort of zeitgeist that I grow up with is to be a successful leader, I have to be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the people that I’m leading. And I think that’s dangerous. That’s a dangerous story for us to keep telling. So here’s another analogy. We’ll run the gamut with random analogies.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure. Yeah, I love it.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Women’s gymnastics.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay?
Dr. Michael Miller:
So I remember as a child watching Kerri Strug land that vault. And I’m like, “American hero. This is the best thing ever.” Go back and watch that now.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I did that. Actually, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I had that exact same experience looking back.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Can you name Kerri Strug’s coach?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh no, I can’t.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So it was Bela Karolyi. Can you name Simone Biles’s coach?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. No, I can’t.
Dr. Michael Miller:
I can’t. But that coach had more of an impact by supporting her player instead of pushing them to do something that they were unable to realize was safe or dangerous for them in the moment. And so that is what Gen Z is watching right now. That is what our next generation coming in, those are their role models of what leadership looks like. And so we have to internalize that because that’s not what leadership looked like when I was learning how to be a leader.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Some of the best business advice that I ever got that I use all the time, it’s just a statement that I found that I make and it smooths everything out, is generally in any business interaction I’ll say, “Look, this has got to work for everybody.” And I mean that; it’s got to work for everybody. And I don’t think most veterinary practice owners have sat down and said, “This has got to work for everybody.” I think a lot of people are like, “No, it has to work for the pets, and it has to work for the pet owners, or it has to work for my staff.” It’s like, “No, it has to work for everybody and that includes you.” And if it’s not working for you, you need to say, “This is not working for me.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that’s how we delegate calling back the angry clients. If this is hitting you like a Mac truck, because you take this personally and you can’t not take it personally, you need to have somebody else calling the angry clients to do crowd control. And you empower them to take care of those clients and give them what they need. “But you throwing yourself into this emotional meat grinder because you feel like that’s your role as the leader,” I go, “that doesn’t make any sense.” This got to work for everybody. There’s some people I know who are largely unfazed by conflict with pet owners. I would much rather have those people do those conversations. And granted, if you talk to one angry client a month or a quarter, then maybe you suck it up and you do it. But if you have a big hospital and you’re dealing with customer service stuff all the time and it’s taking a toll on you, you need to find somebody who’s got thicker skin than you do and empower them to do the job.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that’s not failure. That’s not failure as a servant leader, that’s you making a business that works for everybody, because the clients still get taken care of. That’s the thing, you’ve got to make sure you empower the person so the clients also get taken care of. And you need to make sure that you get the right person so that you’re not putting someone in there who’s feeling it just as badly as you are. It needs to be someone who’s more comfortable these types of conversations, or can shrug them off, or, honestly, just someone who’s not the practice owner is going to be less likely to take this personally than the practice owner who feels it deeply.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so I’m really loving this idea of this has got to work for everybody and I think that maybe that should be the normal. But it’s funny, it’s contrary to the vet culture, right? The vet culture has always been James Harriot goes out and saves the day and makes it happen. James Harriot is not like, “Oh, it’s got to work for everybody,” but James Harriot didn’t live in a world… Well, first of all, he didn’t have a 10-vet practice and a bunch of other people to juggle. He didn’t have the population density that most of us have right now. He didn’t have a cell phone where people could text him all the time. He didn’t have social media where local groups are saying things about your business 24/7, 365, regardless of what you do to make people happy. He didn’t have Google reviews where you get a one-star review from someone who’s reviewing the wrong vet clinic for God’s sakes. He didn’t have any of that stuff to deal with.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Then I go, “Well, yeah, when you had one landline and no answering machine, then you can just kind of throw down and do what you can do because, ultimately, you’re going to be able to handle it.” We don’t live in a world where people can throw down and just handle everything coming at them anymore. It’s a different world and we’re playing a different game, and medicine is different, and now it’s time to shift that mentality from, “I am a sacrifice that I’ll put forward to the world,” to, “This has got to work for everybody.”
Dr. Michael Miller:
So I just read a book that I’m going to hold off on telling you the title of the book until the end because it’s going to blow your mind.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. Is it a Harry Potter book?
Dr. Michael Miller:
No, it is not a Harry Potter book.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, okay, then I’m going to guess this.
Dr. Michael Miller:
It was a business book.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, I’m going to guess this.
Dr. Michael Miller:
But in it, the author talks about how we make a mistake in thinking that history repeats itself. And if we’re basing our current decisions off of what worked in the past, we’re bound to make mistakes, because we are not living in the same world that the past was. And so if we’re looking to James Harriot as the model of veterinary medicine, we’re basing that off of a system that is not relevant anymore in most practices. Yes, there are things we can learn from the past in history, and I get that, that’s fine, but you can’t do everything the way that it’s always been done. That was one of the key things in my sort of management journey was realizing, are we doing something because this is the way it’s always been done, or are we doing it because this is what we need to be doing right now?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, I agree with that. I think that makes a lot of sense. So there’s a number of different things here that we’re putting together. So what’s sort of spider webbing together in my mind is history repeating itself, are we doing this just because it’s the way we’ve done in the past? I think that’s a great question to ask ourselves, that we need to be willing to make changes, and that’s sort of scary.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There’s the other part that we were sort talking about earlier where we were talking about finding balance and you said, “I don’t get this right. I keep trying new things and making mistakes.” And I say, “That’s true.” I think a lot of times we do what we did in the past because we know it, right? It’s the devil known versus the devil unknown, and the devil that we know is not nearly as scary as the one we don’t. And so I think owning that idea that this is not perfect, and I’m not going to get it right, and it’s always going to be hard, I think that liberates you to try some new things and say, “Yeah, I don’t care that this is how the practice owner before me did it. I don’t care that this is how the vet that I watched when I grew up did it. This is not working for me as an individual, in this time, in this place, in this culture, in this society, in this general geographic location. It’s not working for me and so I’m going to do it differently.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
The other thing that comes along with that is I just want to smooth things out. Because I think a lot of people feel like, “Oh, well, if I got this right, if I really set this up the right way, if I set boundaries for myself, if I got this balance right, then this pain would go away and I would have it figured out.” And I also like the fact that you said, “I don’t have this figured out.” And I think it’s just really important for everyone to know is balance is an act of process.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I’m looking at a BOSU ball that I have. You know the BOSU ball, it’s got the flat side and then the round side? It’s a fitness thing. All right, so how do you tell people that you do physical therapy without telling them you do physical… Tell them you have a BOSU ball. All right, so yeah, a BOSU ball. It’s a thing that you balance on. And I will tell you, you stand on this thing, and after about a minute, it burns. It burns. But stand on one foot, and after a minute, it will burn, because you’re actively balancing yourself. That is what balance looks like. It is not a passive process where you get it and you just stand there forever, it burns. It is a constant adjustment and readjustment.
Dr. Andy Roark:
School is getting ready to start back. I know that’s a big deal for you. That’s a big deal for me and my family. I’ve got kids going to new schools, meaning going to high school and going to middle school. My life is going to change, and the systems that we had to keep balance are not going to work. And we’re going to have to find new systems then. We’re going to have to reevaluate how we do things and what that looks like. That’s life. And that’s not failure. But don’t think that constant readjustment is failure because it’s not.
Dr. Andy Roark:
One of my favorite sayings that I think makes a big difference and I think about business is the difference between a struggling business and a thriving business is this: The struggling business makes the same damn mistake again and again and again, and the thriving business makes a different damn mistake every day; and that’s the difference.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so it’s never, “I got this right and I got it figured out,” it’s always a struggle. But to me, as you brought up earlier on, if you got a problem again and again and again and again, at some point it’s not a surprise, it’s your business model. And so that’s doing the same damn mistake again and again and again and again. And so I really like this idea of setting the expectation of active management is what it’s going to recall. Are you going to make it work for you today? And after a week or two weeks or a quarter or six months or a year or three years, it’s not going to work for you anymore and you’re going to say, “Things have changed, my life has changed, I’m in a different place. I didn’t have kids when I started this practice and now I do.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that’s not bad, but it does mean that things are not what they used to be. And the fact that we did things one way does not mean that we’re going to keep doing them now that I have kids, or we did them this way… And I can see the time when my kids… I’ve got a kid that’s getting close to getting a driver’s license, Michael, and my life is going to change. It’s going to change. And the way that we as a family have done things in the past is not going to be how we’re going to do them in the future when I’ve got another driver around. Oh, that gets to be a lot. Uber for the younger one just became a reality. But you get the point, right? Just because that’s how we do it when the kids can’t drive doesn’t mean that’s how my life is going to be when they can drive.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I think about the practice, I think about the speaking and traveling, and I’ve really geared my travel down because I can see my kids getting close to the time when they’re not going to hang out with me, and so I’m going to be here as much as I can right now with them. When they leave and they’re off driving and doing stuff for their friends, then I love going out and talking to vet people and being on the road and seeing people. And you know what? That day will come back and I’ll do things differently then than I do them now. But I think that’s healthy, I think that’s part of the journey.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Yeah. So I came back from the April Uncharted with a 13-point plan to help my business that I brainstormed, “Here are the 13 things that we’re going to deal with.” And I went back to that last week and I think three of them have actually gone as planned. But that’s sort of the point is you develop a plan, you try it, and then you have to adapt and not get too set into, “Well, this is what I said we were going to do,” and realize that, you know what? My plan for my practice in April, those circumstances are not the same thing that I’m dealing with here in going into the Fall. And so some of those initiatives and things, it’s not that I’m throwing it away, but I’m definitely adjusting it. I’m not trying to force the shoe to fit when the foot has changed. I don’t know why I picked that analogy, that’s weird.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. That’s what I’m saying, you’re nailing it. Great analogy.
Dr. Michael Miller:
I guess maybe as a toddler, the toddler’s getting bigger feet? I guess that makes sense there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, yeah. And maybe so. Let’s not think too deeply about it. Okay, one of my epiphanies this pandemic inspired that I have kept since then is I have really come to the belief that planning is absolutely vital and plans are basically useless. And I have just found that to be true again and again and again and again, is that you make these plans and the world changes. And you have so little control in the world, and people don’t realize that. You’re like, “I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.” I have never successfully executed a plan, I don’t think, with more than a one-year timeframe. The world just changes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Now, I have set general goals and very much achieved them over a period of longer than that, but there’s just so much uncertainty. You set this great plan and then the person that the plan depends on leaves your business or gets promoted or moves somewhere else, or this other person you’re working with moves away. It’s so out of your control. But having a plan is so vital because you’re constantly adjusting. And really, I feel like our careers and our lives are a lot like sailing, where you think that you can set a point on the horizon and just go there, but you can’t control the wind and which way it blows. And so for the most part, you actually end up tacking one way and then back the other. And you keep moving in that general direction, but you’re not going to set one target.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Boy, we’re all over the place with metaphors today. You’re not going to set one target and just go there directly, it’s going to be moving in that way. But you do that by making a plan, starting the plan, running the plan, learning what you don’t know, seeing the world and the circumstances change, and then readjusting the plan. And that’s not failure either, that’s life. And so we bring people together, we do our Uncharted, we do our planning, we go home. You did three things coming out of uncharted, that’s a massive win. That is a huge business-changing step to do those things. And the rest of them, we learn some things, we make some changes, we readjust, and we come back and we reset plans and we go forward again.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Anyway, that makes tons of sense. Michael Miller, you are amazing. Thank you so much for being here and talking through this with me. I feel inspired. I got so much out of our conversation. I really appreciate it. Real quick, let me ask you this. So you pushed back on leaders eat last, do you have resources? I know you’re a big reader, what resources would you recommend for people who are like, “Man, this is speaking to me and I would like to dig deeper into this”?
Dr. Michael Miller:
Okay, so get ready to have your mind blown here. Ready?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So I read a book by Margaret Heffernan titled Uncharted.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I see, yeah. I knew it.
Dr. Michael Miller:
I was like, “Hey, I’m going to get the business book that’s titled Uncharted.” And that was the book I read earlier this year that was all about… The basic thesis was that business projections that are more than 400 days in advance are pretty much useless.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, that’s amazing.
Dr. Michael Miller:
And so she goes on to talk about a whole bunch of other things.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s going on my list.
Dr. Michael Miller:
But if the discussion that we just had resonated, you need to read that book, because that opened up my mind and it gave me the freedom to realize that the things that I was working towards, it’s okay when things don’t go as planned, and gave me some tools of what do I do? Because I want to have a plan. And so having different scenarios and things. So that was the book that has opened up my perspective recently and it just happens to be named Uncharted.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I love it. That’s fan-freaking-tastic. I love it. All right, cool. Where can people find you online?
Dr. Michael Miller:
Yeah, the most interactive is usually on the vetstagram community on Instagram, @HarryPotterVet. If you really want to get ahold of me, do that. And I will say that, for anybody who is listening, I listened to previous podcast episodes and there were some things that started to talk about servant leadership in burnout with leaders, and I contacted the previous guests, so feel free to contact the guests because they reply. And it was a great dialogue and it helped me sort of move on to the next thing. So if you’re listening to these podcasts and you’re like, “I can’t contact that person,” no, we’re all people. We wouldn’t have put ourselves out there if we weren’t open to discussions. And so for any of these podcasts, if you hear the guest and they give contact information and it’s something that resonates, go ahead and contact them.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Okay, I wasn’t going to touch on this, but now I will. Okay, you beefed with one of the guests that I had on my other podcast. Do you want to explain what your beef was?
Dr. Michael Miller:
Very quick. It was not a beef, it was a question.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It sounded like a beef.
Dr. Michael Miller:
It was not a beef, it was a chicken.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So you had Dr. Clinton Neille on and it was Cone of Shame episode 120: The Economic Toll of Burnout in Vet Med, and he made a comment about how practice owners do not feel the same level of burnout as the rest of the support staff. And that was like-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I was…
Dr. Michael Miller:
That was like the moment of, “That is dissonance. That does not make sense with what I’m hearing.” So I emailed him and I said, “Hey, I’m working on this servant leadership stuff. I’m interested in this comment that you made.” And he said, “Well, it comes down to the definition of burnout. When they looked at the studies, they defined burnout as leaving that job, and the practice owners have more barrier to leaving that job.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Michael Miller:
And so maybe it’s semantics in my mind, kind of back to servant leadership. In my mind, what I was calling burnout wouldn’t have been classified as burnout, but it didn’t feel like it was wellness.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right.
Dr. Michael Miller:
So some of this is maybe we need to think about the words that we’re using and how it applies, because how it’s perceived may be different than what the sort of academic definition of that word actually is.
Dr. Andy Roark:
This has been one of the most intellectually stimulating conversations I’ve had in a long time, which is saying a lot because I had a lot of great conversations. But yeah, I love it. Thanks for bringing that up. Thanks for talking about it. Because I tell you, I have 100% been burned out. It was a number of years ago; I had a serious bout of burnout. I did not leave my job. And if that’s the criteria for burnout, then I didn’t burn out. But I can tell you, boy, it felt… One star, would not recommend. But yeah, okay. Awesome. Thanks, Michael. Guys, take care of yourselves. Everybody, be well. We’ll talk to you later on.
Dr. Michael Miller:
Bye.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that is what we got, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I mean, I could have talked to Michael for another hour or so. Gang, if you are thinking about, “Oh boy, how are we going to update our practice? Are there ways that we do things that I would like to do them differently?” I’d love to help you out if I can. Check out the Uncharted community where we work on this stuff all the time.
Dr. Andy Roark:
If part of your doing things differently is empowering your staff to do more with clients and do more client communication, check out my training programs over at drandyroark.com. I’ve got Charming the Angry Client and I’ve got Exam Room Communication Toolkit. They are both fan-freaking-tastic for getting your clinic up and trained to be effective working with angry clients and not angry clients. But boy, I put my heart and soul into them. I think that they’re really, really good. The feedback on both of the classes has been amazing, but pick one and you can use it with your team, and just maybe I can help you get people trained up so that they can take things off of your plate.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Anyway, guys, that’s all I got. Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your week. Be well. I will talk to you next week.