412 - Tech Team Lead Pulled In All Directions

0:00Ten years ago, I thought people came to conferences for information. I was wrong. You can Google almost any answer in 30 seconds while hiding in a supply closet. What you can't Google is skill. Skill is having hard conversation when you're exhausted, short-staffed, and the person across from you is upset. And that only comes from practicing with people who will tell you the truth when you miss. That's what Uncharted is. On Friday, January 15th in Orlando, the day before VMX opens, we're celebrating 10 years with a one-day conference built around leaders practicing hard things together. You'll get Dr.

0:37Peter Weinstein, the Uncharted team, and about a dozen mic drop talks from people in the community, people you know like Dr. Phil Richmond and Dr. Caitlin DeWild. I'm not going to tell you it'll be easy because it won't. But if you want to do the work alongside people who get it, come and join us. Details are at unchartedvet.com. Register today. Don't miss your chance. Hey, everybody. I am Dr. Andy Rourke, and this is the Uncharted podcast. Guys, I'm back with my friend, Tyler Grogan. We got a question in the mailbag from a veterinary technician lead, and it made me think, ooh, Team Lead Summit is coming up.

1:19That's right. Uncharted virtual Team Lead Summit is on October 13th, and it is happening wherever you are. You can watch it anywhere. That's the beautiful part of being a virtual summit. This is a fun event. It is a larger and larger event. It is a good time if you are a lead technician, if you are a lead CSR, if you are a lead kennel tech, any of the teams in the clinic. If you're the team lead, this is a great place to get some knowledge and education information about filling that spot and being absolutely fantastic at that job. So guys, we've got the mailbag today. It is very much about a veterinary technician lead who's been kind of thrown into the job, it seems.

1:58And they're getting asked to do lots of things to make people change what they're doing. And requests are coming from everywhere and nobody seemed happy and none of the requests seemed to fit. Meaning that, you know, you get some requests to set the exam room up one way and then a different doctor says, no, no, no, you need to set it up the other way. And our poor tech lead is feeling trapped and feeling like they're failing. And so that's what Tyler and I weighed into today. Guys, I hope you'll enjoy this episode. Let's get into it. And now, the Uncharted Podcast. I want to take a moment to talk here about something that hits close to home for all of us that are working in the vet clinic.

2:37We all know that veterinary medicine isn't just a career path. If it were just a job, we'd probably all have much cleaner clothes and way lower blood pressure. No, it's a calling. It's that thing inside you that keeps you showing up for your patients and your team, even on the days when the coffee machine is broken and the schedule is double booked. Well, our friends at Zoetis get that. They've just launched a new initiative called Care Is Your Calling. It's specifically designed to recognize and support veterinary teams, not just for the work that you do, but for the reason that you do it. Here's the thing.

3:11Hundreds of people at Zoetis are actually veterinarians themselves. They've been in the trenches. They understand the realities of daily practice and they've spent the last 70 years working arm in arm with pros like us to push the profession forward. Everything Zoetis does is about strengthening that partnership, whether it's through clinical tools, reliable solutions you can actually trust in the exam room, or just listening to our feedback to build better resources for the future. They want to support your calling so that you can keep doing what you love. So do me a favor. Go check out careisyourcalling.com.

3:45Take a look at the resources they're building for you and your team. That's careisyourcalling.com. All right, let's get back to the show. And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Rourke, and the one and only, the legend, the myth, the miracle, Tyler Krogan, LVT. You are LVT, right? This is not a CVT, an RVT. You're an LVT, right? CVT, actually. No, you're a CVT, Tyler. I know, I know. You know, I wish there's part of me that wishes I could collect them all, but that would require some more paperwork and I'm not willing to do it. Technician Pokemon. Yeah, I just got to have them all. Hello, my friend.

4:31How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing today? You got your anchor gear on. I do. I do. I've got my anchor shirt on. I wore this at the vet clinic today, actually. And so, yeah, it was my Uncharted at the clinic shirt. It was a day this morning. It was one of those emotional roller coaster days, But, you know, we got them all sorted out and all's well that ends well. And so I am glad to be here with you. But also, I am fresh with the chaos of a full clinic day. Oh, yeah, I can imagine. Any favorite clients or pets you saw today? Favorite client? Oh, yeah. So my favorite client for today is this woman.

5:13And I got the note on the chart and it was like possible parvovirus. and I was like oh no and I looked and it was like a 16 week old dog and I was like oh no and the person pulls in and and they stay in the car right because we're not bringing them in and everything and we go out and the technicians go out and they get like a parvo test and everything and I'm talking to the techs while the parvo test is running and I was busy seeing other appointments and things and I said you know has this dog had vaccines before and they were like oh yeah and looking back they were like this dog has been in multiple times and I was like we vaccinated it right?

5:48And they're like, oh yeah, this dog had had three distemper vaccines and had been fully treated, you know, and I was, has he been anywhere shady? And they were like, no, he went to, he went to the lake a couple of days ago. And I was like, I think this parvovirus thing is probably going to be okay. I think this is probably not what we're dealing with. And sure enough, I went in and talked to the owner and she was like, I'm a first time dog owner. And when I saw diarrhea i kind of panicked and i thought i love you i'm just i'm so like i'm so happy that you're here and like i just i love how much you care and how good a job you're trying to do and you know we got that we got that dog sorted out and patched up and she's going to be just fine but the best part of that case was not fixing the dog the best part of that case was engaging with that pet owner and like making her feel heard and seen and saying, hey, I really appreciate that you're really attentive.

6:47Also, this is going to be totally fine. You have been doing the right things along and along. You are okay. And just, and making her feel good. And she was so thrilled. And so anyway, that was my favorite case of the day. Well, happy ending. That's good. I have a question from the mailbag here that is around lead technicians. And as a former practicing technician, I thought you'd be the right person to talk about this with. And so I want to, let me give you the mailbag. Are you ready for it? Let's go. All right. Essentially what we got in the mailbag is this. So I am a team lead and a bunch of people are asking me to ask my team to do things differently.

7:24And the expectations of what we're supposed to be doing is unclear. They don't like how things are being done. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, which I thought was a great line. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. How do I get clarity here and not feel like I am continuing to fail? And so I thought that was great. Some of the examples they gave was around like the doctors want the exam rooms set up differently. Or like we have a fractious pet come in and the doctor is like, you didn't get a temperature. And another doctor is like, you got a temperature. Why would you do that on the fractious pet?

7:59And so it's just different stories. And I really I felt this person when they were like, how do I feel like I'm not failing? And so I really like that a lot. Tyler, let's let's start to talk about this for our technician lead. What's the headspace here? What are the what are the things that you think are important for them to remember? Definitely can feel this mailbag. I have been this technician plenty of times. But, you know, from a headspace perspective, a lot of this as a lead, even if you're not a titled lead, you're kind of put in the middle a little bit it feels like sometimes these yes conversations you know like like you and i might work really well together as a doctor and tech team and it might just be because we get along really well or it might be because i have you know worked with you enough to know those little things about what you like like where you like the otoscope on the counter or whether or not to get that temperature so from a headspace perspective i think some of this just comes over time for some team members and for a team lead perspective, you can't necessarily teach that or you can't be responsible for that.

9:05So recognizing what's in your control and what's not, I think is a really good start for Headspace of, look, there are things that there's going to be preferences and then there's things that are going to be systems things. Like, for example, the mentioned the flea and tick prescription permissions and who can say that this is allowed to go out and this isn't, that's a practice-wide policy. That's something that you can say, hey, if this is a problem, I have some control to talk to my team and say, okay, this is actually what the policy says that we have to follow and get your team in line to do those things.

9:40But from kind of like relationship building and preferences with doctors and things like that, that's not necessarily something that is, I would say, a team lead's responsibility. And you might disagree with me on that. What do you think? No, it's okay. So there's different things here. This is always a little bit tricky to talk about because it really does come down a lot to the context in which it's happening. If you have a one vet practice and the vet's like, this is how I like the room set up, then I think that you should just lean into the preference of the vet and set a room up there. If you have two vets and one likes it one way and one likes it another way, well, there's only the two of them.

10:15And so maybe that is okay. I think that some of the hardcore business people who listen to our podcast are going to be like, no, that doesn't scale. You need a system that is consistent, that people can do and move quickly through. And I'm like, look, if it's a two vet practice and it's going to stay a two vet practice, then you don't have to build a two vet practice so that it scales to 10 vets. I think that's something that I didn't really understand earlier in my career. I was like, you would just look at it from a system standpoint. You're like, you should make this thing to grow. But a lot of times it's not going to grow.

10:48It's a two vet practice. It's going to stay and maybe three vet practice at the most. You know, like I still think it's smart to do things in an organized way to help people train, to help them onboard, to make sure everybody knows what they're doing. But I also have come to believe at some point, a little bit of personal preference when you've got a two or three vet practice. I really, I think that sometimes it's that extra inch that takes all of your heart and your soul to try to get it together. At some point you go, this is just not a hill worth dying on. like that. This is not a big enough deal.

11:20However, when the practice grows, when we, when we continue to add doctors, things like that, if we have a practice and we know that growth is the future, then we need to be leaning into systems. It does not make sense to build things on personal preference that are just not going to hold up over time. If we have doctor turnover, it's going to be a huge thing of relearning the preferences, things like that. So that, that just doesn't, that just doesn't make sense. And so anyway, people would ask me and they would say, okay, but Andy, at what point is it okay to be a preference? And at what point does it need to be a system?

11:50Like at what point do I, the lead tech, need to say something of like, hey, this needs to be a system, not just every vet, you know, tells me what they want. And so for me, I think the biggest flag is the pattern of behavior. If there is a pain point and you get caught in it over and over again. At some point, we choose how we suffer, right? And you get to make a choice. You can continue to try to figure out preferences and, you know, and get caught kind of again and again. And you can look around and see the other techs and assistants getting caught again and again and say, okay, I guess I will accept this pain so that we don't have to have a doctor's meeting or in the doctors aren't forced to get on the same page.

12:35And that's okay. And again, And if it happens once in a blue moon, like, all right, you know, fine. Like, this is going to be a little headache of communication or practice. I don't like it, but it's not the end of the world. However, the other way that we can choose to suffer is to say, look, this is a consistent problem, right? Like, I keep having these, I either keep getting chastised or I keep having to deal with crying assistance because the doctor was frustrated with them, or I'm getting chastised in a way that's really bothering me. So like the whole, you got a temperature on this aggressive dog, what are you doing?

13:07You didn't get a temperature on this aggressive dog, what are you doing? I think that would really bother me. And you wouldn't have to say that to me too many times before I would say to you, look, what do you want? And I wouldn't say it that way, but it would come to a head where I would say, this needs to be addressed. And so one of the first things that I would sort of say to our writer, who's the lead technician, I don't want you to feel like you're failing. And the fact that you feel this way, I think that that's important, right? And so whenever I'm starting to have stuff, if I see a problem sort of again and again, I would say this might be something worth jumping on and fixing.

13:41It's going to be hard as the lead technician to go and say, we need to overhaul our whole practice. We need systems for all of these things and we need them yesterday. I think that that's probably not going to fly. But I think that we can start working piecemeal and pick the pain points that stand out the most. And then I think the way you look at your role as an implementer, as a lead technician really matters because you're not the boss and you can't make the doctors generally, you can't make them do anything. Usually, veterinarians, in my opinion, are very nice people and often they don't want to make people uncomfortable.

14:13And if you ask them and say, hey, guys, I really need help with this, they'll usually hear you, I hope. But sometimes that's not that's not the case. Usually in a vet practice, the lead technician is an implementer underneath the practice manager. And so depending on how your practice is laid out, usually the lead tech is going to answer to the practice manager. And when you have a frustration with the doctors, when you have a frustration with systems, the way things are done, even though the doctors might be the ones that are making this happen, often this is going to be something that I'm going to, if I can't sort it out quickly with the doctors in a friendly way, I'm going to go to the practice manager and I'm going to say a couple of things.

14:49The first one is, hey, this is a problem that I am seeing. and I would explain what the problem is. And then I would say, this is the impact that this problem is having. And I think a lot of people miss that because it might seem self-evident to you that it would be frustrating that Dr. A feels this way about flea and tick stuff and Dr. B feels this way about flea and tick stuff and them wildly disagreeing is a problem. That might seem obvious to you. The practice manager might not understand why that's a problem or they might not understand the emotional impact of that problem or they might not understand the impact of that problem on the assistants or the techs or the team as a whole.

15:28And so if you say what the problem is, you have to say why this is a problem. Like, what is the impact of this headache? And then I would propose a couple of solutions. I would say, and I've been thinking about this. I was wondering if we could either move to A or B, or you might have other ideas that the doctors would be on board with. do you think it's possible to work on this problem because I'm feeling like I'm failing or I'm feeling like I'm trapped or I'm feeling like everybody's getting frustrated at me. And so anyway, that's kind of how I start to look at that. And it's going from the personal preference to the system.

16:06And there's some great resources out there as far as not even conflict management, but just difficult conversations and approaching someone maybe in a different level of authority to you of saying, okay, why is it that this matters to you? Or why is it that we can't come to an agreement here? Or this is why I thought this way in this situation. So, you know, feeling like you're failing as a lead is sometimes, I feel like you've talked about this, where you feel like you're failing in the middle of a process, right? Like you might've just stepped in, they might've just stepped into this role and they don't necessarily know where their team members need some coaching and this types of things or where those relationships currently stand in the practice, because it's not something they've been asked to be paying attention to before.

16:53So, you know, feeling like a failure in the middle of something like learning those things, I feel like is really normal, too. Yeah, I think that's probably where a lot of pain in this mailbag comes from, right? It seems to me like this person got kind of dropped into this ecosystem that was already functioning. And so we're talking about like this protocol doesn't exist. Sometimes the protocol totally exists and the doctors just don't know what it is, or the staff doesn't know what it is. Sometimes these problems have been figured out and then filed away. I think a lot of this, if I could jump back for a second, when you become the lead tech, and I think there's a lot of lead techs who were just like, hey, do you want this job?

17:28Okay, great. Here you go. And then they're like, what's the job description? We don't have that. We don't have it. What authority do I have? It's like, well, really done, very little. Whatever authority you can convince the rest of the staff you have, that's how much authority you have. And that's how a lot of these things go. And so if I could jump back in time, I would say, all right, lead technician, when they offer you the job, I want you to say, do you have a job description? And if they say no, then say, well, I would really like a job description before I take on these responsibilities.

18:06And then I would ask a lot of questions and I would start to ask questions around their specific behaviors. What do you want me to do in this situation? So I have two different doctors and they want these two different things. Is there an official policy for the practice? If not, what do we need to do to have a policy so that we can address this problem so that we can train our support staff effectively? I would also say I want you to figure out as quickly as possible what is the motivator for practice leadership? Is it patient care? Is it having a good team culture? Is it being profitable financially?

18:42The people that you answer to, what do they care about? Because when I go and I say, hey, you know, the doctors, two different doctors are giving us two different stories. They're making us set up the exam rooms differently. These two different doctors are making us set up these exam rooms differently. If there is patient care as like a driving desire for the practice leadership, I'm going to go and say, hey, we want to make sure the exam rooms are set up consistently so that they have everything that they need to have and they're well stocked. And that's really hard to do when people want them set up differently.

19:11It leads to confusion. I'm afraid we're going to end up missing things in the exam room. And we're not going to be able to provide that level of care. It's going to be a bump in our care delivery. And now I'm framing this around patient care. And if it's about revenue, I would say having people set the rooms up in different ways is a big waste of time. And it has people undoing and redoing rooms. And it's causing confusion. and it's slowing us down, it's inefficient, and that's slowing our room turnover speed. And so I would like to get this smoothed out. And again, what I'm asking for is the same thing, but I'm framing it up in the language that I think is gonna be most effective for this leadership team.

19:46And so that's how I would kind of try to engage with the practice leadership to say, what do you want? I would really work hard to have some good personal boundaries and try to not feel like this is my circus because it's not your circus. You have very little power as the lead tech. You know, you do. And that is as much a blessing as is a curse. A lot of people go, I don't have power, so I'm set up to fail. And I'd say, well, you don't have power, so this is not really your responsibility. If you're not giving the authority to fix the problems and you're not giving the guidance or support you need to fix the problems, you should not take those problems home.

20:20And so I really think that it is your job to try to be a communication node between practice leadership and the technicians, if you're the lead tech. The CSRs, if you're the lead CSR, things like that. And so I would be very comfortable taking problems from the techs to management and trying to take messaging from management down to the techs. But you are not the sheriff with no star and no gun. Like, that's not who you are. You are trying to help wrangle. But if you don't get some endorsement, if you don't get some support by upper leadership, it's going to be very, very hard for you to do that.

20:58And so I would keep coming back to the questions I said before is, what is your expectation here? What does it look like when there's a problem on the floor? What do you expect me to do about it? And people would say, I would never ask the manager, what exactly do you expect me to do about it? I'm not saying it as a challenge of like, what do you want me to do about it? I am asking an honest, curious question of when these things happen, what do you expect me to do about those things? Seriously. seriously and see what they say. And if they will go tell them this and say, well, do I have the authority to make those changes?

21:31Or if I go and I talk to them and they don't want to change their behavior, like what happens then? Do you want me to report this up to you? Do you want to, you know, to be made aware of it? Do you want me to just file it away for myself? Do you want me to let it go? What do you expect? And these are hard questions. And I'm asking for two reasons. I'm asking one, because I would like to have the answer. But number two, I'm trying to make the practice manager or practice leadership understand what I'm dealing with. Because oftentimes they don't. The medical director, the practice owner, they have never been a lead technician in their life.

22:06And they have definitely not been a lead technician in a post-pandemic veterinary medicine world. They haven't been there. They don't know that. And so you asking those questions from an honest place of curiosity, not a gotcha place, is really about helping them understand what you're facing and getting them on board and getting them to give you your attention and to give you the support that you need. 100%. For a lot of people that are maybe in this position, I have not been a titled lead technician, but I've been put in positions where I've been asked to basically be an implementer of different things.

22:40And I've definitely gotten it wrong in a lot of ways where these conversations, first of all, I want to validate are really difficult. Like I said, having a, knowing what questions to ask is a skill sometimes too. Stepping back and being able to slow down and look at the bigger picture and say, okay, what do I actually need to know to succeed here? Like, do I need to know what I have the authority to do? Or do I need to know what the expectation is first of what do they actually want me to do? And sometimes I've had these conversations and they don't have the answer for me. And I think that's the most challenging part of being put in the middle of these types of roles is where, and I'm sure a lot of people might have run into this in practice too, where sometimes they don't have a clear answer.

23:23Like we just need them to move faster. Okay. So what does that actually look like as far as my responsibility in this? Like where we, if we can't measure it, we can't necessarily manage it. And those are skills that I feel like people in practice are often learning in tandem, especially if you're dealing with a lot of turnover. Like you might have, for example, when the pandemic happened, I ended up in a practice where I had been brought in to be basically a relief technician. But then the pandemic hit and they allowed me to stay on a little bit longer while kind of we figured out the world and what was happening.

23:56But it kind of put me into this weird position of I had some experience as a technician. They had a very brand new team that needed some training and things in all kinds of areas, like a lot of different areas from low stress handling to how to navigate these conversations with the six plus doctors that worked in the practice. And so there was a lot to be learned everywhere. And also at the same time, everyone, including management was learning what are our roles right now? How does all of this fit together? What are we actually trying to accomplish? So I feel like a lot of this is often happening at the same time.

24:32So you might bring good questions that they don't necessarily always have great answers for. So the ways that I kind of navigated that were wrong. I tried to fix everything at once. The problem of we just need to move faster comes to mind where we're seeing patients back to back to back to back. And it's just the pace we're not able to keep up. And so suddenly we're going so fast that we're missing important details. And so I had to slow myself down from taking everybody into the exam rooms and saying, this is how we should do it. because in my head, this is the best way to do it, right? And that was a pretty egoic way to approach that problem was, okay, I know how to fix it because I'm able to move fast, not realizing and thinking about the fact that I had 10 plus years of experience at that point.

25:16And these were all people that had just started in this field, thinking that that was all gonna fix everything. It just killed everybody's motivation and confidence. And it made it seem like we were all failing all the time. Stepping back from that, learning from that experience, the best thing I found was just finding the thing that was the most important and working on that and getting that right and then taking the next thing and getting that right. So if it was a low stress practice, how do we make the patient experience as low stress as possible? How can we communicate around, I didn't take the temperature because I felt this patient was too stressed and I know that it's important because it doesn't feel well.

25:53And also I didn't want you to not be able to touch the cat because I went in the room and took the temperature. Having those conversations and coming from a place of trusting each other, It's also building trust. Like you talk a lot about trust building, Andy. Being able to build that trust comes over those moments of having those conversations, explaining why it matters, explaining why having this surgery suite set up this way is important to me because I have a fear of this thing. I would have never known that if we didn't talk about it. But picking one thing as a lead and saying, okay, this is something that matters because either it's been expressed to me by my leaders that it's important and the expectation is that I need to help support this happening.

26:32Or I see across my team, this is a challenge where everyone's struggling to communicate with this particular doctor for some reason. How can we work together to fix that? So picking one thing at a time and like, okay, where can I do my best with this right now? And then do my best with the next thing really takes a little bit of the overwhelm out of the big picture and the failing feeling. That helped me at least. And also, like I said, Coming at it from everything is wrong and you're all just need to do it my way. It's definitely, it doesn't work. I did that one wrong myself. Yeah. I think there's two pieces to that.

27:09I think slowing down to go fast is a lesson that we learn over time. You know, it's a lot of the, I want to get this fixed right now. This is how we're going to do it. And you get zero buy-in and it just, it's a headache and it's a nightmare. and slowing down and having the conversations to get people to kind of buy in and agree on what's important and what we're trying to do. In the long term, that is the fastest way to move forward. I think that's right. The other thing that I think you touched on is the idea, you know, we tend to wildly overestimate what we can accomplish in one year and underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years.

27:44And I think one of the things that people don't realize or they don't think about when they start in like a lead tech role or something, for example, is if you fix three problems, in a year, that's a pretty good year. And I think that blows a lot of people's minds, especially when like, everything is wrong. I was like, look, if you fix three problems this year, and then you fix three problems next year, and then you fix three problems the year after that, you fix nine problems. That is real forward progress. And again, I'm sure people are like, I can list a million problems. Like, you probably can't.

28:15You can probably list a million symptoms, but there's probably not that many real problems. And also, if you fixed one, it would probably spill over and improve some of the other things as well. And so I really like the way you broke that up. Tyler, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and I'm gonna kind of try to run through this in sort of chronological order of sort of steps to take. Is that okay? Yeah, sounds great. You believe that Uncharted is turning 10? That's right. Uncharted Ben-Hari Conference is celebrating 10 years and you're gonna wanna be there. It is happening on January 15, 2027, and registration is open right now.

28:51UnchartedVet.com. Hope to see you there. All right. So getting into some action steps. Lead Vet Tech feels like they're failing because everybody's asking for different things, and it doesn't feel like we have any continuity, and there's just confusion, and lots of different desires and people getting pulled in different ways. I think for me, the first thing here has got to be around clearer job expectations and understanding what does the leadership who put you in this role, What do they expect of you? And so to me, I think I would try to have a vulnerable and honest conversation. I think a lot of people would say, no, I've been elevated to this role.

29:24I want you to know that you selected the right person. I think for me, I want to go and have an honest conversation and say, look, there's a lot of things where the doctors are asking for different things, where there's confusion between doctors on what we're supposed to do. And I think that causes frustration for the team. And honestly, I don't know how to solve this because I'm not sure what the right path is. and I don't want to step on toes. And it's making me, it's honestly making me kind of feel like I'm either overwhelmed or feel like I'm a failure. And I wanted to know if we could, if we could sort of start to talk about that and talk about the vision of what my role is and where you would like to see the treatment room go.

29:59And so I would start by asking questions like that. You called out something earlier, Tyler, that I really liked when you mentioned like, how am I, like, how are we measuring success in your eyes? So we talked about, we want things to go faster. What does that mean? What are the metrics that you're looking at where you are measuring our speed? Is that wait time in the lobby? Is that the number of patients that we're seeing in a day? Is that when we're turning off the hot donuts now sign and not letting new appointments walk in at the end of the day because we're like, nope, we're done for the day.

30:32And that time is getting earlier and earlier in the day. What is it? How are we measuring success? How are you measuring success for me? If I'm great at this job, how will you know it? And if I'm bad at this job, how will you know it? I really like those two questions because that tells you something about what leadership is looking at you to do. And so I don't know. Do you agree with that on trying to find clarity around your job as a first step? Yeah, absolutely. I think you've got to be really clear about what your role is that you're filling. What did they put you into this position for? And then what responsibilities go with that?

31:04Like this isn't just about you being kind of the middle person between two sides of a difficult conversation. You know, it's more than that. And so it's worth sitting down and having those conversations. And also just getting into that headspace of it's not wrong on either side. Like nobody's wrong here. Like, yes, at the situation that I mentioned earlier, we did need to move faster. We were seeing a lot of patients. That is a real need that needs to be fixed and fulfilled. But what is your responsibility in supporting that happening? And what are you actually able to influence? And picking one thing and being able to start there with that alignment.

31:44Like you said, alignment is one of our team words now. But what is the expectation on both sides? And at the end of the day, everybody wants to come to work and feel good, right? Nobody wants to leave feeling like they didn't do a good job. So figuring out where you actually fit in and influence is, I think, important too. I think that's really important. I think in a lot of cases, in a lot of practices, the team lead, the lead CSR, the lead assistant, lead kennel tech, lead technician, these are fairly new positions in a lot of practices. And a lot of them were put together really without a whole lot of thought about what they were actually going to do.

32:20It's usually the practice manager feels overwhelmed. And they're like, I need help. Let's make one of the technicians help me. And we're calling the lead tech. and that's it. That's not a bad way to start. It's a bad way if you're five years in and that's still all you got. That's not where we need to be. So we need to sort of push for that order. You talked a lot about the sort of the second one for me, Tyler, which is around priorities. You can't fix all the things at once. Try to make a list of like, where are these pain points? Where are the places where you feel like communication breaks down?

32:48Where everybody's freestyling, as I call it. People are just, just do what you feel. Everybody's doing it differently. what are those places? And then sort of look at them. And the questions that I have when I look at where are we dropping the ball is, number one, which one hurts the most? Meaning if I'm going to fix one of these, which is the one that is either is most common, I mean, it's affecting a lot of my days, or it's affecting my days severely. Or if we could fix this, I think a lot of other peripheral things would all get better. So I try to weigh all three of those factors, but then I try to make my priorities and I can't fix the whole practice at once.

33:25It does need to be a, let's work on one issue and let's work on the next issue and let's work on the next issue. And what I would encourage people in this regard is once you pick your priority, slow down to go fast. Just try to let some things go as far as feeling bad because everything is not fixed at once. Invest in having the conversations, invest in listening to people's desires and concerns. Why are the doctors recommending different things or why do they want it different ways? And you might not, we're not gonna be able to do what both of them want if they want opposite things, but I can at least make them feel heard.

34:00And the reason it's important to slow down here is because if you plan to keep making changes, you can help yourself by building trust in this first process and making people believe that you care and you're trying hard and that you listen to them. And if you want to make everything in the future hard, make people think that you don't really care about them or that you're going to try to bulldoze over them or that you're not listening to them because they will they will step up and make every change you want to make hard in the future. I also think that there's just this element of just like I said earlier, relationship building.

34:31And I feel like more of a dynamic thing than people give it credit for, myself included. Like walking into an exam room, working with a doctor for the first couple of times, it's going to be bumpy. Like it just it is like. Yes. Andy, if you and I have never worked together in an exam room, like I don't think we could walk out of day one and be like, that was fantastically perfect. And I did everything that you hoped I would, or I held that pet like the way that you would prefer. Like those are going to be things that naturally shift and change over time. And so some of the things that people that end up in a lead role where they're kind of being asked to navigate these types of maybe preferences and things like that forget is that some of this is going to be dynamic.

35:13Like we're going to walk in some days and like they just like some people aren't going to get along. And so you mentioned at the very beginning of when we were talking kind of what's the context of the conversation we're having right now? What's the context of like this isn't happening the way that I need it to? Is it because we had you and I had a really bad day working together? Like, did did I just do something that really set you off today? And and that's a conversation you and I need to have. Or is this something that's like you said, a pattern? So what's the context of this issue? But also, you know, for me, working in the exam room and working in the practice, just coming in and realizing that we're all there every day to have a good day.

35:50we're not there to to butt heads or to disagree or to be difficult or they're with the same goals in mind and so if i start to learn over time that andy likes to have the otoscope out on the counter and if the medical records pulled up on the computer when he walks in like that makes life go so much better then i'm going to learn that over time and it might not happen every day if we're having an insane saturday but those are things that i think are more dynamic than we give credit for too a little bit. And so from a lead perspective, it might feel like there's problems all the time, but I think that's just kind of part of it.

36:25It just changes. Things change, people change, teams change. So I'm not getting too caught up in that being like your responsibility too. Yeah, I agree with that. I think the next thing for me is really leaning into knowing the team and knowing the doctors as much as you can, because I hear a lot of lead techs that will complain and say, well, I don't have power to make people do anything. And that's not abnormal. You don't want to lead your team with power anyway. Like where I think you genuinely want to go, it's rarely on the lead techs to be like disciplining people. Again, it depends on the system, but that's often not the case.

37:03And it's not about having the power to walk in and say, Tyler, I'm your boss and I'm telling you, this is what you need to do right now. That's rarely required and most people, it's not a very good system in my experience. I think the way to be effective in these lead roles is to really position yourself as an advocate for the techs or an advocate for the front desk or an advocate for the kennel assistants and things. And to try to know these people and understand them and support them in your role. And so basically, if you see yourself as a servant leader and a supporter, it makes it a lot easier to go to your team and say, guys, I need some help with something.

37:40Hey guys, nobody's doing this wrong, but we're doing it in different ways. And I think it's causing some confusion and I really need your help to come together and align on what this is going to look like or how we're going to do it. And so would you guys help me with that? And it's that kind of, it's a soft leadership and it's really very much from sort of leading from the middle and it's leading without, you know, dominant organizational power. That's usually how it goes here. And so it's really, it's not trying to flex on the people you're leading and saying, I've got the title. I wear the share of star.

38:17You're going to do what I say. It's never that. It's not going to be that. It's about saying, hey, you guys know I'm trying really hard to make things better for the techs and to make our jobs easier. I need your help with something. And I think it's going to make, it's going to make our lives better, but, but we're going to have to make some compromises as a team in order to make it happen. And so let me tell you what I'm looking at. And then let me tell you the why behind what I'm asking for and go forward. But it's really hard to jump in and start asking your team for stuff if they don't believe that you care about them or they don't know that you're there to serve them.

38:53It's kind of the same thing we say for pet owners. You know, it's like people don't, they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. It's kind of that same feeling as a team lead as well. And so I think the next step after that really for me is build those relationships and lean into relational power. Yeah. What you said about asking for help, I think it's a really, it's a vulnerable way to lead people. And it's also, I think, way more effective. It's also hard. It is hard if it's something that you struggle to do, that it is something that's a skill. Again, like a lot of the things that I think we hear on the podcasts or we read about in, you know, leadership trainings and things like that.

39:31Like these are skills. So, you know, being patient and realizing like over time, these things you're going to learn and you'll start to pick up more and, and just practicing. And you mentioned something that I hear and have heard from, I think Maria Parita talks about this really well is using one-on-ones and spending time getting to know your team. Yes. Spending time where you can have those types of conversations, or maybe you can ask for individuals for help. And also having regular meetings with the team to say, as a group, how can we come together to solve this problem or see where we're missing these steps or what resources or tools do we need to support making this happen in the way that we need it to.

40:10So regularly checking in and having kind of the framework set up where you can do that. That's something I think is a great starting place too. If this is someone stepping into a new role as a lead, talking to your manager and saying, am I able to set up something like time to have one-on-ones with the people that I'm leading and group meetings and maybe meetings with the leads of the other teams so that we can come together. Those are all things that setting up from the beginning can help facilitate some of those conversations that support training throughout the process of getting your team on the same page.

40:43Well, that leads into my last point just perfectly. of. And the last thing for me is some one-on-ones with your direct boss. And I would say, hey, can we get some time once a week, once every other week, just to talk about how things are going to touch base? Let me ask you some questions. I want to hear how things are going. All of those sorts of things. And this is the time to say, what am I doing well? What do I need to be doing differently? How do you feel like this is going? This is what I'm seeing on the ground. Can you help me with this? But it's having a regular check-in time so we can compare notes, have just clear communication.

41:17And also it stops me from coming and knocking on the manager's door all the time, because I know we're going to get our time together and I'll give you a download then. And ideally, hopefully it stops the manager from texting me and being like, why didn't this happen? Or where are we with this? Put that stuff on the agenda, you know, keep it in a document where you won't lose it. And then ask me when we get together. It's very efficient communication. And it stops us from blowing each other up on text messages after hours. So anyway, that's, That's what I got, Tyler. Is there anything else you'd add to that?

41:45I don't think so. I feel like we covered a lot. This was a great mailbag question. Thanks for asking me to come help. My pleasure. Thanks for being here, Tyler. Guys, thanks for tuning in, everybody. We'll talk to you guys later on. And that's what we got. Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks to Tyler for unpacking this with me. If you have a question for the mailbag, send it to us on email. The email address is podcast at unchartedvet.com. That's podcast at unchartedvet.com. Gang, take care of yourselves, everybody. I'll see you later on. Are you a medical leader who has not invested in themselves recently?

42:19Guys, don't miss your chance. The 10-year anniversary of Uncharted Veterinary Conference is coming up in January. January 15th, the day before VMX. Come to Orlando, have an incredible time with us, and then stay for the conference. Don't miss it. UnchartedVet.com