422 - I Need to Delegate but the Team is Too Busy to Help

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.

1:00Ron Sosa: Welcome back to another episode of the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Maria Preeta, and I am super excited for today's episode because I felt like it was super relatable to so many of us in practice management. Whether you are a practice manager, whether you're a practice owner, whether you're a veterinary team lead, so many of us have oftentimes taken on extra tasks, whether it was because we were short staffed, because of a crisis situation, the person that normally did it left, whatever it was, we take on these tasks sometimes because we're the only ones that know how to do it because we're the only ones that are good at it.

1:29Ron Sosa: We take on the task and then we don't give it to anyone. And before you know it, task piles up after task, after task, after task. And you're finding yourself having to do the job of two people simply because you never delegated any of these things. And we have that exact mailbag from a practice manager who did this because their team was short staffed. They took on a lot of these roles, a lot of things that they now need to delegate and they recognize that they have to delegate, but obviously they're unsure about how. Some things they're very worried are just not going to get done at all. Some things they just don't know who to delegate to.

2:02Ron Sosa: Some things they're afraid they're not going to get done correctly if they do get done. And the biggest one of all, they are just too afraid that the team is too busy to take care of any of these things. So how do you delegate when your team is just going to see it as more work? And all of these questions, they were so good. I feel like so many of us have been here before that I had to bring on Ron Sosa. You guys know that Ron Sosa is so good at facing that inner critic, trying to figure out what's really bothering us about the situation and why we can't move it forward. And I really kind of read that in the mailbag.

2:34Ron Sosa: This person, they know what they have to do. They're just having a hard time actually getting through that piece. And so we talk a lot about, in general, our own mental headspace around this, like what makes this difficult, how we can move the things forward, how we get organized, how do we decide which tasks are most urgent or more important to delegate first. And then in general, how do we talk to the team about this so that it doesn't feel like more work on top of the work that they're already doing. And so all of this, I hope you guys enjoy. I know I had a lot of fun with this. So without further ado, let's get into this episode.

3:07Ron Sosa: And now the Uncharted podcast.

3:16Ron Sosa: You show up for pets every day. It's because care is your calling, and it's ours, too. We know it's what drives you to make a difference in the health and well-being of every pet. That's because at Zoetis, hundreds of veterinarians are part of our team, too, working with you to provide science-backed medicines, technology, and practical support to help elevate your standard of care. Learn more at careisyourcalling.com. And welcome back to the podcast, Ram Sosa. How are you doing? I am doing great. Thanks for having me once again. I love talking to you. I feel like you and I have this really good energy in general, but also I just, I love picking your brain because you're doing such great work in the neurodiverse world and also in the coaching world.

4:03Ron Sosa: I mean, boy, our Uncharted members are benefiting so much from the leadership labs that you're doing and from the group coaching and from so much that I wanted to talk to you about this mailbag particular for that reason, but also because when I read this mailbag, I was like, I felt it to my core as a practice manager so much, but also when I worked in other fields too. And so I was like, you know what, this is a very much a practice manager mailbag. Let me bring on Ron Sosa, who is excellent at this delegation piece, which is kind of the core of what we're talking about. But before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've got going on and how things are going and yeah, like how things are going in the community as well too.

4:43Yeah. The leadership labs that we're doing once a month right now are going fantastic. It's a place where we can practice hard conversations, practice skills that we don't normally get to do and have fun with doing it. Right. If we say something that is totally like, oh, that came off the wrong way, you get to like pause and laugh about it and then try again. Right. Which is, it's a great place to, in a safe space to practice those skills. That's what I think I

5:06Ron Sosa: love the most is the whole, like, it feels like when we go and have these conversations without practicing them out, we end up getting that, like that pause or that feeling of like, what am I doing in the moment, which then breaks down our confidence or it makes us sound less confident, which then doesn't get us to the goal that we need. But when we can practice those conversations, you know, like you said, in a safe space, it gets all of those like hiccups out, you know what I mean? And all of a sudden, by the time you are having the real conversation, you've practiced it out, you've thought about it, you're not letting your emotion take over, which I think is really key.

5:37Ron Sosa: So I love that about it. One of the things I like is when we get to pick a partner to role play with, we get to ask them, like, how did it feel being the person having a hard conversation with? Right? Yeah, I love that question. Because then it gets like, what is the other person going to experience? And if you get to play that person across the table, sometimes we play role reversal. And then you get to play that person, then you get to feel exactly what it's like to be in their shoes for a moment. And you know, so I just I absolutely love those kind of role play, safe space conversations. The safe space conversations, me too.

6:10Ron Sosa: Boy, such a benefit to Uncharted members, to the teams that they get to lead so much. And I feel like some of that practicing the conversation actually comes into play with a little bit of what we're talking about today. We're talking a lot about delegation. So we have this mailbag from somebody who, like I said, it touched me to my core, but we've got a practice manager essentially. And it's kind of a long mailbag, but the gist of it is essentially that they have had some restaffing. They went through a period of being really short staffed. And as like one person would leave, this practice manager took on part of their role and then another person would leave.

6:46Ron Sosa: So then they took on part of that role. And before you know it, she was handling not just the normal practice management responsibilities, but now like all of these additional things that weren't necessarily part of the role. And in doing so, like now that they've gotten more staff in place and things are going back to normal. She's like, well, now I need to delegate all of this. But the problem is that I'm, I'm worried that I'm, I'm the only one that knows how to do it. I'm the only one that knows how to do it well. And then at the same time, my team is, is fairly new. They're not, you know, they don't necessarily have all of this time to be delegating some of this work to their, they feel like they're super busy too, because the whole practice is busy.

7:24Ron Sosa: So like they even said, I know the obvious answer is probably delegate, but that feels easier said than done. Some things I'm not sure who I would delegate to. Other things I worry won't get done correctly. Some of them, I'm just afraid the team is already too busy or they'll just see it as more work. So how do I figure out what I should really still be carrying as a practice manager and what I need to let go of? And how do I start putting things down without feeling like I'm abandoning the team entirely? So I was like, oh, I feel you because I don't know if you know this from working with me, Ron, but I am that person who will, I I will take on more and more and more and more to help the team.

7:59Ron Sosa: And then before you know it, like I'm like, all of these things became my babies now and I have to take care of them. How do I go backward now? Because I've been doing this for so long. The team has obviously gotten used to me doing these things, but at the same time, if I don't hand these over, I will burn out. And so I've definitely resonated with it. I'm wondering, like, have you ever been in this spot as a practice manager, like where you picked things up as a crisis and then never put them down? Yes, 100%. And in practice, and even being on the Uncharted team where we had some staffing changes over the year, and I picked things up.

8:33And, you know, three years later, I'm like, why am I still doing this? Right? We all, I think, kind of go through those revelations of like, how much workload am I actually carrying? And I think what I see over and over and over in myself and leaders that I work with, is that it never starts with a mistake, right? It always starts as the right call.

8:52Ron Sosa: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're trying to do the right thing. Somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to do it. And most likely you are the person who is the fastest at it. You catch it before it even turns into a crisis, right? And almost none of that has a way of coming out. And so you stabilize your practice, you stabilize the business, the emergency behavior just keeps running because no one's ever told you to stop. And then we have no idea the trigger point that happens, right? Like when crisis happens and we have to absorb, it's easy to say, I'm going to go ahead and take this. What doesn't happen is when the emergency subsides, there's no trigger point, no new crisis that says, here's how to offload until you hit a crisis of my plate is too full and I'm burning out.

9:36And then that's the crisis that says I need to delegate. And at that point, it's not the place to delegate.

9:42Ron Sosa: Yeah. It's almost like you put a bandaid on there or a duct tape solution. But then after a while, the duct tape can only hold so much. And it's just like, now we're, we're feeling this load. And I agree with you. I think this, this happens more often, I think, than we'd like to realize that it does because so many things end up staying part of our plate until we, we kind of bust open. Cause we just can't handle it all. And so there's, I think that this is a very relatable part of practice management in general. I think practice owners tend to feel this too. And a lot of like leads, team leads, or even veterinary assistants who are kind of covering for a team lead.

10:14Ron Sosa: So it's very relatable to, I think more than just the practice manager role, but But I do, I find that this is very common for a lot of leaders, especially when we want to take care of the team. A lot of times, like you said, we have insight that the other team members don't. So that helps us do that task or that role. And then like you said, we just don't ever, we don't ever give it back. I think there's interesting something to point out about the mailbag letter itself. Because this person is not confused, right? They've already diagnosed themselves. And what I see is like three clean categories.

10:46what's actually theirs, what became theirs, and they're good at it. And what still is theirs, because it started a couple of years ago, and no one really discussed stopping, right? So they've got these three clean buckets have already diagnosed that this person already knows what's going on. So the real question is, isn't what's wrong? It's why somebody who can see it this clearly still hasn't put any of it down.

11:10Ron Sosa: Yes. What mentally is there still going on, right? Because there's obviously these barriers. And I think that they started to point those out. I think that that team one is a lot bigger. They put it at the end. I'm just afraid the team is already too busy or they'll see it as more work. I really want to know where some of that comes from because I know that I've been in a situation, and maybe you have too, where you are trying to delegate. But then the moment that you start to delegate it, they're like, oh, this is just more work for me to do. Or when you have handed it over, you realize that you actually have to slow down in order to hand it over.

11:41Ron Sosa: And that slowing down costs us time, it costs us money, it costs us pressure. And at some point you're like, well, it's just faster if I do it. There's a lot of fears going on here that as we're looking at the situation, the fear of not getting done right, the fear of it taking much longer, or the fear that the team is just genuinely too busy to get it done. How do you start to get over some of those fears? Where would you start to do like the mental headspace to move forward or move past that? Oof, like I feel like this is a whole podcast episode in and of itself. Yeah, I think we need to, I think most of us know this in leadership that we've been in it long enough and heard the podcast long enough.

12:15At some point, we have to recognize there's a story we're telling ourselves in our head, right? Are our team actually too busy to do something? Do we recognize what it is that we're asking? Like oftentimes we're diagnosing things that are not actually diagnosable yet, right? And so the fear is overriding the ability to ask the question. So sometimes we just need to sit down with our team and say, hey, I need help. And just being vulnerable and say, I need help. Hey, Maria, I really am struggling and I have too much going on. I don't want to place extra pressure on you. Do you have any capacity on some of these things that I'm actually working with?

12:53And I think you would be a great fit for one of these pieces. And how can we work together and how can I support you through that? I think part of that is just talking with your team and overriding the fear. They got to start with leading with that vulnerability and asking for help.

13:07Ron Sosa: I am so glad that you mentioned vulnerability because that was part of my piece as well. And so I think when you're faced with these situations, I always think about what is the best thing for the team as a whole, right? And as a whole, one of the things that I see here is we are constantly telling our teams, hey, come to us before you're burnt out. Come to us before you quit because you're so tired because we overloaded you. and you put your oxygen mask on first, right? Yeah, exactly. We say that over and over in vet med, but then when you're the practice manager or the practice owner, all of a sudden, that becomes so much harder to do.

13:42Ron Sosa: Right. But this is one of those examples where like, I do think that the practice manager here needs to think about leading by example, think about how they would prefer their team to respond in these situations. And that kind of helps gives us a little bit of the confidence that we need to respond that way. And I also think about, okay, what is the best thing for the practice as a whole. Because if I do, if I don't unload some of this, if I don't delegate this, if I don't talk to the team about how I'm struggling, there's a good chance that I myself, I might end up quitting and leaving the team.

14:11Ron Sosa: Then they're going to be in a whole new situation because now they don't have anybody doing any of these roles or any of the stuff that we need to get done. And so that's leaving them almost in a worse situation because you didn't try to speak up. And I think that vulnerability piece is really key in having the conversation and being able to say like, Hey, I did this and I would want you guys to speak up if you were ever feeling like there was too much workload on your plate and that you were burning out. And so I found myself having to lead by example here and I'm just going to be vulnerable.

14:41Ron Sosa: I'm going to say it out loud. There's a lot that I've taken over from when we were short staffed. It's ABCD. I'm looking to offload some of this. I don't want to add more to your plate. And that's why I've come to you with a plan, which kind of gets me a little bit to that part, because I do think that there's some, there could be some reality to the fact that the team might be too busy to help us with these things. And so I think that there's oftentimes when it comes to delegation, there's a little bit of a give and take. So let me ask you that before she decides to hand anything off or before this person decides to hand anything off, if you're saying she, because I'm a practice manager.

15:14I know I was thinking she in my head, like let's face it. The reality is our practices are dominated by people who are born female, right? So that's just what it is. And that's totally fine. And so So I think the assumption of saying she is way better than the assumption of saying he at this point.

15:28Ron Sosa: Thank you. Thank you. I mean, that's a good way to think about it. So that makes me feel a little bit better. But yeah, like before this person officially starts to think about what to hand off, like how do they frame it with the team so that it doesn't feel like more extra work? Or like what kind of things do we need to keep in mind for that? Yeah, I think if we just go back one quick second, when we think about the fear, lead with vulnerability, right? What are the values of the practice? What are my personal values so that I have strength through that fear? because the fear is not going to go away, right?

15:55What's the story I'm telling myself? What are the values that I can lead with? How can I be vulnerable with my team? And then put my oxygen mask on first, so to speak. So I love all of that. The next step is, I think we need to start by seeing it all, right? Oftentimes what we do is we feel like everything is on our plate, right? We need to start by actually seeing it. What you don't want to do is fix anything at first until you see it. Take two good full weeks, right? This is a project in and of itself. We have to work with it as if it's a project. Take two full weeks. Every time somebody brings you something unusual, write it down.

16:32Maybe it's like on a piece of paper, a one-liner, write it down. What was it? Who brought it? How long did it take you to do? That's all you have to do. No problem solving for the first two weeks. You don't even need to renegotiate because you're already doing that work, right? Then I like to sort it. And the instinct is oftentimes to go right to Eisenhower matrix and say, what is important and what is urgent? However, before we can even get there, I like to say, what needs my authority? Because that's what stays. And then we can bucket it into what's important and what's urgent. What needs my knowledge?

17:07Because that can be taught to someone else, right? And then you can stamp a date on it for training. And then what only needs my willingness, right? Because that's what piles up. I'm willing to take this on because I see it and I can do it, not because it needs your authority or your knowledge. Those are the things that pile up way too much. And then the third, that willingness also becomes part of our identity. And one of the reasons we really don't negotiate it is because you really don't want to negotiate your identity until it becomes a thing that you can't handle anymore.

17:43Ron Sosa: Yes. I love your buckets because they're very similar to the ones that I wrote down. Will was like, what do you like to do? What do you want to do? The reason why I think that that's really important, and I'm glad that you put that in his bucket. The other two seem to be very obvious. What are the things that only you can do? Like you only can have the authority or the access to? Yeah, exactly. That's obvious. And then what are the things that anyone in the practice could do, right? Which you mentioned, what are those things that are coming through that you can delegate? But I do think that other bucket that you mentioned, like the will part is super important because you're right.

18:15Ron Sosa: We tie it to identity. And so that's why it becomes important. But at the same time, there are some things that we will naturally want to hold on to, even though they don't make sense to stay in our role. You will fight for those, even though it doesn't make sense for those to stay in those because you want to do them. The best thing you can do is address the fact that you want to do them and then see if that makes sense then thereafter. And then the other thing is because you don't want to give up too many of the things that you want to do, because otherwise, if you're doing all of these admin tasks that you feel like you have to do, well, that's another way to really look at your role and start to hate it on a regular day-to-day basis.

18:50Ron Sosa: So I think that bucket is really important from a, hey, I don't want to only do the things that I want to do and then accidentally ignore all the other things. And at the same time, there's a certain level of these things that I'm probably going to want to keep because they fill my cup and it's part of like - That external validation is a nice drug. Yeah. And there's, I think there's systems in which we can maybe keep some of it and maybe not keep all of it, but you don't know until you start to buck it out from a perspective of this or that. You touched on the Eisenhower matrix. And I want to expand on that just a little bit, because it's a really good tool that I think works on a day-to-day for tasks or for things that need to get done.

19:25Ron Sosa: And so just for a quick explanation for those listeners that have not heard of the Eisenhower matrix yet, basically quadrant one is do first. And these are tend to be like your urgent and important tasks. Quadrant two is not urgent and important. quadrant three is urgent and not important. And then quadrant four is not urgent, not important. And so we've got these four quadrants and we'll put up a, I think a little slide to show you on the videos video side, but you've got these four quadrants and everything exists in one of those. So essentially like, obviously you would do first the urgent and important things, and then you would schedule the not urgent and important things.

20:01Ron Sosa: You would delegate the urgent and non-important things. Did I say that right? You would schedule the not urgent and important things and you would delegate the urgent and not important things. And then you would delete or not do the not urgent, not important things. And so, yeah, I'm going to push back on the Eisenhower major. I love it and hate it at the same time because it depends on how you look at it, right? Am I looking at it through the lens of my role as a practice manager, or am I looking at it at the lens of the business needs? And it's important to know what lens that you're looking at that from, because if you're looking at that as your authority, which is why I bucketed into authority before I'll move that way first, is because everything can seem like it's the most important.

20:44Ron Sosa: Yep. I was like, because I'm looking at it through the lens of the business, everything is important, right? When I start to look at it from my role and what I need to accomplish and my authority, things actually shift. And so I want you as the practice manager to look at it from the lens of your role, not you as the business. Sometimes we need to put the goggles on and look at everything from the business perspective. And sometimes we need to look at it from our role perspective. And I think that's a really important distinction we don't often talk about. No, I think you're so spot on. And that's exactly why I was saying I feel like it's a good tool for delegation.

21:18Ron Sosa: I think when it comes to tasks and what need to get done on a certain business side or like how the lens that you're looking at it essentially is the way that I think you're describing it so perfectly. I think it's a great tool. I prefer the buckets for what we're talking about here, because I think the buckets are going to refer more to what instantly can't, what can get removed from my plate? What do I want removed from my plate and what can't get removed from my plate? And I think that that fits more for a role perspective than necessarily like a full business. But I do think that there's multiple ways to delegate.

21:45Ron Sosa: And we talk about Eisenhower matrix. We talk a lot about it, the buckets. There's also the whole, which ones do you do the harder task first or the easier task first, you know, like, which I know those, that's just so personality dependent. I feel like I am totally the easy task for first person. Like I love to knock those out. Cause then I feel like one accomplished task gives me enough motivation to accomplish another one. And then another one, and then another one. Again, that way of delegating is not necessarily what I think is going to be the biggest tool here in this example, just because to me, it's very task oriented doing the harder thing first and the easier thing.

22:19Ron Sosa: Um, it might not exactly fit what you need for this particular situation. Maybe this is a good spot to take a break before we get into it because I'm getting into some action steps real quick. Is there anything else from like a headspace perspective that you want to touch on before we get into these action steps? No, I think that I think we hit on a good amount of them at the authority, the fears, like I think that's a great place. I think the other thing we need to think of is how much self-criticism are we bogging ourselves down with before we're allowed to actually move forward on something.

22:49That's something I see in a lot of veterinary professionals, a lot of leaders. we often like if you think about how we go through school how medicine is built right it's all built around self-criticism like you have to be top of your class right to get into vet school yeah right if you think about all of the credentialing and all of the superiority and elitist things that we often kind of normalize in our profession all of that comes with self-criticism right and so when medicine is like you can't screw up then all you do is saying look at where you're screwing up, you can't do that. And that's where perfectionism comes from, imposter syndrome and all of that negative self-criticism.

23:27Ron Sosa: And perfectionism will really get you here because there's a lot of people who will be like, oh, I need to have the entire job discretion for this role written up with every single task with a protocol manual for this role before I can hand it over. And it's like, well, not technically. You can start with one task at a time and build the protocol manual as you're training this individual or even have this individual who your training, build the protocol manual. Because as we know from training individuals or Bloom's taxonomy, that last level of education, really creating something helps them with retaining information anyway.

24:00Ron Sosa: So like not allowing this perfectionist thing of I have to have everything before I can hand over. No, we have to have a basic understanding of how to do the thing, maybe write it up and train somebody, but it doesn't have to be perfect. This individual that we put in this role can make it even better for us once they start doing it. And so that's such a good call out too. Why don't we take a break here and then we'll come back with the action items. Sound good? Let's do it. You believe that Uncharted is turning 10? That's right. Uncharted Vet Conference is celebrating 10 years and you're going to want to be there.

24:33Ron Sosa: It is happening on January 15th, 2027 and registration is open right now. Unchartedvet.com. Hope to see you there. All right. So obviously we know that we've got this practice manager who is coming in. They've got a lot on their plate. This is going to lead to chaos, which actually I love because you are doing a lecture coming up or similar to chaos and how do we get out of this situation at Uncharted in January? If I'm not, why don't you tell us a little bit about that session? Yeah. So this is really exciting because it's 10 years of Uncharted, right? We've got Peter Weinstein, we've got you, we've got Andy Rourke, we've got all of us speaking.

25:10And so Peter Weinstein is walking us through how this profession got us here. And Andy, I think is handling or handing us away on how to decide what we keep. And I'm going to close the day and I'll let you talk about your piece. It's why I'm intentionally skipping it. But I'm going to close the day and I want to talk about you, the listener here, the person who has to carry all of it, right? So we're each packing gear in the metaphorical journey in the jungle on the uncharted path. We're each packing gear for the next 10 years, gear we have chosen, right? And this is very appropriate to the mailbag today, gear that someone hands us, right?

25:47The gear we forgot we're even carrying, right? And that last pile of what I call that internal load, we're going to name it all, right? And we're going to set some of it down. And I'm going to walk you through with what it is. And I'm going to walk you through like a sentence to help you keep what you want to keep, put away what you want to put away and bring your whole pack to the next 10 years.

26:09Ron Sosa: I love that. Really doing some internal deep work. And I love preparing for the future. Like I'm a big planner in general. My sessions focus more on communication. So it doesn't necessarily pertain to this mailbag, but it is more on like, how do we communicate the changes coming to veterinary medicine to both the clients and the team? Because at the end of the day, whether you add on AI to your clinic, there's going to be a client who says, I don't want to be a part of AI. Or whether you decide to bring on remote CSRs, whether you're starting to see like the whole practitioner role that we've got coming on.

26:39Ron Sosa: There's like all of these changes are coming to veterinary medicine. And for me, it's more about how do we communicate those things outwardly to the client and also internally to the team. Communication does come into play for this mailbag because we talked about how do we delegate without making it seem like it is more work for the team. And so I do think that there's part of this involved in like a lot of what we do. So I'm really excited to talk about that. I'm really excited to hang out with all the Uncharted members. We're turning 10. There's going to be mic drops. There's going to be all sorts of fun stuff.

27:08Ron Sosa: And I just, I think it's going to be a really good time. So I'll make sure to put the registration link in the show notes, but I didn't want to leave today's episode without mentioning that just because you're not going to want to miss it. You know what I mean? We're going to have a lot of fun and there's going to be photos. There's going to be videos everywhere. So back to this mailbag, you're talking a little bit about preparing for the future and especially like around this delegation piece. I think that there's a lot of action items necessary here to really set us up for success. We kind of already said that we'd start with looking at the tasks and delegating it in these couple of weeks where we're just kind of writing down all of these tasks that making us feeling overwhelmed.

27:40Ron Sosa: Let's say that we're past these couple of weeks where we've written down the tasks and we've bucketed them out. Where do we go from here? Yeah, I think before we even look at handing anything off, I think we need to decide, is this a people problem or a system problem, right? If your schedule falls apart every week and you hand the schedule to a person and say, fix it, fix the schedule, right? And basically you're handing someone else a dumpster fire. We need repetition is a design signal, right? So that is a design problem, not a person problem because it's going to fail in your hands and it's going to fail in someone else's hands.

28:14All right. So some of what you're carrying should get systematized. So nobody has to handle it, right? And some of it should just be eliminated? Like we had talked before with the Eisenhower matrix, does your website actually need to be updated right now or even in the next six months, right? Can you throw some of that onto the back burner? Second, is the decision narrow enough to act on, right? A client gets a complaint. Let's use that as an example, right? A client complains. And if I said, oh, client complaints get handled by me now, right? That's too broad to hand to anyone. Because what complaints?

28:48how much money does that complaint need to deal with, right? Can I deal with a$5 off for a nail trim or do I have to bring that every single time to the practice manager here, right? So which complaints at what dollar amount, at what risk level? And if you can't make it that specific, your handoff will bounce right back at you. And then third, where does the 80%, right? The 80-20 rule actually cost something. So most things can be done imperfectly and the practice will survive. That was the perfectionist piece. Like she was like, I'm afraid to hand it off because they're not going to do it as well as I do.

29:22Some of that you've got to let go. 80 % is going to have the practice survive and you survive your plate because your capacity is at full, right? So sometimes we have to be okay with somebody doing about 80 % of the way that we would do it, right? The thing that we cannot take off the plate, right? And I just want to make sure that we say this right up front, right, payroll, control drugs, anything around licensure or legal exposure that has to stay with you, we're probably not delegating those pieces off. And the last question I would ask is, why are you keeping the thing that you wanna keep, right?

29:57There's a version of it won't get done right. And that could be true. And there's a version that's protecting something else. So I would test the hypothesis of what is it protecting you by keeping it, right? What is it protecting you by not wanting it? Oftentimes we'll find some different answers in there that we weren't expecting.

30:15Ron Sosa: Yeah, I think there's a lot of deep work there. I love so much about that. The only thing that I would add is as you're putting together these tasks, you probably do have some old job descriptions or some old protocols that might fit some of these to start gathering some of that information that you do have. You don't have to have it necessarily all built like we talked about, but there are usually some tools that can help us as we're doing some of this work. And as we start to look at like handing off these tasks, what does that look like, Ron? What does a good handoff look like? Because you kind of started talking a little bit about this.

30:45Ron Sosa: Like you don't want to hand someone over a dumpster fire, but like, how do we make sure that we are supporting the team in the handoff? What does that look like? Yeah. Number one, and don't live my failures because I have done this and I know many other leaders who have also fallen into the trap is like, hey, stopping, hey, Maria in the hallway, by the way, do you want to take on our new social, like our social media posting? Great. That's awesome. Good job. And then you walk away and then you notice that the most social media postings don't happen on the way that you wanted them to happen. And you're like, see, I delegated and it didn't work.

31:18Right. That is not how delegation works.

31:20Ron Sosa: So yes, yes, yes. I think we need to have when we delegate something, I think that there's six things that we need to answer. What can they decide? What is their autonomy? What can they decide? What limits apply? What information should they use? Like what resources do they have? What resources should they be using? What standard are they working to, right? How are they being judged and graded on performance? What do they have to escalate? What mechanism do they have to escalate it when it's beyond their approach? And how are we going to review it? How it went? Like, what does that performance look like?

32:01What does success look like at the end of it?

32:03Ron Sosa: Yeah. And I think the escalation part is probably the biggest piece because what will happen is we delegate this off and people are afraid to give it back to us when it's beyond their scope. And then they do something in a way that you don't like, right? Give them a mechanism of action for them to bring it back to you when they don't know or they're learning because that is an investment back into the delegation. Yeah. It's interesting that you feel like that one might be the one that gets missed. I could see that for sure. I almost felt like the checking back in would be the one like afterwards.

32:32Ron Sosa: So like figuring out when is a good time to come back and revisit, like, what does our cadence look like? Because I think oftentimes we can hand people off these things and then we'll be like, okay, we'll do like a weekly check-in, but that weekly check-in then never arrives. And so in the process, there are questions that you could have answered for this individual, but because we didn't answer them in the moment, because we didn't have the check-in, they moved forward and they did it. And then maybe they didn't do it right the way that you wanted to. And I think that that's also something that I would add here as like what a good handoff looks like.

33:00Ron Sosa: I always tell people to remember the dishes. The reason why I tell people to remember the dishes is because there's two things here when we're remembering the dishes. The first one is if you have ever been the dishwasher in your household, you will know that people oftentimes only notice when the dishes are not done. Not when you did the dishes, but when the dishes are not done. I don't know what you're talking about, Maria. No, I always notice when the dishes are done. I am not the dishwasher in my house. I have been the dishwasher in my house, but I'm not the dishwasher currently. Either way, think about the dishes.

33:31Ron Sosa: Make sure that you are not only noticing when the dishes aren't done, but rather notice when the dishes are done. When the tasks are going through and they're happening, even if they're moving and they're learning, remember the dishes. Let them know that you're seeing them doing it, that they're proud of them, that you're happy that they're doing it. Giving them feedback. Positive feedback works a lot more than the corrective feedback, right? We know this. So remember the dishes, which also leads me to that other one, which is the second way in which we remember the dishes is like, I always tell people, pretend like you have, for me, it's my nephew.

34:01Ron Sosa: Like I always, my nieces are nephews, but your kids, your niece and nephew, somebody else's kid is helping you to do the dishes and they're helping you to do the dishes. And they're excited to do the dishes because they've never helped anyone do the dishes, but then they drop one and it breaks. And if you were to yell at the child for breaking the dish, do you think that the child is ever going to help you later on want to do the dishes? And the truth is, no, they're not going to want to, because they're going to remember the time that they broke the dish and you yelled at them. Your team is very similar in the situation is this is how we build psychological safety.

34:29Ron Sosa: So just knowing that your team is likely going to make a mistake and that's okay. It's how we respond to the mistake that I think is really important. It's not a, oh, everything's fine. We make mistakes all the time. Like, no, we have to have the conversation about what mistake was made, but it's not about getting upset, yelling, and, you know, using that negative reinforcement when they do make a mistake, but rather being able to support them in the learning process, I think is going to be key here because you're right that sometimes things might not get done correctly. That is a very valid fear because it's the reality of it.

35:02Ron Sosa: It's about how we respond when the things aren't done correctly that I think really, really matters in those moments. Yeah. See, I always fell into the trap of like, oh, come to me if you're just not sure about anything, right? That was the directive. And then everything came back to me because they're not sure of any of it, right? They're the first time doing it. And so they're unsure and they don't want to get in trouble and they don't want to do it wrong. And so everything comes back and boomerangs back at me. So I always wanted to fix that problem by escalate for risk, not for discomfort, right?

35:32Give them a path to escalate because there's a, it goes beyond the money limit. It goes into a licensure problem. It goes into a money problem. It goes into an authority problem, not because they're discomfort with the actual task, right? People need to experience discomfort in order to grow.

35:50Ron Sosa: I totally wholeheartedly believe that. Yeah. And yeah, I'm so glad you called that out because I am definitely the person that I'm like, like this, you know, like, oh, Maria, take care of this. Okay, great. Like this. Do you like this? Is this good? Do you like this? Is this okay? And I was like, that is so me. So I'm glad that you called that out. One thing that we kind of started talking about is how do we communicate this so that it doesn't seem like it's more work. We talked about leading with vulnerability. We talked about kind of modeling what you want. So a lot of, if somebody was burning out, you'd want them to speak up.

36:17Ron Sosa: But from an actual action steps perspective, how do we make it fair so that it does not feel like added work on top of a busy day? I don't think you're ever going to not feel that way. So we've got to get past feeling like I always say the same thing with confidence, right? You're never going to feel confidence. Confidence is a buildup of proving to yourself that you can do it. So we're always going to feel like that. So we've got to, for instance, whenever the x-ray machine would go down. Instead of calling me, I'm already going to do it, right? The action is already going to happen. I'm going to come out of my office, or maybe I'm going to get on the phone.

36:52We're already doing that piece. So if I was in the practice, I would say, hey, Maria, come over here and learn this thing with me. Oh, you're with a patient. I'm going to take 10 minutes. I'm totally fine. Can someone help Maria and take Maria's place? Help coordinate that, which is going to take you 30 seconds to help Maria cover the thing that she's doing so that Maria and I can now learn the thing together rather than like that's training in real time when the thing happens so that when the x-ray machine goes down like hey is Maria available okay she's not all right I'll do it hey Raphael you're available why don't you do it with me this time right so now I'm training other people how to deal with when the x-ray machine goes down so when it goes down, no one should need me.

37:38Eventually the whole team is there for trained.

37:41Ron Sosa: Yeah. I think that comes down to a lot of systems and making sure that the whole team is aware of what is happening, right? Whatever you're delegating, whatever you're going to have formally go down. This is where like, if you're thinking about delegating as full as like an actual inventory manager role, think about what is it, how long does it take you to do inventory currently? Because it's not really fair to, oh, well, I know it takes me six hours a week to do inventory, but I'm not going to allow somebody else to have six hours a week to do inventory. It's like, no, we have to understand that if you are going to be handing over that inventory and you know it takes six hours, be realistic about that.

38:16Ron Sosa: Let the individual know, hey, this is going to take you about six hours a week. What does that look like for your schedule? What are the best times of the day where you can realistically get this done? I will make sure to schedule it in the scheduler so that everybody knows this person is off the floor. What systems or mechanisms will you need in order to get it done and really coaching the individual, letting them have part of a buy in on this, like a say in this to get their buy in and having a ways of working conversation almost. Because I remember when I handed things down as a inventory, I hated inventory.

38:46Ron Sosa: I had not, I do not put me to count things and order things. And like, it is not my jam. And so it was one of the things that I immediately delegated and I had my inventory manager and she had started doing it. But one of the things that like during one-on-ones that she struggled with was like, every time I'm trying to count things or order things, everyone comes to me and they're like asking me all of these questions. And I said, okay, great. Well, what would be a cool signal? Cause I'm sure they don't realize that that's what you're doing. What'd be a cool signal that you would let the team know?

39:12Ron Sosa: And she's like, I don't know, I guess like maybe I'll start wearing my kitty ears. And I'm like, I think that's a great idea. I'll make an announcement that whenever, you know, Grace is wearing her kitty ears that you are going to be doing inventory. Great. So then that became the signal to everybody else, but that was a ways of working right here. You like realistically you do need this time. And I understand that if we don't talk to the team about it, they're not going to be able to give you that time. And also, even when we talk to the team about it, they might still unintentionally try to take that time away.

39:41Ron Sosa: What's a system we can do? It's like the if then statement. If they still end up doing, like if we still fall into this area where I end up having to run on the floor, what happens then? Right. And I think that those can be really beneficial so that people don't feel like you're just giving them an extra task, but really talking to them about how we're going to achieve that task throughout the work week. Yeah, I agree. All right. So one last question, Ron, because I know we're running out of time here. And so I just have this one last question. What would you say to the manager who feels like she is abandoning her team by putting things down?

40:12Oh, yeah. Okay. I start with what she already did. She signed the mailbag letter with quote, unquote, somehow everything became my job, right? She has named it herself. And I don't think she knows how useful that actually is naming the beast, right? Because once a pattern is named, you can ask it things, right? What are you protecting? When did you start doing it? What's your role for holding on to it? What's your role for letting it go? What's your role for noticing it, right? Now here's the flip. She thinks putting it down is abandoning her team. But right now, that practice only works because one person is catching everything.

40:50So if she's out for two weeks, that fragility of the system that she's already created doesn't go anywhere. It becomes the problem of the team with no warning at all. And all of that prep that you were trying not to abandon your team for, you've just now abandoned them. And that means you can't go on vacation. That means you can't be sick. That means you can't have an accident and be out of the practice, right? And so all of that already means you're abandoning them, right? You're abandoning them. And I don't want to place blame here or shame on here, but I want to have a little bit of a wake-up call.

41:24We are abandoning them in the sense of being able to give them professional development, right? By hoarding all of the things that you do and you do well, but don't actually need to own, you are not allowing them to progress and grow in places and grab things and become leaders in their own right because you're hoarding it all.

41:43Ron Sosa: What a great way to frame that. I just knew you'd be the perfect one to talk to about this because immediately I want to delegate things. I don't even have things to delegate, but I feel like delegating stuff just because I got to talk to you about it. That's what it is. Thank you so much, Ron, for taking the time to talk to me about this. I know that you're doing so much out there. Where can people find more of you? I'm the most active on LinkedIn at least several times a day. I'm out there checking it and messaging and whatnot. So LinkedIn, Ron Sosa, if you type in Ron Sosa CDPM is probably easiest to find me out there in the world.

42:12Ron Sosa: Awesome. And I'm sure we will all see you on January 15th at Uncharted Veterinary Conference where we're turning 10 years old. So go ahead and go register for that today. And we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone. Bye. And that's it. That's what we got. Thank you all so much for tuning in and listening to this conversation. Thank you to Ron Sosa for joining me. Gosh, he always has such wonderful things to share. He is such a wealth of knowledge. Definitely check him out on LinkedIn. Check him out at Uncharted Veterinary Conference happening on January 15th in Orlando, Florida. that's right. The day before BMX starts, it's going to be a hoot and a half and you're not going to want to miss it.

42:47Ron Sosa: So go ahead and register today. And once again, thank you to Dustin behind the scenes for editing this episode. Thank you to Tyler, who does so much work for our marketing. And thank you as always to our founder, Dr. Andy Rourke for allowing me to do these episodes. And I can't log off without thanking my mom who made me and gave me the gift of gab. So thanks, mom. I'll catch y 'all later. Bye.

43:10Ron Sosa: A brand new course is now available from the Uncharted Veterinary Conference team. Don't Get Sued is an on-demand eight-module course that we've created in partnership with HR expert Debbie Hill to help you answer the question, why do veterinary practices get sued in the first place, and what can I do to protect my team? This course is available now for$2.99 and is free for Uncharted members. You can find out more now at unchartedvet.com.