Charting a Path to a Rockstar Veterinary Team

Josh Vaisman, CCFP, MAPPCP

Susie is a credentialed technician at a bustling small-animal hospital. Having joined the practice three years prior, she isn’t the newest tech on the team nor is she the longest in the tooth.

Diarrhea gets Susie fired up.

Well, not the diarrhea exactly. That’s a stinky bummer. But looking at it under the microscope gives her great joy. She can still nostalgically recall the first time she identified a live sample of coccidia.

Actually, pretty much everything in the lab is fun for Susie. Which is why, in her interview, she tried to make it clear she’d love to work the lab as often as possible.

The interviewing manager seemed excited to hire someone with a passion for the lab, but the interviewing manager wasn’t the person assigning daily roles. That was the purview of the technician supervisor, Dan.

Dan took pride in running an efficient team. He felt like he had his finger on the pulse of everyone and everything, ever aware of who fit best where to maximize the team’s effectiveness that day.

For what felt like months now, Dan had been assigning Cassie to lab, while Susie found herself covering surgery or exam rooms every day.

Aside from missing lab, Susie knew that Cassie struggled to keep up with the in-house lab testing demand. Cassie had a habit of starting a test and finishing it fully before moving on to the next one. As the requests piled up, she’d fall behind, often working through lunch to stay afloat.

The doctors were grumbling and Dan, victim of his own confidence, was blissfully unaware. He was certain things were running smoothly.

Susie knew a better way. Sure, she’ d love to be in the lab more but truthfully, she just wanted to help the team do better. However, she was scared if she asked Dan if she could help Cassie, he’d perceive it as an attack on his supervisory skills and get defensive and upset.

So she kept to herself.

For a while.

Eventually, she could hold it in no longer. So, she did what she thought was the best step. She went to the practice manager, Betty.

Betty intervened, pulling Dan aside and telling him, “Susie tells me that Cassie is falling short in the lab. Dan, it’s your job to make sure we run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Please replace Cassie with Susie on lab shifts moving forward.” You can guess what happened next.

Dan felt hurt and a bit betrayed. Why hadn’t Susie come to him? Cassie felt embarrassed and angry. Why hadn’t Susie come to her?

In short order, Dan and Cassie found comfort in each other’s dismay. Before long, Susie felt their angry stares, judgmental whispers and cold treatment.

After a few weeks, Susie couldn’t take it any longer. She began looking at college parasitology programs, strongly considering leaving veterinary medicine entirely. These stories are common in our profession, but they don’t need to be.

SAFE TO SOAR –PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

These stories are common in our profession, but they don’t need to be.

Extensive research tells us teams that cultivate a culture of what researchers call “psychological safety” learn faster, make fewer mistakes, have significantly lower turnover and perform at substantially higher levels. As a result, the organization these teams are a part of do better by a variety of objective business metrics. Psychologically safe teams act every day to reduce the barriers of contribution—and they do this on purpose.

You see, no one wakes up in the morning hoping to spend their day at work looking incompetent, incapable and a negative influence on the team’s success. Quite the contrary, veterinary professionals want to appear competent, capable and be a positive, contributing member of the team. This makes the necessary, difficult conversations risky.

If I admit a mistake, will they think I’m not competent?

If I ask for help, will they think I’m not capable?

If I suggest a better way to do things, will they think I’m just being negative?

Teams that avoid those conversations are less likely to learn, adapt, grow and evolve. I like to think of psychological safety as a culture where we make it safe to soar toward our individual and collective potential, in service to the higher purpose of our work. The thing is this doesn’t happen by accident. We make a team safe to soar. It’s not the default.

The default is the absence of psychological safety. The default is to withhold our shortcomings, failures, hopes and ideas to manage the impression others have of us. The default is to be a normal human being who wants to fit in and feel like they belong. While this may feel safer, it limits our potential.

When Susie saw a better way for Cassie to do things in the lab, or a better way for Dan to schedule the lab shifts, this came from the normal human desire to contribute to the team’s success in service to the higher purpose of the work. When Susie felt scared to talk to Cassie or Dan, this was also a normal human experience in a workplace where it is safer to withhold things than to share them. As a result, Cassie lost an opportunity to grow; Dan lost an opportunity to improve; and Susie lost an opportunity to connect. Everyone lost out.

You might be thinking, “Well, Susie should have just been braver.” After all, in going “above” Dan’s head she set off a cascade that led to her leaving the practice. It was her fault, right?

Yes, Susie could have handled things differently. She could have spoken to Cassie directly, offered to help, or at least mentioned to Dan that Cassie could use some support. To this I ask, how’s that working for you? Have you been successful finding, hiring and retaining a full team of people naturally brave enough to productively admit mistakes and shortcomings, ask for help when needed, and caringly challenge themselves and each other to learn and improve in service to the higher purpose of the work? This is my point.

Most people are already courageous. The problem is, in many work environments, the fear of looking bad or being punished for using our voice outcompetes the force of our courage. Highly effective teams recognize this truth and work together to overcome it and minimize the barrier of fear. In this way, instead of expecting everyone to be “brave enough,” we cultivate an environment in which their natural bravery is already sufficient.

How do we do this?

THE SAFE CONVERSATION CHARTER

There are myriad ways to cultivate psychological safety in our teams. One helpful place to start is developing a “Safe Conversation Charter.”

The Safe Conversation Charter is a list of agreements, shared by the team, that provide the guiderails for “how we interact here.” Think of it as the rules everyone agrees to follow when they communicate with each other, especially during difficult or sensitive conversations.

The goal is to make the communication space both safe and productive.

I’ve been consulting with a large hospital of nearly 150 employees. When we gather for leadership development work, there may be as many as 35 people present. To maximize engagement in both safe and productive ways, we utilize five agreements:

1. Everyone’s perspective has value.

2. We are not here to judge. We are here to grow together.

3. We all have opportunities for growth.

4. We all have strengths to offer.

5. During this meeting, we all agree to be present, engaged and participate.

We review these agreements at the beginning of every workshop and remind ourselves of them before any activity that might be challenging or uncomfortable.

CREATING YOUR SAFE CONVERSATION CHARTER

I recommend every team build a Safe Conversation Charter as a foundation on which psychological safety can be nurtured. Here’s one way you can create one for your team:

1. Consider the team you want to create the charter for. This can be the entire hospital, a department, an individual team... It’s up to you!

2. Schedule a time of at least 30 minutes where you and the team can gather undistracted and uninterrupted. You really want to focus on this activity. The bigger the team, the longer chunk of time you’ll want to set aside.

3. At least one week PRIOR to the meeting, reach out to everyone on the team. Let them know you’re gathering them in a week to create a Safe Conversation Charter. Share with them why this is important to you and what you hope this will help with. Then, assign them a bit of homework in preparation for the meeting with something like this:

a. “Before next week’s meeting please take some time to think about what needs to be in place for you to feel 100% comfortable sharing all you have to offer with everyone on our team. If you make a big mistake, what would you need in place to feel absolutely comfortable telling everyone immediately? If you don’t know how to do something, what would you need in place to feel absolutely comfortable asking anyone for help? If you see a way someone on the team can improve in their job, what would you need in place to feel absolutely comfortable sharing it with them? Write down your top two-three things you’d need in place to feel 100% safe sharing anything in this team and bring your list to next week’s meeting.”

4. At the meeting, explain again what the team is gathered for and why it is so important to you. Then ask them to write down why it is important to them that the team is safe to make mistakes, admit shortcomings, ask for help and challenge each other to be the best they can be.

5. Next, divide them into small groups (three-four people) and give them ten minutes with the following assignment:

a. Everyone share why this is important to you.

b. Everyone share your list of two-three things you need in place to feel safe.

c. As a group, pick two-three things you all agree need to be in place to feel safe.

6. Re-gather the whole team. Every group shares their list. You collect the list on a board or poster.

7. As a whole team, select the rules you agree absolutely must be in place to make conversations as safe as possible.

8. There you go! You now have your first edition of your team’s Safe Conversation Charter!

Not only is this a wonderful team building activity, but it’ll carry over into everything you do as a team. Revisit the charter at every meeting and review it before any difficult conversation.

Periodically, challenge the charter. Can it evolve or change to better serve the team currently?

Imagine if Susie’s hospital had one of these in place. How might things would have turned out differently for them all?

You got this—and I’m proud of the culture you’re creating in your practice!

Josh Vaisman, CCFP, MAPPCP

Josh believes all veterinary professionals deserve to feel fulfilled by their work, each and every day. Through his company, Flourish Veterinary Consulting, he combines more than 20 years of veterinary experience, a post-graduate diploma in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology, and education in positive leadership and positive organizational scholarship to help them do just that.

Fun fact – Josh is also an avid beekeeper who teaches beginning beekeepers how to tend to their buzzing buddies.