Veterinary Blueprints

Emotional Intelligence In Vet Clinics

• Bill Butler • Season 2 • Episode 30

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We explore why emotional intelligence drives clinical outcomes, how slow change beats rapid pivots, and why clarity prevents errors. Practical habits show leaders how to build trust, grow resilience, and turn small actions into a safer, calmer practice.

• EQ as the core lever for communication and patient safety
• Five elements of EQ applied to daily hospital work
• Give yourself grace and label emotions to create space
• Self-awareness loops that lead to self-regulation
• Realistic timelines for habit and culture change
• Trust building through consistent micro-interactions
• Virtual rapport tips that reduce uncertainty
• Four to six week checkpoints and peer accountability
• Resilience across mental, physical and social lanes
• Collaboration over competition to amplify team strength
• Specificity in expectations and confirming understanding

Please like, share, and review the podcast. Share this with your team, share it with your friends in the veterinary community, and be intentional with resilience, with leadership, and taking action on a small level over time to try and impact your team in a positive way.


Host Information

Bill Butler – Contact Information

Direct – 952-208-7220

https://butlervetinsurance.com/

bill@butlervetinsurance.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/billbutler-cic/

Schedule a Strategy Session with Bill – Strategy Session


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SPEAKER_02:

One of those absolute total consistencies that draws a line of connection is emotional intelligence. You know, there's those these five components of EQ. I won't get academic, but context, right? Self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, and social awareness. These are basics for understanding your environment. And it doesn't matter if it's an environment of 35,000 people or an environment of 35 people. That environment's going to affect the behaviors of the people and ultimately the output of the business. In VetMed, the output of the business equals patient care. This is extreme, but doctors will get this, right? The wrong vaccine given to the wrong dog can be lethal.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Veterinary Blueprint Podcast, brought to you by Butler Vet Insurance, hosted by Bill Butler. The Veterinary Blueprint Podcast is for veterinarians and practice managers who are looking to learn about working on their practice instead of in their practice. Each episode, we will bring you successful proven blueprints from others, both inside and outside the veterinary industry. Welcome to today's episode.

SPEAKER_04:

Welcome to the Veterinary Blueprints Podcast. I am your host, Bill Butler. This podcast is all about bringing business and entrepreneurship ideas to veterinary practice owners and managers. Today I'm joined by Rob Best, founder of Best Leadership and Coaching Services. Rob works with veterinary teams to build strong leaders, create emotionally safe workplaces, and drive better team performance. We'll talk about some leadership development, why it's critical to veterinary medicine, and how small changes can lead you to transform your practice. Rob, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Bill. Great to see you. Appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_04:

Good to see you as well. So, Rob, um, you and I met at uh VMX and WVC, and we've had a chance to interact, and I've gotten to know you a little bit better. But um what has caused you, you've worked with leaders, you know, and learning more about you. I've said you've worked with leaders all across uh different industries. What has pulled you towards veterinary teams?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh yeah, you know, I I I stumbled into uh leadership development. And um as I was getting coached and and mentored by some some really high-level impressive people I was lucky enough to be surrounded by, uh I was offered an opportunity to do a little side project that happened to connect to veterinary medicine, and I quickly fell in love with the industry.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Like we all do, right? If you're into it, you you fall in love with it, and then you're here.

SPEAKER_02:

You do. I mean, you you you spend even just minimal amounts of time around people who who operate animal hospitals, and you immediately feel the passion that they have and the drive that they have, both for the patients and for the pet owners. And it was it was too easy not to get pulled in. But it immediately established this parallel that occurred at the same time. One was I continued to build my career. You know, I started uh for postgraduate stuff. I got into the neuroscience of leadership, and then I fell into some government intelligence programming stuff. And ultimately, uh all of my postgraduate work was focused on human behavior.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So on one side for fun, it's like profiling and reading and influencing, but in the professional world, it's understanding individual and organizational influence from leadership perspectives. So while that's occurring, I'm growing to understand the veterinary profession and expanding my network. What I really hung on to was especially if I get into a private practice, um, it doesn't matter if it's a three-doctor practice or a 30-doctor practice. Yeah, there's so much opportunity for positive influence that exists throughout the entire day and with so many different people that have high levels of influence.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It's not just the titled leaders, it's every doctor in that practice, whether they choose to uh uh accept it or not, every doctor in that practice is an influential leader. And for me, that just means there's so many opportunities to help teams and develop relationships with individuals in ways that can help those teams. And that that drives me. I have a lot of fun with it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and I know for your practice, right? Like it's not just individual practices either. Like you work at the corporate level and not just corporate, but like BI, like large level executive team leadership all the way down to that, you know, three-docker practice. So you see a very wide, you you you you do leadership and coaching. So you see the the broad broad leadership at a high level, you know, multi-billion dollar organizations or multi-million dollar organizations down to, you know, again, that three-doc practice. So what's one of the common threads that you see from leadership? Because that, you know, those are much different, but um leadership, leadership traits are leadership traits, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. You're spot on there. It's and it and it really is wild because you saying that's the first time I've really processed the the gamut, because it has been multi with a B billion, yeah, and in supporting and coaching C-suites through the single owner, three doctor practice with you know, 15 or 20 people trying to figure it out. One of those absolute total consistencies that that draws a line of connection is emotional intelligence. Um, you know, there's those these five components of EQ. I won't get academic, but all but for context, right? Self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, uh, motivation, and social awareness. These are basics for understanding your environment. And it doesn't matter if it's an environment of 35,000 people or an environment of 35 people, that environment's going to affect the the behaviors of the people and ultimately the output of the business. In vetmed, the output of the business equals patient care. You know, we're talking about decisions that can be life and death for simple communication moments. Like a this is extreme, but doctors will get this, right? The wrong vaccine given to the wrong dog can be lethal. Like something as a vaccine. Okay, so let's unpack that. Uh um the wrong vaccine is given to the wrong patient, and and we have uh uh just an or clinical outcome. Yep, right? Okay, well, now we have to back up and well, what happened? And almost all the time when we start looking at the lines of communication, we can pick out something that was specifically connected to an emotionally intelligent behavior that was missing. Hence, I can always draw a connection. So whether it's it's in the practice and a specific moment, or if it's a large organization and decisions that are going to affect you know tens, hundreds, or thousands of people. What are the emotionally intelligent behaviors? And the first two are the ones that we we focus on most often: self-awareness and self-regulation. The awareness is usually the easiest for an individual leader or an organization to grow. We can become more aware of what's happening and how my behaviors are affecting the out the outcomes. But how to self-regulate is the most challenging? How do I then change behaviors, develop new habits?

SPEAKER_04:

That's that's the hard one, right? Because we uh like we do what we're gonna do in the past 80% of the time or more in the future, because we're creatures of habit. So breaking some of those habits are probably, I mean, I just know for my own, like that's really hard to do. My knee-jerk uh reaction is hard to overcome. Yep. And so, well, how do leaders um that how do owners or practice managers, somebody in a leadership position, grow some of these skills without overwhelming themselves? Like, I have to change my my personality. How do I do that? How do they do that without overwhelming themselves?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's tough. You know, there's so much on our plates already, especially at the hospital level, right? We're we're we're looking for an extra hour just to finish a medical record, much less self-improvement.

SPEAKER_04:

Um I'm gonna change how we react to something.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04:

In the moment.

SPEAKER_02:

In the moment, in real time, you know. But wait a minute. I I've got I've got an HBC that just came in, I've got this client that needs this, I've got a CSR that needs that. Like, how where do I fit this in?

SPEAKER_04:

Payrolls due tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02:

Payrolls due. We just April April 15th just passed. Taxes, you know. Um the first step is give yourself grace. That's that's first and foremost. Um, our brains are going to self-talk between 300 to 1,000 words every minute of every day. And this is this is the kicker. That alone is is is a while, right? But the next piece is is the one to really hang on to. The majority of those words will be negative.

SPEAKER_04:

So there's this internal dialogue and it in in You and I actually had a pretty deep conversation about this at uh WVC, I believe, about some of this like that the natural human uh it's self-preservation to go to negative. Like this is the Neanderthal brain of it's gonna try and kill me. I have to look at what's gonna kill me. And so we always look for the negative because that's the self-preservation piece. So you have to recognize that, right?

SPEAKER_02:

We have to recognize it. Our brains are always scanning for threats. And you know, the neuroscience behind this is it breaks down what can be complicated with the words, and I don't do well with complicated words. It takes me a long time to learn this. However, there is a simplicity that that is beautiful because once you get it, you can you can leverage it. So my brain is scanning, our brains are scanning for potential threats at all times. Hence it's it's influencing that negative dialogue that's there. When we're aware of it, we can consciously pull back and begin to narrate that dialogue. And where I suggest you start with is simply by giving yourself grace. It's okay to acknowledge that it's a tough day. It's okay to acknowledge that there's a lot going on, and you're just trying to get through that particular day. That's literally step one foundational baseline. Give yourself grace, acknowledge the emotions that you're feeling, and validate them. It's it's okay if you feel frustrated or exhausted. What's important is that you don't self-identify, right? You it this isn't these this isn't semantics, this is very important. Yeah, it's not I am angry, I am sad, I am frustrated, I am disappointed. No, I feel angry, I feel sad, I feel upset, I feel uncertain. You're identifying it as an emotion so that you can label it and create some separation for it. You're you're gonna literally reverse it.

SPEAKER_04:

It's not your identity, it's a fleeting moment in time.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. It's fleeting, but it's valid.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It's important that it's valid, right? And if if you can establish that as your first step, it's okay to feel these things. Now you can take a second step and begin to self-examine.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

And this is where the self-awareness, so where's our first real actionable opportunity to grow emotional intelligence? Grow your self-awareness. So give yourself grace, acknowledge these emotions. Now, with some space between the emotions, you can start to unpack. And that unpacking is where you can increase your self-awareness. Well, what was it that made me feel this way? What triggered this emotion?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Even just asking that question alone grows your self-awareness.

SPEAKER_04:

Start yeah, so starting with self-awareness, and and this goes into a team culture question that I had for you. Um, and and it it deals with common leadership mistakes you see at vet clinics or on C-suite teams. And I have a I have a guess as to what you might answer that ties into your question about giving yourself grace, but I'm interested, you know, what what are some kind of when you go from a consulting perspective or working with a team, what are some of the leadership mistakes that you see occurring at practices or or teams?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, right now, one of the most common I'm seeing, again, spectrum-wide. And outside, not just in the not just in the hospitals. I mean, we see this with with our vendor partners and and alike that that we get to go interact with you and I when we're at WVC or VMX. It's this misaligned understanding of expectation for change.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

See, people talk about change being hard. Change isn't hard. It's not, it really isn't. We live our lives through change, our lives change constantly.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So what is that that's hard? Rapid change.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Rapid change is what's is what's difficult. And when we talk about things like behavior change, such as growing our emotional intelligence in ways that are evidence-based for measurable outcomes that are improved, it needs to come with an understanding that this takes time. Yeah, not gonna see this in a day, a week, or a month. You know, habit formation. So have you ever heard, Bill? Have you ever heard that habit formation occurs in 21 days?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I've heard that.

SPEAKER_02:

I I've I've heard it too. Um, it's not true.

SPEAKER_03:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Throw it out. I paused a moment there because I almost cussed. I was gonna call it BS, right? Um, so I'm gonna give everyone a BS barometer right now.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

If if someone talks about establishing this habit that they broke, atomic habits and all this kind of stuff, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Like there's a lot of books on habit forming and have all this stuff, right? Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Deep dive on that stuff. There's a lot of value there. And one thing you'll find consistency with consistency if you look at the science, 21 days does not break or form a habit. It's the minimum required to initiate the neurologic process.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure. Okay, yep.

SPEAKER_02:

Hence, give yourself some more grace, right? If it's time to break a habit, especially if you're thinking for the team, I want to do something culturally that shifts our team to a positive. That has to start with leadership behaviors first.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And the grace is this if you just look at a single individual to break or form a habit, you need 50 to 55 days at minimum. Minimum. And that's for a single person.

SPEAKER_04:

So that's double, over double what we you know think that we need to do.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's if you're going to focus on it every single day without missing a day.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Put that into the context of, but now I'm going to help grow the culture in my hospital. And add in the days that you're closed, holidays, weekends, um, when people miss a day here or there. How often you can actually have your hospital meetings. You know, you're not looking at 55 days for culture in a hospital. Now you're looking at 250 plus days before you see any real habit formation.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's again, if you're focused and you're consistent. So when we do culture work, the realistic expectation is you've got to look at nine to 12 months to establish the process, 18 months plus to solidify the process for change to be long-lasting.

SPEAKER_04:

So this ties in with your first thought of giving yourself grace, because I think as humans, especially in now, right? Like everything has to happen immediately.

unknown:

It's true.

SPEAKER_04:

I gotta, you know, you see the you see the diet stuff on YouTube, like, oh, you know, lose all the weight by the end of May. Like, okay, well, that's not gonna happen. Like, we're just we're so instant in society today that you get to day 21 and you don't see the change that you're expecting, and you go, well, that didn't work. And you're you give up on it and you stop versus being committed to the end goal and the end goal in mind.

SPEAKER_02:

It's true. It's it's it I love, I always love that analogy that you introduced, Bill. You know, I went to the gym today, I looked in the mirror tonight, no difference.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm gonna try it again tomorrow. Went to the gym the next day, looked in the mirror, no different. Like, and everybody's a little different, right? Maybe you see some changes in a couple weeks for one person, maybe it's a couple months for another person. It it varies, but you need time to look over trends. A more current example also is the stock market. You know, if you watch the stock market, especially these days, every day you're gonna see this, right? It's up and down. If you're watching every day, you're gonna lose your mind. Over time, you want to look at the trend.

SPEAKER_04:

Zoom back to 1940 and look at it and see what it's done versus the last six months or the last three months.

SPEAKER_02:

Same thing with behavior, same thing with behavior. Over time, as I'm intentionally growing my emotional intelligence, and I have a day. For whatever reason, I had a day. We all have a day, right? Um, so I pick myself back up the next day, we're good, we're good, good, and we have a day. So over time, you're still gonna do this, but are you trending up?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That's that's what's important. What? Give yourself grace and look at the trend over time, you know. Trust. People will associate a lot of this type of conversation around trust. Well, if you're growing your emotional intelligence, you're becoming a more self-aware leader who can self-regulate behaviors and communicate with empathy. Chances are you're going to increase the trust that you can build with your team. Well, a lot of leaders will tell people on their team, hey, if you guys just learn to trust each other, everything's gonna be great. Well, it doesn't work that way. There needs to be intentionality behind how these relationships are grown. And even with the intentionality, you need somewhere between six to nine months on average to truly establish trust.

SPEAKER_04:

Because uh, as a leader, you know, you're talking about as a leader, let's say there's you know 20 people in the practice, you might not be able to individually touch every person in that team every day over over the course of a month. You might only have you know 10 to 15 interactions with a specific team member. You know, in our office, uh, we've got one team member who's remote through three days a week. So I'm only seeing her three days a week physically in the office. We do a daily team huddle. So we're on we're on a uh you know a virtual call as a team for 15 minutes a day. So I am interacting with her 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes every day, but it's transactional, it's not that intentional uh uh interaction like you're talking about. And so, you know, that can take a lot longer than to affect change because you don't have some of that longer, stickier, stickier situation, uh, not from a bad, but just from being able to affect some of that because it's not um as as deep and meaningful.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, you is it okay. Uh is it okay if I if I introduce a piece that you uh may have unintentionally introduced here regarding virtual environments and and human connection, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

So the world is so connected with technology in the greatest of ways. You know, you and I are in different states in the United States in the United States right now, and we can do this and connect, and and it's it's great. Um however, there is there Is a reduction of true human connection when you're on video. For example, a handshake in person, a single handshake in person is equivalent to three hours of rapport building on video.

SPEAKER_04:

Really?

SPEAKER_02:

You don't have to be an expert in human behavior and profiling all this stuff. The brain and its ability to scan for potential threats, when you meet someone in person, you shake their hand, the brain is scanning the entire environment, including that person and what surrounds that person, which allows you to build more rapport with a true physical touch, hand-to-hand shake, eye contact, facial expressions. You get more of the total body. You guys got to see my um for those who are watching the video, I'm wearing my basketball shorts because that's what you do on video. You wear blue shorts.

SPEAKER_04:

I got blue jeans on.

SPEAKER_02:

Very good. Um Friday when we're recording this, so but so it's you you get the you get the full effect of the environment, which rapidly increases your ability to build rapport that you don't have in a virtual environment. Okay, well, then what do you do in a virtual environment? You have to be aware that this is virtual and you want to give other people a greater opportunity to receive your communication. I'll give one simple example. Everybody can do this, it'll make an immediate change in how they're received. When you first get on any video call of any sort, greet the rest of the people who are joining you with your hands. Always show your hands. Hey, how are you doing? Good to see you.

SPEAKER_04:

You do that every time we hop on a call, Rob.

SPEAKER_02:

Every time. Every time. Um, the brain is gonna process. If I can't see your hands, then there's something that's missing. And I don't know what that is, but it it leaves a question of uncertainty.

SPEAKER_04:

It may be a weapon and it might try to hurt me.

SPEAKER_02:

It might be a weapon, it might be just you're hiding something. I don't know if I can trust you. So you you literally showing your hands, the brain registers, there's there's there's nothing to hide.

SPEAKER_04:

Huh. I know I know when we when you uh at our at our vet partners meeting down in uh WVC, you were talking about um you know connecting in circles and how much of your heart is facing the other person, and all of these, you know, without getting into a lot of that, all of these things matter. And and I I think probably the point for our guests is it it can be very, it doesn't have to be a lot. You know, big doors swing on little hinges, so it doesn't have to be you know seismic changes and we're gonna have you know meetings and all these things. It's about learning a couple things, being intentional with doing, you know, here are my hands, right? Being intentional with doing them, and then being, you know, I think probably the last component for anything is like consistency and and sticking with it, because if you don't aren't consistent and don't stick with it, it's not gonna change.

SPEAKER_02:

It's true. You know, the the the neurologic average for bounce back is between four and six weeks for most humans. So if I if I choose, say I'm on video calls three days a week on average, and I tell myself, I even write the note, like, okay, I'm gonna say, you know, do this this thing. I don't know, I don't know this guy, Rob, but I'll I'll try it. It's easy, I'll try it. And I do this for the first few weeks. If I don't provide some sort of process to help ensure that I continue with this beyond the four to six weeks, chances are after four or six weeks, I'm going to reduce it. Exactly. So keep that in mind as you're as you're giving yourself grace and providing a realistic set of expectations. Your checkpoint for yourself is that four to six week window. Every four to six weeks, have at a minimum, have something in place to check whatever the changes are that you're trying to make for yourself. Because that's when you can see it fall off. If we're doing, if we're doing group work with whether it's a hospital team, um, a consolidator C-suite team, a field team of directors, if it's a team of people, I I almost always build in processes where you're gonna have people partner like for peer support, and though those individuals are gonna be required to, without my presence, to touch base with each other every four to six weeks. Whether it's uh we're working together for six months, 12 months, 18 months, so long as I'm there, every four to six weeks, you're gonna connect with one of your peers as an intentional check for accountability that is more connected to developing habits than doing it just for the sake of accountability.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Or purpose behind it.

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. So in in the vein of leadership development and grace, I think the vet industry right now, just uh especially right now, as we're recording this uh late April, early May of 2025, is that um I think there's uh people are under a lot of stress for a variety of reasons. There's a lot going on, both you know, personally, professionally, and also politically, that I think a lot a lot of people are just stressed out right now. And so from a resilience standpoint, how do how do we build resilience into some of this intentionality and leadership and and into a busy veterinary practice? Because a lot of our listeners and the and the people out there that we work with are practice owners and managers. You know, what does resilience mean for for Rob and when he talks to leadership teams and leading resilience or building resilience in?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, it it really is hard. It just it just is.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

For for and it's not isolated to vet medic. It's just things are hard and and and it's with perspective as well. You know, the one of the reasons things are so hard is this age of information puts things in front of us so fast, whether it's yeah, true or maybe not true, or we don't know, it's just but all of it's in front of us.

SPEAKER_04:

75 years ago, you did not know it was going on in Central Europe.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04:

And when you did find out, it happened two weeks ago, exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

And now we know it before it hits news because of social media. I mean, yeah, everyone with a phone is now a journalist, right? Um so and it's just context for understanding that things are hard. Yeah, we all have our own story, and it's hard. So, what do we do? Um I like to start with again keeping it, keeping it easy, you know, give yourself grace, and what are some of the low-hanging fruit opportunities that are easy for us to hang on to? And when we talk about resilience, I like to identify things that people are already doing that can be building blocks for greater resilience. It's just a matter of being aware of them, validating them, and doing them with more intention. And there's three categories I like to give with this um mental resilience, physical resilience, and social resilience. And when I workshop this, I put it in the category of presence. How mentally, physically, and socially present am I in any given moment? And I start by asking, and and the listeners can do this. This is really quick, it's like a 30-second thing. You know, just think back to a time when you overcame a significant challenge of any sort. And as you replay coming out of that challenge, right? You navigated it, you figured it out, and now you're on the other side of it. And you look back and you reflect. What were some of the things that you did socially that were helpful? Right? Was it talking with a friend? Was it seeing a psychologist? Was it leaning on your significant other for support? Was it going for some quality time with your dogs? That's a social thing too, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, what were you doing physically that was helpful? Are you are you are you are you a runner or a biker? Um, are you somebody who really likes to knit or crochet? Uh, do you just go for walks? You know, what was something that included some physical movement that you can connect back to? Like, yeah, that helped. It was really hard at day, but that walk outside was really helpful.

SPEAKER_04:

Um people I do not want to derail you, but some of this is flow state. Like there's a whole thing about flow state, there's brain chemistry involved, and like some of that resiliency goes to flow state. There's a lot of research out there on that. There's some actually good books on my bookshelf here about flow state, and and it does like it. Some of this is resiliency. It builds in not just physical but mental, and both of those tie together because it is brain chemistry, and a lot of that has to do with physical activity of what you're doing at the time. So don't discount the physical piece with the mental piece because they tie together so well.

SPEAKER_02:

It is directly tied, and hence that's the third piece is what is the mental resilience? What were things that you did mentally that helped? Did you meditate? Um, did you read? Uh, did you uh and this is the answer is not doom scrolling Instagram. Exactly. It is not. So you look at when you reflect back, look at these items um or or these lists, if you were to actually list it out, of things that you already did then and continue to do from time to time now, because these are specific building blocks, if done with intention, that can grow your resilience. So this is why I say low-hanging fruit. Start with what's easier. You're already doing these things. Now simply identify them, acknowledge them, and do them with a greater intention for the next one, two, or three months. After the next one, two or three months of doing the same things you're already doing, you're simply acknowledging that they have greater intent because of the health factors and the resilience factors. Now you can add to all three categories. What's one thing more I can do physically that's good for my health? What's one thing more I can do mentally that's good for my health? What's one more thing I can do socially that's good for my health? Right? Keep it easy. Choose one thing a month, just one. Um, for those of us who are, you know, lifelong active learners, yeah. Choose two, never, never more than three, though.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

The power of three is is uh very you see that come up over and over again.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, you do. Yes, you do. So keep it easy. You're already doing all of us, we're already doing something. Let's just unpack it, acknowledge it, do it with a little more intention. Start there.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, one thing that I I thought of while you were you were talking about resilience is it shouldn't be discounted, is the the power of teamwork in resiliency, and because there is resilience in the power of teams because you want to pick each other up. And when we were at uh when we were at our vet partners meeting uh in front of WVC, you did an exercise about uh thumb war. And the thumb war exercise where you know, one, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war, and then you try and you know pin your pin your partner's thumb. And the exercise that that you had us run through was see how many times, I forget how long, 60 seconds, 30 seconds, or something, you can pin your partner, and then the team that had the most uh pins would win. And instead of fighting each other to pin your partner, it was collaborating to alternate, giving yourself up, so to speak, and allowing your partner to pin your thumb so that way you're racking up the count versus competing with each other. It was collaborating and and having having a um background in the military, you know, there were guys that I served with that I could not. There was a guy, uh I still remember his last name, Herm Hernandez. I I wanted to punch him in the face to be very blunt about it every time he was eating his MRE because it drove me crazy the way he ate. You know, you're sitting, you're sitting next to this guy every day, all day long, and he just, you know, it's like somebody chewing with their mouth open. Drive you crazy. But I would do anything for that guy because we were on a team together, and so that that camaraderie, that teamwork, and that's where, you know, without getting into a lot of uh psychology stuff, that's where a lot of PTSD for veterans comes from is the loss of resilience because of the loss of the team. And they have resiliency, but because they're not part of a team anymore, there's a huge piece missing. And so if you can build resilience not just individually, but if you can build resilience as a team, then you're you're kind of amplifying um what you can do, and and then you're relying on team, not just individual.

SPEAKER_02:

This is so accurate for so many reasons. And you know, those three categories, the the the team piece directly connects to the social resilience.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

What can I do socially?

SPEAKER_04:

That's what made me think of that. Is it's not just you know, okay, I need to build my own physical and mental resiliency, but that social resiliency is I can't do everything, you need to rely on your team, and your team needs to rely on you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, if if one person could do everything, teams wouldn't be necessary, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And from a from the leadership perspective, if if we if I keep the leadership lens on for a moment, it's it's crucial for people to understand that this is this is a detail that must start with the leader. You may be lucky, and on your team, you have that one person or those two people who just have a natural ability to influence more team-related and collaborative type behaviors. In general, that doesn't just happen. It right, our brain's normalcy will will gear toward being more competitive as opposed to collaborative.

SPEAKER_04:

And in the thumb war exercise, I was I was with uh Ryan from RWE construction. Yes. Uh, we had one pin in 30 seconds because we fought each other the entire time. It was not collaborative at all.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. And and you you you remember, you know, the the language I used to set that up was very specific. I I never said anything about being competitive. I simply said you're going to work with a partner. Yes, and your goal is to score as many points as you can. That was it. Score as many points as you can. I never said you have to score more than the other person. I never said you had to beat the other person. I never said anybody was gonna win. Simply score as many points as you can working with a partner. And naturally, the entire room became competitive. And I don't think anybody got over two or three points in the first time.

SPEAKER_04:

There were a couple teams that I think had either done this before, or you know, I'm gonna say this as a as a military veteran, type A personality. I was going against another very type A personality. I think uh women tend to be more collaborative in in many respects, and men tend to be more, you know, I'm gonna beat you, uh, you know, sports and all that stuff. And that's that's a very broad general statement, but I that I think there were a couple teams that were collaborative, and they were both female teams. So, you know, keeping that in mind of where where are some of those pinch points in your practice understanding that? Um, I I am my wife and I don't play card games very well because I'm competitive. I get mad when she wins, and then she's just happy to play. She's just happy to play whatever we're playing, you know, if it's rummy or or whatever it is, she cheats to lose, so I'll play more. And then I get more upset that she's cheating to lose and not trying to win. And she's like, I can't win with you. And I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna say, so you know, you have to, and but part of that is like grace, self-awareness, resilience. Like, okay, Bill, just settle down. We're gonna play, you know, we're gonna play some cards at the cabin or whatever and have a good time with it, versus like trying to beat your wife at cards. So just settle down.

SPEAKER_02:

You know what, Bill, this is this introduces and and you know, we we can go shallow, we can go deep here. Um the root of all heartbreak is found in unmet expectations.

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

When we unpack what's occurring with a professional team of any kind, and we identify areas that we believe need attention for performance improvement, let's say, yeah, somewhere along the line, we will find usually multiple points where unmet expectations become the center of the conversation. So even something as as simple as a card game. You and I have never played cards, but if we said, yeah, let's play cards, hey, we'll see, I'll see you at the AVMA conference in July. Oh, that's great. Yeah, let's grab uh let's grab some dinner and play some cards. And that's all we say. Like we know how to play cards, or even dominoes, or damn it for who knows? And we just said let's start playing. You get competitive, I get competitive, I have a sports background, military background. Now now we're going at it. We also we also respect each other, we're we're we're becoming friends, like we'll probably have fun with the competitiveness, but there were zero expectations that were set other than let's go play cards.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

If we said, hey, um, Bill, I have a sports background, I get really competitive on all things like this. Um, I'm gonna be playing to win each individual game. And maybe we'll, you know, I'm to to add some fun to it. Uh, if if I win, you buy me lunch tomorrow. And if you win, you buy right like, and then you can respond to that and establish an expectation in yourself. Now we get into the gameplay and we can have more fun in an environment where if you get more competitive, it's still safe and it's aligned with our expectations, and vice versa. That piece of communication, especially with leadership, oftentimes is missing someplace in the line of where we find areas to give attention to. It's unmet expectations.

SPEAKER_04:

If you want to be to my team hates hates it. And in fact, I said this at uh I was at our our state insurance convention. I'm on the our state board for our insurance association here in Minnesota, and I said this statement, and everyone who is within earshot rolled their eyes at me. And I said, No, my team gets sick of hearing this statement. And if you want to be terrific, you have to be specific. And and it's setting those specific expectations and guidelines. And and you know, I said, don't roll your eyes. This is actually very like it's an important point. Like, if you don't have clear expectations of what the the final outcome is, your team doesn't know, they get frustrated, they don't know what you want. You're like, well, you're not achieving the goal. Like, well, you said the goal, but I don't know how to get there. We're gonna play cards. What does that mean? Well, the goal is to see who can win the best out of five. If we set that expectation ahead of time, we know the criteria, what we're gonna do. And if you lose, Rob, you're gonna have to take me out to In N Out Burger in California next time I see you, because that's my that's my game out there. So setting those clear expectations and guidelines for your team, and then you know how to coach them along the way. Then when when the outcome isn't bad, you've built in the resiliency to kind of tie that that piece in of a Like, okay, well, I didn't win this time, but I can win next time because I know I know what's expected of me, versus just this ambiguous, I'm not sure what's supposed to happen. I failed. Why did I fail? I don't know. And now you've had some collapse of whatever the collapse looks like.

SPEAKER_02:

It's so true. And you know, that that piece, if you want to be terrific, you have to be specific. This is also known as speaking with specificity.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And there's a critical next step that is often even even let's say we get there, we we advance to the consistency of leadership where that ability to speak with specificity is there. It's there in electronic communication, verbal communication, virtual communication. However, there's one more step that that is oftentimes missed, which is now that the specificity has been communicated, the clarity of understanding must be confirmed. And that piece misses a lot. Hey Bill, I'm gonna, I'm gonna um I'm gonna have that that summary of our discussion prepared and sent to you by email um before the end of day on Friday. Is that good for you? Friday good for you?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, it works for me.

SPEAKER_02:

So in that brief exchange, the appearance of specificity was communicated, the appearance of understanding was confirmed. And yet we're still missing something. What is your interpretation of end of day Friday? Because I don't know if it's the same as my interpretation.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

You're in a different time zone.

SPEAKER_04:

5 p.m. Eastern or 5 p.m. Pacific. And then I'm getting it at 7 p.m. going, well, Rob's lazy. He didn't send it to me, and I'm on like now it's might as well be Monday morning because I'm off on to the weekend.

SPEAKER_02:

And I'm over here, one, I'm on the West Coast, two, I work long hours. My end-to-day Friday is 7 p.m., 10 p.m. your time now. Like there, yeah, these details must be communicated with clarity, specificity, and there needs to be a confirming of understanding in return. Now that doesn't mean you become robotic at with communication. Like, say you and I have that exchange one time, two times, maybe three times. Now we have a rapport of understanding in this arena. And what once was, okay, Bill, da, da, da, da, da, all these details. Fast forward, now it's a fist bump or a high five. Bill, I got you Friday. Cool. See you then.

SPEAKER_04:

I know what Friday means to Rob because we've we now have a rapport.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Well, Rob, you and I could probably talk on this for another, you know, we're at this for you know roughly 40 minutes. We can probably go at least another 40, but it is Friday afternoon. And so with that, I just I I want to thank you so much for your insights and information on leadership. How can people learn more about best leadership and receive leadership coaching?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, well, Bill, first, thank you for having me. Always great to connect and have a conversation with you, especially now in a format like this where the intent is to make some valuable information available for people.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

So thank you. Uh yeah, any anyone with interest in more information about leadership in general or specific with leadership coaching, um, a couple easy platforms. Just go to my website, bestleadership.com. Uh, if you want to reach out direct, it's rob at bestleadership.com or head over to my LinkedIn. Uh, you can find me through my name, Rob Best or RBest13, the number 13. My first career was in athletics, and I wore a jersey number with 13 for a long, long time. So nice. Those are the two easiest, fastest ways to find info or reach out.

SPEAKER_04:

And you also are very active in the in the traveling veterinary community at a lot of different events. And uh one of one of the favorite things closing with this, Rob does walk-in coffee appointments at the convention. So if you if he's at one of these uh large national events, AVMA, uh WVC, VMX, um, and you say, Hey Rob, when do you have some time? He'll say, I have 15 minutes, and it'll be from 10 to 10.15, and you'll be walking around the floor with Rob having a conversation. And um, very interestingly enough, Rob connected me and we had a very good call with uh with Mal after after uh after the meeting. So um Rob's a great connector, knows a lot of people in the industry. So if you have an interest in in connecting with Rob, he's an awesome guy. I'm so glad you're on the podcast today. And as always, for our listeners, please like, share, and review the podcast. It helps with all of the algorithms out there. And uh share this with with your team, share it with your friends uh in the veterinary community, and uh be intentional with resilience, with leadership, and uh, you know, taking action on a small level over time to try and impact your team in a positive way. Thanks so much, Rob, for joining us.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks, Bill.

SPEAKER_04:

All right, everyone, have a great day.

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Bill Butler

Host
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Rob Best

Guest