SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome to the Veterinary Culture Lab, where science meets real-world application. I'm Andy Davison.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

And I'm Josh Weissman. Together we'll show you an evidence-based blueprint for renovating culture in your veterinary team. One episode at a time.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

When crisis hits in veterinary medicine, people remember how they retreated. Today we'll explore the role that positive communication plays in whether teams pull together or simply walk away. Well, I'm very hydrated, I can tell you that. Good and hydrated.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Good and hydrated. Uh, early May 2026. Tell me what the early May weather is in uh O'Cala, Mikinope, Florida.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

We just got our first like big summer storm yesterday. We had been in a serious drought. We still are in a serious drought. Like there's no doubt about it. We're super behind the deficit, blah, blah, blah. That's big topics of conversation around here. Um, but we got our first run outside, dance in the rain. Thank goodness it's finally raining storm yesterday. Uh, and now, of course, it is humid as all get out. It feels like I think it's 92 degrees out right now when it's actually only 80 degrees. So it's the humidity has set in. Like we are right with it's just it has just happened.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

That's that's the ick. Um, but so wait, did you go dance in the rain when the rain came?

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Um, I didn't because I was in the middle of doing other things, but there was definitely like party texting between me and all of my horse girls. Oh, thank goodness it's finally raining. We're gonna get grass in the pastures. Yay, the ground isn't gonna be so hard, like all of the celebratory horse things that we get excited about when it rains.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

That's awesome. Um, scout, how does Scout react to the rain? Like I know Scout barks at thunder, but but is Scout like uh, I want to go dance in the rain crazy, or is Scout like not a chance, I'm not gonna melt?

SPEAKER_02 2:18

It depends. If it's thundering, oh yeah, she's out in it because she wants to bark at it, she wants to run around. She's very lieutenant Dan in the situation. Like she doesn't care if it's lightning, if it's raining, she wants to be out in it and is talking back to the storm. If it's just raining with nothing exciting happening, she kind of finds a way to sneak under the deck and do her stuff and then come back in. So it's very dependent on the noise factor.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Okay. So so when there's no thunder, it's not that she's indifferent to the rain, it's that she would prefer not to be out there, but she can do it.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Right. Okay. I love her, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

She is she's the sassiest, most amazing little tiny ball of floof ever. What about Rue? What does Rue think about rain and storms?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Um, Rue is adamantly opposed to getting wet from water that falls from above. Uh he yeah, he he has zero desire. The snow, however, like I'm pretty sure that Rue's primary circuitry lives in his like pads of his feet because they get into the snow, and then there's a short circuit that occurs, and he it like turns into like a psychopathic six-month-old puppy bouncing around like an idiot. It is hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Oh, I thought it's so cute.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Oh my god, it is so adorable, it's super fun, but not the rain. He is he's opposed to the rain. And of course, we we don't we did have snow, I don't know, a week and a half ago, and yesterday was yesterday or the day before was like almost 90. So, you know, Colorado in the spring.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, it is the season.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Andy, I have a question for you that I'm hoping you can help me settle. Greta and I um were having this uh discussion earlier, and we both kind of landed on different sides of the coin. So I feel like you can be like the the, I don't know, deciding vote.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Oh, it's a lot of pressure.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

I I it's I mean, it's it's a fairly low pressure question. Um, you know that Greta and I don't have children, and I know that you and Mike also don't have children, so I don't feel like we're experts here, which is why this was like a little bit of a subjective conversation. But but the question that we were struggling with is if if you have a child and that child refuses to sleep during nap time, does that make them guilty of resisting arrest?

SPEAKER_02 4:40

I'm gonna go with yes, and I'm also gonna go with I would be unable to like put this rule into play because I'd be laughing so hard.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

So hard.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Um thinking of yeah, this dad joke.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah. Um, on to more, I guess, quote, serious things. Um, today, Andy, we're gonna talk about a paper that really focuses on why people stay in their workplaces, which to me feels like especially refreshing because I feel like a lot of the conversation in VetMed over the past few years is really focused on kind of the opposite side of that coin. Instead of asking the question, which you know the power of questions, Andy. You're as big a fan of Appreciative Inquiry and David Cooper Eiter as I am. Uh, the questions that we ask influence what comes next, right? And I feel like a lot of the question that we've been asking in VetMed is not what makes people stay in their job. We've been asking the question, why do people leave their job? Which feels like they're very similar, but actually it turns out that we get really different answers. So, so this paper is really about the what makes people stay. And there really is something powerful in asking. When things are hard, when challenges emerge, when we face stressors and obstacles and adversities, what is it that makes a team member say, Yeah, this is tough, but I'm still in it for the long term. I want to stick around here. But another way, what if employee retention wasn't really about perks and pay and all the things that we think will hold on to people, but rather retention was about the memories that people build during difficult times. And that's kind of what this paper is really about. Uh, before we get to the paper, though, Andy, I wanted to ask you a question. Before you joined Flourish, you were the technician manager in an academic setting, leading a very large team of technicians in the large animal teaching hospital that you worked at. You were in that role during a really unique time in our history. You were in that role during COVID. So you were in this leadership position during COVID, but kind of a middle management position. So you were leading this team, but there were other people that you reported to that had a lot more power than you. What I want to ask you to do is I want you to think back to like when shit really hit the fan and the COVID crisis was at its peak and it was pure chaos and nobody knew what was going on. In particular, I want you to recall, if you can, during that specific time, the interactions that you and others around you had with hospital leadership, with like the core top leadership. And then I've got sort of two questions for you in one. Part one is how would you describe the leadership's communication during that crisis time? Would you say it was positive? Would you say it was negative, or would you say it was kind of neutral, somewhere in the middle? And then secondly, if you could give some examples to help me and our listeners kind of understand what led you to choose that? Like why would you describe it as positive, negative, or neutral?

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Thinking back about this was quite the trip down memory lane, right? I mean, on one hand, it felt like it was a lifetime ago that this happened. But on the other hand, it was literally just last week. I mean, it was just insane to think about everything that we went through and how long, quote unquote, long ago it was, but how recent it was as well. And I think VetMed experienced this in a very unique way. And I was in it. I mean, I was in it up to my eyeballs during COVID. And being in an academic hospital that was huge and I mean, couldn't stop moving. I mean, there were no options to shut down, shorten hours, any of that, because of the type of environment that I was in. Uh, communication was huge when it came to COVID. And thinking back all these years later on how that went down and what that felt like, I honestly would say, COVID aside, the experience was actually fairly positive. And for me, it had to do with the level of communication that was happening. So, as you'll all remember, right? Everything changed from one day to the next. There were different rules, there were different suggestions, there were different ideas, there were different findings, there were it, it was, you never knew. Any every morning you went into work, you weren't really sure exactly what had happened overnight, what was new, and what was going to change. That led to a lot of conversations between like the upper management, middle management, which is where I lived, and you know, the teams out in the floor doing the things. And this constant change and these constant meetings actually encouraged communication. I think that at first it was viewed a touch negatively because people did think, oh my God, now what? Right? Now what's gonna change? What we we were doing this all along, and now all of a sudden we have to do this totally differently. But I think over time they started to realize that it was like consistent, constant change, and that the change was being fueled by leadership's desire to protect us as humans, right? Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody knew what to expect. Everybody was nervous, everybody was scared. This was brand new territory for everybody. And the leadership team that I dealt with was actually pretty damn transparent about that. They shared that fear, they shared that uncertainty, right? Of well, we have no idea what's going on. This is what we know now, but that might change in five minutes. Like, and they include they included me and they included most of us in on some of those conversations. So while they had to set the pin, right? They had to say, for example, we need to find a way to function as an academic teaching hospital, but minimize sort of the quote unquote cross-contamination of shifts so that if one shift goes down, the whole entire hospital doesn't, you know, all of a sudden turn into a ghost town.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

What do we think some of those options could be? Because nobody had the answer because we'd never done this before. And so I felt very included in these conversations. My leadership team knew that I knew what my crew was doing, what they needed to do, who the players were, what might work and what didn't work. And they listened to me when I shared some of those things. And they were transparent about the goals that we needed to reach, right? Like the things that we needed to accomplish, the way that we needed to make sure to balance everything. And that accompanied with that human sort of empathy, emotion that came with what the heck is this, right? Like, what is this COVID thing? How are we going to manage this? What's going on now? I want my team to be healthy. I want to protect them from anything that, you know, might come rolling down the block tomorrow because nobody knew what the deal was behind the, you know, this new virus. And so that became very, very apparent. The willingness to include us in on decisions, how we were going to make these things happen, the willingness to be transparent about, well, this is what we know and this is what we've got to do. And, you know, these are our thoughts. And that willingness to be vulnerable and show us that like we were humans and that they cared. And we we knew that some of these crazy rules or these middle shift changes were simply because they didn't want us to get sick.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

So it sounds to me like um you would describe it as positive during that time that senior leadership's communication towards the rest of the team was positive. And some of the things that made it positive for you was that it was consistent, it was transparent, it was candid, it conveyed care, it was inclusive, and it showed a lot of trust in the organization. And the communication was centered around the well-being of the team in balance with the needs of the hospital.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. And that stuff matters because it turns out that teams really remember how their organizations treat them when things are messy, scary, uncertain, or inconvenient, right? Like when we have these kinds of crises, how we are treated makes a difference. What is it that Maya Angelou said? Something like, uh, it's not what you say or do, it's how you make people feel that matters, or something along those lines. I love that quote.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

That's one of my favorite Maya Angelou quotes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Oh, yeah, it's awesome. So here's the thing, Andy. Moments like that aren't just in a pandemic. I mean, COVID is like a really acute example of what a crisis can be like, but in veterinary hospitals, these kinds of moments actually happen with a great deal of frequency. You know, things like the brutally understaffed Monday, those back to back to back cranky clients, or, you know, that day where you have to work through three euthanasia around a couple puppy visits and you're doing all that emotional code switching. Uh those are all really, really difficult moments that can feel like mini crises. Our teams are watching how we communicate during these tough times. And that communication, it becomes a really big part of the culture that people remember. It shapes how they make meaning of the hard work that they do, of the things that they're enduring. And there's a really big difference between today was awful, but we were in it together. And today was awful, and I really felt like I endured it alone. So maybe the problem isn't that we lack resilience in veterinary medicine. Maybe the problem is we ask people to spend their resilience capital alone too often until they decide to head out the front door for good. And we all know about the turnover problem that veterinary practices face these days, which is why I think this paper is such a cool paper for us. So the study that I've brought to this episode is titled The Structuration of Positive Communication Experiences: The Case of the Great Resignation by Elizabeth A. Williams and several of her colleagues. Now, don't worry, Andy. We're gonna explain that funny word structuration a little bit later in the episode, I promise. But Andy, I I I was really curious before we do that. Can you say structuration five times really fast?

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Um, no, if you want a good laugh. Because I kept wanting to make it structurization. And I'm like, no, that's not even that's not even letters in the word, Andy.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

What's a set of Z here?

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

You know, I so often in vetmed and in other industries, we study turnover and why people leave workplaces. But this study, as we mentioned earlier, it took a peek at the other side of that coin. It really focused in on what makes people stay. In particular, why people stay through and beyond a crisis? In this case, it was the COVID pandemic and then the ensuing great resignation that sort of came, you know, in and after that. The researchers ended up asking what role, if any, did positive communication play in helping people want to stay in their job, which is of course something that you and I are super jazzed about uh given the graduate program that we did and our course in uh positive communication in veterinary medicine. So the the research, the study was designed around two big questions. Number one, how did organizational communication create positive workplace experiences during the COVID crisis? And then number two, why did team members choose to stay in their job during the ensuing great resignation? To answer those questions, they conducted some pretty extensive interviews of 25 people who had stayed with the same organization from January 2020, so just before COVID really kind of went bonkers through March 2023. The interviews were one-on-one. They were semi-structured. Uh, semi-structured, by the way, just means that they had a list of sort of interview questions that they went through, but they sort of followed the flow of the interview. They may have had probing questions that they asked or uh additional questions beyond, but they were always sure to ask those specific research questions as well. And then the interviews lasted somewhere between 30 and 90 minutes. Uh, they resulted in a lot of data, nearly 500 pages of single-spaced transcript data. That's a lot to look through. They then used a uh a data analysis approach called the frenetic iterative approach, which probably sounds like something you'll need a degree in Latin and a pot of coffee to fully understand. I get it, but I'll explain it really quickly. Basically, they took that nearly 500 pages of data and they just read all the interviews over and over and over and were looking for patterns. Then they compared the patterns to existing theory in the literature and then repeated the process consist while consistently asking, hey, what is both congruent with existing theory and actually useful here? What are the things that we're pulling out here that really match up with the theory in the literature and can be useful in the real world? You could kind of think of this like renovating an old hospital building, right? So you buy an old creaky building, you're gonna start up a new practice there. You're not gonna walk through that place once and then immediately know what to keep, what to tear out, or tweak, right? You're gonna take time to inspect it. You're gonna revisit things, you're gonna tap on walls, you're gonna look at blueprints, you're gonna talk to the people who are gonna use that space every day. And then through all of that sort of subjective data collection, the real structure that you have and the one that you want will start to reveal itself. That's basically what a frenetic iterative approach is to this kind of qualitative data analysis. From a more technical perspective, the researchers basically started broad with what we call primary cycle coding, the grouped patterns, and then they refined with secondary coding and selective coding. So, in other words, they just narrowed with each round until they had their final results. Now, earlier I promised that I would explain structuration theory, so I'm gonna do that. But let me try and do that um in a way that hopefully doesn't cause an allergic reaction requiring a hit from the epi pen. Structuration is a theory about how people and systems shape each other. And this is one of the more powerful theories, Andy. I don't know about you, but when when I first came across this in our graduate uh studies, this one really hit me kind of square between the eyes. You see, organizations have rules and resources. Rules are kind of, you know, the how we do thing here, how we do things here, and those things matter. Uh and then resources are the tools, the knowledge, the authority, the relationships, money, time, like all the stuff that people use to get things done according to the rules. People then use those rules and resources every single day. Or they don't. Sometimes they break rules, sometimes they bend rules, sometimes they do things a little bit differently. But either way, every time they use a rule or resource, or they don't, they're reinforcing the existing culture or they're changing it. People make culture, which influences how people behave within the culture, which makes or remakes the culture, which influences the next set of behaviors that happen in that environment, and round and round and round we go. Culture is not something we prescribe, culture is not something we ascribe to. It is both at the same time. It's co-created. So in a veterinary hospital, if people skip lunch every day for any reason, it doesn't matter why, people work through lunch every day, then over time skipping lunch becomes a well-worn path in the culture. It's like, you know, I don't do mountain biking, but people who mountain bike always talk about, you know, the the little the tiny little path that you put your your tire, your fat tire through as you're going through. That's kind of what happens. We create sort of keeps people within quote unquote the lines of how we do things here, which is we don't take lunches. But now let's say that all of a sudden one day leaders start saying things like, Hey, listen, Andy, I want you to take your lunch today. I'm gonna cover for you. And then they make sure that you actually take your lunch. Well, we can carve a new path then. If people actually take the break and they're actually covered, then over time a new path will emerge. Hey, this is a place where we take lunch. That's structuration theory. Andy, how are you feeling at this point?

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Um, the Abby Pen is sitting here, but I'm not actively reaching for it. So we're doing best. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Okay, I think I did a good job then. Okay, so so let's return back to the study. What did they discover? Well, I want to share four big findings today. The first one is that positive communication, it isn't fluffy, it's infrastructure. Or at least it can and should be. So this study found that the primary reason people stayed in their job through this major crisis of COVID was their experience with positive communication in the workplace. Specifically, communication that can't Conveyed things like flexibility, transparency, health and safety, support, a lot of the kinds of things that you shared from your example, Andy. And the leaders genuinely cared about the people that they led, which is something you said multiple times. You could kind of think of this as like routine communication that sounds a bit like these phrases. Hey guys, here's what we know right now. Here's what we don't know yet. Right. Or things like, here's what we're doing to protect you, to protect the team, to protect the organization. Here's where we or you have some flexibility and latitude to make your own decisions today. Here's where we can't flex. Here are the things that we really have to stick to rigidly. And here's why. Here's how we're going to get through this together, right? Those are hope-building statements. That kind of communication, what it essentially does is it lowers uncertainty and it strengthens trust. And then as a result, people are willing to stay and use their resilience capital to get through the tough time. Andy, veterinary hospitals and organizations, they face a lot of challenges. You and I know that. And sometimes even crises. And this can happen with more frequency than maybe we would like in veterinary settings. When those situations come up, in your mind, just from your personal opinion, what do you think gets in the way of veterinary leaders communicating in this kind of positive way with their teams?

SPEAKER_02 23:25

That's a really good question that has probably a couple of different answers. But the ones that came up for me were the leaders' desire to fix the problem. They want to fix it for their team. And they want to just go to the team with an answer. And they do that, I think, because they're trying to protect the team. But it comes across as a bit of, I don't know, lack of transparency because they're coming back with, well, what you got to do is Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I I totally agree with that. I I think that some of what I'm hearing in what you're saying is that oftentimes veterinary leaders show up in a way that they think that they are supposed to be the source of problem solving all the time perfectly. And you didn't, yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Well, I was just gonna add, I think that I mean, the way that you rephrase that is perfect. And I think the reason that I had such a hard time putting the words together for that is because I did that. I did that. I felt like that, that I had to have the solution and to fix it and to always know what the right answer was and to protect my team in the process.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah. No, it totally makes sense. I also feel like I heard this element in what you were saying. You didn't use this word, but what I kept hearing in my head was thinking back to my coaching psychology training when they said that like a really good coach um maintains an even playing ground, that they don't position themselves as the expert or the, you know, the know-it-all. Uh, it it should be an adult-to-adult relationship. And that sometimes what we unintentionally do as coaches is we position ourselves as the parent. And then that puts the the coache in the position of child. And I think that sometimes leaders do this too. Again, you didn't say this, but it felt implied in what you were saying that sometimes as leaders, we we take on this role of parent and we look at our team as children. Whether we're actually overtly doing that or not, it's happening maybe even a bit subconsciously. And when we step into that role, that means we have to always have it together. That means we have to be the emotional regulation, you know. And the reality is you're in a crisis and you're a human being, and so are they. It's gonna be hard for everybody. Uh, sometimes that that transparency is actually the better approach. People see right through the sort of like fake stoicism. The other, the next um big finding from the paper that really stood out to me is that when times are hard, people really need to feel trusted and supported. And providing flexibility is actually a great way to accomplish both, which, you know, hearkening back to what you just said, Andy, if we're positioning ourselves as the be-all-know-all problem solvers, we're actually creating inflexibility for our team. We're telling them the only way that you will get through this is through me. And so I better be right and you have no say, right? And so what they found in the study was that actually it's quite the opposite, that leaders who provide flexibility is a really great way to build trust and show the team, I've got your back. So that flexibility, it seemed to help employees really feel trusted and supported, confirming that they could adjust to the shifting times and that leadership believed in their ability to adjust and flex. During the pandemic, the the organizations that allowed people to work differently, whatever that meant for them, that can be different from organization to organization, even within an organization from team to team. But those organizations that allowed that kind of like work flexibility ended up having a lot more retention, people who stayed instead of quit. And over time, that flexibility actually became part of the enduring culture. Remember structuration theory that we talked about earlier? Turning into a big piece of how people understood what the organization was, you know, quote unquote about. I like to think of flexibility as renovating culture in a very low impact way. Instead of removing walls, we're just putting better hinges on the doors, right? So people have the ability to move freely throughout the organization. Andy, listen, I I know that a lot of these organizations during COVID, they went to things like work from home. And I that that might not really be a big option for a lot of veterinary professionals. It's not like we can let people hop on Zoom to conduct a foreign body surgery, at least not yet. But I do think that work flexibility is an area that we can really improve on in veterinary medicine. And I have a sense that you're probably going to agree with that. So, with that in mind, I was curious to ask you, what are one or two ways that you think veterinary organizations of whatever kind can give their teams more flexibility in how they work?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

I love this question and I love thinking about all the different options out there that could be implemented. The first one that came to mind kind of did, kind of did involve a little bit of work from home because I get it, you're right. Not everybody can. There's not always the opportunity, but there might be. There might be. I actually work with a veterinary clinic down the street. It's where Brody goes for his PT and his aqua tread and all of that. And whenever I contact them to make an appointment, I'm talking to the CSMer. She works from home. She works from home. I know. I thought that was really, really cool. And that's a great example of an option or a possible opportunity to be flexible. I don't know if she works from home every day. I don't know if she does it a couple days a week. I don't know, but that's a really neat option. Another one that came to mind was talk to your team about what kind of work they want to do, right? This kind of harkens to the idea of job crafting. So talk to your team about what kind of work they want to do and maybe find some more opportunities for them to do it. Yeah, it might not be every day, all the time, right? But when the possibility comes up to, I don't know, get in the truck and go to the track and take, you know, a whole slew of radiographs, and you know that this particular technician loves that part and gets really jazzed about it. Cool. There's an opportunity to be flexible. Maybe swap them out with your surgery tech that day. Another one that may or may not work, right? I know your listeners might roll your eyes at this one. Think about lunches or breaks. Maybe there's some options to be flexible there. Maybe you, you know, you want to make sure everybody gets lunch between, I don't know, 11 and 3, whatever. But when you take that lunch, that's up to you, right? Maybe there's some ways to encourage that flexible autonomy that will give people the feeling that they actually care about us and they want to make sure that maybe if I wanted to go to yoga over lunch and the class was at 1:30, I could do that because I've had the option to take my lunch during this flexible slot in the day. Stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

I love all of those ideas. I mean, this is it's really about what I'm hearing from you is that it's it's really about just think of something that you can empower your team with to have some form of decision making over. That's really what flexibility is. And whatever that is, to whatever extent, is going to vary from team to team. Uh, but it's about finding opportunities to give people some more decision-making power. I love it. Third big takeaway from the paper for me transparency is emotional PPE. You do you remember that buzz acronym? Does that does that make you twitch when you think about PPE and COVID?

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yeah. Well, yeah, especially having gone through COVID in the academic world where we had to like find it and get it and distribute it and wear it, and we had it and we didn't have it, and all of that.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Sorry for inciting the twitchiness again. But yeah, transparency, it it really is for teams, it really is emotional PPE. The the study authors, the researchers, found that participants felt more connected to and confident in organizations that really communicated openly, transparently, and in real time or as close to it as feasible during that crisis. The authors described transparency as a positive communication practice that helped employees feel steadier and more connected to their workplace. Andy, I worry that too often veterinary leaders, like we said earlier, adopt a bit of a hero mindset or a parental mindset, this belief that we always have to have all the answers, all the solutions, always be put together, gritty, resilient, never show that you're crumbling or have a crack, right? That influences what we share and how we share it. Like that changes our behavior. And sometimes it changes it to the detriment of our teams and ultimately to ourselves. The truth is, during a difficult chapter, like teams don't need leaders who pretend that everything is fine. They need leaders who can be clear, honest, informative, and all with the appropriate level of hopefulness, optimism, and humanity. Uncertainty breeds stories. And when we feed people false narratives, or we're really selective about the little crumbs of information that we give them, the very normal human response that they're gonna have is to craft a story that Hollywood horror film directors would be envious of. I mean, that's the reality. That's what the human brain does. Transparency gives people fewer scary blanks to fill in. It provides them a truer story that they can build off of, and they're going to be more resilient because of that. Lastly, fourth thing, while leaders play a huge role, everyone in the organization carries the culture. This study found that positive experiences did not only come from, quote, the organization in some weird abstract sense. They also came from coworkers and leaders, local leaders, people like you, Andy, when you were in middle management. Coworkers provided support and flexibility, and those local leaders created positive experiences through authenticity, care, vulnerability, and permission for self-care. With every action, every choice, and every conversation, every single person on the team is either reinforcing the old structure or helping to build a new one. Again, structuration. The more power that they have in the organization, absolutely the more impact uh the kind of structure being built that they're gonna have. But everybody plays a part, which means that we can all make things better if we want to. We just have to do it. Okay, Andy, I imagine at this point you're probably ready to put these lessons to good use. And I'm sure our listeners are as well. Don't worry, guys, we got you. So here are some of the ways that you can use structuration and the results of this study to renovate your veterinary culture to become the one of your dreams, or at least get it a step closer to that. The first idea that I wanted to share is this idea of adding this uh, here's why we're doing this script to every change you announce. And I literally mean every change. Even if you're, I don't know, you're changing the way that people clock in in the morning, whatever it is, adding that here's why we're doing this script is really powerful. The idea is pretty simple here. So anytime you announce a change of any kind, change to the schedule, a new protocol, a shift in appointment flow, a pricing update, a staffing decision, new client communication process. Hey guys, we're completely uh tearing the team apart into three separate groups that are never going to see each other so that we don't cross-contaminate with this new virus. Whatever it might be, just add one sentence prompt or a few sentences that explain the why behind it. That's it. Don't assume. Because if you assume you're leaving people to create their own Hollywood story in their head, in the absence of explanation, that's what people will do. They're gonna build that Hollywood story, and usually the story that they create is not gonna be very generous. They might think things like, well, leadership obviously doesn't care about us, or they're just trying to squeeze more out of us, or no one understands what we're dealing with here on the floor. Oh, just another random rule somebody made up in some, you know, back corner room. Transparency interrupts that spiral. A very good, here's why we're doing this script, it's gonna have four parts to it, Andy. Okay, you ready? Number one, name the change clearly. An example could be like, hey, Andy, starting Monday, we're changing how same-day urgent care appointments are added to the schedule. All right, so that's the clear, this is the change, and I'm starting with that. Number two, explain the why. You know, we're doing this, Andy, because the current process creates a lot of bottlenecks for us, which pushes lunches later and makes many days feel like a nonstop emergency to a lot of the team. We want to make that better. Then number three, connect it to values, patient care and team sustainability. Those are both really important to us. We think that this change will help both. And then lastly, clarify opportunities for input and adjustment. This is that flexibility, this is that inclusivity part, right? Hey, Andy, what we're gonna do is we're gonna try this for four weeks as a little experiment. Then we're gonna have all the leads check in with all of their teams and just ask three questions. Hey guys, what's working, what's not working, and what do you think needs to be adjusted? And that last part, Andy, it really matters because transparency, it's not just about broadcasting information. It's not just about prescribing things, it's helping people understand the decision and the role that they play and where they still have agency. Now, a few things to keep in mind, okay? Keep it plain spoken. Don't hide behind obtuse or obscure corporate language. Don't over-explain. Don't spend 10 minutes on this when two very honest sentences are sufficient, and don't pretend that the change is perfect if it isn't. If it truly is an experiment and you're not 100% confident it's going to work out, be honest about that. That's positive communication and action. That's turning change from something being done to people into something we can understand, we can participate in, and we can improve together. The second idea for cultural renovation using this paper is to build micro moments of a visible care and support. Culture really changes, at least for the better, when support becomes observable. I'm not talking about dramatic or performative. It doesn't have to be big things. It's just that it's observable and repeated. Examples could, I mean, simple things, right? Like, hey, you know what? You've been at this for a while. Why don't you take a drink of water and a breath for a few minutes? I'm gonna take this next room. Or, wow, Andy, that last one was really tough. Why don't you let me take the next cranky client? Or that was such a hard case. How are you doing? What do you need? Right? These are all opportunities to show support, micro moments of support that all of us can do over and over and over in our practices to create a culture of support. And support becomes culture when that happens, when people see it happening, when they receive it, and then they start copying it. That's the kind of this is like kind of like that uh kitschy little statement put into the world what you want out of it in action based on evidence. But that's the cool part. This culture of renovation tool, it's super simple, it's surprisingly powerful, and it is literally accessible to anyone, regardless of role. You're the brand new Kennel Tech that's been there a week, you're the hospital owner who's owned the practice for 25 years, and every other role in between. You don't need a title to make someone feel less alone in their work. Okay, Andy, lightning round style here. What are some other ways that literally anyone on the team could create a micro moment of care or a micro moment of support for other team members?

SPEAKER_02 38:41

Catch someone's eye across the room and smile. Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

That's yes, right? Who, oh, I think I want to say I was with you, but it might I may have been alone. I met a uh veterinarian who he was um he was a surgeon in academia. So you can put those two things together and um the amount of terror that uh uh exuded from him when students came into the OR, right? And he said that one of the things that he learned to do um was to pay attention to you know all the the students, the residents, everybody that was there, and look for people who seemed like maybe they they were exuding some sort of nonverbal of struggle. And all he would do is it was in the OR. He couldn't like really have a conversation with them. He said he would just look at them, make eye contact. Obviously, you have the mask on, so it's just eyes, right? Make eye contact and just touch his heart. That's it from across the room. It's very similar to what you said. What else? What else you got?

SPEAKER_02 39:37

Um, what else? Help without being asked, right? Just something basic. Let's say that you're walking down the hall and you see somebody balancing 14 syringe boxes and they're obviously going to restock and they're coming up to the storeroom.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Open the door for them. Hold the door. Awesome. Awesome. Tiny little micro. This is, I mean, this is it. And listeners, you're gonna think of a thousand other little things like this. Doing these things repetitively creates the opportunity for others to repeat them, which is how we influence culture. It's really just that simple. Uh, the third tool that I wanted to share today is this idea of turning crisis survival into future strengths. This is like growth spotting a little bit. Andy, you know what big fans of Appreciative Inquiry we are at Flourish. One of the things that I really love about that methodology is the underlying mindset that the questions we ask really shape our future. For example, if we ask questions about failure, like, why did everyone freak out during that emergency hit by car? The best that we can learn is how to avoid freakouts in the future. But if we ask questions about excellence, like, hey, what made it possible for all of us to come together and save that dog's life? Same situation, very different question. What we end up discovering is what's best in us, and then we can grow and amplify those strengths. I really think that applies here. Here's the deal listen, veterinary teams face crises of all kinds frequently, almost daily. Every time, though, or at least damn near, we get through it. We survive, we endure, we get to the other side. Appreciative inquiry would then suggest that there's resources in those experiences that can actually help us thrive moving forward. So, based on this paper, here's one way to tap into those resources. Debrief crises, but in a very particular way. After the team has overcome some sort of unexpected emergency, an unanticipated challenge, some unique obstacle, whatever it is. Once the dust has settled and the stress-induced tachycardia slows to some semblance of normalcy, huddle up and debrief. First, recognize and validate the tough thing that they just went through and celebrate what's worth celebrating, right? So we got to validate that was hard, that's real. And then we move to celebrate what's worth celebrating. And we do that by spending a few minutes exploring two questions. Number one, and this is in a team conversation, hey guys, what did we do during that really difficult moment that actually worked for us? What were the things that were working? Not what went wrong or what could we have done better? What were the things that were working? And then question number two is what did we learn by going through that experience that we can apply to the next hard thing? Because God knows it's coming, who knows when and who knows what? Right. So, what what did we do that worked? And what lessons can we carry forward to the next thing? Andy, in your experience, what happens after a big hard challenge in veterinary teams? Do you find that they debrief like this or does something else happen?

SPEAKER_02 42:38

I usually find that one of two things happen. Either everybody just like quietly sort of acknowledges that that happened and they move on because they've got a thousand other things to do. And I think there is some form of a debrief, but it's that problem-focused debrief that you're talking about. Because when I talk to a lot of veterinary professionals out there, I get a lot of them go, yeah, yeah, yeah. We we debrief those things. We debrief the emergencies and the things that don't go well. And I find that they often focus on what didn't go well. What did we screw up? What could we do better? Why did that suck? Why did we fail? And then at humans being humans, we go down that path and we start to focus on all of those things, right? That's a lot of what we've been talking about here today. And so the productive debrief is few and far between.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Yeah. Okay. So, so in your experience, one of two things happened. Either they like very briefly acknowledge that was a shitty thing and then just move on, or they quote unquote debrief, but the debrief is very focused on what went wrong, where did we screw up, where are the problems that we need to retrain, those kinds of things. Andy, if people debriefed in the way that I'm uh proposing here, how do you think that would change things for this? Typical veterinarian team as they're coming out of uh, you know, a challenge or crisis.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Oh God, that would empower people in ways that would be absolutely game-changing. It would make crises and challenges and less than awesome situations way more of a growth opportunity rather than an oh shit, this happened and now we have to deal with it. And I think that it would really empower your team in those moments too.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

I totally agree. There's this concept in in or the organizational literature, um, it comes out of positive organizational behavior called psychological capital or psychap. And, you know, three of the ingredients of psy cap is self-efficacy, hope, and optimism. And I feel like doing a debrief like this helps to build all three of those things. Show people we are capable of enduring hard things. Um, and so therefore, uh we can build hopefulness for the next hard thing and optimism that we'll get through it. Uh so yeah, I'm I'm totally with you. The the last sort of tip that I wanted to share for cultural renovation around this paper is to learn the ins and outs of positive communication and apply it. Uh the most of the findings here really, really spoke to the power of positive communication in creating a workspace uh that people want to stay in even through difficult things. Annie, when when you think back to your time in veterinary practices, how many times a day did you communicate with people? And I'd like including both the team and clients, roughly.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Oh God, four million. I don't know. I mean, constantly. Constantly.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Constantly. Would it be safe to say that you would you would have on a typical shift um 500 conversations?

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Yes, at least.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

Of the at least, right? Let's go with 500. Of those 500, on any given day, how many of those communication interactions involved some form of genuine quote conflict?

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Five or ten, not many.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

So one to two percent. Okay. Isn't it funny that almost all the communication training we do in vetmed is on conflict management? Yes. How to get clients to comply, how to de-escalate cranky clients, how to manage conflict in the team. I get it, that stuff is super important. Relationships can be made or broken in those critical moments. But what about the other 98% of the time that we're having non-conflicty communication with people? We're already communicating with people. It's not conflict. What if we used all that time to actively build better relationships, to strengthen connection, to nurture teamwork and team coordination, to better understand each other? That's what positive communication is about. Imagine how much better we'd all feel, how the workplace culture would improve, and heck, how much less conflict there would probably be. If we spent that 98% of the time actively nurturing relationships, there probably would be less conflict. So that's really what this idea of positive communication is speaking to. But no one really teaches us solid evidence-based skills for mastering that until now.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

I was gonna say they don't. I know some place that does.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Yes, I do too. Listen, if we I think that if we want positive cultures in our workplaces, which is what we hear all the time, then we need people communicating in positive ways. Structuration tells us that what people say and do at work is repeated and influences what is said and done next by them and others. We can use that power for good by teaching ourselves and our teams how to communicate positively. And to what Andy was saying, it's very true. The Flourish Academy has the only certificate in cultivating positive team communication course that teaches all these things. By the way, that's based on the preeminent scholar in applied positive communication, Julian Miraval's work. So that's just one option. But another one is to just really talk through this as a team. Put pull the whole team together and talk through what positive communication means to us? What would it look like if it was happening here? What would it look like when the day begins, when people first walk in, when patients are handed off, when you need help, when a shift ends, when there's a one-on-one conversation in the break room. Like just really explore those things and identify a few like shared behaviors and approaches that you can all agree to as a team. Now, there is somebody in the world who doesn't need these lessons because they've already mastered the art of positive communication. Andy, I think you might have that somebody ready to share.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Ooh, and this somebody has mastered the art of communication in a way that is epic. Yes, it is Florida man. And this Florida man, I I've been so excited to share this one. I've actually had this in my back pocket for a minute, and I've been so excited to share this particular Florida man headline with you and all of our listeners. Because this Florida man running from the cops stops to pet cats and ends up going to jail. So apparently, what happened is that this guy was fleeing from the police during his marathon run from the cops. He stopped at a house to ask for water, got distracted by all the cats, went into the house, laid on the floor to pet all of the cats, and the cops caught up on them and arrested him.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

This is why veterinary professionals will never uh escape the police.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

Right, right, right. I know. I was like, well, we can all relate to that because it's something we would 100% do.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

It's amazing. Florida Man is the very, very best. Well done, Florida Man. Well, listen, everybody, Andy, listeners, thank you all for joining us for another episode of the Veterinary Culture Lab. We're we're always delighted to share some of these uh sciencey bits with you. Don't forget to subscribe and to rate us. That really helps us get visibility and spread the word about the things that we're trying to help the veterinary profession do to renovate veterinary culture. Until then, see you all next time. Be well.

SPEAKER_02 49:56

Bye, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with us in the Veterinary Culture Lab, powered by the science of workplace well-being, and brought to you by Flourish Veterinary Consulting. If today's episode sparked an idea, made you smile, or got you thinking, hey, I should totally try that. Let us know. What do you think? Be sure to subscribe, share, and remember a thriving veterinary culture is possible, and you don't have to build it alone.