Peer Powered Performance

In our many years of pet ownership I estimate we have funded the wings of Veterinary Hospitals established college endowments and I have personally been threatened with involuntary inguinal orchiectomy for absent-mindedly allowing the escape of any member of our feline front office.

I have learned my lessons (painfully), Amazon has thrived, and UPS workers are stronger now. Cat stuff is heavy.

The greatest weight I have experienced has not been with our own feline family but experiencing the business side of Veterinary volatility.

This is not a problem exclusive to those serving animals, but inclusive of any business that requires people to work together …….multiplied by unreasonable owners, anxious animals, unexpected outcomes and catatonia inducing costs to the third power.

Running a Veterinary Practice is highly stressful – emotionally, fiscally, physically and mentally. My own experience working in a Veterinary parasitology lab at WSU ensured I would NEVER consider the profession. I am not hard wired to be emotionally objective. I am incapable of intellectualizing another’s pain; I internalize the experience.

I am not alone in my emotional osmosis. We all experience the emotions of others. People and apparently many pets as well have the ability to re-experience our own emotions or even imagined emotions. This is part of the two million year upgrade that has given Homo sapiens such enormous heads. The uncontrollable part of this “new” upgrade is our ability to lie to ourselves. We all do it. We do it all the time and the more isolated we are from honest, unfiltered, unbiased, uncoerced feedback the more delusional we become. Defined as the Illusory Superiority Effect those isolated by title, position or choice are consumed by the illusion of omniscience. Unrealistic expectations and political pandering deepen self deception resulting in what I would describe as:

The Egoic Multiplier Effect. (Expectations X Title(s) X Dishonesty X Insulation= Trouble).

Titles are a reflection of academic accomplishment, persistence, resilience, rigor and grit. Titles are helpful, meaningful and deserving of respect.

In complete contrast entitlement is a function of fear, a sense of scarcity and NEED to control.

When used as an adjective entitled people are “Convinced of one’s own righteousness, justifiability of one’s actions or right to have something, especially wrongly so; demanding and pretentious.”[i]

In my personal experience and from interviews with Veterinary industry professionals, a healthy practice requires a unique combination of organizational architecture and ideology that values the emotional health of the practice staff as much as it does the animals they serve.

Based on the Bar-On model of Emotional Intelligence “two-thirds of leadership is dependent upon Emotional Intelligence”.

The good news is that Emotional Intelligence is not a fixed asset but a learnable skill. The difficult part, and a revelation to me after 30 years teaching EI, is that developing Emotionally Intelligent teams depends as much on organizational design as it does interpersonal understanding.

[i] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/entitled

Hierarchical structures emphasizing command and control over Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose[i] undermine the intrinsic motivations that attract people to the profession in the first place. Veterinary practice professionals at ALL levels are intrinsically motivated.

These are highly intelligent and incredibly disciplined people. They have horsepower to do anything they want. They chose this profession. Every member of the team deserves to be respected equally for their contributions. There are rules, requirements, limits and liabilities but above all there must be respect.

Earlier this week I visited one of only 17 Expeditionary Mentor Schools in the country. Serving grades K-8 they consistently score at the top of the scale in standardized testing despite their anti-authoritative approach. Anser “Students learn to take responsibility for achieving their personal best”.

If we can give this kind of “Response-Ability” to eight year olds maybe it is time to revise the way we think about the exceptional adults that make up our Veterinary teams. An easy start might be to adopt one of Anser’s founding phrases in your practice.

EVERYONE has a voice. EVERYONE has a choice.

Simplistic solutions to complicated challenges only exacerbate the issues. There is no one right way. In the same way a Veterinarian needs to understand the unique characteristics of each species they must also be vigilant of the VALUES of each person. The solution is not puritanical policies but caring conversations with every person at every level.

Respect is not tied to a title but something to which we are all entitled.

If you have an interest in leading edge leadership you are invited to join the conversation in our New Peer Powered Performance LinkedIn group. Share your super successes, fabulous failures and make some new friends along the way.