The power of self-awareness.

This week I had the distinct privilege to work with a group of young Michigan veterinarians and veterinary students as a mentor for the Power of Ten Leadership Academy.  I have been a supporter of this program for years and for the past two classes have been one of their two veterinary mentors.  The program is filled with fresh veterinary faces eager to improve their skills as leaders in the veterinary profession. Speakers are brought in each quarter to challenge us in new ways to develop ourselves into better leaders and better humans.  I love the program because each session I learn something new from the speakers and from the students that I mentor. 

The program that we attended on Friday and Saturday revolved around leadership development through self-awareness. Self-awareness is defined as, “conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives, and desires.”  Working to become a better leader starts with looking inward.

Dr. Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, describes self-awareness as the core component of emotional intelligence.  He defines emotional intelligence as the ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and the ability to manage those emotions. 

How do you create more self-awareness and learn to manage your emotions?

The first step that we took was to work through a personality assessment.  I love personality profiling systems as tools to get to know myself better and to learn more about others.  We used the DISC profiling system, taught to us brilliantly by John, our MVMA CEO.  The DISC system helps identify our preferred behavioral styles by looking at a combination of the four DISC styles.  Whether you use DISC, Meyer’s Briggs, Enneagram or The Big Five Personality tests, getting to know yourself on a deeper level will help you understand how you react to situations, and help you to understand the people that you lead. 

Self-awareness requires that you to understand your emotions.  Learning that your emotions are created by your thinking and learning not to fear your emotions, is a key step in developing leadership maturity.  Staying on your toes with regards to self examination in your response to all circumstances will allow you to change and grow in the areas of your greatest emotional strengths.

Self-awareness requires you to stay curious.  One of the primary attributes of a good leader is a healthy curiosity and thirst for life long learning. Looking to other strong leaders to learn from their experiences will open up your mind to ideas that will help you develop your leadership skills.  The Power of Ten Leadership Academy is a group filled with healthy curiosity. 

If you work to understand yourself, learn to feel your emotions, and remain curious you will embody the power of leadership self-awareness. Knowing yourself well is the most important step in becoming an authentic powerful leader.

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Strong people have a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness; they don’t need the approval of others.” ― Roy T. Bennett 

Client expectations: Are we losing our patience?

In a service business like ours there are many opportunities for failure of expectations and client disappointment.  When people call into a veterinary hospital and they are unaware of the inner workings and complexity of the profession, they may think that having a doctor call them back is as simple as us sitting at our desk just waiting to return phone calls. In reality there are days when I never even see my desk or sit in any chair. 

Expectation is defined as, “a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future” and “a belief that someone will or should achieve something.”

I think the second definition is what gets veterinarians into trouble.  Client’s belief that something should happen the way they think it should happen.

Veterinary receptionists spend their day answering calls from concerned pet parents while they try to decipher the emergent from the ordinary.  They ask questions designed to read the minds of the clients on the other end of the phone, and without seeing the pet, decide how soon they need to squeeze them into an already packed schedule.  The doctors, working 10-12 hour days, are required to see patients that are ill, provide vaccinations, perform surgery, interpret radiographs, record everything -in detail - into computer charts, approve and write prescriptions, prescribe and dispense drugs, perform blood and urine tests, and then analyze and report those tests results to the clients.  These working doctors also have families and homes that they need to attend to.  At our hospital, we currently have two nursing mothers, who have to pump and store breast milk several times a day while keeping up with everything else.

Veterinarians and their technicians do what in human medicine would be done by a small army of people, and we do it all while the client waits.  When was the last time your human doctor called you back the same day, or reported your blood test results the next day?  

Our clients are most often very appreciative of our caring kindness, but sometimes there is a disconnect between what the client expects will happen, and what actually happens.  Then they may become angry either posting an ugly online review or hit us up with a frustrated phone call.  We hate that!  We are really trying to do our very best to make everyone happy, and an angry client is not our goal.

So, what can we do to help meet our client’s expectations?

We must improve our communication about the workings of the hospital and set boundaries.  Clients may get angry when we don’t do everything exactly the way they want us to, but if we communicate our boundaries, we let them know going in, what we can handle.  Clients don’t know that we have 8 other people to call, have a big surgery waiting, or have to run and pick up our kids from school in 20 minutes.  It is our job to communicate by saying, “Ms. Richards, I have only 5 minutes tonight to give you your pet’s results, but if we need longer than 5 minutes, I would be happy to call you again tomorrow so we can discuss further.”  Clients are thrilled to hear from us and love to spend time talking about their pet, so it is up to us to communicate our boundaries, and then have the mental strength to enforce them.  If clients get angry, we can calmly tell them that we are sorry that we have not met their expectations, however we are doing our very best for their pet.   Being honest with clients is the key to protecting yourself.  We need to take a lesson from our human doctor colleagues and train our clients to respect our free time so they understand what expectations should be.

It starts with honest communication by every member of the veterinary team to set the proper expectations.  Clients expect us to provide quality care for their pets while being kind and honest.  When they have unreasonable expectations about how we should schedule our time, it is up to use to set our boundaries and then let them decide whether they want to continue to work with us or move on to another caregiver.

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”―Henry Winkler

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”―Bill Gates

Dr. Julie Cappel

Join me on The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast!  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730