And hello everybody and a very, very warm welcome to you from myself and Bash. Hello. So, yeah, yeah, thank you everybody.
Thank you for joining, and thank you to Fear Free for kindly sponsoring this webinar. If anyone has any questions for our speaker, please put them into the Q&A box and for comments or other queries, please use the chat box. So to introduce Bash, Bash is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, a certified Veterinary practise Manager, and a licenced veterinary technician with 27 years of experience.
He is a frequent contributor to DVM 360, VetsEd, AAHA Trends, and today's veterinary Businesses. He is a member of the advisory board for the US Vetch 360 veterinary conferences and has been an invited speaker at all the major North American veterinary conferences with others in the UK, Central and South America. Recently, Bash was a recipient of the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association's President's Award for Management Education in the state of Pennsylvania.
His company, H Consulting, has worked with dozens of veterinary businesses, as well as corporate, private, and teaching hospitals throughout the world. As Vice President of Business Development for Healthcare Provider Network, Mr. Hallow works directly with HCPN's CEO and COO to ready their hospital communication app for launch later this year.
And Bash, it's over to you. Thank you so much, Helen. You know, I have to tell you, everybody, as I see that count lining up there, I, I wish I could peek into the world that you, live in now.
I understand that most of you are calling in from the UK, but it'd be great to know where all of you are signing in from. I've worked before in the UK and I absolutely love your country. I love the food, I love your wit, I love the culture, and, the only thing that could be better than this, working, with you, in this capacity would be to do it live, so that we have an opportunity, to interact.
You know, Helen, went over my bio. What she didn't tell you was that, I've done every role at a veterinary hospital, except to be a veterinarian in my 27 years in this business. I got started out, in this business because I was a writer in New York City, which meant I was a bartender in New York City.
And there was a waiter that told me that there was a veterinary hospital that was opening up down the street from where I live. So I'm calling in from New York City, so if you ever come here, you come visit me, I'll give you a hot dog and we'll have a bagel with a smear of cream cheese on it. And but I, I live at 261 West 18th Street, that's where I'm calling in from now.
And the, the business is at 257 West 18th Street, so that's only two buildings away, that was my commute to work. And I absolutely fell in love with the job, and, I've had a lot of great times in this business, but those were 5 years of really sustained. Fulfilment, a lot of laughs, a lot of great friendships.
And there were two things that were critical to that. That first job that I had, really, my entry, my, my entry-level position was basically a janitor. I was hired as an assistant, but it was a brand new hospital and there was nothing to assist with, so I was basically mopping floors and breaking down cardboard boxes.
But with time, I found my niche. I, I discovered My value to that hospital, even in those small roles, those that role grew eventually, but even in the small roles, I discovered my value, and maybe just as important, if not more important, was that other people recognised that I was valuable. And man, if you as a leader can do that for your team members, somehow help them discover their value.
And create an environment where they feel valued, you'll have that employee forever. And the other thing that was great about that job was. You know, the stars aligned, I really, after all these years of trying to figure out how you do this, I really think there's some heaven, heavenly hosts involved in this, but we all liked each other, we just did.
And going to work on a regular basis. Knowing that other people like you, warts and all, and have your back. I honestly think that you remember those jobs for the rest of your life, and I also think that those are jobs that you stay with and hang out with.
So, I became, after 3 years, that's all it took, 3 years, I became the practise leader of that hospital. And no business experience, didn't know anything about leadership, except what I'd learned growing up in school, you know, in, in, in rudimentary jobs as a dishwasher, whatever I was, and that was, if you wanted people to do stuff, you yelled at them. Or, the underlying, Everything that you did at a job was this notion that if you screwed up, you got fired, or you got yelled at.
And I don't know how all of you feel about that, what I just said, I have a feeling that some people are like, oh my, you know, I go to conferences and you'll see these people clutching their pearls when I tell them that. I actually think that that exists in a lot of jobs nowadays, to this day. That even in those, those jobs with the big placard up there about how important culture is and yada yada yada, I think that underlying a lot of the, of the relationship between a manager and an employee is this subtle threat of, I'm in power, and if you don't do what I tell you to do, you're gonna get in trouble.
And, or worse. And so, You know, I, I became a success at that hospital despite that flaw. I'm, I'm, anyway, I, I wasn't, I don't think I was particularly, Knowledgeable about leadership on many levels, but at least I did know, have enough sense to rally the troops around a common cause, and I was successful at it, and then later I was recruited to become a regional manager, and then I had all those credits that Helen listed.
And now in my capacity as a business advisor, I get a chance to visit hospitals all over North America and then some. And I've learned so much, and I've experienced a lot of, I've I've worked with a lot of practises that have blown me away with their fear-free technique. And when you visit those hospitals, they have a com an almost completely different approach to veterinary medicine than most of the other hospitals in America.
I always say that if, if you're a veterinary professional working in whatever hospital you want in the 50 states, I could airlift you and drop you into any other hospital in America and you could hit the ground running, because we all do it the same way. Except for those practises that are practising fear-free, because they've seen how they deliver care through a brand new lens. And that has taught me, An approach to problem solving in general at hospitals and in a new way of leading, and that's going to be the main focus of today's lecture.
So I wanna thank Webinar Vet for making this lecture happen. I was just telling them while we were waiting for you guys to join that I have a lot of continuing continuing education credits that I gotta deliver on every year. And online education saved the day this year.
I just eked by. So I want to thank them for the hard work that they do. And of course, I want to thank the Fear Free for sponsoring it.
They really are near and dear to my. Heart. So in today's lecture, what we'll talk is I will talk to you briefly about the what and why if you're free.
I don't know how much you know about it. It's a big deal here in the United States. I don't know how much of it has caught on in the UK and abroad.
You guys will let me know. Please let me know. And so I want to talk about the what and why just to kind of get you up to speed from where, so that you have a basic foundation for what it is, it's about.
And then I, I'll get into the meat of it, which is the power of pers perspective on building a competitive business that Fear-free, that Fear Free lays a foundation for. And then finally, implementation of a fear-free programme and using that as a template for building out all other kinds of initiatives at your hospital. If you'd like a copy of this deck, there you can snap a snap that QR code right now, and that will take you to a landing page where you'll get, you know, you can download a free copy of the deck, and just give me, would you just mind, like just give me an hour after the webinar because I've made a little tweak to this deck and I want to give you a fresh copy.
So what is Fear Free? It is the leading US provider of education certification to reduce fear, anxiety, and stress, or I'm going to refer to it as FAAS from here on out, in companion animals. It was built on the pioneering work of a veterinarian called Sophia Lynn, who developed a notion of low stress handling.
And Lynn, I think, really landed a bull's eye when she understood that if we Manage how we interact with pets more thoughtfully in veterinary hospitals, we're going to achieve a number of goals. One is, the veterinary care is going to be improved, because you're not going to have this animal that's lashing out and. Thrashing, things like exams and diagnostics and so forth are going to be more accurate.
Certainly the care is going to be more efficient. The care experience is going to be better for everybody involved. We'll talk more about this in in the in the upcoming parts of the lecture.
And then of course all of that's going to lead to better outcomes, so you can get certification in low stress handling through the low Stress Handling University, and if you want that information, there's a QR code to go to to find out more about that organisation. So Fear Free, what it did was it, it built upon what Sophia Lynn did, but it widened the lens. So instead of taking a look at the individual parts of service that we deliver in the cycle.
Service, it widened the lens to look at the whole cycle of service from the moment the owner decides to call up the practise and schedule an appointment through their travel to the hospital, while they're at the hospital, and then when they return home. It teaches things like how we should be scheduling patients for low, fast, numbers, to, to recognising signs of fear, anxiety, and stress in pets, to teach people how to handle pets with low, you know, low stress handling techniques and gentle restraint, how to modify your, Work environment, I'm sure many of you have explored that through your own organisations in your country, but how we can modify our exam rooms to reduce fast, how important pain management is, and how we can use, we can always lean on what we've got in the pharma cabinet to make sure that patients are walking in as calm as possible and not going to be as reactive as possible. The education we can provide to the clients, and also suggestions for workflow, all of that is available, when you log in to the education that Fear Free has to offer, or whether or not you decide to become certified as an individual, or as a whole team, and of course there's the QR code.
Under that umbrella, there are subsets, you have the Feline American Veterinary Medical Association, has a cat-friendly practise certificate programme. There's the QR code. I'll talk a little bit about that, in, in the minutes upcoming.
And then I believe if I'm not mistaken, you guys have the International Society of Feline Medicine's cat-friendly Veterinary Professional certificate programme, and there's a QR code for that to explore those educational sources. So the why of fear-free or low stress handling, I know seems like a duh kind of question, of course, all of you probably on the call see the value of it. I'm going to talk about the value of it, not just from the pet's point of view, but from a business manager's point of view.
So it really is better emotionally for everybody involved, not just the cat or the dog, but you must know that when cats and dogs get stressful, then owners get stressful, and when owners get stressful, they usually take that stress out on us. Stress is contagious, whether it's with people or with people to pets. So reducing stress levels in pets works on everybody involved.
It likely improves clients' compliance with return visits. I'll talk a little bit about that in just a in just a moment. And then here are 3, and the 4th 1 is on the next slide, but here are 3 other great reasons why I believe embracing a fear-free approach to care is great.
The first is, you give your team members an opportunity to be expert. So I was recently working at a hospital in Wisconsin, and they had gone through the cat friendly programme that the Feline American Veterinary Medical Association puts out. And this one technician was really into it, and they've got this fractious cat who has a history of being very fractious at the hospital, and it's got a chronic disease, can't remember what it was, and it's got to come in for a blood draw, and the technician is excited.
Because she's going to work with these low stress handling techniques that she's recently learned. So she's set up the room, she's had a little call with the owner before the visit, makes sure that she's on board of the pre-visit medications, talks about transporting the cat to the hospital. When the client arrives at the hospital, she's ready, and she's kind of got a crew with her, and, and I've always said, You know, there's nothing, there's that's one of the strongest first impressions that you can give to a client.
When they walk in the door, if you want them to trust you, when they walk in the door, let them see a team that's ready and that is eager to be of help. Completely changes the tone of what's to follow, and I'll talk more about that. .
So anyway, so the client walks in, we're ready, she takes them immediately into the room, it's all set up, dim lighting, and the technician's got the cat on her lap. She's going to hold the cat on her lap, they pull the blood, and the owner's in the room. I don't know, you guys can tell me, you know, typically in the US that's pooh-poohed, like, we don't keep owners in the room for diagnostics, we'll either take the patient to treatment, or we're just not gonna let that owner in the room.
Owner gets in the room, and so, They do a a butterfly and a lateral saphanus and out pours the blood from this cat. This cat is laying there, and the technician is kind of humming, and I have to say that I was taken aback by that. I was like, what?
It was kind of like a, it was kind of like a Native American chant, and I'm looking at the client, the client is like astounded that this cat is being so, you know, agreeable through this process, and I really was struck by that. The owner was completely impressed with the process, and afterwards that technician really radiated. Real genuine satisfaction in what she accomplished, and I think that she, she, that's another, that's a person that understands her value and who is valued in the hospital, and I was glad I saw it.
It's a big impact on pet owners. I worked with a hospital in Northern Virginia, it's called Harmony Veterinary. If you ever come to the US you gotta visit Harmony Veterinary.
It was the most impressive, fear-free experience I've ever witnessed. And I always like to talk to the pet owners when they come, when, you know, when the, when I have a moment with them, and I ask them questions like, you know, how did you find this place, what do you like about the vet, etc. I, I, I try to really get honest feedback from them so that I understand the hospital that I'm working with, and I understand in general what clients want.
And this woman said that she'd explained this dog that she'd brought in had another chronic disease, and the, the dog's reaction to the other veterinarian with every visit, became, it it it it it just it it grew, it, it just became more and more aggressive every time it went to that doctor. And she was referred by a friend, almost all the clients, by the way, to this hospital were referred by people, and she said, she, when she told me that she, when she found she was so grateful that she'd found Harmony Veterinary, she teared up. And I know again, everybody on this call is like, well of course owners appreciate Fear-free.
I never saw that sort of intensity before, that a whole hospital could attract people regionally, regionally in Northern Virginia, for their fear-free approach to pet care. And they, by the way, have a waiting list, they have a waiting list to get into that hospital, and that was, you know, shortly after the pandemic. I don't know if it's still true, but I, I was so impressed with that.
And then lastly, last story I'm gonna tell you. That, that, they can bond. It's an opportunity for clients to, bond with the doctors and staff.
So another thing that's often frowned upon here in the US is, is clients assisting the doctor with holding the pet. I don't know if that's a thing there, but that's a, can be a big thing here. A lot of, a lot of people make a lot of stink about that.
They're worried about liability and blah, blah blah blah blah blah about why they won't let clients hold. But this was a one doctor practise outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Steel City. And they the, the doctor is really very productive and very busy, and a lot of times he doesn't have the assistance that he needs, so he enlists the help of the client.
And this was, again, you'd think I would have seen this or noticed this, but this is the first time in my long career that I ever really saw it is the client is helping the veterinarian hold this pet, and They've developed, their relationship has gone beyond client and doctor. Now they are partners in the care, and I really marked that, this hospital has excellent retention rate for its clients, and the clients are very. Loyal to the practise, and I have no doubt that that partnership that's fostered when the parent and the veterinarian both work on the health of the pet, I'm sure that that really sticks.
So, and here's the last benefit that I see is that. Fear Free invites all of us to see our hospitals from a completely different vantage point, and that is valuable. And before I talk more about that, I want to give you an opportunity to potentially see your hospital from a different vantage point, and we're going to play a game, and it's called, we're going to the Human Doctor.
Now I think that your human doctor experience is probably as miserable as the human doctor experiences on my side, but we, we're about to find out. So I'm gonna call out. The milestones of going to your human doctor, and you're going to think out loud.
I wish we, you know, we, we wish we could have this live feedback, but you're going to think out loud about what it's like. So today is the day that you go to the human doctor. How do you know that today is the day that you go to the human doctor?
Did you get a reminder on your phone? Did you get an email? Did you get a phone call?
How many reminders did you get? How many text messages did you get? Did you also have to fill out a little form before you went in?
Does this form look exactly like the form that you had to fill out just 2 weeks ago when you were there, and that same form that you filled out 2 weeks before that? Did you have a co-pay? How at the end of this exchange did you feel?
Did you feel the love flowing, or did you feel that you were part of this automated pipeline? So now we're going to drive to the doctor. You're driving to the doctor and you are, are you?
You are, oh, yeah, no, are you happy or are you a bit nervous? Or maybe you're angry, which is another way of saying that you're nervous, just like our pets. Are you angry that you think that you're gonna go there a half an hour before your for your appointment, as they instructed, and then they're gonna make you, make you wait an hour before you're seen?
Maybe you're frustrated in that this couldn't have been a virtual appointment, or maybe you are scared because you've got testing that's due, and every time that testing is due, you worry about what those results are going to be. Are you thinking about all the other things that you have to do and worried that the doctor today is not going to be respected, Of your time, and that's going to set you behind. So, have you worked yourself up into a ladder even before you walked in the door, or are you calm and just enjoying the trip?
You think about it. Now we're going to walk into the doctor's office. You walk in, and are they like, hello, how are you?
Or how are you? Or do you walk up and they go, who are you? Your name, date of birth, -huh, what are you here for?
Who are you seeing? Do you have to sign in? Do you have to sign in?
Now, never mind that we've gone through 8 different kinds of electronic verification. We can send electronic messages around the world at the speed of light, and we're still using a 1938 clipboard with a piece of paper that you're signing in on. And now we're going to wait in the lobby.
And you're waiting, and are you like, oh my goodness, this is lovely. The air condition's on, the TV, are you like that, or are you already starting to work yourself up? You're monitoring the other people in the room.
Are you concerned that some of those other people that you are positive that you got here before, are they going in in front of you worse? Is there anybody paying attention to this room and making sure that everything is flowing reliably, or, or Are you going to be talking to the other sick people and making friends, or are you kind of just going to sit there and smoulder? You've sat there a while, I don't know how long, eventually they call your name, how do they do that?
Do they come out and greet you, hello, hi, it's nurse Jackie, how are you doing? Do they do that? Or do they hang out in the doorway and call, hello, Bash?
You know, I was recently at the doctor. And I was the only person in the lobby, and the nurse actually did that from the door. She calls into the lobby, hello, batch.
I'm like, does she think I'm hanging from the rafters? I mean, I'm right there. So anyway, so we fall, I follow her back, and then it's for you, when you do that, is the love flowing?
Are they, are they taking the weight, the temperature, your blood pressure, but are they taking time to take you in, or is it all getting that information into the computer? So, they do all that, then they leave and they maybe, I don't know if it's like the US, they leave you alone in the room. So when you're alone, what do you do?
Are you listening to what's happening outside? What is it that you hear? Can I just not to digress, but what do you think that clients hear when you leave them in the room alone?
What's that all about? What do you think they hear? When you hear laughter in the outside, do you think to yourself, no, listen to them.
They're having a good time at work. Is that your thought, bubble, or is it, will you hurry it up? Do you even know that I'm in here?
Have I been forgotten? they have, they've forgotten that I'm in this room. Eventually there's a Good dunk, and now the doctor's in.
What does the doctor do? Does the doctor take time to be like, hello, Bash. How are you doing?
Or are they immediately going to that computer and talking in that voice that's supposed to sound like I care? So, how you been doing? What's going on?
Tell me a little bit about what's going on today, as though you haven't said it already 4 or 5 times down the line. I just have to tell you one other quick story. You know, one time I went into a hospital and the woman was.
Managing a cat that was near end of life, and he walked in the room and he said, how are you doing? And she goes, Oh, I don't know, he's not eating anymore and I'm worried about, and he stopped her and he said, No, I want to know how you are doing. And she choked up, and I just thought that was such a beautiful thing for him to do, to take time and see how the client is doing.
So anyway, I'm gonna leave it there, and I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about that experience. Do you think that patients are likely to be honest with their doctor in that kind of setting? So some of you, I can just hear you saying, I'm going to be 100% honest with my doctor because I won't get a chance to see him for another 6 months, so I can't get it all accomplished.
Some people, some say that here in the US. Most agree that it, that setting that we just described, at least that I think that you just described, is not one where you feel comfortable to, that you feel like you can trust them to be honest. What percentage of clients, patients rather, do you think lie to their human doctor?
I'll tell you, it's 80%, and I'll ask you another question. What, what percentage of pet owners lie to you? So I've asked this question to many, many audiences in the United States.
I don't think anyone has ever said no one lies to me. Most people say that about 70 to 100%, they laughed through 100%, but I don't know whether there's a little grain of truth in that, lie to them on some level. And I don't know how you've answered it.
You can tell me in the chat. But imagine, just to zoom out for a second, zoom out. Here you are, now it's 8:30 at night, whatever time it is, 8:30.
You are logging in after long days at work to learn another thing about how to care for pets better or clients better. How many of these education seminars have you done? How many meetings have you and your team members done to try to be better client to be better for clients and patients, and still, you're telling me that clients are reluctant to be honest with you.
So I think that that is a great jumping off point to think about. Why they might not be willing to be honest with you. The cycle of service that we have at our veterinary hospital, if it at least here in the US, is very similar to the one that we just described.
Clients have to call up, book an appointment with a receptionist. They we confirm the appointment, they check in. The receptionist pass them on to a technician.
I don't think you do this part. I think your doctors take the history. But in the US technicians take the history.
Then the technician tells the doctor what the history is, and the doctor does the assessment, comes up with a plan, tells another technician. The technician comes in and does the diagnostics. The diagnostics come back, the medication comes back to the room, we check the, we give the client the discharge instructions, and then they check out at the desk.
Here's my big point. You walked in a doctor's office that had a process for delivering care to you. In that process, you think they've forgotten the purpose of what it is they're supposed to do.
And I wonder, I wonder if in this cacophony of things that were that's happening, all the steps that are involved in delivering care to our clients, whether or not they've misinterpreted what our purpose is. You know, in a fear-free approach, we've stopped thinking like, I've got to give this cat a vaccine, so I'm gonna push that cat down on the table and give the cat a vaccine. We've stopped doing that.
We thought, you know what, maybe it would be better if we tried to accomplish. This goal, but take into consideration how the cat feels about it. And when we did that, when we did that, not only did we deliver the vaccine, but we made changes to our business model that actually improved the business, that made it more appealing to clients, more appealing to pets, and more enjoyable to work in.
What if we did the same thing at our hospital except for people? What if we had a fear-free approach to people, and we take a look at the steps that are involved in delivering care, not so intent on what we need to do to get the job done. But what, but taking into consideration how the client is experiencing it, what is the message that we're ultimately signalling in all of this assembly line care that we're delivering it, and is it on point for our purpose?
Fear-free and the low stress folks, as creative as they are, were not the only ones that alighted alighted upon the the notion that looking at your business problems and thinking about solutions from a whole other perspective would be better. They're not the only ones that thought of that. There are many companies out there that recognise that as they've evolved.
Their processes have have started to alienate them from the consumers. But what you have is you've got team members and management that have worked so hard on the process, they, they're very possessive of it and very reluctant to change. So there's a process in the great big wild wide world that many large corporations use, and it's called design thinking.
And we don't have time to get into it right now, but there's more information about it there. But, Essentially what it's inviting you to do is it's inviting you to see the, the care through the client's eyes. With the, your, your customer's eyes.
So I do. Sorry, I do this with my hospital teams. I take them through the design thinking exercise, and I, I wanna show you many versions of how I try to wake them up to the message they're communicating to their clients.
So this is a hospital that I've worked with in Santa Fe. These team members, pardon me, these team members, this group is, this group behind them is about to go out to the parking lot. These are groups of technicians, assistants, veterinarians, managers, they're all jumbled up into small little groups.
I don't know if you saw that, you'll see this next clip. Some of them are holding stuffed animals, and their job is to walk through the entire cycle of service, from the parking lot, to the reception desk, to the exam room for history, with the exam with the doctor, to treatment, etc. And try to think about the point of the steps, the way that they do them, and what that's communicating to the client.
Here is another, this is the same hospital again, you can see that stuffed animal there. This technician who never works at the desk, just jumped behind the desk, learning for the first time what the receptionists do on a regular basis. That's why this exercise is so great.
A lot of us don't know what the, you know, the Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, so it's valuable from that point of view as well. This is a practise that I worked with in Northern California, big practise. You can see they're broken up into small groups and they're eagerly working at the reception area, walking through the process and ensuring that.
What they're doing is not only getting what the hospital needs done, but communicating the right message to the clients. Again, not to beat you over the head with it, but we're doing the same thing with Fear Free, right? We're looking at the care that we need to deliver for pets, but we're shaping it because we're seeing it through the eyes of the cat, thereby changing the way that we deliver the care and probably improving the business as well.
We're doing the same thing now, except we're doing it with humans. This is a wacky idea, but I, they just might like it. This, this hospital, these were a group of hospitals that I worked with in Ohio, and I gave them babies, because I think that we lose sight of how owners feel about inducing pain in their pets.
One time, I hope I, I hope I don't run over on this, I One time I was working at a hospital, and the veterinarian has the veterinarian and assistant have their backs to the client and the patient, and I'm sitting in front of the lot, so I'm here, here's an exam table, there's the pet. We've got a veterinarian and the assistant, and behind them is the pet owner and her like teenage son. And the veterinarian gets to the part where she's going to deliver the vaccine, and she goes like that, and she takes the cap off the nail, now for the part you're not gonna like, and when she did that, when she goes, now for the part you're not gonna like, and she's about to stick the pet, I wish, wish, wish, wish, wish she could have seen the reaction of the pet mom and the son in the back, and their reaction was.
Because we've become inured against the fact, well, you know, vaccines hurt, but not to that pet, that, that, that was a very different experience for that pet owner, I mean, that pet owner and her son. So, I mean, I'll just point out that having them hold these babies just gave everybody, made everybody more thoughtful about how we recommend, how we recommend services, and how much attention we spend talking about how we're gonna manage how the patient feels about those services. Two more exercises, one on the left is the worksheet that your team can use as they walk through the hospital.
Another one is a story just like that we told about the doctor, but invites them to think like an owner. I actually haven't had as much success with this. Exercise because I think it's a little too close to home.
People, again, are very defensive about the way that they deliver care. So I, that's why I like talking about going to the human doctor better because they're able to see the steps more objectively. But, you know, play around with it.
So all of those exercises are available, for you through that QR code. Now I want to talk about something else about leadership. So I told you at the beginning that I thought, as a manager, my job was, you know, when the cat's away, the mice will play, so I was the cat or the bad cop on the right-hand side.
And I would ask you, leaders on the call, which, which role do you play more often? Are you really a coach? We talk about that all the time.
You're really a coach, or, and you're, you're, you're, you are proactive about fostering growth. And helping your team members, or are you the person that is the cop and reacting to failure, mistakes, upsets, etc. I think that Fear Free is a wonderful place to start exploring how to be a coach, because.
You know, you know, it's going to be very easy to get a fear-free initiative off the ground. It is intrinsically motivational. It's fun to do.
It's fun to learn stuff. It just plays to everything that your team members like. And in that process, it would be easy to support the staff members through it, because mostly none of them are going to screw up.
It's all, it's all going to be a success. So it's going to be going to be a great trial run of you. Assuming the role of coach and thoughtfully assuming the role of coach, as, as opposed to waiting until something goes bad.
So, if you try a proactive approach, there's a lot of benefits from it there, you can see the statistics. But the most important thing is, is that nobody wants to be a cop, not unless you're a sociopath. I mean in the veterinary hospital as a manager.
I mean, it's a perfectly fine position outside of a veterinary hospital, but it's not fun to be, it's alienating, it's lonely to be that person that's constantly going around. Make sure that people do stuff. It's so much better to be thoughtful about what journey will the team member take once I give them this task, and how can I support them along those lines.
And there is a structured way to do that. It's called the feedback loop, and the feedback loop is part of a seven-step approach to goals. It is and it encourages.
Leaders to be thoughtful about, OK, now we had the meeting about the initiative. Everybody knows what role they're responsible for for for getting this initiative off the ground. How can I check in with both the team members and the individuals to make sure that they're progressing, not waiting until something goes wrong?
It, you know, it's just the best way to grow trust. Yeah, and great, great, great, best way to interact with team members. So.
The I want to just digress for just one second. I said that the feedback loop is one part of a seven-step approach to goal setting, and I just want to talk about how managers should. Structure goals, because I think that typically, at least I did, we always had the meeting about what it is we wanted to achieve, but we hadn't done our homework we hadn't done enough homework prior to that meeting, and we certainly didn't have the follow-through I think that we needed to have in place.
So here's some guidelines for that, if you do a Fear Free, or anything else thereafter, is the first step is to Is to discuss and frame the goals in intrinsically motivational terms. So as a reminder, intrinsically in you know, intrinsic motivators are the things that draw you to get a job done. Extrinsic motivators are the things that push you to get a job done.
So intrinsic motivators are things like a sense of accomplishment, personal growth. Acceptance, belonging, all those things I talked about at the beginning of the programme, being part of something great. Extrinsic motivators are things like lunch, money, time off, prizes, gift cards, candy, tickets to an event, etc.
Now take a look at those lists, take a moment, just, I know you're jogging or on your treadmill or drinking your wine and listening to this, but take just a moment and look at those columns, which is the most strongly motivational? It's this one, and which one is the one that you dole out more? It's that one, is it not?
OK, lesson learned. So moving on, step 20 sorry, I'm gonna just give you an exercise with that. So, I have, this is in your notes, is that I like managers, minimally managers, but actually the whole team, to discuss the goal that they're trying to achieve in intrinsically motivational terms, and how it would benefit the business, the patient, the pet partner, the team, and themselves.
And this is really important. I don't know what this sounds like to you, if it's like, oh hello, come on. It, I promise you.
Understanding a goal in how it's intrinsically valuable, is going to give you a lot of firepower, firepower is a bad word, a lot of, it's going to inform the way that you talk to your team members about their progress. So number 2 is we're going to write out a detailed plan of what it is we want to do. I, I must tell you that I, when I say detailed, I mean detailed.
Like, I don't know if you guys have this thing over there, but here in the US we call lapsed reminders. So they've had 1 reminder card, 2 reminder cards, 3 reminder texts, whatever, and they still haven't come in. Now we have our client care representatives calling them on the phone.
So we have a meeting, we say, all right, is everybody gonna do this? Yeah, we're all on board. How are we're gonna do.
That the following day, nobody makes the phone call. Why? Because nobody knew how to print out the report of those people that have the lapsed reminders.
So this is where managers, I think, have to be very thoughtful about the details of the plan to make sure that we have everything in place for success, because it's very frustrating for the team when we have these stops and starts, these fits, these fitful starts, stops and starts when initiatives, we, we launch initiatives. It's very demotivational. Decide who owns each part of this job.
Determine the training that you need. Of course, as I said, we're going to think about how we're going to check in with both the team and the individual, to talk about progress or lack thereof, you know, for support through that, listening to them, etc. How we are going to make this a habit.
This is something I failed as a manager at initially in my life. I think that a meeting is enough, but a meeting is going to train the mind. What makes habit is repetition.
So, not only do we have to build into the plan, how they're going to intellectually understand what it is we want to do, we've got a build into the plan. A methodical way for them to repeat it. so that we can create habit over time.
So maybe there's a time every day at 11 o'clock, where we're going to do some reminder calls. It's just a thing that we, that we do, and then it, it it forms a habit. And then this is a great one, is.
How do leaders contribute to the progress or lack thereof, in, in an, in an initiative? You know, I'm working with a hospital now, and they have an issue with team members melting down. You know what that, you know what that expression is, I don't have to translate that, but they're, they're, they're stressing out at the job.
So we regularly talk about how leaders, the things that leaders do that help in that situation or don't help in that situation, because I don't know if you've got a meltdown situation at your hospital, but I'm willing to bet a lot of money that leaders are contributing to the anxiety, you know, negatively contributing. That means making it worse, contributing to the anxiety levels of of team members, so. I tried to get leaders to be thoughtful about their reactions to progress.
So, I have these sheets for you that you can practise. Everything we just discussed is available on worksheets. There's the QR code for you to get it done.
Feedback goes into, you know, there's two methods, 2 avenues of feedback, we're gonna do. One, we're gonna talk to our whole team members, and we're also going to talk, we're gonna talk to the whole team, and we're also gonna talk to individuals. So again, if I'm talking to individuals, I'm expressing their progress in intrinsically motivational terms.
You know, I have one hospital where the owner is a blower upper, and you know you can't fix blower uppers. They have to fix themselves, and even if they want to fix themselves, it's going to take forever to fix themselves. We could send them to therapy 3 times a week, 45 minutes a session.
It would take 2 years before we even made a dent in that person's ability to blow up. We have To be able to manage our reaction to it, and I'm, I've reminded this employee that heretofore she has done that well, and she's learning skills that will last a lifetime because you're always going to work with somebody who can't keep a lid on their temper, and learning those skills not only makes her successful today. It, it makes her successful for a lifetime, and not to digress, but the same is true for clients, you know, we've created this age where we're intolerant to clients getting angry.
The first, our first knee-jerk reaction is fire them. I just think that's such a bad choice. You know, we are seeing people at their emotional worst.
We should be having training sessions for our team members in de-escalation, because you're gonna fight me on this, I know you're gonna fight the comment, I can feel the comments filling up. Look, we could, we could fire 20% or 30% more clients this year because we've decided to draw a firm line in the sand about what we will and will not tolerate clients doing. We can do that.
At the end of the year, nobody's going to feel better. Nobody at the, at the, at your holiday party is going to be like, you know what, yeah, we fired 30 more clients this year. It feels.
Great. What they remember, they always do, is they remember that one client that they flipped. There was one client that was losing it, and there was one person with a, the magic, that they were a, they were, they were a dog and cat whisperer, but they were also a people whisperer, and they were, despite all that ranting and raving, able.
To get a message through that deaf person, that person deaf with rage, and calm them down. That's gratifying. That's expert, that's what makes people feel good.
And we should be working with our team members to move through obstacles. That's the role of a coach, and it's, and it's gratifying. So I'm just gonna tell you one other thing about this, you know, I'm making it all sound wonderful.
There are people, and I'm working with one I can think of, where this is probably not going to work. The difference is When you take this approach of being supportive through this individual's journey. Minimally, what you're doing every time is going into those meetings and learning and observing the same thing that you do in low stress handling and fear-free.
We're watching this patient for signs of fear, anxiety and stress, and changing our approach to it depending upon their response. There's something similar is happening with this approach to managing team members. I'm going into these proactive meetings, listening, learning.
Some are not going to. They're not gonna, they don't have the capacity to do it for whatever reason, but I am gaining valuable skills. I'm walking away from the relationship knowing not only did I do everything I could to make this, to help this employee, but I'm also walking away more adept and stronger at fixing the next employee that comes down the line.
So, when giving feedback, I want to just tell you 6 great things to think about when giving feedback. The first is, make sure that you've observed the thing that you're commenting on. When I go to hospitals to visit, I am a lot, they, they teams like it when I come to the hospital.
Why? Because sometimes for the first time, they find somebody studying what they do successfully, and I'm not scrutinising their mistakes. I'm watching, I'm looking at all the good things they do, cause they do a million good things for every one mistake they make, and I'm monitoring it, and I point it out, and it's incredibly powerful, and I wish more leaders did it.
I underscore the impact of their actions. I, I'm gonna tell a quick story. One time I go to a hospital.
I'm talking to a client. How'd you find out about us? How did I find out about you?
Oh, I know, we went to some weird fair and you had a booth there, and I brought my dog Ringo and my other dog's not here, Lassie or whatever, and we go on with the conversation, and the client care representative is listening and she says to the client, after the conversation is over, she goes, you know, I don't have Lassie in the software. Do you want to get her information in and then we can have her as a patient as well? And I was like, Like, and I pointed out to that person, do you realise how much revenue you grew for the practise in just doing that one thing, cause you had your ears open and you offered our services to another client.
So that's what I mean by underscoring impact. A tribute. And, you know, make sure that the person understands their actions in terms of what this implies for their growth and, their talent.
I love to spur reflection, as I told you, when I have those, that one team on my phone call, I'm asking them, how do you participate in meltdowns? What are the things that you are doing or not doing as a leader, that are contributing to making that situation better or worse? It certainly is very helpful if this feedback doesn't come from peers, but comes from like the people on this call, people who who have tenure at the hospital, and who are deemed, you know, credible, veterinarians, licenced technicians, etc.
And you can or cannot add this, this step, this next thing. I mean, sometimes, . You know, just the price is enough.
They don't need more, they don't always need to build more. That's such an American thing to do. I do, do it better, more, just, just to maybe just be happy with the 1st 5, but if you can think of the next step, then add that that's maybe extra credit is that next step thing.
So I wanted to just tell you in conclusion then that Fear Free is an approach to medicine that I definitely think is more in line with your mission and your core values. It really is the message that you want to send the client. It is telegraphing your purpose, not having them glean, oftentimes wrongly, what your message is through being part of the process.
It's also excellent, excellent, lesson in the power of perspective. We are too entrenched in the way that we do things. We work so hard on our systems, we're possessive of it, and we're reluctant to admit that maybe there's a better way.
So many team members are, are, are like that. So switching perspectives help, helps restart ideation that's creative and, and new. It can literally be transformative if you start thinking of your practise through a client's eyes, and just as it was when you started, if you have a fear-free or low stress handling hospital, what it's like when you started to look through the eyes of a patient.
It doesn't just make, it's not just more bowing and scraping to the client, it's more than a pops, pop, you know, I have hospitals in the United States, they have a popcorn machine in the lobby, or free water, it's so much more than that. It is like that veterinarian, taking a moment with that client and saying, no, I want to know how you are doing. It's fear free and low stress handling are one of the easier goals that you're going to accomplish at your hospital.
I think it's an excellent, it's gonna be excellent for patients. It's gonna be a wonderful. Exercise for your team to explore all the things that we've talked about in this lecture, and especially a great introduction for all the leaders on here of how you can take the proactive rather than reactive approach to to management.
So I petered out there a little bit at the end too anyway, listen, thank you so much. Again, I, I love doing this, but I'm not doing it anymore like this. We're gonna do it live next time.
In fact, I'm coming to the UK in November, so. I mean, maybe we'll cook up some scheme for us to meet and work there. All right, thank you so much, and I think we're gonna have questions now, if I can hear them.
Yeah, thank you very much, Bash. That was absolutely fascinating. I get to sit here and listen to you for another hour.
No, we're not doing that. I'm hot. No, it's 90, it's 90.
You got to get you did the conversion. It's 98 °F here. I'm boiling.
Take your jacket off. Has anybody got any questions for Bash? There's none in the chat, but the floor is open to you guys.
Minimally, if you want to tell me where you're, where you're watching, I would love to know that. Yeah, so there are some comments. We have JP Spurlock is joining from Western Massachusetts.
Oh yeah, I know. We have Christina from Belgium, Hayley from Norfolk in the UK, Anne Marie from Ireland. So quite the spread across the world.
That's great. Absolutely. Any ques?
Oh, somebody from the Czech Republic, Ohio, Pearl, South Africa, my goodness. You know, really, Luxembourg. North Carolina.
Or some US people, the North Carolinians, you know, we do that. I do. They probably maybe the North Carolinian has seen me in, Charlotte because I do that like we do conference there all the time.
Some more from, from Kansas City and love Kansas City, Taiwan, Boston. What? Bash, you've got all your friends with you tonight, have you?
Ah Very good. Oh, there's somebody else from Northern Ireland. Hello David and Austin.
Yeah, but there doesn't appear to be any questions. You've done an excellent job, Bash, of addressing this topic. Absolutely amazing.
Really, really interesting. Thank you again to Fear Free for kindly sponsoring this webinar. And if there are no questions, then we'll bring it to a close.
Thank you all, I loved it. Next time in person. Definitely, definitely, thanks everyone.
Good evening.
