Beyond Burnout 3-Part Series // Part 3: Beyond Resilience - Building Practices That Support Leaders Instead of Draining Them

We've talked about what burnout looks like and why managers feel stuck in the middle. Part 3 is where we get to the part that actually matters: what do we do about it? Backed by the same VHMA research that sparked this series, we close out Beyond Burnout with a forward-looking conversation about what sustainable veterinary leadership actually looks like in 2026 and beyond.

From the simplest one-change-tomorrow answer (hint: let your team make more decisions) to what it takes to build a practice culture where managers can genuinely recover and grow, this episode is part practical and part permission slip. Veterinary medicine is a dysregulating field by nature — and when we get better at creating emotional safety at every level, everyone benefits. If you've made it through all three parts of this series, this one's the payoff.

Host = Brenda Tassava Medina

Panelists:

• Julie Squires, CCFP, CMLC, Rekindle Solutions
• Susie Crockett, CVPM, Director of Practice Management at Noah's Animal Hospitals
• Josh Vaisman, MAPPCP, CCFP, Founder and Lead Positive Change Agent, Flourish Veterinary Consulting

Thanks for listening!

Website: https://encorevet.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/encoreveterinaryconsulting

Instagram: @encorevetconsulting

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/encore-veterinary-consulting

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

On behalf of Purina, I want to discuss two specialized diets from Purina, the Pro-Plan Veterinary Diet EN and EN Fiber Balance. The EN formula is designed for general gastrointestinal support, featuring a balanced blend of soluble and insoluble fibers to promote healthy digestion and manage GI sensitivities. It's ideal for dogs experiencing gastrointestinal disturbances such as vomiting and diarrhea, pancreatitis, gastritis and enteritis, and inflammatory bowel disease. On the other hand, EN Fiber Balance takes it a step further with an enhanced fiber content specifically aimed at improving the microbiome. This formulation is particularly beneficial for dogs suffering from fiber-responsive colitis, large bowel diarrhea, constipation, and diabetes. Both diets are crucial in managing GI health. To learn more, please visit www.proplanvet.com. Welcome aboard. You're listening to Flight Plan Quick Consults, your go-to podcast for veterinary insights that are fast focused and designed to elevate your practice. I'm your host, Brenda Tasman Medina from Encore Veterinary Consulting. Whether you're between appointments or heading into a strategy session, we've got takeoff ready tips, tools, and takeaways to keep your team soaring. So buckle up as we make our way to our final destination in our three-part Beyond Burnout series, Beyond Resilience, building practices that support leaders instead of draining them. We'd like to welcome our panel back. Thanks for joining us again, Julie Squires, Josh Fazeman, and Susie Crockett. We're looking again and digging a little deeper into that study that the VHMA produced around practice manager burnout. And managers overwhelmingly said they don't need more resilience training. What they said that they do need is adequate staffing, better support, trust and autonomy. We talked a lot about autonomy on our last episode, less micromanagement, stronger leadership alignment, more strategic time, clearer communication, and better delegation support. So Susie, if you could make only one operational or leadership change tomorrow that would immediately improve manager well-being, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Ah, the queen for the day question, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

The magic wand question.

unknown 2:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Honestly, it would be to give the teams more permission to make decisions. I think so often we tighten the reins because we're concerned that they're going to make the wrong decision. And if we have good training structures in place, if we've onboarded it correctly, I need to trust my team. And so let them make that decision. They can handle that client up to, you know, we've heard that before, up to a certain dollar amount or up to certain, like come back for a free exam. Um decisions on workflow. If they're doing the work, I'm not doing the work. So if they feel like there's a change in workflow, they have permission to change that and do it. Right. Um, so I think that it's almost loosening up a little bit, um, that tightening that we kind of feel because it's that we've talked in the previous sessions about this feeling of need to be control, um, almost like letting that go a little bit, which is really scary because as a leader, we're responsible, right, right? We're held accountable to the outcomes. And so to let somebody else take control of the outcome, I'm like, ooh, I don't know about that. But I think really when I've seen that put into practice, I have always been pleasantly surprised of how the team responds. And they're more engaged and they're excited to be involved and they're like, yeah, we can do this. They trust us. And so to me, that one piece would be let go and let the team.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Let go and empower. I love that. It reminds me of uh one of my practice owners. He gave the team empowerment by telling everyone, you can make any decision regarding a client or patient up to $200, you know, and just giving them that work within this two to a hundred dollar limit, you know, really takes a lot of that fear away because and hardly anybody ever went beyond $200 and hardly anybody used it. But just having that feeling that I have I can do this, really you see people step up.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

We have a in the absence of leadership, um, if you um have a plus one, get a buddy, as long as the decision is made um with tying to one of our core values, you cannot be disciplined. It takes the fear out of it. Um, and we might correct you and coach you later to do it differently next time, but that's rarely what has to happen because it's tied to our core value and we all live and breed those. So I think, yeah, giving that permission and that empowerment is huge.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Thank you, Susie. Josh, how about you? If you had only one operational relationship change tomorrow, what would it be to improve manager well-being?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yeah, I love I love this question. I'm gonna play off of Susie's use of the word permission here in a slightly different way. Uh, there was a paper that was very eye-opening for me recently, uh, where they identified essentially like uh six core needs uh for workplace well-being, for workplace fulfillment. Uh, and four of them were directly related to like our in-work experience. Two of them were actually related to out of work. So it's the the ability to, they called them by the way, I love this acronym because this is social scientists trying to be funny. Uh, they squeezed them into an acronym acronym drama. D-R-A-M-M-A, uh, the drama needs. Um, two of those needs are detachment and recovery. So the ability to completely detach from work and then have some way to recover from the energy expenditure in work, right? I think in in especially for veterinary practice managers, those two things are very closely intertwined. So creating some sort of a system that allows for detachment and recovery is really essential because it gives people permission to detach and recover. A couple examples of what this could look like. Uh, one that we implemented at Flourish. So when I brought on a team at my consulting firm, um, it it was really important to me, first of all, that I didn't go through the experience that I had gone through before of extreme burnout, but also I wanted to support them and show them that like this is important work and meaningful work that we do, and it's not the only thing you do in your life, right? So, what we did was we created two organization-wide shutdowns a year. We have a week in the middle of the year around the fourth of July, and then we have roughly a week and a half between uh, you know, Christmas Eve and New Year's Day, where our organization is shut down. Nobody's working. So you don't have to run into the issue that I ran into as a practice manager, which is was, yeah, I'm on vacation, but the team is still there working in what if they need me, right? So having something in the system that like really truly gives somebody permission, that gives our entire team permission to detach from work and then use that time for recovery activities. Another simpler one, because I recognize veterinary hospitals can't necessarily just shut down for two and a half weeks out of the year and pay the whole team. I get that. Um, but smaller things like implement a no after hours contact rule or a no time off contact rule, like something where it doesn't matter who you are, but certainly the for the practice managers for this particular conversation. When when Brenda's not at work, we do not contact her. We don't we don't text her, we don't call her, we don't email her. If something is truly urgent, you address it. You know, use Susie's like rule of like as long as you can tie it to our core value, solve it. Or use the thing that you suggested, Brenda, as long as it costs less than 200 bucks, solve it. And if it's really that urgent, find somebody else who can help you with it on on site. But we don't contact each other when we're outside of the hospital, right? That is another way to give people permission uh to detach and recover.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Those are great examples. You know, I I I think I used to jokingly say, Don't call me unless the bell building's on fire. And and then it became, and then make sure you call 911, not me, right? Julie. Julie, what change would you make tomorrow to really help with these managers' well-being?

SPEAKER_03 9:02

It's hard to follow both of these brilliant uh folks here. But um I'll tell you what, like, you know, I've been doing this work, my coaching work in the veterin for 12 years now. And I started doing one-on-one work, and then I've since gravitated to groups. And the reason I gravitated to groups is because I found myself, I'm on Zoom, I'm coaching someone, and they're talking about their challenges and the obstacles and how they're feeling about things. And then I get off that Zoom, I'm on with another client. They're talking about the same exact thing. So this started with women veterinarians. And I had this idea of like, if I could get these women in the same room so they could see that they are not alone, that would be amazing, brilliant, and transformative. And that's proven to be true. So I've done that with, you know, women veterinarians, animal workers, and I'm gonna do it. I'm also gonna start a group with practice managers because I believe that what the number one thing I think we can do for our well-being is find our common humanity. Find out, oh, you too? Oh, wow, that's so good to know that I'm not the only one. And and actually feel a connection, right? This loneliness, this loneliness epidemic that is in this middle management, right? Like we have to find a solve for that. And the healthier our middle management is, the healthier the whole practice is. And I think it's just a biological need to find people that we connect to, that we feel like we belong with, and that people that truly understand that what it is that we're we're dealing with. And to the level of the burden sometimes that it feels like.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Absolutely. That's a I love that because I mean it just runs through my whole career. I think I felt that loneliness. It was the reason that I started a local manager's group, and that's how I met Susie, you know, and and that seems like a lifetime ago, but you know, and then the VHMA has has done that for me. I mean, I've met so many great colleagues from around the country, and we can talk, we can pick up the phone and share problems and really help each other out. And I see the same as a facilitator for VMG. You know, this is where practice owners can come together as peers and be able to share those experiences and realize it's not just me.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah. It's pricey. Susie, what does a truly sustainable veterinary leadership role look like in 2026 and beyond?

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Yes. Um, I think it's twofold. Um, I think one, it seems like a very simplistic answer, but I think it's just better support. I think us as industry leaders need to keep knocking on the door of upper management people, the people that are pushing the industry and let them know, like, hey, we need to support this group of people more. We are asking a lot. We're asking them to take our businesses and our livelihoods and grow them, but we're not, we're overloading without supporting them. And so I think it's really about providing more support than we have in years past and recognizing it's because the job that we're asking them from to do has changed over time, but we haven't changed our level of support, right? And so we need to do that a little bit more. But I think also recognizing that the people that are in these positions, our leaders are human and they're people and they have their own passions and their own desires and their own wants. And so it's supporting and giving space for them to grow in their own individual professional paths as well as their own personal paths. And I think if you can give space for them to do that, those are the things that fill their buckets, fill their balloons. Even if they're facing a lot of challenges in the clinic, they come back energized, right? We talk about that kind of conference high when people go away and they learn things and they get with their network of peers and they come back, they're like, yes, I can take this on. And to kind of Julie's point of like getting people together to have this like empowering discussion, like, okay, I can go back now. I'm refreshed. And so I think providing space and time for that, for these people who are doing so much for us, those are the two things. If I was gonna do something for my managers, better would be more support and opening up space for them to do what is for them, right? Invest in them.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

That sounds so much more sustainable than what we're feeling today, right? Right. Josh, what does sustainability sustainable leadership look like in the future?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Um, for me, this is just um this is really about taking just a more human-centric approach to how we how we look at management and leadership within veterinary organizations. Um, I I'm really personally very inspired and fueled by uh a pretty robust model for human motivation called self-determination theory. And essentially what self-determination theory tells us is that there are three core human needs. And if those needs are met in the workplace, we're likely to actually get as much or more energy from our work than we give to it. That's sustainability, right? If those needs are unmet in the workplace, it requires us to spend more energy to deliver on outcomes than we get in return. That is the opposite of sustainability. That's where burnout comes from. Those three needs are essentially agency or autonomy, relatedness or belonging, you could think of it that way too, or meaning, uh, the sense of meaningfulness. And then the third one is competency or capability, right? And so what we have to do for if we want to create sustainability, we need to we need to make sure that those three needs are met for our managers. Here's what I think kind of happened in our profession, Brenda. I think that historically, veterinary practices were owned and ran by veterinarians. And veterinarians over time, luckily um in part because some outsiders who were very, very smart individuals came to them and said, Hey, yo, by the way, uh they realized that they were wearing way too many hats, most of which did not exactly fit their heads. You know, they were trying to be business owner, entrepreneur, marketer, HR, like all those things at once. And so what came of that, gratefully, is this, you know, uh growing area of veterinary practice managers. You know, we see it's it's actually, in my experience, at least in small animal practices, very uncommon now to find a veterinary practice that doesn't have a practice manager. Great. The problem is that what many of those veterinarians did, unwittingly, unintentionally, a lot of the times, was they took all the hats that didn't say doctor and they just put it on someone else's head. Right? That is still too much for one individual, right? And there's no way if that individual doesn't, if they're wearing all those hats and they don't feel like they have a meaningful amount of control and agency in their work, they're wearing all their hats and they are truly lonely and don't feel like they have a commute, a sense of community or connection or a support system or advocate. And the work that they're doing, they're accomplishing things, it doesn't feel particularly meaningful. If they're wearing all their hats and they don't have all the tools to really succeed with every single hat, which by the way, I'm pointing at this guy. I was terrible at operations, decent at finance, okay at HR, right? Like I didn't excel at every single thing that I was trying to do. If if that's the reality, we're not going to have a sustainable career for them. So we we have to think of ways to make sure that all those needs are met, whether it's actually meeting the needs while they wear all the hats or dividing up the hats.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Hiring somebody to complement your strengths and weaknesses.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Precisely.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Yes. Julie, what's your definition of sustainable veterinary leadership roles in the future?

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Well, I mean, just to add to what's already been said, I I think what's coming up for me is one of the things that you know, what makes it easier for leaders is also the health of their team. And here we do, we we work in uh in a trauma-exposed workplace that we are dealing with patients, clients, and team members that get dysregulated because we all have nervous systems, right? And yet all of those things, like we're addressing the patient dysregulation, right? That's part of the whole fear-free movement, right? Where we're really good at knowing how to deal with the stress response of our patients. We're not so good at dealing with it with our clients, which causes undue stress on our teams, which causes undue stress on management. So I still am of the feeling of like the more we're able to recognize that this is a dysregulating field, right? We're exposed to primary trauma, secondary trauma, moral stress, all of these things. And we have to address it from starting with clients, starting with our team members, we have to create more emotional safety in this field because this isn't the old days when, you know, I always kid that I worked in a veteriness in the 1800s. Uh, that it's a different time now. Like there is so much more emotional um uh intensity about this this relationship that that clients have with their pets, that when that is vulnerable, which it is in every visit, we even if it's a wellness visit, when that is at stake, we're already dealing with people that are already amped up. They're already in fight or flight. And and we need to equip our people with how to calm other people down, how to calm themselves down. And ultimately, I do believe that that then rises up through the ranks and for sure takes some of the burden off of um middle management to try to calm everybody down, right? Including clients, and allows them to be able to do all these amazing things that you're talking about, like strategy and stuff like that. But until we were able to really look at that, I think, you know, I don't know if any of you watched The Pit, but like I got obsessed with the pit. I love the pit. Yeah. And and I could not help, but I was like, oh my gosh, like this is veterinary medicine, right? In a different, like we're seeing it through a different lens. But I kept also noticing all the the missed opportunities for like that waiting room, like what a disaster. And that put so much pressure on, you know, the doctors, the nurses, everybody else that people are interacting with. We need to do a better job all the way of creating environments that are ultimately that feel emotionally safe to people, so that that trickles all over. I don't know if that, you know, you're if you're picking up what I'm putting down, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

I do, I do. And it reminds me of a couple of my recent practice visits where we really, you know, drilled into our workflow. And and workflow doesn't, it sounds very disconnected from what you talked about, but it's not because it's like, how can we look at our workflow critically through the point of view of the actual pet owner and and make it not only comfortable but super hospitable and welcoming, and really think about the experience that they're having as they go through, you know, all the interactions with everybody on the staff and just being able to workshop that with your team can go a long way in recognizing the nuances that are happening and how how we really need to address anxiety. And if we can do that, it's gonna open up people to be better listeners and more compliant to the things that we're recommending, and we get in that wavelength, and our jobs become easier because we're doing what we set out to do, right? Yes, I love it.

SPEAKER_03 20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Well, thank you all for flying with us on Flight Plan. Thank you for joining us on all three of these episodes. Um, I can't thank you enough, Susie, Josh, and Julie. And thank you to our generous sponsor, Pirina. If today's insights helped you climb to new heights, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your crew. Until next time, keep your mission clear, your team aligned, and your practice soaring.