If you're having trouble justifying the expense of investing in education for your team, you've come to the right place. This blog talks through the significant impact investing in education can have on employee engagement and retention, reputation, consistency, and efficiency. You'll soon see that a comprehensive education program will be a game-changer for your veterinary practice. 

1. Employee Engagement and Retention: A Crucial Factor in Veterinary Success

Did you know that up to 30% of your current team may feel disengaged with your brand right now? Employee disengagement can have serious consequences for your veterinary practice, leading to decreased productivity, lower morale, and higher turnover rates. Rehiring for veterinary positions can be a daunting task, with an average time to fill a veterinarian role taking up to 7 months. This makes it all the more important to focus on re-engaging your team members.

One of the most effective ways to re-engage your team...

We are going to go through 5 strategies that can help you to tackle some of the negative effects of perfectionism:

1. Challenge Your Perfectionism Behavior:

So I want you to think about what are some of the things that you MUST do "perfectly" eg.  surgical skin close.  Examples.  --  for Alex, it would spelling and grammar, for ME it is at the gym if they say 12 reps I do 12 reps and die… 

Exercise: Write down why you believe that this activity must be perfect? What is the impact if you do or don't??

Do you resist delegating tasks to a co-worker because you don't trust their ability which means that you stay back late? 

Pro Tip: How can you overcome them?  Only challenge one perfectionist behavior at a time. Otherwise, you may feel overwhelmed. One small change can have a huge impact.

2. Set Realistic Goals:

Set realistic goals.  Think about your most important life and career goals. Then, break them down into smaller monthly or yearly...

So let’s just say you have a plan and you are pretty good at knowing how to prioritise so you start off on the right foot but somehow you always end getting pulled away to something else. 

What is getting in the way? How do you preserve that time so you can work uninterrupted? This is often something that people living in busy households or busy workplaces where there are kids, customers or workmates coming and going. 

For example it might be that you sit down to type your clinical notes but then the receptionist comes in and tells you there’s a client on the phone, or one of your colleagues pops their head around the door to have a chat. As a manager it can be really hard to get uninterrupted time to work on projects because then your’e always spending time putting out fires. Urgent unexpected things- usually staff issues, people issues, child issues. The reality is that a lot of these do need to be dealt with straight away but some need to be managed so...

Burnout occurs when passionate, committed people become disillusioned with a job or career from which they have previously derived a lot of their identity and meaning. That’s quite an important distinction because the World Health Organisation definition of BURNOUT directly links it to work and the workplace.   It comes as the things that inspire passion and enthusiasm in your job are stripped away, become tedious or sometimes unpleasant things start to crowd in. 

The key prerequisites therefore are previous passion and enthusiasm. You can't burnout unless you were alight in the first place. 

Now having defined what burnout is- you can start to see why veterinary professionals like you guys- passionate, committed people- are very vulnerable to burnout and that’s why it's so important that, even if you are not experiencing burnout right now- you know how to recognise it and have strategies to tackle it. 

The tricky thing about Burnout is that it's very...

I want you to pause for a second and consider this question..

What thoughts or beliefs do you have that get in the way of your progress? These are your limiting beliefs. It might be ‘I'm not smart enough’ or ‘I'm not pretty enough’ or "I am shy" or "I am bad with names".

Limiting beliefs are things that hold you back. I like to think of them as this list of rules we each have in our heads about what we should say, how we should be, and what we should do and about how the world works. They are based on things like-  what our parents taught us, how we were educated and our past experiences  Plus, we reinforce them either via our inner dialogue or what we tell other people. We seek out proof that they are true and think of them as "just who we are".

We say things like  ‘I'm not good at maths’ or “I’m terrible at public speaking”.  A  limiting belief could be about you, your interactions with other people, or...

Confidence is a skill that you have to keep working on, it is like a muscle that needs consistently building and a commitment to step outside of your comfort zone ... the place where we become stagnant and into your ZONE of POTENTIAL as this is where growth and development occurs. 

Now, in this zone you will fail and make more mistakes, however it is only through these learning opportunities that you will achieve the confidence and competence you want for a successful and satisfied career. 

So let's look at a scenario .. you are in the consultation room and you see something for the first time, or do not know what is going on with a patient. You don’t feel confident in what to do next. 

If you struggle with imposter syndrome the “expert” persona kicks in here.  But, remember, vulnerability not equal failure. You do not need to know everything in order to be a good vet. If you don’t know the answer right away, it doesn’t diminish your...

Motivation is one of the most important things we have to master in our emotional toolkit.  We need to be master of it, not be a slave to it.

When you have the motivation you need, you are pulled forward, out of bed each day, into the day, into work, it pulls the best out of you, and everything changes.  When you lose motivation, the first gate to suffering opens and momentum stops.

First … you don’t feel like doing anything, you don’t feel like working out, you don’t want to act on your goals, you then start to feel unfulfilled, and unsatisfied.

Motivation is something we have to generate on a continual basis, and it is fuelled by our ATTENTION and by our MOMENTUM. We want to be able to generate the emotions of drive, desire, diligence —whatever you want to call motivation.  We want to help you generate and master the emotion you need to move forward powerfully.

It all starts with YOUR AMBITIONS!

All motivation begins with a desire or a...

If you are experiencing conflict with a colleague and you would like to address it. So you are the target or involved in conflict with another person in the team.

Carefully review the situation, evaluate what has happened before you take actions. Ask yourself is this behavior normal from this person or is this person just having a bad day? If it's typical behaviour  it might be time to do something about it, which we covered in the live training. 

Here I want to focus on if it is out of character. Who has heard of the Iceberg effect? It is used to explain the concept that 20% of the iceberg you can see and 80% is under the water. So this means that what you see in terms of verbal and non-verbal communication is influenced by what is happening below the surface eg. financial issues, sick loved ones, time constraints, trying to manage multiple people’s expectations.

So if it is out of character for this person then you can choose to give them the...

It is important to take stock on where we are at now, and reflect on the goals you set this year or the project that you wanted to achieve or where you wanted your career, family or love life, health and well being to be at this point.

So write down a list of what it was that you wanted to achieve this year! 

Was it a health goal, was it a fitness goal, was it something you wanted to learn about, was it something you wanted to do with your family, was it a morning routine you wanted to start.  Was it starting meditation or reading a book each evening.

What has been a nagging thing that you wanted to achieve or take action on .. that you just didn't? 

The goal here is to gain self awareness of the things that you wanted to achieve, so that you can either say that you have ticked it off or you did not do it.  Remember it is not about making yourself feel bad or disappointed, it is more about being able to move forward with more clarity.  

If you still...

Confidence comes from within, it comes from the decisions you make and the actions you take. You need to develop what is known as a growth mindset, which will bolster the belief that you can be, and are, confident. 

First step: FOCUS 

The first step is to change your focus – because “Where you focus is where you will end up” 

Instead of getting hung up on all the ways something could go wrong, focus on all the ways it could go RIGHT. Think about how you’re going to nail your next exam, consults, surgery or presentation and how it will feel to walk away after knowing that you smashed it. 

What you focus on becomes your reality – and that includes what you focus on within your own mind. Replace negative words with positive ones and start seeing the bright side of situations. By changing your focus, internally and externally, you’re changing your state. And by changing your state, you’ll change your life. 

Second step:...