As a business consultant and entrepreneur, I’m often asked to help identify individuals who can lead a project, manage a new location, or join a startup at a leadership level. While I don’t claim any special abilities or secret formulas to predict who might fare well, there are five behaviors I’ve found common to the most successful folks I know and admire. If you’re a veterinary professional looking to improve your leadership skills or a team member seeking more responsibilities, working on these five traits can boost your chances of success and encourage colleagues to follow your guidance.

Discover how accepting tough feedback or constructive criticism can transform your leadership, strengthen team dynamics, and enhance communication. It’s time to shift from defensiveness to curiosity, turning tough conversations into valuable opportunities for growth. Are you ready to embrace the challenge?

Fee complaints are one of the most challenging criticisms in veterinary practice. Try these strategies and tips on handling price complaints to address client concerns and maintain positive relationships. 

A lack of appropriate feedback leads to failure. Here are the three types of feedback you need to give to succeed.

If you own or manage a veterinary clinic, chances are you’ve encountered an employee who was once outstanding and has recently started to slip or a new team member who isn’t pulling their weight or meeting expectations. You know they need to change but aren’t sure how to proceed.  

I’ve always been a list maker. I attribute much of my professional success and personal happiness to jotting down to-dos. Psychologists term this technique “compartmentalization,” and anytime you feel overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities is an excellent time to try it.

Psychologists define compartmentalization as a defense mechanism to avoid the anxiety that arises from the clash of contradictory values or emotions. While that may sound like a bad thing at first glance, it’s how our brains handle conflicting internal standpoints. For example, a manager can consider herself a relaxed mother or partner at home but a demanding boss at work. These two self-images can coincide because the manager compartmentalizes her life. 

I’ll get straight to the point: Many of our emotional workplace challenges are worsened by poor physical conditioning. 

An Infinite Loop of Unhealthy

The infinite loop of “feel bad, eat bad, don’t exercise, health declines, feel worse, more stressed, eat worse, even less motivated to change” results in professional burnout, microaggressions toward coworkers and clients, short tempers with loved ones, and eventual illness. 

Fall is the season for you to break this destructive cycle. 

"I don't want huge things. Like, I want to get a dog someday. But what if that dog has to go to the vet and we have to pay $6,000 to get this dog surgery? Wanting a dog to share with my partner should not be a thing that could bankrupt us."

This article from the @nytimes on July 11, 2022, featured a series of young Americans sharing their worries about their economic futures. 

Aedan's story hit me like a ton of bricks.

While I certainly don't have all the answers to this very complex issue (no one does), I know there are at least a few steps the veterinary profession can take.

I'm thrilled to announce the debut of my new column, "Opening Shots," in the North American Veterinary Community (NAVC) "Today's Veterinary Business" magazine. Here's one of the questions I answer in the December 2020 issue...

“My best technician of 10 years is loved by our clients - but hated by our staff. She’s patient and kind with pets, but condescending and rude with other team members. I don’t want to fire her, but it’s destroying my team. What do I do?”

For the full column, click here: https://todaysveterinarybusiness.com/column/opening-shots/

If you have a veterinary professional or personal life question you'd like me to address, leave a comment or email: OpeningShotsTVB@gmail.com

The USDA confirmed that the North Carolina pug initially thought to be the first US dog to test positive for COVID-19 never had the infection. If you’ve been watching Off Label Veterinary News for the past three months, this is no surprise. Each time stories about SARS-CoV-2 positive dogs and cats have emerged, we’ve cautioned that it’s important to distinguish between an active COVID-19 infection and incidental or “accidental” positive test results that only detect genetic fragments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We saw similar reporting during the 2003 SARS outbreak, and there is still no evidence that you can get Covid-19 from your pets.

The pugs that tested positive in Chapel Hill, North Carolina by Duke University researchers in April were positive only for genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not an active infection. The dogs were also not initially tested to determine if they mounted an immune response to the human coronavirus. If the body creates antibodies to a virus, that indicates an actual or “active infection” was or is occurring. When the USDA performed validated followup antibody tests, the North Carolina dogs were negative, proving no active infection with COVID-19.