You know the feeling.

Your face goes hot. Your brain, which was working perfectly fine moments before, suddenly decides this is an excellent moment to go completely blank while simultaneously flooding you with fifty thousand rushing thoughts at the same time.

It feels like a car crash. But you’re sitting. Maybe in a classroom. Maybe a conference room. Maybe you were in elementary school being called on to read the next paragraph. Maybe you’ve just been promoted into a manager role and it’s your first staff meeting. Your whole team is looking at you and you have to present the company information for the first time. Or maybe you’re at a veterinary conference and you got the guts to raise your hand when the presenter asked a question, thinking “they’ll never actually call on me.”

But then they do.

You’re safe. You’re not in a car crash. You’re in a room. Probably 72 degrees or so. Your mouth is open. Something is supposed to come out of it. But nothing seems to be happening. Time is standing still. All eyes are on you. And your body is trying to figure out whether to fight, flee, or somehow put on an invisible cloak like you’re a wizard in Harry Potter.

In that moment, every version of you that you have carefully constructed up until this point completely short circuits.

What’s left is just…. you.

I know it’s hard to imagine now, but I was terrified of public speaking. Growing up, I was really shy. I was the person who would rather hide away reading a book or writing in my journal than stand in front of any room and … talk 😧 ! If there is ever an opportunity to jump in a DeLorean and travel back to my childhood, I can assure you that young Suzanne would absolutely not believe that I would willingly stand on stages. Yet somehow, I ended up in a public speaking class. (Somehow was a mandatory class in my undergraduate studies, but I digress.)

Our final assignment was an interview. In front of everyone. You had to sit in a chair, answer questions, and be seen. As always, I was prepared. Except the last question was purposefully unknown. The reason, according to the professor (who, by the way, was Johnny Depp’s doppelgänger), was to get us to think on our feet. I practiced the version of me that seemed like the kind of person who could handle this without falling apart. I stood in front of my dorm room mirror and answered the questions over and over for hours, days, before. I even dressed like I was a 30-something to seem professional, because that’s what you do. Right?

Then the last question came.

The student asked me if, all circumstances being different, I would date the professor.

Time stood still.

The prepared version of me completely short-circuited. There was nothing left but the actual me. And the actual me, apparently, is funny under pressure. I responded the only way I knew how, honestly: “Well... (pause) no offense, but you’re not exactly my type.” and if you know me, you know the facial expression at the end was something like this emoji: 🤔

The room stood up. I received a standing ovation. The professor? Slow clap. Smile, ear to ear. I got an A.

The laughter was intoxicating. I remember thinking that if nothing else works out for me in life, maybe comedian could work. But then I’d have to talk in front of people. No, that couldn’t work.

I’ve been thinking about that moment a lot lately. The prepared version of me would never have gotten that response. It took the real me showing up, unprepared, unguarded, just present, to get the room on its feet.

Leadership is a lot like that, and your team? They’re waiting for the same thing.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

The next statement might be hard to read if you’re in a leadership position in veterinary medicine. I won’t apologize for it.

Most leaders in veterinary medicine aren’t leading. They’re performing leadership.

They’re doing what they were told leaders do. They run the staff meeting. They have the open door policy. They give the performance review on time, every year, like they are supposed to. They check every box. They go to the Facebook groups and forums asking other managers for advice, and the feedback is always the same: put them on a PIP, get them out, fire them and hire someone else, change the meeting format, watch for signs of burnout and make sure your team knows you’re watching for it.

Meanwhile, their team is in the other groups. Telling each other to run. Warning people to get out. Or worse, to leave VetMed altogether because the leadership is terrible.

Everyone blaming everyone else instead of asking the bigger questions.

What nobody tells you when you step into your first leadership role? Your team can feel the costume. They know when you’re performing.

They know the difference between the leader who runs a meeting because someone told them that’s what leaders do, and the leader who walks into a room genuinely trying to figure out what their team needs. They know the difference between the corrective conversation that follows a script and the one where someone actually gives a damn about the outcome. They feel it every single time.

Recently I received a call where I could tell the person on the other end was reading from a script. While the details of the call aren’t important, I will tell you that I know this person. I know her heart. And while she read every line like she was supposed to, at the end, her voice cracked. I heard it, despite everything she’d been trained to do to keep it hidden. In that moment, she showed her humanity, she showed herself, whether she meant to or not.

I messaged her afterward. Acknowledged how hard that must have been. Apologized that she had to do it. Told her I hoped one day we’d laugh about that call together.

What she did in that moment might seem small. But it showed me who she was outside of the performance. She cares. She is human and she still had to do something really hard. Because she let that show, I will carry a version of her that is nothing but warm. As leaders, we have to do hard things. Sometimes the best thing we can do in those moments is let people see us doing them.

When your team feels the performance, they check out. They stop bringing you the real stuff. They stop telling you what’s actually wrong before it becomes a crisis. Not because they don’t care. Because they’ve learned that the person in charge is managing the appearance of leadership, not actually doing the work of it.

A doctor I deeply respect recently told me she has tried everything she knows to do.

A doctor I deeply respect recently told me she has tried everything she knows to do.

She documented a situation for months. Brought her concerns to management consistently. Followed the process she was told to follow.

Her manager told her there was nothing they could do. Then turned around and asked her why she’s so difficult.

Here’s the thing. The manager isn’t wrong about what they’re seeing. They see a team calling out for mental health. They see a doctor who cut her appointment load in half, which hits the hospital’s bottom line, and ultimately the manager has to answer to someone about that.

But the doctor isn’t doing this because she’s difficult. It’s not a reaction. It’s a direct response to watching her staff leave while leadership did nothing. The manager thinks the doctor is the problem.

The doctor has a different read on that.

Then she said it: “I’ve given up.”

They’ve lost her. And what makes it worse is that the leaders above her are not bad people. They know all the right things. The mission and vision are literally on the wall. The right language shows up in every meeting. And yet when it mattered, they blamed the doctor and told her nothing could be done, when they are the only ones who can actually do something.

That is what performance costs.

Disengagement. And not just for the person living in it, but slowly, the entire team because they are also watching it happen.

There’s a post making the rounds right now about how to restructure your staff meeting so your team shows up engaged. It’s not wrong. Meeting format matters.

But here’s what restructuring the meeting cannot fix.

If your team is still checked out after you change the agenda, and you’re still frustrated, and you still go home wondering what is wrong with these people, try this.

Take the people out of the equation entirely.

What if Sara isn’t there? What if every single person on your team disappeared tomorrow and you rebuilt from scratch with all different people? Would the problem still exist?

If the answer is yes, it was never a people problem.

It’s a systems problem. A structure problem…. and dare I say…. a leadership problem.

The meeting format is downstream of something much harder to look at. Most of us never get there because restructuring the agenda is easier than asking what we built that made our people dread walking into the room in the first place.

Are you performing? Or are you leading?

This week I want you to do one of two things.

Join me tomorrow, Wednesday April 1st, for the webinar “Build the Floor Plan That Supports Your Staffing Model.” That’s where we get into the structural answer. Register for the webinar here, watch live, or catch the replay. It’s free, because I genuinely believe everyone in this industry needs to hear it.

Or sit with this question. Seriously sit with it. Write it in your journal, share your thoughts in the comments, or don’t - this one’s for you - no performing allowed.

Either way, don’t let yourself off the hook with a new meeting agenda. The answer isn’t out there in some new format.

It’s in the mirror.

See you tomorrow.

Suzanne

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Suzanne Thomas is a credentialed veterinary technologist (LVTg, CVTg), MBA (c), and the founder of Leading Veterinary Teams, LLC (www.LVT.vet), a leadership development platform built specifically for veterinary professionals. She is the author of ‘From Competent to Capable: Redefining Success Through Veterinary Technician Utilization and Team Empowerment’, host of the Leading Veterinary Teams On Air podcast, a speaker and consultant focused on organizational design, team leadership, and operational clarity in veterinary medicine