On Sunday I posted a video on my socials telling you I’m in my leap year.

I shared that I went from being the boss of a team to being the boss AND the team just about a week ago, that I have one week left of my MBA, and that I really have no idea what comes next. For those of you who have never met me in person, I’m 5 feet tall and there’s always been this running joke about how small I am, but how BIG my personality is and, well, my dreams? they don’t play small either.

Lately, I’ve been feeling this pull and this life change sort of hit me …. okay, it didn’t “sort of hit me,” it whacked me like a mack truck…. into the reality that it’s time to stop playing small.

And for those of you that showed up for those posts - liking, sharing, reposting - thank you 💚, it really means a lot. But a few of you sent some version of the same message: okay but what actually is Leading Veterinary Teams and why did you build it?

Fair question. So, I figured I’d take a minute to answer.

I spent years inside veterinary hospitals at every level except doctor.

I’ve watched brilliant credentialed technicians become lead technicians and managers and go completely silent about how lost they felt, mostly because the same excellence that got them promoted made it impossible to admit they were struggling.

I’ve watched hospital managers carry weight that would have broken most executives. No support structure or training, just a new title, a new set of problems, and the expectation that the same instincts that made them great at clinical work would somehow translate into knowing how to hold a team accountable, navigate a conflict with a doctor, read a P&L (what’s that?! it’s not a new body process - if you don’t know, it’s a profit and loss statement - business speak 😜), or have the conversation that nobody else would have, but the manager really SHOULD have.

And then I’ve watched those same managers get blamed for the outcomes of systems they never built and were never taught HOW to operate.

They go home thinking there’s something wrong with them but the reality is, it’s NOT them. Because this isn’t a people problem.

It’s a design problem.

Veterinary medicine built itself on clinical excellence and then assumed that excellence would translate into leadership, but it doesn’t. Clinical skill is a technical discipline. Leadership is a learned practice. They are not one in the same, they never have been and they never will be.

And don’t be fooled, the industry knows this. Want to know how I know? Well, because I’ve sat in conference halls for years listening to very smart people talk about it. But year after year, lecture after lecture very little gets done about it systemically. The promoted technician figures it out alone. The new hospital manager figures it out alone. The medical director who suddenly has to manage the doctor who used to be her peer… she figures it out alone. Usually heading to Facebook anonymously, asking I’m staying anon since people I work with are in this group.

That’s why I built www.LVT.vet.

Not because I had (or have) it all figured out. But because I was the person in the room who kept saying someone should do something about this, and eventually realized that I was tired of waiting for someone else to do it. I have years of multi-site retail experience prior to ever stepping foot in vet med, followed by learning this profession from the bottom up. I know vet med. I know business. Somewhere along the way I decided if I keep waiting for someone else, I’ll be waiting for a long time so, that someone was going to have to be me.

Here’s something I want you to do this week.

I’ll go first. Mine were:

That list is your leadership gap. It is probably also the same list the people who report to you are carrying right now without telling you.

Next Tuesday I want to talk about the moment feedback stops feeling like an attack and starts feeling like a push, and what actually makes that shift happen. It’s more specific than you think and it changed how I lead my teams.

If this landed for you, would you do me a favor? Forward it to one person in vet med who is figuring it out alone right now, because that’s exactly who this is for 😉.

And if someone forwarded this to you, welcome. I’m Suzanne. I write here every Tuesday. I’m also building in public over on Instagram and TikTok at @therealsuzannethomas if you want the less polished version of all of this.

See you next Tuesday (but in a much more kind/polite sort of way)

— Suzanne

Leading Veterinary Teams | LVT.vet