Listener Q&A: How Do You Build the Leadership Team You’re Becoming?
What happens when your therapy practice is ready for a new leadership structure—but the people, seats, and responsibilities haven’t caught up yet?
In the first listener Q&A episode of Culture Focused Practice, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper answers questions from former mastermind clients Amy and Brittany of Tiny Planet Counseling, who are navigating several interconnected EOS leadership transitions.
Brittany is preparing to become the integrator. Amy wants to move fully into the visionary seat and out of the clinical director role. A new clinical director needs to be hired. And adding another person to the leadership team raises questions about ownership, overlap, and whether the L10 can remain effective as the practice grows.
Tara digs into three questions that many growing therapy practices eventually face:
- How do you design a clinical director seat without creating more overlap? If responsibilities currently live across several people, where do you begin—and how do you avoid turning the new role into a dumping ground for leftover tasks?
- How do you prepare someone to become the integrator before the title officially changes? What should they begin practicing, owning, and measuring now?
- What happens to the L10 when the leadership team grows? Will adding another voice improve the conversation—or make meetings slower, less focused, and harder to manage?
Along the way, Tara explores the difference between facilitating and truly owning leadership meetings, why a seat should be designed before a person is placed in it, and what visionary-integrator transitions require beyond handing someone a list of responsibilities.
If your practice uses EOS—or you’re trying to build a leadership team that can support the next stage of growth—this episode will help you ask better questions before changing titles, hiring another leader, or restructuring your accountability chart.
Timestamps
- 00:00 Listener Q&A Setup
- 00:51 EOS Leadership Transitions at Tiny Planet Counseling
- 01:54 Designing the Clinical Director Seat
- 06:26 Preventing Overlap Across the Accountability Chart
- 11:01 Practicing the Integrator Role Before the Title Changes
- 12:47 Integrator Training, Scorecards, and L10 Ownership
- 16:53 Adding a Fifth Leader Without Breaking the L10
- 20:06 Keeping Leadership Meetings Efficient
- 24:49 Coaching a New Clinical Director Through the Transition
- 27:00 Why Leadership Transitions Feel Uncomfortable
- 30:47 Seat Clarity, Same-Page Meetings, and Ownership
- 34:15 Trusting EOS to Surface Problems
- 35:42 Submit Your Question and Closing
Related Episodes
- Episode 99: The V/I Table: Meetings Are Feedback Systems
- Episode 97: How Leadership Teams Confuse Reporting with Ownership
- Episode 91: You Don’t Have a Capacity Problem—You Have an Ownership Problem
What leadership or systems question are you actually wrestling with inside your practice? Send it to Tara at hello@taravossenkemper.com. Your question may become a future listener Q&A episode.
Subscribe to Culture Focused Practice for more honest conversations about EOS, therapy practice leadership, accountability, and building a team that can grow with the business.
