Culture Focused Practice

Hey, Dr. Tara, Vossenkemper here, and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice Podcast. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for joining.

We are finishing up part two of the rest does not equal stagnation why integration is the hardest work you'll do. It really is.

We're basically ditching this notion that rest is passive, 'cause that's a fucking lie, and we're gonna get tactical in this episode. So integration isn't just about pausing, it's really about refinement. It's about aligning. It's about letting all of your systems catch up with your vision, even your physiological system.

If you have ever really felt like momentum has to mean. Either being in motion or staying in motion, or just in motion period. Ideally, this episode will change how you lead in between your big pushes or your big launches or your big projects.

So before we go further, make sure you subscribe. The more you subscribe to this podcast, if it resonates with you, especially the more it will reach like-minded people. So do me a ,solid subscribe if it resonates, and let's keep going, shall we?

I wanna cover the agenda real quick. There are six items on here, which sounds like a lot, but we're gonna get through things pretty quickly.

So one is what integration actually means. Two is operationalizing integration in practice. I love operationalizing things.

Three, embedding integration into your leadership rhythm. Super important. Four, making it safe. Five, mindset pairings for leadership who struggle with stillness like yours truly. Thank you very much.

And number six, anchor practices. So to give you some things you can walk away with and seek to implement right away.

Okay. What does integration actually mean? I think sometimes people think of integration as a stop gap in between projects.

Like, well, it's time that I have to spend before I launch this next thing. It's the space that I have to take and I'm not allowed to do anything else. I. Yeah, sure. Okay. Like, uh, you know, to some extent those things are correct.

And integration is a strategy. It's a space for your brain to settle, first of all, and by settling, it's also synthesizing and making sense of what is.

Additionally, it's about recalibration. So when you finish something and it's big, let's say it's a big step for you and your practice and your group, et cetera.

The next move is not to do more. The next move is to let it ride. See how it feels. Where do we need to tweak things? If anywhere? Where do we need to recalibrate our goals from here? What can we layer on before we go further, if anything? So another piece to integration is that we have to let things settle in before we can start layering things on.

So, I mean, wasn't it Vygotsky with the scaffolding or maybe it's Piaget. I always, I always forget one of the two theoreticians talks about scaffolding, I'm pretty sure it's Vygotsky. It's the zone of proximal development.

And so we, you know, we build something or we're teaching something and then we're pushing people into the space where there's some discomfort, but they're still able to learn.

We go beyond, they shut down 'cause they literally can't learn, they don't have enough to build on. And anything before that is just easy peasy and boring as fuck.

So I'm saying that structure, there's something similar. That we can't just put everything on a, a newly developed or newfound structure or project or whatever it is that you've launched.

We need to see how it goes. We need to address any tweaks. We need to recalibrate. We need to reorient to the vision. We need to ensure that it's received well. It's being stabilized, it's being implemented accurately by all the people who were involved in it, and then we can start to add things on.

What's really nice is that depending on what you're adding on, that layering is gonna feel like an organic evolution rather than a whole big ass new project.

So that's kind of a benefit of taking some time to let it settle because then when you layer, it can feel like you are addressing maybe some of the issues. 'cause you're gonna have issues when you implement anything new, but issues within whatever it is that you have implemented. And it, it feels like you're speaking to needs or you're, you're sort of meeting needs instead of just trying to move forward with something new.

If it's an entirely unrelated project, then obviously it's not gonna feel like you're layering on top of what you just did, but. My point remains the same, that we do need to let structures settle before we add anything else on. So thinking about integration again as a strategy, it's not a stop gap. It's not just a space and time you have to kill before you jump to your next project.

It's a strategy space. It's where you get to recalibrate and reorient, and it's where you really let the dust settle before you start layering things on.

Actually, another great example is a fish tank. If you have a fish tank that's full of water, and let's say you have some sand in the bottom. Anytime you go to put something in there, you're gonna see all the sediment float up in the tank.

You cannot make it go down faster. You have to then let that settle before you see the tank clearly. It's just gonna be messy and fuzzy because you have all this stuff that's now floating in the water. It will settle, it goes back down, and then you have this clear view of what you've created and then you can decide, oh hell yeah, okay, I wanna put this plant here next.

Okay. Next agenda item, operationalizing integration in practice. I told y'all I'd like to operationalize, I mean that sincerely. I think you also know that I use EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system developed by Gino Wickman. These are some EOS related examples. So some things are directly from EOS and some are gonna be offshoots. They're gonna be evolutions of EOS.

One is rock review cycles. So how do we integrate the projects and things that we've done? Well on a quarterly basis, we are reviewing our rocks from that quarter and we are planning for the next round.

And so all of the rocks are related to our. One year plan, our three year picture, and in our case five, but in a lot of cases, 10 year vision or target, excuse me, everything is tied together.

And so even if this rock felt big at the beginning of the quarter, I implemented it, I met my milestones, I got it going, and then at the end of the quarter, we are recalibrating, like I said.

We're looking at the rocks, what went well and what didn't go well if we did not achieve our rocks. And then we're setting new ones for the next 90 days. And those things are always tied in with a vision.

So they don't need to be the most giant things ever. They just need to be in the direction of the vision, and they're gonna be built off of what we just did this past quarter. And a three month timeframe is broadly speaking, enough time for people to really feel settled with changes, especially depending on the size.

Another example is gonna be a VTO check-in. So this is also in the same cadence and rhythm as the rock reviews On a quarterly basis, at our full day quarterly meetings, or at the annual two day meeting, we are going to review our VTO, which is a vision traction organizer. It's absolutely an EOS tool.

And in that VTO, we go through everything. Are we on track with our values, our core focus, our marketing strategy, our issues, our vision, our target, all of those things we're reviewing together and we are one, ensuring that we're all operating from the same song sheet, and then two, we're also low key planning out all of our projects as they come up.

And so if we know in three years that we want X, Y, and z done, that means we don't need it done in one year, but we know we're going in that direction. And so in year one, by the end of this year, we might need just x done. So what does that mean for this quarter to get to X by the end of the year? What does that mean we need to do in these next 90 days?

And so you're taking these what might seem like big projects and you end up sort of chunking them down and then you constantly stay in tune with them by nature of having quarterly full day meetings, or again, the annual two day. So VTO check-ins are another fantastic way of operationalizing integration within your practice.

Another EOS thing is taking a clarity break. So this, ah, fuck, I forget how often Gino Wickman says to do this. I don't remember at all. Honestly,

I think the rhythm is maybe decided by you, which is why I don't remember that. There's not a set one. I think at least once a month is ideal. I could just be talking outta my ass. So just, you know, go with it, take it with a grain of salt.

But a clarity break is where you basically take a few hours, you not in your office, you need to get outside of where you normally work, and you sit and you ask yourself a series of questions, and then you just write or maybe you talk out loud if you're a talker, or maybe you type if you're a typer, or maybe you just think if you're a thinker.

I am a writer whenever I do clarity break style things, so I need to have a, you know, pen and paper in front of me. No distractions. Your, your phone should be in the other room, your laptops should have nothing on it except the clarity break questions if you need them. Ideally, you can print them out and bring them with you.

But the goal is that you get yourself away from doing any work. You shouldn't be engaged in actively creating or doing something. You should be engaged in thinking and in having a clarity break and thinking about what you're doing.

You are kind of practicing integration. From my perspective, that's like practicing the synthesis of all the things that you're trying to create at your practice. It's an active process, but it's not the production of something. So it's not about busy work. It's about allowing your brain to ingest and digest actually the things that have been happening for you and your group.

What's really beautiful about these is that. you can schedule them when you need them, and so it might be that you're scheduling them every other week. It could be that you schedule them once a month. It could be that you schedule them once a quarter.

My point is that you get, decide what works for you. You get to figure out, okay, I, I need clarity breaks at this level of frequency.

You know, I love EOS, but those are not the only ways that you can operationalize integration the other ways. Do quarterly rest weeks.

So maybe you intentionally take time on a quarterly basis where you don't do shit. So difficult. Oh my God. That is so, so hard to do, so hard to do. Maybe you need it. I probably need it. It's still very difficult to do.

Another thing is almost like a deep work retreat. Deep work is not sending emails, putting out fires, answering quick questions, being available for meetings. Deep work is sacred. Blocked off time where you only focus on sort of things that you are grappling with or big writing projects or like research that you need to do. I mean, there are things that you need to spend time thinking about.

Maureen Werrbach talks about this kind of stuff all the time, so I'm like thinking about her specifically. Every Friday she takes a certain amount of hours and she spends it doing research on the future of mental health.

That's deep work. That's all she's doing for that amount of time. It's blocked off every single week and if she doesn't still do that, then my bad, but I know she had been doing it for a long time. And in that space, the point is to stay engaged with something, not produce, not create, just research for her. The point was to research and try to stay in tune with the future of mental health.

In Cal Newport's case, it might be to write a book. In my case it might be to think deeply about a larger issue within my group practice and ponder ways that I could seek to resolve it. So that's the point of a deep work retreat.

Another way you could operationalize integration at your practice is doing something called a hold month. And basically what this is, is a hold, like you don't do anything. You're not allowed to move anything forward that is project related. If you have just brought something to life for that next month, you don't get to do shit with anything new.

It's literally about letting this thing live and seeing how it starts to breathe. That's it. Think about it like a transplant of some sort. You have to, it has to be accepted by the system, and we wanna make sure that it's a healthy acceptance. That's the hold month. Let this live and see how it breathes. And then you can move from there.

Okay. Agenda item number three, embedding integration into your leadership rhythm. I love this. I love leadership stuff so much. What a fucking privilege to be able to lead a group of people that you adore with a team that you trust and feel safe with. I mean, I just, I know I feel privileged. I hope that you also feel the same.

I hope that your team is set up in such a way that you feel similar. So I'll just say that I think it is a privilege to lead.

There's a couple ways you can embed integration into your leadership rhythm. One is called a leadership debrief, and so this is a way where you just with your team, or if you are the only leader at your practice, it might be by yourself, but I would say if you have a leadership team with them, whatever it is that you implement, the conversation is what just happened? What went well? What's the fallout?

Three questions. What just happened or changed? If you wanna use that language, what went well and what was the fallout? Period.

Don't shy away from any of the questions and I would honestly say anytime I'm asking myself what went well, or I wanna like hear that from people I, it is not because I need an ego boost.

It's because I need to know what is working and I wanna juxtapose that with what's not working. And so if something is working, I might go further and say, okay, what about this made it more effective? Than this other thing that I thought would be awesome. Why this and not that over there.

So it's not like, oh yes, oh, I'm so awesome. I feel so great. It's cool. This is working well. Why though? Why is it working well?

And then again, similarly for things that are not working well or if there's a fallout or if there's pushback. Wow, I wanna know why. So that's a leadership debrief. Another thing, this is where you pull your team in is doing a team audit.

And so, same questions. What's not landing? What's the fallout, what's the resistance? What's not landing or working post change? I love this feedback.

I don't know if I am alone in this, but part of the reason I love feedback so much is. I feel like it gives me a 3D view of a problem that I can only see in 2D, sometimes even a 4 D view, honestly, where I can really move it around in space and I start to like see it in this 4 D perspective from all of these different angles.

And I sort of see these weak points that I, I hadn't anticipated or I didn't notice before because of maybe where I was standing or, you know, my view of the practice is much different than other people's, and theirs is much different than mine. And so the feedback from other people is incredible.

Case in point, we have an onboarding process for new hires that I think is great. And what we did is the same onboarding process for an intern. An intern. So in retrospect it's like, Ooh, Tara, you silly. Like maybe you shouldn't have done that, but I'll get to that.

My point is, we meet for biannual feedback. She's very honest, very candid. A fan fucking tastic cultural fit. And we talked about the onboarding process because one of my questions during the biannual is I wanna talk about the issues that you've seen in this past year, you know, with your time with us so far.

And one of her issues was with the onboarding process. And the feedback was basically that it was way too much for a prac student. She's absolutely right it was.

Had I not spoken with her, I would have no idea. I would not be thinking about this because I'm thinking we just redid our onboarding process. It's awesome. Yeah, sure. It is awesome for a new employee. For an intern or a prac student, shit is way too overwhelming. Way too overwhelming.

And so for me, that feedback is just fucking golden. You might be offended if someone says, this was too much. Please try to just embrace the part of you that feels defensive and then ask that part to step to the side and hear what the person in front of you is saying.

That feedback is golden. It's a, it's a gift. I won't get into feedback being a gift, but it is, and I mostly wanted to give you an example of a team audit and getting feedback about what's not working post change and how beneficial it can be because now I have been informed and our onboarding process for pracs and intern students is absolutely going to change.

Last way you can embed integration into your leadership rhythm is having like quarterly integration goals instead of just metrics.

And so this might be something like measurables related to your rocks. You know, it could be something like, I would say you could actually embed this into rocks, but if you don't do rocks, if you're not using EOS, you don't have quarterly goals. You should as a side note, but I will let that go.

And if you're not, then having an integration goal is gonna be something like. I want this project to be launched, and then you have all of the key measurables associated with that project. Let's say you have something like you wanna launch a new service.

We wanna launch psych evals. Psych evals and launching a new service is not just a let's bring on a psychologist and hope for the best. It's let's plan and be intentional. In order to launch this new service, there is a wide variety of things that need to be included or nested underneath that goal. Think of that as like an integration goal.

We language that as rocks and then milestones for said rocks, but if you need different language or you don't use EOS, then I would say an integration goal, boom.

And Okay. We've got agenda item number four next. Making it safe for you and your team.

I am of the opinion that so much shit can just be said out loud.

I just talk about stuff that's going down. So if you have been. Okay. But let me correct myself. When I started the group practice, and I would say up until maybe if it's been, it was, it took me a few years of being in a group practice to really embody this feeling and not just say it out loud and not just try to do it, but to actually embody it.

I. I felt like I had to be constantly doing and producing and evolving the practice because I didn't understand why people wanna be here. Like, what am I doing? How am I making sure that they're satisfied and happy and engaged? And , I was sort of this like place of, I'm not doing enough, which if you know me at all or if you've been listening to this podcast, this is a thing for me, like the enoughness piece, you know.

And so I was doing things from a place of, is this enough? And then from there, I could not ever justify slowing down. I couldn't. It was just more. you know, I have to do more to make sure that everybody's seeing the growth and they're seeing how great this is, you know.

It was sort of this, not an intense, frantic energy, but definitely a little bit of like a nutty professor type energy, a little bit, like a mad hatter, or, you know, maybe like Taz, you know, something like that. So.

My point is at, as of now, at this point, after therapy and being a group practice owner for so long and having a lot of these conversations and having shit grow and then blow up and then grow again, and people leave and stay, it's, you know, having lived through this, now I just vocalize things. I feel safe and calm vocalizing staying still. I don't like to stay still, but I still feel safe vocalizing this thing, so I.

If you know that you need a pause, if you know that you're planning on launching something and then you're gonna have a hold month, or you know, for example, my integrator's out on leave, if you know that someone's gonna be gone and you're not gonna be able to take more on, just voice it.

Voice in advance. Hey, you're gonna see us slowing down. It's for this reason we're launching this new service, we're gonna give it a month or two and we're gonna see how it goes, and then we're gonna adjust and then we're going to maybe add things on.

If you draw out a timeline for people to say, this is sort of the plan. Just know like this is, these are our down months. The integrator's gonna be gone on leave, so we are not taking on anything heavy for this whole quarter. We're gonna just lie low and sort of clean up some internal infrastructure.

Don't ignore it happening. Everybody knows what's happening around you. They don't know the details, but they know something is going on. And so you don't need to act like it doesn't exist. Just voice the thing, whatever the thing is.

Another way for you to make it safe. What I just talked about was like not disappearing and like saying, Hey, we're gonna slow down. A related thing is to talk about slowness as a strategy. So not just we're doing this, but also, and for this reason, you know, the integrator's gone, so we're not gonna take on any new projects.

And then you might level up to more meta level and say, from a larger perspective, it's also really important for us to slow down as a strategic move. To really try to assess how things are living here between all of us, with our community, with our clients, et cetera.

Sure. It's like the Jonathan Haidt thing, you know, the elephant and the rider. Like, we're making this move and then we're kind of post hoc, giving a rationale for it. The reality is that it's still true.

Like even if you were making this move because the integrator is out, just as an example, it still is crucial. To see slowing down as a strategy in like a bigger context.

And I would say if you're only doing this when you have to, then that would be the task for you is to try to figure out how to do this because you should, and it's good for the group, not because you are short a person, so you have to do it now, even though that's also a nice timing sometimes.

Another way of making it safe for folks is to share what's being evaluated, not just what's being produced. So anytime we do, let's just say Biannuals, for example, I'm gonna share the evaluation feedback.

I. I might not do it in a timely manner 'cause it's very tedious and hard for me to compile it all. But I am gonna share it with everybody and I'm gonna say, this is the feedback that we're getting, this is the feedback in relation to our vision. This is what's coming down the pike, or this is what's coming next. And as you can see, there's overlap here, here and here.

Do the in real time, what's happening, and then also in context, don't just focus on what's being produced.

We were doing that for a while as a side note, and I realized that I hated it. And this is before we rolled out EOS with the entire group. I didn't want to overburden or overwhelm my team with the inner workings of leadership or EOS, frankly. I didn't want them to, I don't know, be worried or feel like they had to understand or do something or I I didn't want any of that.

And so what happened is that internally leadership team is like fucking hitting shit hard. You know? We are cleaning things up, we're creating more accountability, we're clarifying so many systems and processes, and there's all of these like micro and sometimes macro changes.

And it hit me one day where I just felt so much resistance to sharing another change with my team and I thought, oh God, I have to let them know like this time is now. And so we ended up having a full day rollout meeting and it was, you know, incredible.

My point is, in doing that, we were sharing the evaluation process and we let them in. And in doing so, it, it was to show them this is what we're doing. This is how we're showing up with each other and for you all.

So when we have a product, this is where it's coming from. Like all of these processes we're doing right now, they're interconnected, they're deeply intertwined.

And I will say in doing this, it did make it safer for the team. Not immediately. But the more that we did this and the more consistent we were, the safer everybody felt.

The higher trust was, the more connection people had with each other and with leadership, frankly.

s something very important about sharing the evaluation process. And honestly just the internal process of how things are developing and being created. Not just focusing or not and not just sharing what's being produced.

So, alright.

Item number five, mindset pairings for leaders who struggle with stillness. I'm just gonna give you a couple of these. So if there's something that comes up for you, like I'm not moving, so therefore I'm irrelevant, like I have to be moving, creating, producing to feel relevant.

Something that might help you to think of instead is stillness sharpens clarity,

And so it literally does, your brain does not get to a gamma wave state, which is like a eureka moment for the record through intense thought and focus. It gets to a gamma wave state by way of a theta wave state, which is like a trance-like state.

That's where those eureka moments come from. Not from trying to force them, but by Slowing your brain down and letting them arise on their own.

It sounds so cheesy. I don't mean to proselytize, but the answer is there. You're not creating something that doesn't already exist. The answer literally lives inside of you. The busier you are, the more you stir up that sediment in the fish tank and the less you can see.

Stop it. Slow the fuck down. Just chill. I'm saying this to you like I need to say it to myself. I'm the exact same. I have to chill sometimes. Let shit settle and then look again.

In that letting things settle process, I might get an insight that I just didn't even realize was right there, like waiting to have space to show up.

Two more mindset hearings. I'm not leading unless I'm fixing. Take big umbrage with this one. The thing I would encourage you to say instead is holding space is leadership. You don't need to fix everything. You do need to hold space.

If your practice is an organism, the membrane is leadership. You're a porous membrane that allows things in and allows things out and holds the structure as it is, and allows all the internal stuff to shift and evolve and expand and grow and settle. That's your job. That is the role of leadership. Holding space is leadership, period.

Third thing, rest slows us down. Yeah, sure. Kind of. So instead, what you can say to yourself or start to try to internalize is disorganized urgency slows us down.

So the more frantic you are and the more you're running around left and right, back and forth fixing this and this and that, you are not only again stirring sediment up, but also you're not really deeply solving problems.

And so if you're moving quickly instead of spending time grappling with something or thinking through it thoroughly or really trying to understand what's going wrong, your solutions are gonna be band-aids. So when you have that, and I would say disorganized urgency, I really like that language, that is what slows you down.

Because you're not giving your brain enough time to even fully assess and be in something before you're moving. Instead of rest, slows us down, it doesn't, think disorganized urgency is what slows us down.

Okay, sixth and final agenda item, anchor practices that support integration. So of this whole episode, I think there are a variety of things you could seek to implement at your own practice.

Here's a few more things, a few more practices that can help support integration.

One is weekly reflection. You can do this a couple different ways. You could steal some clarity break questions from EOS. I think that's always beneficial. You could create some prompts for yourself that you know speak to you. I love that.

You could go to chat GPT and ask it to generate some prompts. You could ask your leadership team to come up with some together, or you could also just journal on a weekly basis. So weekly reflection prompts for leadership.

Another anchor practice is a monthly quote what changed in quote review? I absolutely forget. All the things that happen on a week to week basis. Geez, if I don't write down an item on the issues list for our weekly L 10 meetings, our leadership team, standing meetings, or if I don't write down a headline when it happens or when I have one, it's gone it's just out the window.

If you're that type of person where like it's not written down, you sort of forget when the meeting comes, just have a draft pulled up on your desktop or on your browser.

Save it somewhere. And anytime something has changed or anytime you're noticing something related to a project, just write it down. Write it down in that working draft that you have, and then on the first of every month, go and review what the previous month looked like.

Boom. Schedule it in. This is easy to do.

Third thing you could do, start encouraging peer feedback during calm sessions. I would say start encouraging just entire team feedback during calm sessions. I need to clarify that.

When shit has hit the fan or when you've implemented something new, you're gonna get pushback and resistance because it's new, of course you are. The system has to figure out how this thing lives within it, including the people who are interacting with it.

But when things are calm, their feedback about anything is gonna feel and be different, and so don't just seek feedback in times where you have changed something or implemented something or launched something new.

Do that during the call moments as well. And so it might be that you have a quarterly rhythm for seeking feedback. You know, there's a biannual review twice a year where there's a lot of feedback, and the opposite two quarters we're gonna do quarterly conversations.

We're gonna do another form of, in our case, optional, but you could mandate it, feedback, style of conversation. And so four times a year there's the opportunity to really discuss and digest and talk about things that have happened, or services that have been launched, or projects that have, been launched or whatever.

My point remains the same, is that. Don't just do it when it's chaotic. Do it also when it's calm, because you need baseline data as well. And chaos, I hopefully is not your baseline. If it is, then uh, you know, do it then. But if chaos is not your baseline, then you wanna make sure to hit those moments too.

I think just to close this out, you do not have to do every single thing from this episode or any of the episodes to be effective or to evolve in leadership or to evolve your culture or to evolve how you're showing up. I would say just pick something that resonates with you and maybe that picking something that resonates is not doing anything.

It's just letting an episode or letting a concept simmer in your brain. That's also fine. You don't have to do something from every episode including this one. And maybe it's just that you're thinking. You have thought about something in listening that you hadn't thought about before, and now it's like scratching at your brain. Okay, cool. Let it scratch.

I'll say one more thing. This is the leadership that nobody claps about. Like, you know, people wanna produce and they wanna do big things and they want accolades, and we wanna be externally validated and we want high fives.

Nobody's gonna high five you. When you say, I need a, I need a hold month, I. Like nobody's gonna cheer for you in the same way. You're not gonna be seen producing in the same way. You're not gonna be seen solving problems in the same way. It's very different.

But also something like a hold month, something like a down week, something like a clarity break, that is the work that sustains the rest of the systems and structure and launches that you have put together and started.

So That's all I got folks. I hope this was helpful. I hope something resonated with you. My ask again is that you subscribe and share this with somebody you think it'll resonate with. So that aside, I will see you on the next episode. Have a fantastic rest of your day and thank you for being here. See ya.