Culture Focused Practice

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

Today's my favorite type of episode, The Owner's Room. So this is a space where I. We all stop pretending like we have shit figured out. There's not polish, there's not prep, there's not listicles, there's not teachable content, and there's not solid answers.

This is just the real time, messy work of leading humans while also being one. That's all that this is about.

Today's episode is the brutal, God, brutal fucking moment where you hired someone who got through your hiring process, checked every box, and then as soon as they start, you realize, this is not what I signed up for. So when the perfect hire looks great on paper, but not in practice.

Before we go further, make sure you subscribe. The more you subscribe to this podcast, if you're not already, the more that it shows up for people who also need it. That's what we're trying to do here.

So I think you should know, if this is not your first owner's room episode, we do this in question format, so I have five questions that I'll just talk through. I have not practiced, I haven't done anything with them other than choose them from a list and then I will run through a scenario and just talk about how I might handle it and then we'll wrap it up. So.

Alright. Question number one. What made them seem like the perfect hire? There are two instances that are coming to mind for me and one is with somebody I knew very well and another is with somebody I didn't know at all.

And so with the person I knew very well, I don't know how to say this without sounding like I am absolving myself of responsibility, but I think there was something about being unhealed that influenced that decision. I think maybe, you know, I'm human. I think I'm always unhealed to an extent, but the part of me that wasn't healed, or the parts I should say were attachment based.

And so I've since done, you know, I've done neurofeedback, which I loved. I've done EMDR for some complex trauma stuff, for attachment related things. And you know, since then, I can see how my attachment wounds were showing up in that hiring decision and in that relationship.

And so they seemed like the perfect hire because I knew them. I was close with them, and I thought when they joined that it would just be this fantastic fit. And I thought that it was. Until it wasn't. I will just leave it at that.

But this other scenario, we brought somebody on, and I did not know this person at all. And it's weird to say I was not very involved in that hiring process. So ultimately, that's my fucking fault. Like that's, that's on me.

At that time, I think what was happening is that I was overloaded. I, I think I like had a new baby. I mean, it just, I wasn't involved in the process to the same extent that I would be if we were hiring, you know, right now. So at that time, I think I just watched like a little bit of a recorded part of the skills portion of the interview. I didn't even connect with that person directly prior to them starting with us.

And I signed off on the hire because the recommendations were good from the team. It seemed great on paper, like, you know what we're talking about.

So it's weird too to look back because I don't even think it was a hell yes for me. I think it was just a, yes. Everybody else is on board with this. Again, I watched a little bit of the interview. I'm, I'm good. We can bring this person on. We needed a person. So you're in that sort of desperate phase. And then we brought the person on and it was just almost immediately, like within a week, I think we was like, oh fuck, this is not gonna work.

So I don't even know if, I think that they seemed like the perfect hire, the person that I did not know. It was more like circumstances. And again, I've not, me not being involved, like that's, that's a hundred percent on me. This is, you know, I'm not blaming anybody else. I hope it doesn't come across that way because ultimately it is my decision who joins the team and who doesn't.

So that to me is like, that wasn't even a perfect hire. This other one, again, the one that I knew, what made them seem like that perfect hire is just my relationship with them already. I thought very highly of them and I think maybe in that I, I might have curtailed some of the hiring process. That's a lie.

No, I didn't at that time. 'cause this is years ago, we did not have the hiring process in place in the same way that we do now. And so they were a hell yes for me, like just immediately and I made an offer. We didn't do the hiring team meet and greet, we didn't have the interview process, like none of it. I just made them an offer, period.

it was for a role that had not yet been developed, and so this person was stepping into a role that wasn't developed yet. So all of it, the, the perfect hire piece was me gut level saying, yes, that's it, which feels relevant.

I told you the unhealed parts of me, the attachment based stuff, my connection to this person was from that standpoint. So that's why I say, you know, this unhealed part of me was part of it. Yeah. This unhealed attachment wound is rearing its head in my relationship with this person. And it felt perfect and it was fine for what it was for a while, but it was not what it needed to be, what I actually needed it to be.

So there you go. That's what it was.

Let's keep going. Question number two. Did I ignore any gut feelings during the process? Honestly, no. I, in retrospect, there are a couple of learning moments, a a lot I should say. For the person that I thought was perfect. For me, I have a bottled sense for when I'm interacting with somebody from an attachment wound place. I know what that feels like now.

And then also I have people around me to further vet. So it feels like that has sort of been taken care of. So I will not say that I ignored any gut feelings. I'll say that I like relished my gut feeling with the, the person from a few years ago, you know, that I thought was the perfect fit and just ran with it.

The fucked up thing is I trust my gut to a large extent, but there's a certain type of personality that speaks directly to that wounded place that is really hard for me to see. But I do know the people around me who can see it clearly. And so in those moments where I have a feeling, then I turn to these people and I'm like, okay, I'm way too excited about this.

What, what do you think? You know, what do you, what do you seeing? What do you think? And then I, you know, can check myself, which is really great.

For this other person. Like I said, the one that I. Wasn't even really involved in No, I had no gut feelings 'cause I wasn't even fucking involved in the process, which is my own fault. Not even coming at anybody. That's on me.

No, I had no gut feelings during the process that week in immediately, again, within a week sort of had gut feeling like, Ooh, I don't know about this now I'm, now I'm concerned. Very, very quickly.

So, so like, no, I didn't really to answer the question, did I ignore any gut feelings during the process? Not really. I relished one and I didn't have any for the other, and that's my answer.

Question number three, how did they show up differently after onboarding? Hmm. That's a really good question. So for the person who was short-lived and we knew right away this was not gonna work. They showed up differently after onboarding in that they didn't do anything that was required of them.

So this person was basically logging 40 hours a week, but getting nothing done and not responding to directives or prompts. Also, this is recent enough that they were writing answers and doing things with chat GPT. I love chat. I use it to conceptualize projects and work through issues, but I don't use it as a standalone writing tool.

And so there was one instance where they had submitted something. It was written with chat, GPT. It was just very obvious. I sent it back and I said, Hey, this reads like ai. I need you to go through and make it your own.

And what they sent back was honestly worse than what they sent in the first time. And I remember thinking to myself, this is a simple ask, and this is one of the very first tasks we assign people.

And this is already what I'm getting back. Oh, good lord. How are we going to move forward with this person? You know, how are we gonna trust that they're doing what's required of them.

With the other person, how they showed up differently after onboarding. You know, that wasn't a right away thing. You know, if we're talking about the perfect hire, looking great on paper, but not in practice, what's really hard about the person who I knew well is that initially I thought it was great because now we've got somebody else involved in the thick of leadership style things.

Now we've got additional input. Now I trust somebody's clinical judgment in this role. But what really started to show up for me and it really started to show up after I had a baby and I think I was on leave and they just didn't step up at all.

And so I have my integrator or director of ops at the time, maybe carrying all of my weight in the middle of this big overhaul at our practice for something, and this other person is just not asking to help, not stepping in, I think dropping the ball on what we needed them to do. And it was sort of the same situation where I kind of started looking at what are they spending their time doing?

They were not doing anything. They were doing nothing to forward the vision of the practice. There was no initiative and like developing projects and moving things forward, which was expected and was role appropriate for the record.

So I'm not saying I expect, you know, um, an office manager to take ownership of some giant full team project. What I'm saying is the role that we had this person in, they should have been taking ownership of some company level, some group practice level projects. They were not.

And it was more how do I get rid of work on my plate, even in my absence? And so that wasn't right after onboarding. It was a little bit down the line, but that was for sure the start of where I, I started to question this person in this role and whether or not they actually wanted it, they did not. They did not really want it.

So that's how they showed up differently. One just wasn't really working, but saying they were. And ironically enough, it seems like the other person was doing the same thing where they were tasked with things- they should have been working, but they weren't. They were spending time doing other stuff.

That shit sucked, man. It's hard to even talk about now where it's like, God, I'm still like, I'm still angry. I still feel angry about all of that happening. I'm angry about what I didn't know I'm angry about somebody saying they're doing something and they're not. I'm angry about falling prey to my attachment wounds. I'm just, I'm still angry about it.

You know, it's funny because the relationships in my life that have been born out of that specific wound, that specific attachment style are the ones that I'm still fucking pissed about.

Because after healing, after doing, you know, therapy and neurofeedback and earning secure attachment with my husband, I see how much I didn't know about myself and those types of relationships. And how much I doubted something that was so obvious.

I think there's a sense of, um, almost like feeling disrespected. And disrespected by somebody who I don't think can show up any differently. Like, I don't even think that the, the people I'm thinking about, they can't show up differently. This is just who they are. This is how they exist in the world. And it just sort of grosses me out at this point in my life.

And sure, I can have compassion for myself and I can understand that I have my own learning to go through and my own healing to do, and when I get back into it, when I think about that, again, I just feel angry. It's like watching Kody on Sister Wives, this fucking raging narcissist who never takes ownership.

So there's this constant sense of this is never gonna be finalized. Like this person will never see themselves clearly. That feels so unjust. I think that's what it is. As I'm talking out loud, it's like, oh, that that wasn't fair. That wasn't fair. It's where some of that anger is.

' cause I don't typically hold onto anger. I don't walk around feeling angry about these things. Not by any means honestly, but when I talk about 'em, feels unfair, and then I feel agitated in the moment. So little fun facts.

Okay, I'm gonna keep going then. Question number four, what impact did their presence have on my team? Well, the person who was gone quickly, I would say very little impact. They weren't really connected enough in to have a significant impact, and we'd actually hired another person at the same time, and that went well and continues to go well. And so it's almost like they're forgotten. They were with us a very short amount of time, so it's almost like inconsequential.

The person who was with us for longer. I don't know if they had any sort of impact on the team. I would say net neutral, maybe slightly negative only in that they would defer conversations that they should have been having.

So it's like a clinician might reach out for consultation with this person who was there for a while who I thought was the perfect hire. You know that relationship, that person. And their role was to engage in conversations. It was to be available for consultation. It was to be there for the clinical team. They were not.

And they would say something, you know, like, schedule with me in this very limited amount of time, or just email me the questions and I'll get back to you via email. And so I think that my team, some of them anyway, just stopped asking for help, but they also didn't speak up about it.

I hate that. Again, that's where I get into this like that fucking sucks for them. I'm so mad that I did not realize this was happening to the extent that it was. And it is fine now, you know, so I would say not any real negative impact when they left, which to me is indicative also of they weren't really that invested then in the first place.

If my integrator left, we would feel it, like the team would feel this, every person would feel it. If my DCO left, every person would feel it. All of the clinical team would be, not scrambling necessarily, but they would feel the loss of this person.

And so I think the lack of significant impact when they left and even when they were there probably speaks more to they weren't really doing much when they were in that role than it does anything else.

Fifth and final question, what did I learn about my hiring process? Yeah, geez, a lot. Um, so a couple things. One. I learned that people can lie on their hexaco 'cause we do a hexaco to sort of get a feel for personality before people join.

So we need something that also assesses people's desirable response habits. Meaning some scale that assesses if they are answering in a way that they think we want them to. That's what we need in the hiring process in our assessment process.

We also need for me to be involved in the interview process, and I don't want to be the one heading it up, I don't wanna be the one that is the point person or doing all of the backend work, but I do think I need to be there for the clinical skills portion of the interview to be able to sit and feel what it's like to be with this person and also just get a sense for how they show up in real time. I think I needed to be more engaged in that process.

Which is honestly something I had always done up until this little segment of time. And now I'm back into doing it and I'll probably continue, especially just having final say on interviewees, on candidates. I really want to have that Hell yeah. Moment with people.

So that's a couple things. Something else is that there's no bypassing the hiring process, not for any person. Every single person has to go through this, regardless of how well I know them or how well anybody on my team knows them.

Everybody has to go through the same hiring process. They have to go through the application process, the meet and greet, the skills portion, the assessment stuff. They have to hit it all, and they have to be recommended.

There's no, if anybody says, do not recommend, that's a huge red flag. We have never brought somebody on where the recommendation was do not recommend from one person on the hiring committee. So we wanna see consistency across all of these domains, across the phone screen, the meet and greet, the skills portion, et cetera.

I think something else I learned about my hiring process, and this is, I'm kind of alluding to this already, is that we need to trust it. Like we need to be engaged in this process, but also we need to trust it in its entirety. Not shirking any of the phases or the expectations, not making exceptions for people.

If it is somebody we know, we might say, Hey, we already know you. We like you, but everybody has to go through this process. I'm sure you're gonna be fine, but we still have to do it. Like this is what we do. And then requiring that everybody go through this process.

I don't think that there's anything else though. I don't think that there's anything significant that I feel like I learned about my hiring process through those experiences.

Quite honestly, I feel like it's good. It's pretty fucking solid. And the things that I'm learning are just that we need to ensure that it happens in the way it's intended to and the way that we set it up.

And there we have it, folks. Five questions for you. Let's move on. We're gonna do the scenario next. So I'm gonna read the scenario and then I'm just gonna talk through what I might do, what I might recommend, et cetera.

Scenario you hire someone with a stellar resume, glowing references, and a great interview. Within two weeks, they've missed deadlines, caused friction in team meetings, and your staff is asking if they're okay. You're second guessing everything. Ooh. Yeah. Okay. What would I do if I was in this position?

One thing I'm I'm gonna say is that I think it's possible that folks sneak through. I think that that can happen even if you have a fantastic hiring process. I think that it's reasonable that you get some people who are very good at playing the part and they just really blow through the, you know, shining star in the entire hiring process.

I will say, I fucking hate references. Who would ever put down a bad reference? I don't understand the purpose of them. I don't understand why they're in place. I don't ever wanna call references, like, I don't get it. Why am I calling? You literally are putting the name down of a person. You're not gonna put down someone who doesn't recommend you.

So that to me is a waste of time. I don't even know if we call references to this point. I never do because maybe I should, I don't know, but I fucking hate it. I'm not going to, nobody's gonna put down a shitty reference, so it feels like a waste of time. It feels like peacocking.

I distracted myself talking about references. Let me get back to, I do think it's reasonable that somebody can skate through and be seen as like, awesome. And then they start and you're like, what the fuck happened?

For me, there's a couple things. One is in your employee manual, you need a trial period, so we have a 90 day trial period. We're also in the state of Missouri, which is an at will state, so we can terminate at will, but if you're not in an out will state and you're noticing issues right away, you need to be documenting.

Documenting all of the issues that you're noticing, addressing them immediately. This is not the time to twiddle your thumbs and sit on the issues that you're seeing until the end of the trial period. Nope. It's the time to document what you're seeing and immediately start having conversations.

So in our onboarding process, for example, we have meetings just throughout the first 90 days because we wanna make sure that we're addressing things immediately. Right away, if this was happening, they would be addressed in these meetings if they continued to happen.

So let's say my DCO, my director of clinical ops has a meeting within the first two weeks. You know, she had one week one, she has another week two with this new hire, there's already been a couple of missed deadlines. There's already been a team meeting, and there's been some friction in that team meeting.

And let's say the staff stuff hasn't happened yet. So let's say we've had missed deadlines. We have friction. We're two weeks in. My DCO meets with this new hire. She's gonna talk about it, then she's gonna say. We've noticed missed deadlines. Here's some friction in team meetings. This cannot continue happening. These are the things we need to see in place, you know, in its place, et cetera, where we give examples of what we wanna see.

If it were to happen again within the next two weeks. We have two more weeks, we've got more missed deadlines, we have more friction in team meetings. That would not be addressed in the onboarding meeting.

That would be addressed in a disciplinary process meeting. So there would be now, okay, now we've kicking off this disciplinary process and we're gonna start documenting. We already have been documenting, but we're gonna document again. This happened. It's a problem. This happened on the state. Here are the examples. Here's what happened, et cetera. A breakdown of all of it.

We're gonna have a meeting with this person. We're gonna let this person know this is a disciplinary meeting, you know, we're in our trial period still, but we need to see these changes.

And then I would go from there. Then if it continued happening, I'm gonna do the same fucking thing. I'm gonna document again. I'm gonna roll it into a PIP, and I'm gonna let them know they have no more chances if it happens, again, that leads to termination.

All of this is in our employee manual. So I think the, the things that really come to mind here are making sure that you have the ability to terminate somebody and that you know how to go through the steps to ensure that it's done legally within your state.

And so you might reach out to an HR consultant to figure out, how do I do this in a way that supports the decision we make if we need to get to this point. For us, again, we're in Missouri, so we're in at will state, but we also have the disciplinary process in the employee manual that everybody has to sign off on before they get hired, you have to review that, and then the trial period itself. And so both of these things help us to make quick decisions when we need to within that first 90 days.

The other thing that I'm thinking about is Gino Wickman, where he says, once you realize someone's a bad fit, it's 36 hours of pain. You might grapple with it. You might figure out, what do I need to do? And then you boom, you move on it.

Within 36 hours, you need to make a decision, and you need to move, period. It's much easier said than done. I will say that, but it's also doable. That is how we acted in the example of the person who was with us, what got through the interview process, realized quickly it wasn't working. We got rid of them very quickly.

But if you are in a place where you're second guessing everything, you might also just look at your hiring process. Just really look at it with a fine tooth comb and make sure, is there something that we could have done that we didn't? I would absolutely be looking at the structure. And then I would still move fast. So.

I think that's it. I think that's all I have. Um, I hope this is helpful. I, I don't know what helpful is. I hope it just sort of highlights that none of this is easy. Even if you feel like you know what you're doing or you feel like you're on good ground, you know, you have frameworks for doing things, you have processes, you have systems, you have the right people.

Shit still gets messed up. I love our people. I love so many of our processes. Shit still gets messed up. And I don't think that that means anything other than this is what it is like to own and be in leadership at a group practice, that this is a living organism.

It's constantly evolving. We're constantly tweaking and changing and thinking and assessing and grappling and trying to do what's best for the group. The group meaning the business as a whole, but then also the people that are within it.

So you're not alone if you're in this, if you've gone through it, if you, I don't know if you feel any sort of shame, I don't feel shame about any of this stuff. I feel shame about other shit, but this is not it. If you do feel any sort of like shame or I don't know, like you're doing something wrong, I would say you're probably not. And stop.

Because every other person, almost every other group practice owner, I can't say every, 'cause I don't know, is going to have a similar story. Like a fuck, oh yeah, we learned that the hard way. We all do. That's the nature of the beast.

Final call to action. My final call to arms for you. Again, subscribe. That's one thing.

Second thing, if you have a real life scenario, you want some help workshopping or you want some insight on, email me. Go to www.taravossenkemper.com and submit through the contact form what your scenario is and I will read it live and give you my feedback.

This has been great. I appreciate your time, as always, and I hope to see you in the next one. Thanks. Bye.