Culture Focused Practice

Hello, my friends. This is Dr. Tara Vossenkemper, and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Thank you, as per usual for being here with me.

Today marks my favorite type of episode, which is an owner's room episode. This is where we drop all pretense of teaching and just spend a lot of time sort of exploring the landscape of leadership and shit that comes up as a visionary and owner and person who has a vested interest in the success of a group practice.

No teaching, no content, no listicles, no bulleted items, nothing like that. A series of questions, six today, with zero prep in advance of recording and two scenarios.

So you can be doing everything right in your business. And still, you discover that what people think about your business isn't what's actually true inside of it.

Reputation is slippery, y'all. It's not easy to hold onto, and it's not quick to change. This owner's room episode is specifically about the moment that you realize there is a disconnect between what people are saying and what it's like on the inside, and ideally how we face it without denial or defensiveness or burnout.

So let's get into this.

Question number one. How does it feel when someone misreads your intentions as a leader? I love this question first of all. Second of all, it feels a lot of different ways based on context.

First, if this were to happen within my team, like somebody on my team misread my intentions as a leader, I would feel concerned like, oh, fuck, what did I say or not say? How did I say it? How could I have said it better?

Basically I'm concerned about how the intention was misread, like what happened that this is how it landed for the other person, and what could I have done differently to stop that from happening? Or maybe like decrease the possibility, but also what do I need to do differently next time?

So my concern is not about the person, it's more like, oh shit. Like how did I send that message? And in what way was it set up to be misinterpreted? That happens, and I think that most often those are just learning moments like, oh, okay, cool. I'll make sure to do this differently next time. Totally fair. Love those moments.

There's also times though, where you might get a recurring pattern of somebody misreading your intentions as a leader. That to me, points to something a little more, what's the word I'm looking for? I think maybe insidious like that points to something that's a little more problematic or possibly problematic.

So if something that I am doing or saying is consistently misread, my intentions are consistently misread by the same person and very, very few other people, if anybody, that is more indicative of either a relational issue with this person, like something's off between us or this person is problematic in some way.

Maybe they don't want to be here, maybe they don't have the capacity to be here. Maybe they don't like your leadership style. Maybe they're not a fit for some reason it sort of doesn't matter.

It's just that the consistency with somebody I misinterpreting you or misreading your intentions points to there being a larger problem at play. So that's all internal. And I will say, largely speaking, it's gonna be the first thing that happens where it's just like a point of, oh fuck, I should have done this differently.

And we move on with our lives and everybody's good.

If we go outside of the practice though. This to me is where I, I swing back and forth between feeling frustrated and not giving a fuck.

I think on one hand, if you are building something with intention and you are paying attention to what you're doing and you're really thoughtful about it, and you're trying hard and you're acting with integrity and you are prioritizing core values, the right people are going to want to be there with you.

I hold that very true.

So when I can trust this and like lean into that, the fact that somebody outside of my practice doesn't see it, doesn't get it. I sort of don't care, you know? That's the one side. It's like, I don't really care because they're not here. Like they're not here because they don't fit or they're doing their own thing or they're just not interested in the setup that we have.

I think that that's fair. You know, people have their own desires, needs, thoughts, experiences, et cetera with the world. Totally fine.

The vacillation to frustrated though, is when there's a feeling of being judged by somebody who doesn't have insight into the actual structure. That's the shit that pisses me the fuck off.

And I'm thinking of like a couple key people. I mean, this is something that actually happens. Of course there are is somebody, or are somebody who are mildly or even moderately or even highly judgmental about the way I might do things.

And yet there's no curiosity or interest in why things are set up in the way that they are. And so the level of intention, the level of thoughtfulness, the level of growth and reading and self-reflection, all of it is just dismissed entirely.

And so I think for me that the perception of criticism.

It feels like actual criticism. I, I'm sure that most people don't care. Like most people aren't gonna care. They're doing their own thing. But there are some

critical people, period. They just exist. It's totally fine. And those critical people, and my perception of their criticism about something that I'm doing

has a flavor of dismissiveness, and I do not do well with contempt, especially when it's unearned. Like contempt implies moral superiority. I mean, it implies that one thinks that they're better than another. So you're sort of looking down on somebody. That's the shit that ruffles my feathers.

I think probably for a few reasons. One is that nobody wants to feel contempt. It doesn't feel good. It's the number one predictor of divorce. Two is that that's just not my mo. Like I assume that people are doing what they do and doing the best. And if I don't wanna be part of something, I won't be. But I don't really care. Like you do, you boo boo, you know?

And so I kind of expect that the same view is lent my way, if that makes sense. And when it's not, that's the frustration piece.

So how it feels when someone misreads my intentions as a leader really depends on the context. Again, whether it's internal versus external, whether it's consistent versus a one-off, whether it's done with criticism or not. I mean, it just, it, it depends on those things.

I'll also add that I think it's unavoidable. Like I don't think it's possible to do something and to grow and expand and try to become better at whatever it is that you're doing without being misread without your intentions being misunderstood or misinterpreted.

And for me, that always means how do I hunker back into what is true? What am I building? How do I assess to make sure that it's accurate? How do I be really clear about my values? How do I assess that I'm acting out my values and living them out?

The result is that I end up turning inward and trying to make sure that it's as pure and like accurate and clean at the most central places, so then all of the outgrowth from it, ideally is going to reflect that center mass.

I can't focus on outward because that would just, I would, that would make me crazy.

Oh, that's actually a great segue to question two. Do I care more about being perceived as good or actually being good?

Being good. Like, duh, I think that's a duh. I don't think I so much care about image. I care about being perceived accurately and also I don't wanna be perceived critically even though I have no control over that. So.

I think also, if you are actually good, then people's perception of you, broadly speaking, is going to be good. Like if I'm providing quality care or if I'm building out a healthy practice or one where we really focus on values or one that prioritizes being of service and helping others, at some point the perception will largely line up with our internal actions.

So this to me is actually points straight back to episode 68. The one right before this. That your brand is, all of the interactions that are happening internally, it's all about your culture and building that out. It's not about your logo, it's not about your design.

It feels the same with this. If we actually are good and we are focusing on quality, and by we I mean leadership, but also maybe like your team, you know, if we're focusing on the right things, the outside will highly likely match up with that. So I care much less about focusing on external first and like the perception of, and I care much more about ensuring that we are actually good. That's what I want to make sure happens.

Question three, am I protecting an image or leading a business?

I feel like to an extent it's both. I don't think you can do one or the other.

Uh, maybe that's a lie. I think that sure, it's possible to do one or the other. I think that for me, it's not possible to do one or the other. If I am leading a business and I'm focusing on doing it well, then I am also indirectly and as an intended byproduct, protecting an image.

If I'm focusing on actually being good at leading a business. Let's just continue that train of thought. You know, actually being good at leading a business that ends up being protective of the image.

So when I read this question, it doesn't feel like these are mutually exclusive. It feels like they're actually very tightly interwoven and I can't pull them apart.

And I don't think I have anything more to say about that actually. I think that that's pretty cut and dry for me.

Question four, what role does humility play in reputation repair? That's an interesting question.

What role does humility play in reputation repair? Hmm. I think a genuine humility plays an important role in reputation repair. I think insincere humility is pandering and gross.

I think about whenever there's conflict between people, y'all know I love conflict, healthy conflict, especially actually exclusively healthy conflict. But I think about whenever there's conflict between people, and maybe I'll just use myself as the example of my husband and I get into it about something.

And let's say it doesn't go well, let's say it's like not a very good fight between the two of us. Let's say that I'm the one that fucked things up like it's me, you know, I'm the problem. Hey.

So, when I finally can physiologically calm myself down and either process something that maybe he said in the conflict that I'm like, oh God, I see what he's saying now. Or physiologically come down enough that I can just process on my own and realize like, fuck, I messed up like my bad dog. Like that was all me. I'm gonna go say sorry, duh. I'm gonna go to him and I'm gonna say, I messed up. I did not understand what you meant. I'm really sorry. I think I get it now. This is what I am understanding from that discussion or from that fight.

I'm using this like person to person example, because it's generalizable. If I mess something up, I am going to take ownership of that thing and I'm going to apologize for whatever it is that I did.

Whether or not this is to one person or a group of people, it's all the same. If I mess up, I messed up. Take ownership and apologize. That's my mo. Like that is the thing that should be done. At least in my opinion, that is the thing that absolutely should be done.

And I think if you can do that, I do think that can work in the favor of your reputation, whether it's with a specific client or a consumer, somebody that interacted with your business and it didn't go well, I think that taking ownership piece and saying, oh gosh, like wow, yeah, sorry about that, can be really helpful for people to have some trust and faith that you will act with integrity and that you care about their experience.

I think that what is way worse is whenever you get an insincere apology or somebody who is not sincere in their humility, you know, those like political or like high level actress, actor level things where they're issuing some fucking bullshit PR laden quote, apology end quote for a misdeed where they've caused actual harm in some cases and they're giving some bullshit sort of an AP apology, like when does that ever work?

Also, nobody believes you, bro, like nobody believes what you're saying.

Instead, you could do that thing where you actually reflect on what happens, where you actually assess what did you do wrong or what could you have done differently where you take ownership of some part of the thing that went down. You might not have to own all of it. It might not all be yours to own, but you can own some part of what went wrong in any interaction.

Almost any, almost any. There are definitely exceptions,

And then apologize for that and try to make it better. Boom, easy. Maybe easier said than done, but simple, at least in a formula version.

Okay, let's keep going. Question five. How can this dissonance become data not shame? And this dissonance is the dissonance between what people might be saying about your practice, that sort of, your reputation versus what it feels like on the inside.

The answer to that question is absolutely it's data. You might feel shame about it, but it shouldn't stop there. It sort of doesn't matter if you feel shame, that's just a feeling. A really unpleasant feeling, but a feeling nonetheless.

So let's say you don't get totally wrapped up in the shame and you don't spiral and sort of lose yourself for the next five months or something.

It's immediately data. You can immediately start figuring out, whoa, what is the disconnect? Wow, that's what people think, or that's what this person thought. Why? You might ask more questions. You might try to figure out where did you get that message about us? Are you hearing this somewhere? Are you explicitly seeing it somewhere?

Is there website copy I need to change? Or a social media stuff I need to change, or maybe employee feedback I need to get. You ask questions. You can ask questions and figure out what is it that is going on that is amplifying a view or a version of something that doesn't feel true.

Again, even if you have some shame, I mean shame sucks. It's really uncomfortable, but it doesn't have to stop you from still seeing this as data and trying to figure out what is going wrong or at least what is going on so that you can make moves to address it in the future.

That's my answer.

Last question. How do I reestablish trust without over explaining or groveling?

I like this question because, um, my tendency is to be overly communicative and if I am doing something from a place that is shame-based, I'm gonna do one of these things. I'm going to over explain, or I'm going to grovel. I'm going to externally beat myself up. I'm gonna somehow show the world that I'm beating myself up 'cause I'm messed up.

I remember one time, this is years and years ago, there was an issue with an employee. And long story short, this person was hurt by something that I did abruptly. It was not a great move on my part, which is the thing I can own. The move needing to be made still is true.

And then I got real caught up in her response to it. And that turned into me gearing up to send this long email to my whole team about a mistake and how bad I felt and how I wanted to make sure that people knew what they could expect from me.

And it was just, grovel-y. It was grovel-y. Thank God I let my husband read it because he read it and he was like, don't send that. Like, what is wrong with you? You didn't really do that much wrong. Like this is way overkill for what happened.

And it was a little bit like getting splashed with cold water where I felt like I sort of woke up, you know, like the shame part of me took a backseat.

So I'm saying that to say what I know now about myself is that if I'm doing things from a place of shame, then I'm going to over explain or I'm going to grovel. Like those things are related. For me, they are related.

But let's set aside the shame spiral stuff and let's say reestablishing trust without overexplaining or groveling.

I think that it's done by clarifying whatever it was that happened, by sharing takeaways, and by trying really hard to not make that mistake in the future, which might mean you remove yourself from a process or a system or an interaction entirely.

It might sound silly to say remove yourself to reestablish trust, but I mean that sincerely, that one of the ways that I've reestablished trust with my team from all the whiplash back when I was starting and doing this and this and this, and this is removing myself from direct interactions with them, is by not sharing all of my ideas with my full team, and instead just taking it to leadership now it has a place to live, is by removing myself from having to respond to a bunch of emails because I'm not going to, they're gonna take me fucking forever. I'm not gonna get back to you for four weeks. And then the moment has passed all of these things that people need around me.

I've had to do is put roles in place to make sure that it gets done and remove myself and then let trust rebuild as consistency takes place. I think that trust and consistency are really hand in hand.

And I'm saying this because even if you do make a mistake, and let's say you take ownership, you apologize, you reflect, you figure out what the hell you could have done differently and what you wanna do differently next time.

And then you appropriately share that with your team where you're not groveling and you're not overly, overly explaining and you know self-flagellating or something like that. The reality is that depending on either the person's temperament, but also the number of times things have happened, trust will take repetition to rebuild.

It's gonna take time to repair and rebuild.

And so I think that reestablishing trust is something that you do with consistency across time. And that may mean that you have to remove yourself from some of the roles or some of the requirements that you have for yourself within the role that you're in, in order for somebody else to step in and do it better.

And in doing so, you are helping to establish trust in the long run and thus increase safety and cohesion at your group over time.

One more thought here. The overexplaining and the groveling piece in particular, if you are somebody who is, hmm, how do I say this nicely? Um, just likely to overexplain or grovel, if you find yourself getting caught up in shames spirals pretty quickly, I think it can work best if you have a person who is maybe a trusted colleague that can check you. I think that's the nicest way of saying it.

Or even a leadership team, if you say, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm thinking about saying, can you put eyes on this email? Your right hand person might be like, yeah, bro, that's too much. Like you need to tone it down. What you did wasn't that bad. You made a mistake, you owned it here. This whole section is now you groveling. That's way too much.

And so then you have, you know, checks and balances like, oh, okay. Cool. Good to know. Thanks. I do feel myself getting caught up in shame. So I, I'm glad for that feedback. And now I'm done with that question.

Alright, we've got two scenarios now. So I'm gonna read these scenarios out loud and then I'm just gonna riff on them a little bit and then we will wrap up.

Scenario number one, you hear through a community connection that your practice feels corporate now. You're shocked. You've been prioritizing structure and clarity, but to others it's reading as cold. You realize reputation is emotional currency and structure without warmth changes your brand story faster than you thought.

Yeah, I really like this scenario actually. I think sometimes that is the risk of focusing more heavily on the business.

I talk about culture a lot, obviously, and I think of culture as the foundation for everything else. That's part of your practice, you know, if your practice is the organism, culture is the foundation, it's the thing that everything is built upon.

And I think that if that is something you keep in mind as you go to build things out, the lens should be a cultural filtration process. You should be thinking about the impact on culture or about, if I'm doing this. Sure. What are some of the positive outcomes, but also what are some of the potentially negative outcomes? What's the impact on culture? What's the impact on autonomy? What's the impact on people having a voice?

What's the impact on group cohesion, what's the impact on wellbeing? I mean, that list goes on and on.

I also think there's a, just a constant balancing process. You know, if there's a,

I don't know what the shape would be, almost like three points, and then there's a sort of a ball in the center and you're trying to balance, think of it as like a balance board or something, or like a three point triangle, you know, meets at the top. Not quite a pyramid, but maybe something close. But again, you've got like a half circle underneath.

Every time you go to do something for your business in the way of structure, you're adding weight on one of those points on one of those corners. And in my mind, the other corners are culture and autonomy.

What ends up happening is that whenever we go to focus on structure, the questions that filter through our minds include questions about autonomy and culture. They all three are tended to at any given point.

And if somebody wants to do something that is a structure add and it also takes away weight from that autonomy point in a pretty significant way, my answer is no. Absolutely not, we're not doing that.

Because that thing that we're adding now looks like micromanagement. It looks like busy work. It's way too much for something that isn't actually that big of a deal.

It's not worth the cost. And also if we are taking weight from autonomy and we're adding it to structure and we're doing something that's more micromanaging, let's just use that as an example. We are over time moving weight from culture also to structure that we are prioritizing one thing over these other two that are, I mean, equally important, we want this whole thing balanced. We don't just want one side to be touching the ground. It's like a fucked up seesaw.

And so I think with the situation, if you found yourself in this situation or something like this happened, my first move, well might have two first moves depending on if I was still talking to the person, I would ask them directly like, holy shit, I had no idea. Like, what do you mean? What have you heard? Can you gimme specifics? You don't have to name names.

But I would want to know what is it that they're hearing? Then I would go back to my team and I would say, this is a feedback I got. I had no idea. I really wanna hear from you,

And if it was something that clients were saying, I would probably reach out to some clients directly and I might ask, I didn't realize that we had changed things in such a way that we might feel more corporate than we did, or We might feel more this than we did. We would love your feedback.

And then you'd probably would just go from there. I think the first starting point, I guess starting point implies first, right? Is more information, I'd want more feedback from the people around me, including that person that talked to me and maybe clients and especially my team, on the extent to which this felt true and also what would help counter it or are there like really certain things that feel especially corporate and then how do we move from that.

It's so hard sometimes to do these scenarios because there's so many, like if then possibilities, like if you're moving from a practice that primarily employs 10 99 to W twos, you might have a few months or like a season, or you might have a moment where this is how it feels for people that you're moving from a very.

Independent organization to a cohesive organization, a uniform, cohesive group. That's not gonna work for everybody. And so your reputation might take a hit and the reality is that it doesn't have to stay that way. It might still be a really warm place to be. Cool. Then it's just gonna be a hiccup in the reputation road.

But if you haven't made like a recent shift like that and you've, you know, you're really just hammering home policies and structure and clarity, that feedback is a great place to start.

Okay, let's do scenario two.

All right. You find out a past employee is describing your leadership as checked out.

It stings, especially because you've been working so hard behind the scenes, but maybe that's the problem. Visibility. People cannot see what they don't experience. And reputation gaps often grow in the shadows.

What I will say right now is that I continue to work myself away from the day-to-day operations. I'm really actually out of day-to-day operations, but also away from the group. Like I continue to do more visionary things, do higher level things like spend my time and energy a little bit more removed from my group. I love my group. I adore my people, and I highly trust my leadership team to do it well, to run it well.

And I think about this often. I think about what does it feel like for people on the team who don't have much engagement with me at this point? What is their perception of me as I continue moving in this direction? How will their view of me or of the group alter or shift or change? And maybe in a positive way, but maybe also in a negative way?

In this case, especially, hearing someone you know, past employee describing you as checked out, and maybe the problem is visibility. It makes me wonder if there's just little tweaks that could be made. You know? So if you're never reaching out to your team, that's a problem. If you're never tuning in with them, if you're never sending emails, if you're, you know, it's very, very rare for you to be engaged with them at all.

I do think that is way more problematic than trying to stay connected in key ways while you are removing yourself from your group further and further.

And it might just be something like you're keeping everybody updated, even through like a shared doc, of all the things that you've got going on in the background for the group, or the things that are being worked on that you're actively tending to. It could be that you send a monthly checkin email.

In this case, again, in this scenario, it might be where, hmm, I don't mean to always say this, but it might mean that you start with your group. You might ask them like, Hey, what's your perception of my level of checked Outness? You know, on a one to 10 scale, 10 being like, my ass is out the door. I don't, you know, in another country, one being I'm right next to you, you feel me, every step of the way.

Where would you rate me? And then maybe a follow up question is ideally, where would I be rated? Like in your ideal world, where would you want to rate me at? And then you might ask a follow up question.

That's something along the lines of what does that look like in practice? If you're saying that I'm at a nine and you would love me at a seven, what does a seven look like? How would you know that I was at a seven? What behaviors would you see that would put me at a seven?

And so not only are you getting everybody's sense for where you currently are, but you're also getting everybody's sense for where they would like you to be, as well as what that looks like.

That's really valuable data.

I think that that's easy enough to start with in terms of figuring out how other people are thinking or feeling about you. And by other people, I mean employees of course, as well as addressing some of those things

if you can, if you actually have capacity and inclination to, it doesn't mean changing everything you're doing. If everybody says, I want you right next to me and you're trying to work your way out, like, no, that's not gonna happen. But there might be some things that get brought up that are helpful to know, and you could potentially add into like a quarterly rhythm or something.

So food for thought.

Goodness, that does it for today. I'm packing up shop. We're done.

I will say before we go to make sure you subscribe, especially if you like the Owner's room episodes, they drop regularly along with content-based episodes, and so being subscribed, ensures that you get notifications when episodes come out.

That aside, super appreciate you being here with me. Thank you so much for listening and spending this time with me and also , ideally anyway, looking honestly at yourself and your business.

Those are incredible moves and I hope that you do feel proud of yourself. All right, I'll see you on the next one. Thanks. Bye.