Welcome to today's webinar hosted by the webinar vet. My name is Doctor Stephanie Morley. I'm the president of Vetlin, your sponsor for today's webinar.
We are very, very pleased to bring you Doctor Stacy Santi to speak to you on Gatta team, how to seriously empower the women on it. I'd like to thank all of you for joining and spending this hour with us, and I'd also like to thank Doctor Santi in advance for sharing her time and expertise with us. Briefly, I'd like to explain why Vetin is sponsoring this outstanding speaker on this important topic.
We have recently launched a product called the Vetin pouch. It's a local drug delivery device that allows for sustained daily antibiotic dosing directly at the site of infection. It can be redosed daily with antibiotic for up to 30 days and is removed as simply as a drain.
Dosing locally is the most effective method for treating biofilm related infections while minimising systemic exposure. And here at Vetin, we are a team of 3 women who are deeply committed to bringing scientifically backed innovation to veterinary practises. We're passionate about supporting all the veterinary care team members and pursuing their ultimate professional success and their best life, and we are happy to bring you the perspective and enthusiasm of Dr.
Stacy Santi. So please do me a favour and check us out at www.vetin.com to learn more.
So, a few housekeeping items to mention. If anyone has any questions for our speaker, please put them in the Q&A box, and we will address them at the end. Those questions will be anonymous when I post them for Doctor Santi.
For comments or other queries, use the chat box, and Doctor Santi will be using the chat feature throughout the discussion as well. So now allow me to introduce my friend Dr. Stacey Santi.
She is a 1996 DBM graduate from Colorado State University and the founder of VET to PE, a tech platform for veterinary practises that was sold to VetSource in 2022. With over 20 years in small animal and emergency practise, Stacy offers a practical solutions for veterinary teams and tech workflows, client service, and leadership. She's also the author of Stop Stop Acting Like a Girl, a book that encourages women to break free from outdated expectations and embrace assertiveness, confidence, and ambition.
Stacy has served on multiple industry advisory boards, was past president of the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association, and was named 2021 Educator of the Year by the Western Veterinary Conference. She lives in Durango, Colorado with her husband, 6 horses, 2 dogs, 1 cat, 4 chickens, and dreams of a baby burrow. It's all you, Doctor Santi.
Thank you, Stephanie. So, you guys might not know this, but I met Stephanie, gosh, what year was that? Stephanie was to come back on.
It was probably about 2004. Yeah, and I tried to hire you to come work for me at my little clinic in Durango, and you had to say no you can't pull it off with the family, but one of my biggest I still with you. I know now I still we found each other.
We did. Can't wait to hear what you have to say. Thanks so much for sponsoring this.
It's really awesome of you. I appreciate it so much and thanks to everybody that took time to come here today. Let's, let's get into it.
We are going to talk about how to empower the women on your team and I've been working on this talk for probably 20 years maybe. It's just something I've been really passionate about because I have worked with a lot of women. My class, I graduated from CSU in '96 and I think we were right there when we crossed the line to having more women versus men in the classes.
And then my first job and my second job were with probably about 80 to 90% women. And when I started my tech company, I hired mostly women. And I just have a tonne of experience, working with women, empowering them, motivating them, and they're kind of a unique creature, and they come with a lot of different Different things that they've carried on with them from their mom, their grandma, the things that have been modelled to them in the past.
So we're going to go into some of this stuff today, and I'm so glad you're here because it means you care about the women on your team. And I'd like to basically have you, let's just open up the chat right now. I really like to use the chat during these webinars so it doesn't feel like I'm speaking out into a blank hole in the universe.
So tell me, where you're coming from and how many women are on your team. So let's let's have a put that in the chat real quick. Dawn has 13 women on her team.
Brooke, oh, hi, Brooke. She has over 130 team members, almost all women. We've got Michigan in the house with Brooke and Stephanie.
Great. All right, so you guys, we've got someone from Wendy's coming in from England, 15 women. Hi Sharon, 84 female nurses.
All right. Yes, you guys are like me, you're used to working with women and you're here because you know, like it's a little bit of a different mentality when we are trying to bring out the most potential with the ladies on our team. Now, before I get started, I do want to say and recognise this talk is really geared on traditional stereotypes of men and women, and I, I know I've put them in a box, and I don't mean to put them in a box, it's just Still, a lot of society operates this way, and I think we want to bring this conversation to light, but for those folks that may be on this webinar that are not fitting into a traditional box, like I see you, I think that's great.
I, I don't have any problems with that, and it's very hard to put people in boxes and I'm certainly not here to say that you should be in one. But for the sake of this talk, we're going to Dig into some legacy, traditional stereotypes that are actually kind of holding us back. So if you find information that works for you, grab it.
If you don't, I get that too. All right, so let's get going. Here's what you can expect from me today.
We are going to be on this call for around 45 to 50 minutes and we're going to talk about The 5 ways that you can support and grow the women on your team. I've got some stories to share with you for what this looks like in real life, and we're going to also talk about how men and women differ in these different areas. And I've got 15, like 15 real life tips, things you can use tomorrow if you wanted that could start moving the needle for the women on your team.
And lastly, if you've got a question or a tough case, a tough scenario situation that you want to have me answer live at the end, be sure to put that in the Q&A and I just want to assure you it will be anonymous and so that that way if you need to ask a hard question and you don't want all your coworkers to know, you're in a safe place for that. OK, so are you guys ready to get rolling? Here we go.
I am going to introduce you to the archetypes, the main archetypes of women on the team. This is actually a picture of my crew from vet to pet. We've got some amazing women in this picture, and they're all wired a little bit differently.
And I learned in my technology company that product and engineer people taught me that. When you're building out a product or service for customers, you really need to think about the archetypes of your end users. So you would give them a persona and some traits and characteristics and you, the reason you did this is because when you really understand the end user, you can That detail and build out a product or service that really fits with them and it really connects and you get what they call a product market fit.
And I try to do this in lots of areas in my life, so this is one area when we're trying to think about the archetypes that you might have on your team of women, here they are. I'm gonna give you a second to look at these and. Ask yourself like which archetype are you, and you can feel free to share that in the chat if you want, or maybe think about one of your key employees.
What is she, or one of your employees that maybe you're having a hard time connecting with or motivating. Think about which box she might fit in. The truth is, some of you, if you're like me, fit into multiple boxes, right?
But there's probably one box that really is the dominating one for who you are. For me, I'm kind of the big ideas girl. I have a hard time with some of the other ones, because that's just not my nature.
But the, the reason you want to think about this is because when you are working with the different women on your team, it's important to know who they are, who is this girl, what is driving her? What is her passion, what are her characteristics, because you can then start to really connect with her in a deeper way that will resonate. All right, so let's dig in.
The first strategy that we are going to use to empower the women on our team is we want to get clear on what she wants from work and life. And I've got a little story to read to you. This is, something that might sound very familiar to you.
You've got a rock star on your team. She's solid, she shows up, she keeps things running, she never asks for much, and you figure she's happy and she's probably here for the long haul. And then one day she quits to launch her own business or maybe to stay at home.
It turns out she's been quietly thinking about it and building it for months, and you as the boss had no idea. And it's not because she was necessarily hiding it, it's because you never asked and you just thought she'd be here forever and she just thought you were a stepping stone in her life. So this actually happened to me, and this is something that has probably happened to you as well.
I can only imagine. And It's important to think about here how men and women are so different when it comes to thinking about the bigger picture of why they are there. Men are often, they often define themselves by their work and they're often motivated by achievement, status, and income.
Women, however, see work as a bigger life picture. They see it as they're taking care of a whole world. It usually involves a spouse or maybe their parents, their children.
They've got a whole thing they're trying to put together, and it's not to say that men aren't doing that. It's just that women are so strong in the nurturing side. That they've got a lot of things that they are working on at the same time.
In fact, one study showed that women in general have twice as many life goals as men. And therefore, women are motivated by things like impact like. What kind of difference are they making in the world or in their kids' lives, in their family's lives?
They need flexibility to do these things, and they're also driven by purpose. And it's important when we think about how we're going to motivate or basically, I don't even think the right words motivate. I think the right word is unleash their potential.
We've got to think about these are the things that a lot of women care about. Not that they don't care about money and status, they do, and that's so important, but they care about the bigger picture. And you're gonna find out that.
Some women on your team, they may be lifers, some, your, your job that you're giving them, it may just be a launch pad, and they may be going on to bigger and better things. They may already know that, they may have no idea and they're still trying to figure it out. But this is my, one of my employees, Kylie drawing this picture, this charcoal picture of this horse, and I picked Kylie up.
She was working at a barbecue place down the road from where my office was, and I picked her up to do some basic data entry for my company, and she was really good at that and super smart, fast learner, so I promoted her up, she started, started taking on more responsibilities and Getting deeper into the technology company, and then one day I see this reel on my Instagram of Kylie drawing this horse, and I think, oh my God, like, this girl has something amazing. I think we can all agree, like most people can't draw a horse like this out of charcoal. And I'm able to now see what Kylie's capable of and so.
I can mentor her a little bit here and ask her things like. What do you want out of your life, Kylie, like, where are you going? What, what do you want?
What would it, what would it be like for you if you could have a a career out of drawing instead of doing data entry and work in a technology company, and she just can't even imagine it for herself, like it seems so far fetched in her mind that that is even a possibility. And I see her do this, and I think absolutely you can make this work. And so my job is to help her figure out how to get what she wants out of life.
That is what makes leaders better than average, is when you can help a person. Get to where they're trying to go, and women really need somebody in their corner to encourage them because that might not have been modelled to them by their parents, by their grandparents, their grandmothers, and they may not believe in themselves. I find this to be true so often.
And so, what can I do to help Kylie as her boss? I can help her, like, hey, you should get a website. Hey, here's some operational things that could help you get your business started.
If here's how you set up an LLC if you wanted to do it. Now, she hasn't done it yet, but I hope that my role in her life would be to encourage her that if she wanted to, she could. In the meantime, she's making a living, paying her bills, moving her life forward at a technology company that is able to give her the things that she also needs to work on her passion.
So, when you think about your employees, the best leaders know that they're developing the person and not just the ambitions of the company. And here's the big deal. If you don't ask, you don't know.
So you don't want to assume that your rock stars want more responsibility. I don't know if I'm the only one that got this memo, but I remember maybe it was like 10 years ago in the business world, there was this common thing going around that said, if you have a rock star and you want to really empower somebody, you give them more responsibility. And that makes them feel really great about themselves.
Well, I found that to absolutely not be true for women. If you give them more responsibility and you don't pay them more or give them more perks, it's really does the opposite. It's kind of an insult.
And so you can't assume that people want more responsibility. They might, but it's important that you ask them. The other thing is you don't want to assume that just because they're quiet, they're happy.
It doesn't always go hand in hand, and many women have not been taught or basically felt confident enough to share what they're truly feeling. And so you can't assume that them being quiet means they're happy and getting everything they want. And you also can't assume if they're easygoing, it means a lack of ambition.
You know, Kylie there in that drawing, she's so chill, like so chill that you could easily get the impression that she doesn't care about anything, but I know her and I know on the inside that is not how she feels and she cares so deeply and she has so much going on internally. That she doesn't mirror that externally and so that's a real risk if you're judging a book by its cover here with, especially with women. So it's important to get comfortable asking.
So how do you implement this in real life? Here's how. Three ways.
One is I recommend having career one on ones, and these are different than performance reviews or your weekly one on ones or monthly one on ones. These are specifically for career one on ones, and it might be an annual thing you do 30 minutes or something like this is what I'm. What I'm talking about, and you sit down with your female employee and you ask her, what do you want to do with your life?
What is your biggest dream? What's your passion? What's something that you could see yourself doing that wouldn't feel like work?
And the thing is, she very well may not have an answer, and it's probably because nobody's ever asked her that before. Nobody has challenged her to think that way before. And when you put it, put this question to a woman, you're just showing that her dreams matter and she does have her own life and you're there to help her.
Now. If she does share with you what she's aiming for, this is your chance to really make a difference in her life, and you can do something to help her move the needle forward. You can introduce her to someone that could be helpful in this path that she's going on.
I just had somebody reach out to me that used to work for me and they're designing a brochure for food that pets can eat. It's like a passion project, all the, you know, bananas and tomatoes and all the things that people want to feed their dog. Is it safe or not safe, you know, my job, hopefully, if I'm being a good mentor to her is to introduce her to someone that could help her like a a nutritionist in veterinary world.
That could just at least get her closer to her goal. You have that ability as a boss to do these things and it really matters. And the other thing too is just to introduce her to possibilities.
There are so many women that don't think that it's possible or that they're capable of doing something bigger, and I had an employee that worked for me. Her name was Shannon, she was a veterinary, she was a kennel attendant. Initially we hired her there and then she moved up to be an assistant to the technician and then the technician and.
She was good, like really good, and I'd say things to her like Shannon, I could see you sewing up this laceration instead of me, Shannon, I could see you wearing the stethoscope instead of me, and I even went so far as to find out, get the list of prerequisite classes to apply for veterinary school at CSU and I slipped it in her inbox. It's things like this that make women feel really empowered that they do have a shot at doing something tough. In your opinion, in your words carry more than you might think.
They matter. So be sure if you've you, if you've got the women on your team, what you do, that you're doing these things because it's going to mean a lot to them. I have a question for you guys now.
So get, get ready to answer in the chat. What kind of support do you think the women on your team want right now? What do you think they're after?
At least a few of them. I'm gonna give you a second to answer. Erin says affirmations.
Don says flexibility. Oh, when you're answering, see if you get, it's saying to host and panellists, you might need to click the little carrot that says to everyone. Because right now I think just I can see that.
Gigi says recognition and achievement. Those are all really great. Sharon says sometimes it's just to listen to them, and Stephanie says opportunities for growth, great.
These are the kinds of things that women want. Brooke says flexibility. Oh, she says, oh, Brooke, to change it, I think where you type your message, there's a little, at least on my screen, there's a little blue box that says with a carrot, it says host and panellists, but you need to change it to where it says everyone.
But if you don't, it's fine. I can read to the group. OK, let's, let's continue on.
Now we're on #2. This is the 2nd way you can empower the women on your team. And oh, Don says that they've kept it and oh, sorry, Don has changed it so that we are just commuting, communicating with just the host and panellists so you can remain anonymous, so I'll stop reading your names to protect you.
OK, so the second way we can empower women is to help them find and use their voice. This is really important because a lot of women haven't had this modelled for them. So, let me read a story to you.
You're walking back to your office after a team meeting and she casually drops a game changing thought and you think, wait a minute, why didn't you say that 5 minutes ago when we were in the meeting? And she says something like, oh, I wasn't sure it was the right time, or I didn't want to interrupt. This is a real life scenario for me.
So I want to ask you, and I'll read your comments anonymously now, what has stopped you from sharing your opinion in a meeting? The big boss being in the room, the fear of being judged, being the only woman in the room. Some people might think it's a silly idea.
Yes, those are so true. Not wanting to sound like I don't know what I'm talking about. Having been shut down before, being talked over that I don't even want to try to speak up.
Yes, I've, I've been there too, ladies. The fear of looking silly in front of everyone. Yes, OK, you're not the only one, like, and it's not your fault.
Traditionally, if you think about it, think about your parents, your grandparents, we don't have to go too far back to see that girls have been conditioned to be nice. They've been conditioned to not interrupt and for the love to not be bossy. I know that being bossy, I've been bossy my whole entire life.
I think it started when I was about 3 years old and I spent a whole lot of time trying not to be bossy because I thought it wasn't very girl-like. I thought it wasn't very ladylike and that was reinforced with me, right, from my peer group, from People around me, but it turns out that being bossy, it was kind of my superpower. I'm really good at being bossy and it allowed me to start my own company and scale it and sell it.
So I think these traditional stereotypes and traditional behaviours that are applied to the genders. Get in our way, you know, and boys, they're rewarded as, as even when they're very little, like if they're assertive and outspoken, they're viewed as a leader and oh, he's got ideas and he speaks his mind. So these are things we've got to get past and you yourself have to get past and help the women on your team get passed.
So this is Jessica, she worked for me at the veterinary hospital and Jessica came to me. Fresh out of graduating from veterinary technician school, which, you know, technicians are hard to come by and certainly someone that goes all the way to get professional training, so I hired her on the spot and I asked her, you know, what's your big goal here? And she said, I want to become a really good technician and I want some day to be a senior technician.
OK, sounds good to me. The problem is, you see that Jessica couldn't speak up. She could barely answer the phone without having a pan panic attack.
And then when I put her face to face with clients, she froze like deer in the headlights and she'd get, you know, her heart start racing, she'd get all flushed, she starts sweating. She couldn't do it. Like it was so hard for her and I told her, all right, you want this goal, you're going to have to learn how to speak up.
So we agreed that she would work at the front desk until she learned how to speak up. It took her about 6 months and she just had to jump into the deep end of the pool. I love this story so much because it just shows you how tough she is and how goal driven she was to get the things she wanted out of life, but these were the questions going through her head.
Is this a smart thing to say? Is this relevant? Well I sound dumb?
Will someone think I'm being difficult? Or for me, I always ask myself, am I talking too much? If you look at that list, these are all fear based.
These are fear creeping in on you, trying to sabotage you, and it's serving zero purpose. So you're going to have to recognise its fear and tell it to step aside because you are moving forward with your life. So Jessica, after spending all this time at the front desk, became really good at speaking with people.
And she got, you know, I moved her to the treatment area and surgical floor and she became an outstanding technician, got to put her skills into work, and now you guys, she's leading the hospital. She's a senior technician at a huge hospital here in Durango, Colorado. So I think that she's so inspiring of moving forward and doing the thing that scares you.
And this is the kind of stuff we have to teach the women on our team to do. So how do we do it? Well, here are three ideas for you.
One is you give her credit for the idea. I cannot even tell you how many times I've been in a meeting. And I've said something and literally 5 minutes later, somebody else says the idea, usually it's a guy, and they get the credit.
And your job as a boss is to not let that happen. Your job as a boss is to say, oh, thank you. I'm so glad you shared that and you're building off of Natalie's idea, that's, let's keep moving forward.
Give the credit where it's due, and that's gonna step one, help her feel really good about herself. Step 2 is prep her. So, I had this employee, Leslie, who would share some really brilliant ideas with me on the side channels, and I'd really want her to speak up in a meeting, so I'd say things to her like, I loved your idea so much.
Will you bring it up at the next meeting? I want you to tell the group what you told me. And will it cause her anxiety?
Absolutely. Will she try to get out of it? Yes, probably, but I don't let her.
I just say, oh no, you got this. You can do it, because here's what happens after she speaks up the first time, she feels so proud of herself and so, good. Yes, she was scared, yes, she moved forward in the face of fear, and it really helped her to to keep building on that.
Which brings us to the third way, which is to use low stakes channels. So by this I mean Slack or email, kind of more private one on one threads. For Leslie, for example, I found that Slack was her game.
Not even me stopping by her desk to talk to her, that kind of panicked her a little bit. She was so shy, but if I would send her a slack message like, Hey, what do you think of the problem we talked about in the meeting, she would send me back these bombs of amazingness that 9 out of 10 times I would end up using because she was so thoughtful and probably because she was such a good listener, she was able to really understand the problem and give a good solution. So you've got these women on your team, you probably already know who they are, and these are the ways to get them to start to speak up more and use their voice, and .
And basically move themselves forward. OK, let's move on to number 3. This one is helping women grow their earning power.
So let me read a story to you. It's it's performance review time and you sit down with rockstar member Bridget. She's smart, reliable, gets along with everyone, and your clinic would fall apart without her.
And you say, Bridget, you've done an amazing job this year. We couldn't have pulled off surgery schedule revamp without you. Clients love you, your team respects you, and we're so lucky to have you.
She blushes, smiles politely and says, thank you. I really love being here. I just want to keep learning and helping however I can.
And then nothing. No mention of money, no question about a raise, nothing. Well, this happened to me because this is Bridget right here.
I cannot run my clinic without Bridget. She is amazing and She never asked me for a raise. She just never did.
Neither did Barbara, neither did Karen. There's Jessica again, she didn't. Tara, Lisa, Doctor Jessica, kinda sorta, Marianne kind of sorta.
Doctor Randy absolutely asked me for raises. So you have to ask yourself, what's going on here? Why are women making less than men?
I mean, that's a proven fact. I think a lot of it has to do with not asking for more money, and when we do ask for more money, we're not strong about it. We're meek about it and easily shut down.
That's been my experience with managing women and I think when we look at the differences to why men can do this so much better than women, here's some facts. Men tend to overestimate their value while women tend to underestimate it. When men assume they're worth more and women feel the need to prove they're worth more.
And men are just way more direct in asking for a raise while women wait to be noticed. So I have this housekeeper, Jennifer. I'm so lucky I have a housekeeper, you guys.
I, she started working for me about 3 years ago. She comes to my house every other week and she does all the awful things that I hate doing like. Cleaning the floor, mopping, cleaning the bathrooms, wiping down all the doors where the dogs put their noses and smudge on everything.
And she had charges me $90 like $30 an hour, takes her 3 hours, and she charged me that for the last 3 years. And I asked her the other day, I said, Jen, what's your new fee schedule for 2025? And she's like, what are you talking about?
And I said, well. You've charged me the same thing for 3 years. Do you not ever raise your fees?
And she's like, oh no, I don't think so. And I said, why not? Why is this that you don't do it?
And she said, Well, because I feel like people are struggling enough, they don't have, I, I don't want to be a burden. I'm like, you don't want to be a burden. Like you're providing a luxury service.
And everybody else on the planet is raising their fees, so you need to raise your fees at least $10 an hour. I, I said, you need to raise your fees every year. What's the worst thing that can happen?
Somebody might say they can't afford it, and then you could roll it back if you had to, but what if everybody accepted your fee increase and you made more money for your life and your family. And she just laughed and kind of looked down and just thought I was nuts. And I said, OK, I don't want you to answer the question now, but I'm going to text you later and I'm gonna ask you what your fee is for 2025 and you come back to me with your new rate.
And so I did that. And so she couldn't go to $10 more an hour. She went $5 but thank the Lord, she did that.
So now she's charging me $35 an hour. And I think she's a classic example that that women just tend to kind of underestimate what they're worth or they need to feel the need to prove it while men don't feel that so much. And it's not our fault, right?
If you think about money. We have This is a scary fact. Let me share this with you.
I just learned that I was born in, well, I knew I was born in 1971, but I just learned that the time difference between from the year I was born to now is the same time difference from 1971, the year I was born to 1917. Like that's a frightening fact. So I don't feel like I'm that old, but when you think about how far women have had to come with money in that time frame, It's no wonder we're not that good at it.
And it wasn't even till 1974 they passed a law where women could get a credit card without having it co-signed with a man in it. That didn't even like really go into effect where people started doing it until the early 80s. So we aren't that, we don't have that much time in the saddle talking about money.
So one of the things you can do to help empower women here is normalise the money talk. And just bring it up and ask them, hey, have you thought about your next salary goal? Let's work together and plan to get you there.
And maybe they're nowhere near getting a raise because they're slacking or they're not, you know, doing the job you need them to do, but this is a way for you to have that conversation now and say, OK, you want to make X? Here's what I need you to do. Which brings us to number 2, which is show the ladder, like publish the growth ladder at your job and spell it out, you know, at my clinic, I had veterinary technician level 1, level 2, level 3 with a pay band on each one and the skills you need to get up the chain, and now we all know where we're going.
This helps women to see if they want to go that next step, at least they know how now, and they don't have to just wonder and guess if you're magically going to bestow a promotion on them because they haven't had the guts to ask about it. And lastly, I think it's so important if you can do this for your team, is build in financial literacy into the team development. So bring somebody in from the bank, bring somebody in from the financial planning office in your community, have them give a quick talk on how 401ks work, how the stock market works, what are the key financial things you should have in place as a woman to protect your portfolio.
You could do one a month for a whole year, and when you do this, women are going to listen, and they're not going to ask about it because they feel dumb. They feel like this is the stuff they should already know, they feel intimidated by it, but it's not their fault. You just haven't been exposed to money as long as men.
So when you can empower them this way, it's going to make a big difference in their big financial outcome in their life. OK, moving on to #4. You want to show appreciation in ways that matter, and let me read you a little story here.
She's your go to. She stays late. She never calls in sick.
She picks up the tough tasks without complaining. You've given her the biggest raise on the team. You've handed her Starbucks cards and told her she's appreciated.
So when she gives notice, you're shocked. In her exit interview, she says, I haven't felt very appreciated, and you think, what, how can this even be? Well, it turns out she didn't need more coffee cards.
She needed to come in later so she could get her kids to school without guilt. You had no idea, and by the time you realised it, she was gone. I hope this doesn't sound familiar to you, but unfortunately, it probably does.
And the problem is here, I think some of the key differences between the way men and women operate is men are just more comfortable sharing their accomplishments, and women tend to be more modest, hoping that the work will speak for itself and that you'll notice as the boss what they're doing and then you'll be able to bestow the proper appreciation on them, which as a boss is really hard to do. This could not be illuminated more than on the golf course. So I want to tell you guys, I play a lot of golf.
I'm on a women's league and I also play a lot with my dad and my husband and some of the other bros in the area. And, OK, here's the key difference. A guy will hit a great drive off the tee box and they will say, I crushed it.
I nailed it. Look at that baby go. A lady will hit a killer drive off the tee box and she will say that was super lucky or you're not going to see that twice.
And this is in summary, the key difference between how men and women view their accomplishments. So men are just more. Comfortable advocating for themselves on their accomplishments than women are.
And when you're looking at appreciation, it is not a one size fits all. So some women might want to shout out in the meeting. Some might want a new challenge put on their plate.
Some might want a note, a Friday off, more flexibility, more autonomy, less on their plate. It varies, and you have to figure out what it is, because if you don't ask, you're going to end up giving the wrong kind of thanks. So I have a quick question for you guys in the chat.
What is the most meaningful recognition you've ever received at work? My team telling me I was the best manager they ever had when I left my previous clinic. Oh, that's a big one.
A reward and recognition for a few years in a row. Our doctor announcing to the entire staff and their families that he would. Be unable to run the business without me.
Wow, that's great. Those are really nice, you know, you've got to find out what makes people tick. I have had a key employee, Karen, this girl, man, I couldn't live without her, right?
And You know what I did when she went above and beyond and when she did things that I never asked her to do is I started putting money in her kids' 401k. And that's thinking, I feel like that's thinking out of the box and the only reason I knew to do this is because I knew she was trying her hardest to save money to put her kids through college because they were little and it, it was the thing she was doing to justify her being at work instead of at home. And she loved her job.
She's amazing in her job, and I don't at all want to say that these two things cannot coexist with the same amount of force. You want to be a successful in your job and you want to be successful as a mom. Like those are two.
They those things happen at the same time. And so a way for me to really recognise her was to put money in the thing that she was working towards. And so it brings us to, you've got to ask what your employees want.
So you can do things like this, just, just drop it in the one on one and say, OK, in the future, when you do great work, what kind of recognition means something to you? It's very likely that she's going to say, I don't know, or whatever you typically do is fine for me. And just realise those are condition statements that she's been trained to have like a robot.
So you might have to push her a little and say, well, some people love public recognition, others like a quiet thank you or a reward like time off. What were, what would you like if it was you and push her because she has an answer. I promise you, and your job is to get it out of her.
The second thing you can do is recognise that, recognise the outcomes and not the attitudes per se. So, You don't want to be complimenting people for like being nice and being a team player and being positive. I think those are just platitudes that should be a no brainer.
You want to praise her for being smart, being driven, being delegating things for decisions she made on certain projects, you want to really focus on the work. And the last one here is a little bit different, but I want you to stop rewarding burnout behaviour. Women are taught and trained to burn the candle at both ends, and you do not want to reward that.
You want it instead, when she does call in and takes a day off, when she does leave the office early to go pick up a family member, do something for herself, when she Does set boundaries that you praise that you let her know that that is what real leaders do is they take care of themselves. And there's so much guilt that goes on for women when they do those sorts of things, and when you're the boss and you're able to reaffirm that that was the right decision, they're gonna feel really good about that. OK, let's get on to the next one.
I felt a little hesitant if I should drop this in here, but I decided, you know what, this is real world and I'm a real woman, and we're going to talk about the 5th thing that you can do to empower women in the workplace is address women's health issues. So let me read you this little story. She's one of your most reliable team members.
She's sharp, steady, a natural leader. Lately though, she seems foggy. She's missing small details, she's struggling to focus, and maybe even stepping back from things she used to own.
You chalk it up to stress or burn out, but what if it's something else? You know, I took over running my team when I was about 35 years old, and I had no idea that menopause was a thing until it hit me like a freight train about 7 or 8 years ago, and now I know the women I was managing on my team were going through this. They were experiencing.
Mother Nature, our our the gift we never asked for, right? Untreated menopause can bring brain fog, sleep loss, anxiety, and energy dips, not even to mention the internal torching of hot flashes, . We don't get a break from this.
Some women appear to have less of a, affliction, if you want to call it that, than others. But I think for the most part, we've been conditioned to suffer silently from our mothers and from our grandmothers. In fact, I told my mom I was talking about this in the talk and she kind of like, oh my God, I don't think that's a good idea, Stacey.
But I think it is a good idea because it's happening. And there's, if you're on. TikTok, there's a funny, huge movement right now.
It's called We Do not Care Club. It's WDNC Club, and they got like a million followers in 3 days, and it's just women talking about the things they don't care about anymore because they're in menopause. The other thing that women have to deal with is the baby, and we didn't choose to carry the baby, right?
Biology designated this, they set that up. So this means that in order for the human race to continue, women have to tap out for a little bit and have a baby. They've got to grow it inside of them, they've got to deliver it, and then they've got to get it set up for survival.
So we gotta make room for that, you guys. We've got to embrace that and make sure that they're set up for success when biology attacks. And I try to think of a men versus women on this, but to be honest, there is no male equivalent that I can think of to male menopause or pregnancy.
The closest thing I can think to describing this to my husband is like, imagine. Someone, you know, put lit a torch inside of you for 3 minutes and at any, any place you were, any time of day, you can maybe, maybe that's scratching the surface of what a hot flash feels like. So how do we support women on this?
Number one, we normalise the conversation. I think management needs to realise that women's health is a workplace conversation, and we need to say things like, if anyone needs flexibility for health reasons, pregnancy, menopause, or otherwise, let's talk about it. Number 2, we need to offer flexibility without penalty.
We need to allow flexible schedules, offer micro breaks. I remember I worked at this job once and a lot of the people were smokers. And I so wanted to take up smoking, right, just so I could get a smoke break because it seemed like it was not at all taboo to be like, where's Sarah?
Oh, she's out having a smoke break. OK, we all sit around and wait till she's done. If I just go as a non-smoker and sit at my desk and say, oh, Stacey's having a a personal break, like that's kind of frowned upon, but a smoke breaks fine.
We need to bring in this kind of micro break for people without thinking they're slacking. And then the last thing is, as management, we can bring education into the workplace because a lot of women don't even know that there are treatments for menopause. It's very, very recent that we've started to discover that the treatments don't cause the cancer like they thought, and there are now women researching this instead of what's traditionally been men researching menopause and how to endure it.
And so find a health professional in your community. Maybe it's a nurse practitioner or an OB doctor or a women's health doctor that will come and just give educational talks to your team about women's health issues. They can talk about menopause and various treatments for that.
They can talk about what to do if you want to have a baby. You just give this conversation kind of some Time on the schedule and I the women are really going to appreciate this. What do you guys think of this?
Am I out in left field or am I hitting on something we should be talking about? I'll give you a second to answer me in the chat. Stephanie, OK, agrees.
We get a loving it. Yes. All right.
Here's what not to say though, and this is for maybe the guys in the room, you never want to go up to a woman and go, are you going through menopause or are you pregnant? Like, just don't, just don't do that. I just wanna give you that little public service warning that will not go well for you if you do that.
OK, guys, we are at the end of the presentation and I'm going to stick around and offer answer Q&A live if you've got any questions, but while we're getting set up for that, I want to tell you a couple of things. First off, I want to thank Stephanie and Vetland for hosting this, . Thank you for bringing this product to market.
Embedded antibiotic therapy and wounds seems like something that should already exist. I'm so glad you're doing that. If you are interested in more girl power stuff or basically how to get past traditional norms that have been placed on you, I've got a book on Amazon called Stop Acting Like a Girl, and I wrote it for my nieces, so it's a very quick read.
I realised, and there's no cursive in the book, there was, and I had to remove it because I realised my nieces can't read cursive, . I also have a podcast. It's on all the big podcast channels.
It's called Everyday Wonder Woman. So come check that out. It's really fun.
I'm interviewing just badass women that are regular women that have done amazing things, and you can come and hear their story. If you feel comfortable, put a question in the Q&A. If you prefer, you can scan that QR code and ask me a question privately, or if you want a copy of these slides, you can also scan that QR code in and order that up.
So, thank you for being here and Stephanie, do we have any questions? We do. First, I just want to say thank you.
That was awesome. And, to remind everybody, we're gonna do a follow-up communication to everyone after this, and you will have an opportunity to actually win one of your books. So, great.
Yeah. So one question we got, was, I find it difficult to help my team. I am very limited as the head nurse to be able to give them more things to do.
Higher management and being in the university a lot is not up to me. So maybe any ideas you would have for people who don't themselves feel empowered to empower their team. Oh yes.
One thing I found when I was super busy in the thick of things, I didn't have time to go around and talk to everybody, and I didn't have the resources to do that myself. So I made this form on Jot form, which is a free service, by the way, and that if you scan that code, it's, it's gonna take you to a jot form, J O T F O R M. And I made this little check-in.
Document that it's a URL basically, and I ask questions like, how's it going for you? What's something I need to know that you're working on right now or struggling with right now? How can I, what's one thing I can do to support you more right now?
And I also had a rating, like, tell me how you are feeling for the week. Like, what's your mental health, physical health score you give yourself for the week? And it was like 1 to 1010, I'm, I'm up for anything, or 1, I'm barely hanging on.
And man, this was so helpful for me. I'd send it out every Monday morning to my team. I think they liked it better than me asking them because they could be real.
And I also have some things like what did you do last weekend just so I could get an idea of where their head was, but. I also could see who on my team was drowning and who was up for extra. So I, if I had something come in that needed to be assigned to somebody on the team, I knew who to go to then, and the team really liked it because they were able to feel like they could cover for each other without having to look weak or say I'm, I'm dying here.
And I also knew who to go to if I felt it needed a little extra one on one. So I would recommend doing that if you're kind of strapped on time and resources, but you still want to give, give, have a ability to have a good deep connection with the team members. I, I don't know, I, I don't know if girls just like it more than guys, but the women on my team really loved it.
It's a great idea and also to this person's question. If you put a survey out like that and you get responses from people, you now have written data for management to see that might help with getting this person as a head nurse the resources they need to do something for their team. Yeah, absolutely.
If you hear week after week that the same department's drowning. Like, yeah, it's kind of a no brainer now, and yes, that's so such a good point, Stephanie. I thought of that, that you have now some data to show that this isn't just one week, one person's view.
This is an ongoing glaring problem in the systems. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, we're actually up on time, so, I'm just gonna stop here and say thank you to you, Doctor Santi.
Thank you to Vetland for sponsoring. We were happy to do so. And thank you to everyone who attended.
We really appreciate you taking the time to, to think about this. It's an important topic for your team and for the success of everybody on it. The recording of this webinar and the CE certificates will be available in 24 hours' time, and I hope everyone has a wonderful evening.
All right, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate you coming and thanks a million to you, Stephanie. My pleasure.
