508 Transcript

Dr. Sharp: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Testing Psychologist podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharp, licensed psychologist, group practice owner, and private practice coach.

Many of y’all know that I have been using TherapyNotes as our practice EHR for over 10 years now. I’ve looked at others, and I just keep coming back to TherapyNotes because they do it all. If you’re interested in an EHR for your practice, you can get two free months of TherapyNotes by going to thetestingpsychologist.com/therapynotes and enter the code “testing.”

This episode is brought to you by PAR.

PAR offers the SPECTRA: Indices of Psychopathology, a hierarchical-dimensional look at adult psychopathology. The SPECTRA is available for paper and pencil assessment or administration and scoring via PARiConnect. Learn more at parinc.com/products/spectra.

[00:01:00] Hey, y’all. Welcome back to The Testing Psychologist podcast. Glad to be here with you as always, and I’m excited to be talking to my guest today. This is a return guest, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper.

I love Tara. The last episode that we did was just so fluid and easy. Tara’s one of those internet friends who I met online through some Facebook group. She commented on one of my posts and then we messaged back and forth a little bit, ended up meeting and talking about business stuff. It was an instant connection. I don’t know if y’all have people like that.

So Tara is back. I’m glad to have her back. This is one of those episodes where nothing was really scripted. We just trusted in the ability to roll with it and have a conversation about leadership, practice ownership, life, journeys, growth and all those things. [00:02:00] I think it turned out pretty well. So I’d like to share that with you.

Just to provide a little more context, we did have a wide-ranging conversation. So we start in talking about how Tara and her family took the leap to go into full-time RVing or 5th wheeling, and how it’s impacted her leadership, her practice culture and her own mental health. So we talked about the experience of running a practice remotely, the evolving dynamics of delegating, the personal transformation that can come from letting go as a leader and many other things.

Tara’s a deep thinker. She’s pretty irreverent at the same time. So it’s a really nice mix, in my mind, of qualities that provides a pretty engaging conversation. I’ll warn you, totally on brand for Tara, there are some swear words in this podcast more than usual, so if you’re listening with little kids in the car or [00:03:00] ortherwise, and don’t want to broadcast the swearing, consider this your warning.

If any of you are practice owners out there and if you’re looking for leadership support, Tara is a great person for that. You can check out links in the show notes. She has a website, taravossenkemper.com, check it out.

And if you’re testing person specifically and want help with building a practice or scaling your practice, you can check out my stuff as well. I offer strategy sessions and I’m always building a wait list for the next cohort of mastermind groups, which are group coaching experiences. You can check those out at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting.

So with all that said, let’s transition my conversation with Dr. Tara Vossenkemper.

[00:04:00] Tara, hey, welcome back.

Dr. Tara: Hi. Thanks, Jeremy. Good to see you.

Dr. Sharp: Yes, good to see you as well. Your life circumstances have changed a little bit since the last time I had you on the podcast. I think back then you were preparing to go on the RV trip or 5th wheel trip.

Dr. Tara: Yeah, I was.

Dr. Sharp: And now you’re there.

Dr. Tara: We’re officially here. We’re RVing around the country. Thank God my husband does the planning. He’ll look in advance. He’ll route out the destinations and make sure there’s stuff to do around there. I don’t do that at all. I just look at the site that we’re going to, and I’m like, yeah, that site looks good. We might be 35 miles from anything. Well, the site’s pretty, it’s safe, it’s good to go. So he does that part, and then I go through and book stuff. So we’re officially on route.

Dr. Sharp: That’s amazing. I assume it seems like [00:05:00] anybody I know who does that, somebody has to be the full-time project manager or whatever, the itinerary person, otherwise it gets complicated, irritating and stressful.

Dr. Tara: Yeah, that works out well because it’s like he has more parameters around the locations; where we’re going. He’ll look at the crime statistics, he’ll look at the things for kids to do, family friendliness. And for me, I’m like, I don’t care at all. Of course, I value those things, but I literally will just get the site and look at the reviews for the site, and then it’s good.

So now he does that part, and then I’ll go through behind him in the city that he has indicated, yes, this is a good city, this little area I’m going to go through and buy insights that are right there. So it’s worked out well because that to me is the heavy lifting. Going through and getting shit booked is tedious, but it’s doable. It’s easier.

[00:06:00] Dr. Sharp: I got you.

Dr. Tara: And all the planning, no, thank you.

Dr. Sharp: It sounds like y’all are pretty good team. You’re finding your groove here.

Dr. Tara: Finding the groove. It didn’t start out that way. It’s a little bit of argument, a little bit of conflict about it.

Dr. Sharp: Oh, for sure. I’m going to ask you a bunch of RV questions now, and then we’ll talk about business and practice management. The folks I know who do the RVing had at least two to three months of complete chaos, figuring out how to park the RV, set up the RV, balance the RV. I know you have a 5th wheel, I’ll acknowledge, this is not an RV, but the whole setup, making camp, what goes where and when do you empty this, all that stuff. Did y’all have to go through all of that?

Dr. Tara: Weirdly enough, no. I don’t know if it’s because we have 5th wheel. [00:07:00] For whatever reason, that part is so easy for both of us. The very first time we did it, it was not, we had somebody that was there. Thank God for the camp host who was there because he was like, oh yeah, do this, do this.

He walked us through because we went into this totally blind. And by totally blind, I mean literally, we had never done anything like this before, either of us, ever, which is so ridiculous. So we go into it.

Our 5th wheel auto levels. So it’ll level itself out, which is incredible. But even after that, it’s hook up hose, hook up electric and turn it on, hook up the poop line, the sewage, the black tank the drain. And then you can tell every few days, you drain the black tank. There’s seamless types of tanks.

That part has been really seamless. I think I expected it to be worse. It’s pretty easy. And even getting it hooked up to the truck in order to tow it, it’s [00:08:00] easy. We’ve got a 5th wheel. It’s a trailer hitch in the back of the truck. So not at the base of the trailer, at the back.

Dr. Sharp: Is that a gooseneck? Is that what they call it? Is it a gooseneck?

Dr. Tara: Honestly, I would tell you yes, but I’d be lying. I don’t have any idea what it is. I have no idea. It might be. You probably know more than I do, but that part’s easy. Hauling it easy.

Dr. Sharp: It just works.

Dr. Tara: Yeah. We use a trucking app, so then we know that the routes are going to be big rigged friendly because it not going too straight. So it’s a desert.

Dr. Sharp: Oh my gosh.

Dr. Tara: We’re not talking semi-truck sized but it’s pretty big.

Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. Of course, there are apps to manage all of that.

Dr. Tara: I know there’s apps for everything, holy geez, in the RV world.

Dr. Sharp: That’s awesome.

Dr. Tara: It’s cool. I will say, the worst part is getting everything cleaned up to move. That’s a part [00:09:00] that’s more in a pain in the ass because …

Dr. Sharp: Oh, yeah, because you’re constantly packing, unpacking, cleaning and that kind of thing.

Dr. Tara: We move every, on average, every two to four weeks. And so we’re not boxing things up or anything like that, but it’s just like the bathroom. I take the stuff off some of the shelves and I’ll literally lay it in the shower on top of two towels, and then there’s that.

So it’s not anything that takes a crazy amount of time. We have three small kids for anybody listening, and so it’s doing all the dishes, trying get the laundry caught up, and then trying to get some things packed. It takes two hours to get everything packed, the slides pulled in and all the stuff disconnected, but once we get there, we’re usually set up in no more than a half hour. Okay. Everything’s unpacked, loaded, leveled and set up. So [00:10:00] effort’s easier than I thought it would be, which is a relief.

Dr. Sharp: I would imagine, geez. kudos to you for leaping into a complete unknown adventure and just doing it. That’s the opposite of my personality.

Dr. Tara: That is tough.

Dr. Sharp: I plan this for two years and then still take six months to make it happen.

Dr. Tara: Take a while to do it. Oh yeah, God. It was probably two weeks of talking and then buying a rig, and then everyone thought, our families were like, you guys are fucking nuts. You’re going to hate this. But we don’t. Even the kids, it’s been awesome. It’s hard in different ways, but it’s been more awesome than what we were doing. It’s like a net positive compared to what we were waiting for.

Dr. Sharp: That’s important, maybe the most important.

Dr. Tara: Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: Sweet. How’s it affected your practice? What’s it like to be a remote leader?

Dr. Tara: I don’t mean to have a [00:11:00] cop out answer, but it’s the same. I have two different answers. One is, on a day-to-day basis, on a functional basis, it hasn’t, because all of my work prior to that was remote. So the things that I needed to, basically, with two locations, I was only in there just to see people. I didn’t need to actually be in the physical space. All my work prior to that was pretty much at home anyway.

The one thing that was important to me, and this was very helpful, is the aesthetic of the office. And so I have a marketing director. She’s been with us maybe it’s been about a year. She helped me put together the new offices in December because we moved. We’re RVing at the same time. So that was crazy; that we moved office locations from a five to nine office suite, which was [00:12:00] nice.

And in that process I realized how much I trust her eyes and then I was able to say, oh, I’m going to have you do the walkthrough of the location on a monthly basis just to make sure things good. They look good, they feel good. Things are not out of place, craziest view or anything like that.

That was one of the things, weirdly enough, that I was most worried about is someone keeping up the visual of the practice. The actual, is the art crooked on the walls? Are the chairs all walky and nobody’s fixing it? Are pillows getting shuffled back how they need to be.

So she goes through and does that. Otherwise, I have people in all the right seats. My director of clinical operations is the one engaging with the clinical team on most of the time. My integrator is the one who oversees the operations team, and is my connection for my DCO. And so it’s like I already had these people in place and being able to physically step [00:13:00] away, it was easy.

So that’s one thing; functionally it hasn’t changed much. I will say what has also happened is that, I don’t know if it’s a result of the movement and just feeling lighter in life, rather than a stagnant pond, I feel like I’ve turned into a creek. There’s fluidity now to life. I feel like I’ve had breath added back into my system. You know what I’m trying to say.

Dr. Sharp: Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Tara: From there, I’ve also been able to feel things, I hate saying more clearly, but more clarity around my feelings and more insight into the business. And so that has been this indirect benefit for me that has [00:14:00] been really incredible.

Dr. Sharp: How do you make sense of that? What do you think’s going on that’s allowed or created that?

Dr. Tara: I think that what has been helpful is getting out of the rig. So I worked from home whenever I was back at the house, so literally having to leave and be separate from home is helpful. I think that’s one thing. So then I don’t hear anything that’s happening. I don’t hear my daughter. I don’t hear the kids. I don’t hear any dogs, any movement, none of it. That’s all gone.

The second thing is there is something about stagnation. There is something about being able to just move whenever we want to; we’re here for two weeks, we don’t like it, we leave early. Let’s go. It does feel like freedom.

I guess we’re tied to some things always. We’re tied to this thread. We’re tied to being able to pull it and go places, but we can go wherever we want to. Just knowing I can do that [00:15:00] helps me feel lighter. It helps me breathe easier.

My youngest is about to be two, and I feel like in the past year, when she hit one, I feel like in the past year I’ve really … Something about let go of some of the stuff around ownership and trying to delegate projects and roles as opposed to delegate tasks; I own a project but am delegating this tasks to you. Instead it’s, no, you just do that and then tell me what you’ve decided and I’ll help you if you need it.

Dr. Sharp: I love that. There’s a lot we could dig into there. I just want to maybe acknowledge that there is something, just the way you describe it. I don’t know if this will make sense, but I feel like sometimes I work better [00:16:00] when I’m on vacation because my mind is free. I’m not super stressed. I don’t have that emotional component of feeling like, oh, I get this done today. It’s more, oh, I’m energetic and in a new place, and I’m going to get into this and hammer it out for two hours, and it goes really well.

I don’t know if there’s something, I’m not sure exactly how to articulate it, if you’re getting a little bit of that every time y’all move, it’s like, oh hey, we get to go do something cool and we’re going to focus.

Dr. Tara: That’s so funny. Maybe there is something about that because there have been multiple times where I’ve heard everything is on YouTube, of course, but there’s people who will talk about full-time RVing on YouTube or their families or their couples or just individual people, and they’ll talk about how you’ll gain vacation weight. I don’t care about that piece, but this notion of feeling like you’re on vacation as you’re going do this, I have found sometime where I’m like, I don’t want to work. [00:17:00] I’m just going to do Wednesday.

Of course, there’s things that need to be done. There’s responsibilities that I have, but there is something around that piece. I don’t know what it’s. I don’t know if it’s freedom. The typical restraints aren’t there. And so your brain is allowed to operate in this new way that you might typically keep it contained whenever you are doing what’s “normal”. Your normal I mean not like you’re in a house versus the rig, literally whatever is your baseline or norm.

Dr. Sharp: I’m with you.

Dr. Tara: That’s so funny.

Dr. Sharp: It is interesting. Reminds me, I need to get out of town soon.

Dr. Tara: No, that’s alright.

Dr. Sharp: But you said something else that was really interesting to me and relevant for practice stuff, and that’s the distinction between owning projects versus tap.

Dr. Tara: Oh man. Yeah.

Dr. Sharp: Talk about that a little bit [00:18:00] more.

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Dr. Tara: So just this concept of delegation, just broadly speaking, thinking about delegation. If there is a thing that needs to be done, let’s say project A. For me, the project delegation is, hey, here’s project A. Here’s what it needs to look like, and you pass it over to somebody, and then that’s it. You give them what the outcome should be. You tell them, this is what I want it to look like. They do the rest.

Maybe you’re doing the bigger visionary conceptualization stuff. Here’s why you want it in place. Here’s what it needs to look like. Here’s some components that feel important, but bring it to life. And so [00:20:00] all of the ins and outs of figuring out how to do this thing and where it lives, then what measures there are associated with it? Who’s for responsible for it? How it gets integrated into the systems and processes which are already in place, all of that is in the project. That’s what the project was about, is figuring that stuff out.

That to me is project delegation. Somebody else is taking this idea and they are bringing it to life. They are embedding it, integrating it, et cetera.

The task delegation would be something like, here’s a project. Here’s what I want it to look like. I’m the one deciding for project A, all the steps. I’m the one figuring out, okay, who should own this. Then I might be telling my clinical director equivalent, hey, okay, we need to communicate this with clinicians. Let’s make sure we say X, Y, and Z. Okay. Hey, my integrator, we need to communicate this with operations teams. This is what I figured out.

I’m telling them what to tell these other people. They haven’t owned the project. They haven’t brought it to life. They haven’t owned it. They haven’t done anything with it other than they’re just [00:21:00] listening to me tell them what to do, but it’s their project. It’s like, no, that’s not really their project. It’s yours that you’ve created and figured out all the details for, and then you’re asking them to close it out by communicating to the appropriate parties. Does that make sense?

Dr. Sharp: It does. And this is, gosh, I forget the second part of this, it’s a difference. It’s like truly delegating versus just dictating maybe is the word.

Dr. Tara: Yeah. Sure. Even thinking every time somebody comes back to you with questions, whom should I go to? That’s the indicator for maybe you’re just task delegating. If somebody keeps coming back to you asking what do they do next? How does it fit? The more they come back to you asking questions about specifics for a project and the more you answer, that’s to me is reflective of task delegation. That’s not project ownership. You’re owning. That’s for them. That’s [00:22:00] not them owning the project.

If they have a question about something and your response is not, tell me what you think we should do and why. Helping them work through a problem is one thing, telling them what to do and solving it for them is leaning into task delegation. That’s just, I don’t want to be bothered. I love my people, but leave me the fuck alone also. You do what you need to do. Come to me when you need help. I don’t want to solve all the problems. I don’t have all the space for that in their lives. I don’t have the interest, honestly.

Dr. Sharp: That’s such a good point. I think this is where a lot of us get stuck, myself included. I’d love to hear your journey with this, but this I feel like has been hardest process in practice management is truly extricating myself from this day-to-day answering question, managing, getting involved with stuff.

And a lot of it, I’ll totally [00:23:00] own it, is my own I don’t know if you’d say lack of trust or need for control or something in that sphere. So I’m curious if you had to work through any that stuff. And if so, what was that like for you?

Dr. Tara: I definitely did. For me, I’m maybe on a bad day, I would say, neurotic and obsessive, and on a good day, I might say particular.

Dr. Sharp: Detail-oriented.

Dr. Tara: Yeah, detail-oriented. I know how I want the experience to be for people who interact with us. And so, gosh, this feels so layered because it’s like there’s this initial, anybody that interacts with the group, I know from the very point of them interacting with us, that that’s the start of their perception of us, that’s the start of the relationship.

So every single step from there matters. Even if person A is a part of [00:24:00] that step, they might think, this isn’t a big deal. It’s because you are one step in this whole ladder of experience with us. This whole tapestry that’s being woven. This whole story that people are living with us. You’re part of it. It does matter.

There’s something around, I’m not perfectionistic, which it might seem like I’m, I’m not, but I very particular. I don’t care if shit’s a mess at first. I know it’s going to keep evolving. But again, particular, every interaction we have does matter.

So I’m saying that to say some of it has been, I just don’t have the emotional capacity to care what the level of intensity that I was previously doing. I don’t have the physical time and space. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth. I don’t have it in me.

It’s like, fuck, I have three small kids. I don’t mean to just like, I’m a [00:25:00] parent, but I mean, it drains me. Parenting is draining in a very particular way where all of my care is oriented towards my family; my husband, my kids, my dog, our household, so to speak.

And so what I have left can we go over here but what used to be was that I had a lot more over here and not as much here because I didn’t have the same setup as what I do. And by over here, I mean back to my family. My family system was different.

So as that has evolved over the years, I think that my capacity has just diminished on this other side, but also I think that I truly I’m visionary in the sense that I don’t want to do the same thing all the time. I get so bored. I just want to pull my hair out if I have to do the exact same thing and have the same conversation, or onboarding, at first I’m so like, I’m going to do the onboarding. It’s going to be exactly like this. It’s got to be very [00:26:00] on point. And at some point I was like, I don’t want to fucking look at this handbook. I don’t care. Somebody else has to do this.

I’m not going to talk about it. I’m not going to train them well. I don’t even remember what our processes are because I’m not involved in the day-to-day as much as my integrator is at this point, or my director clinical operations is. I need to be out of this.

Maybe it’s a little bit lack of capacity. Also leaning more into the shit that I do well and less more out of the things that don’t like and don’t do well. And then it’s also the relationships with the people around me. On my leadership team, for example, have just continued to strengthen. And so we have these ongoing conversations around roles like who fit it at what, who’s not.

I remember years ago when my integrator first started, she wasn’t having her title at the time, and we were having an annual two [00:27:00] days away. I went somewhere, me and my clinical director, stayed the night. We had two-day vision planning session, which was awesome.

She said something to the effect of, I’m not sure if you trust me, not like that exactly, but basically, I’m not sure if you trust me. It’s like, oh my God. Because the clinical director role has always been just crystal clear for me, what it is, but at the time, the director of operations role was just so hazy. I don’t even know what this role is or what it should do.

And her saying that to me was like, oh my God. Yeah, that is 0% it. It’s only that this role is hazy. I don’t know where this ends. I don’t know where I end and it begins, or who should be doing what. I hate everything that’s in here, so I feel bad asking someone else to do it in a role.

And so hit off this conversation of, she would hate my role. [00:28:00] She’s like, I don’t want to do any creative things at all, Tara. I like that stuff that you hate. And so trying to embrace that somebody likes the stuff that I hate makes it easier to let go of.

So it feels like over the years all of that stuff has expanded. As my capacity was diminished and seeing the roles around me is getting more clear on what they did and what the responsibilities are, and being more clear and embracing, I just don’t like certain things and I really like other things. Communicating that with leadership, having them support it, and also want more in agency and empowerment, some ways, it feels like this giant not a boulder, maybe a snowball rolling downhill and getting bigger as it goes in the best way. [00:29:00] Sometimes in bad ways, but a lot of times in good ways.

Dr. Sharp: I like how you put that. I think this is a tough process. That point you made about having a hard time, I don’t know if you actually said this, maybe I’m projecting here, but I think a lot of people have a hard time envisioning others enjoying tasks that we hate.

Dr. Tara: Oh, yes, I did say that.

Dr. Sharp: I think that’s very hard. It’s hard to see past that and acknowledge or recognize that, oh my gosh, I hate this so much. How could somebody else enjoy this? But it’s so true. There is someone out there who is your perfect little lock and keys scenario where you do the stuff you like, they do the stuff they like, and it just fits together.

Dr. Tara: Yeah. And how they hate what you like. Even grappling with a big idea that has fuzzy edges and I can’t quite make [00:30:00] sense of it, I love that space. I want to grapple. I want my brain just to be able to flex in free form and be there, my integrator hates it. She doesn’t want any part of it, isn’t interested.

I don’t get it at all. I’m like, how do you not like this? This is abstract and it’s esoteric, and who knows what it’s going to become. The world is our oyster. She’s like, no, bitch, just tell me what to do. No, no, no, just give me a project. Thanks. I’ll take it from there.

Dr. Sharp: It’s wild.

Dr. Tara: It’s wild. Oh, I can’t imagine.

Dr. Sharp: It’s so funny. I know you’ve had a journey. You’re deep into the EOS system, which we have talked about, and I love and we did in our practice. I’m interested in the evolution. So it sounds great where you’re at now. I’m sure there are people listening and thinking, oh my gosh, I’d love to be [00:31:00] delegating things, extract it myself, and doing what I love and all of that. Was this a gradual process? Did you wake up one day and you’re like, this has to change. What did that look like?

Dr. Tara: I will say there are still things that I do that I don’t love. There’s stuff that haven’t been fully delegated. I feel like roles constantly evolve.

The EOS journey though, I had a painter come through, I was getting a bid on the space and I don’t know how it came up. We were talking about maybe just a little bit about business. You said something about traction and how great it was, and at that time I was like knee deep in reading everything I could. And so I read it and it just clicked. Immediately I was like, oh God, this is literally what I’ve been wanting. I had no idea existed or where to find it.

So from there, then I was introducing [00:32:00] that to my leadership team. No, actually it was implementing it backwards. I implemented it the wrong way. Basically, of my four people in my leadership team, one I got rid of, and then the other left, and then the other went down. I was like, I can’t do this right now.

And then I re-instituted the leadership team with my clinical director and then my, at the time, office manager or director of ops or something. And then from there, we implemented it in the right way. We did it in the order in which Gino Wickman lays out on page 63 of the book Traction, if anybody hasn’t looked in a while.

So the focus day and the two day. He lays it out in a very particular way. We did it. They did not push back, but after the fact they told me, I don’t really know if this was that great of an idea. And then everybody, once you’re in it, like oh God, this is simple. It going to make so much sense.

It was probably a year and a half of implementing [00:33:00] before I rolled it out to the entire team. Part of me rolling it out is that I detected some a little bit of a cultural powering down. I was like, we keep talking about these changes and what we’re working on, but I’ve never leveled with the full team about how we do this.

And so that was, God, I can’t remember if it was February 2023 or February of 2024. I had a mandatory full-day rollout meeting. We’re going to get together, eight hours. Everybody’s here. I’m catering food. It’s not optional. You must be here.

Dr. Sharp: Yes.

Dr. Tara: I spent the entire day, I created 100, which if you know me at all, this is brutal in and of itself, I created 100 presentations. It sounds a lot but it was little thing. It sounds way more than it was. We went over the entire skills EOS, how we’re operating, what we’re doing, what role they played and every component to EOS.

[00:34:00] That was huge for the entire team, but also I think as a leadership team, for us to feel more settled and grounded, and this is who we’re, and this is what we do. From there, I’ll say even up to date, I’m still reading stuff and I’m rereading it and I think, oh, we’re doing that slightly off. This is what that means.

I dig into this notion of with quarterly rocks. You know the quarterly rocks. These are 90-day goals you set. Usually set them at your quarterly meeting the very first time you set rocks. Whatever the most important priorities are for the next 90 days is before you do your two-day. We implement, we set rocks. It’s confusing because they don’t seem to be connected to what you’re building. Eventually, they become connected to what you’re building.

But the company rocks versus individuals, I did some more digging. It’s like, this is how these are teased out.

Got it. This is three months ago; I’m having this insight. [00:35:00] In the recent month, I’ve had, man, big insight about the integrator visionary relationship. So what you would expect out of an integrator and how this role really should be coming to life in conjunction with the visionary.

I heavily, I think I said this, I’m way more visionary than I’m integrator. I don’t do integrator well. It’s hard to do it. I almost feel like I can’t be bothered with this. There are so many more things to think about and do.

And so from there, I recently had a conversation with my integrator who just stepped on maternity leave. And so it’s like, when you get back, and this is a conversation that as we were talking, it was all really crystallizing for me in conversation with her, where I realized I need more out of this role. What we’ve been doing has been a good point, has worked and I’ve realized something’s off in the past two months, and now as we’re talking, it’s crystallizing for me further that I [00:36:00] actually need more, and I think this is what it should look.

I’m saying that to say even implementing it initially, it probably took a year and a half for it to feel like we’re doing it, longer for the full team to get it. And even still, we’re constantly, we as a group, me personally, leadership team, maybe the entire group, evolving me thinking about reading about trying to get better at this thing. I’m talking a lot, so I’m going to end there. Thanks. Hopefully, that’s helpful.

Dr. Sharp: And to see Tara’s TED talk.

Dr. Tara: Go on our website because they’re never going to post it.

Dr. Sharp: No, this is good stuff. I’m just thinking about all these different layers. I’ll latch onto this component of having a conversation with your integrator. That sounds like it could potentially be a hard conversation. How did that go? Was this an accountability thing like, hey, I [00:37:00] need you doing more, or is this more like, you personally, Tara, realized some things and you’re sharing your revelations. What was that like?

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Alright, let’s get back to the podcast.

Dr. Tara: Oh, that’s such a funny question. Before we started recording, for anybody listening, Jeremy and I were talking about, let’s just say forecasting; this notion of forecasting things. What I’m not good at is forecasting how things will evolve and how I’m going to feel over time. What I’m good at is trusting myself to talk about it as it’s happening and to evolve as we go. And this works. This is great. Sometimes and other times it’s just sucks.

So probably over the past few months in particular, I’ve had this growing sense of unease. Like something’s off, something’s not right. I don’t know what it [00:39:00] is. I’m myself frustrated about two things. And then it was with regard to my integrator.

I’ve that frustration, but then I question myself where I’m like, okay, but is it role alignment? She’s been operating within her role. She’s been acting out the responsibilities. We’ve defined it. Have I been clear enough about this? What have I said that would indicate she needs to be doing something else? How have we talked about this together? So it felt like I was growing sense of unease when I’m frustrated but there’s no shelf to place this package on and no way to unbox it and go through the inner workings of it.

So we met recently, we started talking. He asked me how I was and I was like, I’m okay. I said, I feel like there’s something off. I realized that it’s the language I use because what felt true and what I can firmly [00:40:00] stand in is that the role as it is, I need more from it.

And so I could say that comfortably, I need more from this role. What I can’t say and what I couldn’t say and what I didn’t because I’m not exactly sure, but we just started to dance around. I mean dance in a good way. We’re both tangling with distinct, maybe we’re grappling with it together instead of, I’m not coming at her necessarily, but it became a conversation around what I think that I need more of out of it, how I see her being more of a sympathetic part in maintaining the overall strategy of growth, he would be the person that is more connected to leadership team directly. And I would sit in that spot above her.

She would be the one to then say, Tara, we can’t do that yet. To tell me no based on stuff. So there’s something around, [00:41:00] and it probably coincides nicely with me continuing to want to step away, but I don’t want to be done with my practice. I don’t want to be selling it out. I don’t want that yet.

I love the people there. I want this to work well. I can’t continue in the same capacity that I’m at, and therefore it becomes, okay, this isn’t working. And then looking more at, what is the integrator role in starting to talk to ChatGPT, starting to read US worldwide. Tell me more about this integrator, visionary, dynamic and relationship. I want to look at that a little closer.

So I think I’m answering your question. So it became like, we’re talking about this together and I’m not necessarily dictating or telling her. And also, frankly, she hasn’t done anything wrong. There’s no, you’ve been doing this wrong, integrator. It’s, oh, I’m realizing that’s what this is. It’s our next iteration of the accountability chart. It’s [00:42:00] still hard though. It was hard.

Dr. Sharp: I’m always worried that if I have any kind of conversation like that, that folks are going to think I’m mad at them, disappointed with them, or something, even if I present it as the way that you described. But the underlying component there is the trust and the relationship that you’ve built. I like that the person is able to come back to you and say, Tara, I don’t think this is going to work this way, or we can’t do this, or we need the two way. The fact that it’s two exchange feels different and very cool.

Dr. Tara: I would say also, I’m assuming you do this as well, this isn’t trying to add you or something. Even in that conversation, we’re talking about it. [00:43:00] I feel relieved. I know this is new to her. And so I think I said, how are you feeling? How do you feel having this conversation? What are thinking? What’s coming up for you?

Honestly, my history is emotional caretaking. So when I talk about capacity to care about my team in the same way, it’s not there because all my emotional caretaking is now for all my kids and my husband. But my point is, I do, I care deeply. I want you all to be okay around me.

Whether that’s with me or not is moot. It doesn’t matter. But if I am having a conversation and if it might be perceived as hard in any way, shape, or form, I’m going to check in because this thing will happen regardless. What is most important to me in the process is that we are good. Like how are you? How do you feel? What do you need? You need support. We can process. Do you need space and time? [00:44:00] Any of it is fine, as long as you know that I do. I care about how you feel and how you’re doing with this.

So that’s what I mean. I assume you check in, how are you feeling with this? And if I’m constantly asking for feedback, which fuck, I think I do, and I hug my messenger if they ever honest with me, like her telling me years ago, I don’t know if you trust me, is like, oh my gosh:

1. Absolutely that’s not the case.

2. Thank you for fucking telling me this. I had no idea that’s how I was coming across. It’s definitely not the case.

It’s like all these little interactions over time have led to us being able to engage in that dialogue in a really trusted way. And it still is hard to do. It doesn’t feel good. I’m concerned about this, but it still has to happen.

Dr. Sharp: I’ve had a few of those interactions over the years that I’m super grateful for. I [00:45:00] think I get lost and lose track of how I am coming across or perceived. Our former assistant director, she was our integrator before we right sized the practice. She was my right hand person.

I remember her saying maybe a year after she started working with me, this was a long time ago, but we had a meeting and she essentially was like, do you like me? And I’m like, what? Yes. You’re amazing. What are you talking about do I like you? She’s like, I just can’t really tell. I’m like, oh my gosh, that makes me so sad. What is happening here?

Dr. Tara: I’m so curious why. Did you ask? Were there certain, you know what I mean?

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. I think a lot of it is honestly just that I didn’t give a whole lot of feedback in the positive sense. I wasn’t effusive about [00:46:00] oh, you’re doing great. I really appreciate this. I think this is exactly, like how you’re with the clinician, wherever.

I think since then I’ve tried to change that, both with my employees and my family, honestly, with my kids. I reflect on the kids’ stuff. In the past, if I don’t say anything, it means things are great, I’m content and let’s continue on. It’s two setting and that isn’t clear.

Dr. Tara: Are you the type of person that it’s also if I need positive feedback, I’ll just ask for it, but I don’t ever, I’m busy, I’m good. You know what I’m saying? Are you that type of person? Because I feel like I do the same thing where my feedback is going to be like, let’s look at the system and figure out where we can poke holes in it.

If there’s something that’s changed, I might be, oh shit, this is dope. That’s awesome. And then let’s keep going. [00:47:00] There’s more things to do, which isn’t that I don’t appreciate what we’ve done, but is that, do you all see the horizon? Let’s go. We’ve all of this stuff that we can work towards. We don’t need to waste time.

Dr. Sharp: This is a dynamic I think about a lot. This is a little bit different direction for us, but I’m curious where you fall on this continuum, but I think about this, on one end, it’s toxic productivity. And then on the other end, it’s ambition or something more positive.

I can totally just get locked into we’re just rolling. I don’t celebrate milestones necessarily. The goalposts are always moving. I don’t know if that’s what you’re getting at, but I can definitely fall into that where maybe we have a success, and that’s really cool, and I might say something, but then it’s like, all right, what’s next? Let’s get into it [00:48:00] and continue pushing.

Dr. Tara: I think that the quarterly meetings, for anybody listening like we have already talked about, I use EOS. Jeremy, I know you use EOS, I think you still use it to an extent, right?

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. We do.

Dr. Tara: Okay. At the quarterly meetings, we’ll go through and we review rocks. We are looking at to-dos on a weekly basis during our L 10 meetings. We are looking at scorecards. And so I feel like we’re able to reflect on what we did inherently, and have a tie end to where we are going.

I think there’s something inherently meaningful about that. For me, the why, of course, it’s existential. I love anything to do with death, anxiety and human condition. So that meaning making piece is like, oh, hell yeah, we did this and it’s connected here.

I don’t stay there long. I’m busy. I feel like on the inside sometimes I’m a juggernaut or a Tasmanian devil, or [00:49:00] there’s things. Because I think sometimes people conflate me doing this with me not appreciating or like we need more. It’s about more and more. It’s an excited oh fuck yeah. Alright, let’s keep going.

It’s more like that than it’s, I can’t see how we have hit goal posts. It’s just like, we hit the goal post like we said we would. So let’s go. We’ve got other goal posts we want to hit. I feel excited about that. This isn’t like I

don’t feel self-critical. There’s no negative anything in this for me, it’s just I tend to be more forward moving.

I’ve always been busy my whole entire life. I see it in my second born. Homeboy is always constantly moving. Literally, he’ll just stand there shaking his feet and his body, dancing. I’m like, Theo, bro, what are you? Stay in this area because he wants to move, mommy. And I’m like, oh my God, [00:50:00] kid. So I’m like, you need to go and be busy. Or like in Mike Myers, the Philip, the chocolate feel connected to the jungle gym, he’s steals chocolate and he runs off with it. That is me on the inside.

So I think that I’ve had people, this gets frustrating for me too because I remember having a therapist once say something to me, I don’t know what we were talking about. I said that I need, God, I know there’s Cal Newport in my brain, I promise I’m almost done.

He referenced something I was doing. He was like, you need to be productive, and pointed to perfectionism. I was like, this is session 3, I wasn’t totally sure if she could handle me. I can be intense. My emotionality can be a lot. I think fast. She was nice and she was smart, but I was too much for her. I could just tell, I was like, oh fuck, she’s [00:51:00] overwhelmed by me.

And she said something about I need to be productive. I remember thinking like, yeah, that’s not it though. I don’t need to be productive. I don’t need to produce something. And years later, I remember being turned off by her saying that because it was not accurate. That’s not how it was for me. It did not live inside me that way.

Years later, I’m reading Cal Newport and I remember at some point it was probably Deep Work because it’s my favorite book of his.

Dr. Sharp: So good.

Dr. Tara: So good. I referenced it last time I was on here. It’s so fucking incredible. Deep Work, a stellar book. I don’t know if it was in there or maybe it was in So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Maybe it was somewhere else. I don’t honestly remember. He writes about how, was it retirement or something, people with no problem to focus on are less happy.

My brain is happiest when I can wake up and then focus. I have focussed attention on [00:52:00] something that I’m grappling with. That is a way for me to feel settled. So it doesn’t feel like I have to be productive. It feels like my brain needs something to gnaw on, to actively contend with, and then I’m like, okay, now I can breathe.

So I think that in business, there’s just so many of those opportunities. There’s so many things you can gnaw on and think about, and ways to go. There’s so many options for that. I do think if that goes unchecked, and you get caught up in how fun it’s to gnaw, I’ll just keep speeding up.

So it can get to this point where I have to forcefully slow myself down, which is painful once I’m speeding up because speeding up is exciting, but then it turns into frantic, and then it turns into this intense hyperfocused working line [00:53:00] border collie that can’t lay still at the end of the day.

So I can reach this point of excessive, but I could see somebody looking and saying, well, that’s extreme productivity. And it’s, I think that that’s just a simplified way of trying to understand something you don’t relate to on the inside of your body because I know how it feels, and it’s not that.

Sometimes it’s not even ambition. It’s just a need to have this generative focus. I don’t even know what it’s going to turn into. Who the fuck knows. It might just be for me that I’m creating something. I don’t know. I think that there’s something around … Do you know what I’m saying?

Dr. Sharp: Yeah. I’m just processing through this. For myself, I’m trying to always comparing how does this fit for me versus what you’re describing. I might have a little bit more of that, I would maybe call it toxic product. Sometimes I feel like I need to be doing [00:54:00] something just to be producing something because that’s self-wort, value and all that kind of nasty stuff.

But then the majority of my makeup or whatever is what you’re describing, which is just like being engaged is enthralling. Being engaged in something; solving some kind of problem. I always think about my superpower to some degree is being able to solve problems, think of solutions, and figure things out. I wonder if that’s part of what you’re getting at.

Dr. Tara: I was going to say, to piggyback off what you just said though, you said something about self-worth being tied to productivity. There absolutely is a part of me, but there’s something around, so I’m going to say this and it doesn’t feel core in terms of a driver, but it does feel like it’s a layer.

[00:55:00] And I didn’t even think about it until you said that, there’s a sense of, I’m going to say enoughness, whether it’s for me or for the people around me. Is this enough? Are they going to be satisfied? So it feels like it ties in with that emotional care teaching piece, which is like, okay, but is it actually enough? Is this thing that I’m creating, is it enough? Is it valuable enough for people around me? Is it something that’s actually going to be beneficial?

Are they going to love this? Do they want to play a part? Whatever the questions are, they all come from that; enoughness as it ties in with emotional care taking. And then that can get lopped on top of me if we release this juggernaut energy and it doesn’t have a way of slowing down, that’s where it can get messy.

Dr. Sharp: I think sometimes, thank the universe that I have a wife and kids, because otherwise, I feel [00:56:00] I could just go, go, go whatever, 18 hours a day or something. I would have 20 businesses and probably, 1,000,000 different.

Dr. Tara: Yeah. Because why not?

Dr. Sharp: Because there’s a lot of problems solved, and it’s fascinating.

Dr. Tara: Have you been, God, no, I was going to ask a totally unrelated question, so I’m not even going to go ahead.

Dr. Sharp: Fair enough. We can pin that. What I was going to ask though is, I know there are probably a lot of practice owners out there who identify with what you’re describing. I was curious more about, like you said that you have to slow yourself down sometimes, how do you do that? Is that a conscious thing? Is it an accountability thing with other people? How do you rein it in and focus on the things that feel most important?

Dr. Tara: honestly, I have to bake it into my processes. I [00:57:00] have a felt sense for when it’s too much and I’ve gone too far, and I know the excited feeling of getting started and going that space between I’ve crossed the threshold.

It’s like if I’m thinking of a bell curve that curve that 64% in the middle, it’s all the same. There’s a threshold in there somewhere. I don’t know where it’s, so I literally use the people around me. My integrator will say, and I think in our last quarterly, we were talking about, or even my DCO, she’s known me for years at this point. There’s enough of a relationship and trust developed.

And I’ll invite it from my marketing director who we don’t have as long of a relationship. She’s also stepping into something and being a part of a system. And so I want her input. I want her to be able to see that and voice things.

I have to ask them; this doesn’t feel enough to me. Is this enough? Are we doing enough this [00:58:00] quarter, this year? And they’ll say, Tara, yes. That’s way more yes. And I like, I’m going to have to trust you because it doesn’t feel like it. All right, let’s go with that.

Or my home stuff, he’s come up with the analogy, metaphor, I literally never know the difference. They’re basically the same thing, but let’s come up with this. They’re both like, it doesn’t matter analogy or metaphor where he’s more of an alligator where he’s sitting and waiting for prey, sitting and waiting for something.

He might let something pass him by because it might be something else better so he’s still. He’s sitting and he’s waiting for the right thing to come through. And I’m like a pit bull. I’m going to latch and hold. That’s literally what they’re about to do, is latch and hold.

I’m like a pit bull with a high prey drive. I’m at the door and I’m going to get that rabbit, shake it like [00:59:00] crazy. He’s sitting back waiting, biding his time. It doesn’t matter if there’s 15 other prey animals running by this.

My point is I also have to defer to him sometimes because I know I can’t be trusted. I know that about myself. And so that threshold, I’m not going to see it until I’m way past it. It’s like the people around me have a part in honestly slowing me the hell down as well as the systems like the EOS.

Now we have an annual plan. We have quarterly rocks; this is the thing you’re doing; you’re not doing the thing that is going to happen in 3 years. No, do the thing right now because it’s connected.

Dr. Sharp: For sure. That was a nice limiting factor for me as well. I totally get that. Just having the accountability, the team, and you can look, it’s in black and white. It’s like we spent 8 hours, two months ago

deciding this is [01:00:00] what’s important. Why are you trying to steer off and do something else? That’s not part of the deal.

Dr. Tara: It’s like yell yourself doing this. Stay focused just do this thing as much as you might not want to. I get bored by it or sometimes I’m like, ugh, not this, okay, fine.

Dr. Sharp: For sure. It’s that old thing though, it’s hard to remember this, but I got to remind myself. It is somewhat comforting. That whole thing of like the whatever warrior who practices the same move for 20 years is more dangerous than someone who practices 20 moves for 1 year or something. I don’t know. You get the idea; being consistent, sticking with what you know and what you need to focus on. That’s going to be so much more powerful than …

Dr. Tara: Talent code, too. It’s like the Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code. I like the Culture Code best, but The Talent Code is really good. He talks about [01:01:00] where talent is. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but he talks about these isolated populations.

I always think about the music school example where people go and they play one note, and they draw it out. This note that might be like a quarter note and they’re drawing it out for tenfold counts or something. For me, that feels brutal to do sometimes a lot of the times. And even though I know this has to happen, it’s hard.

I’m hearing you say to an extent it’s the same. You have to keep telling yourself, no, no, no, 20 years, same move. That’s how you get really good.

Dr. Sharp: Totally. We are not going to talk about AI now, but we will later. What I will say though is, especially now, because it has opened so many doors for so many things. I’ve had to, [01:02:00] my little outlet for this kind of energy is almost like Google. I don’t know if you remember or heard, they have the X team or whatever; the folks who get to dedicate 10% of their work week to a special project to do whatever.

Dr. Tara: I have heard of this.

Dr. Sharp: I’ve started to build that into my schedule each week where I get an hour or two hours to work on my fun projects where I just get to go and mess with AI, try different things and write little program, and whatever. That’s a nice outlet. And it’s, at least at this point, it’s enough to keep the guard rolled up.

Dr. Tara: Yeah. The guard’s like bumpers where you’re rolling to. That’s funny. My question earlier was going to be about talking to ChatGPT, and if you started because those conversations will go deep if you let them. I think a lot of people are underutilizing it. It’s so [01:03:00] credible.

Dr. Sharp: I agree. I’m going to cut us off reluctantly because I feel that’s a whole, I want to go super deep into that, and we’re almost out of time. I love it. I’m messing around with it a lot, and that’s super cool. But this has been a lot of fun. Thanks.

Dr. Tara: Agreed. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for letting me coerce you into coming back onto your podcast.

Dr. Sharp: Anytime.

Dr. Tara: I’m like, Jeremy, can I come back on? Please? Thanks.

Dr. Sharp: You’re what? Like I said, open invitation anytime. It’s always a good conversation’s. So tell people, before we totally wrap up, what are you up to these days? If people want you to help them, how can you help them? That kind of thing.

Dr. Tara: I started a podcast. So that’s one thing. The Culture Focused Podcast. So all the things we talked about today; culture, EOS, employee engagement, organizational structure and health. [01:04:00] Specifically, for me, EOS, duh, that’s a big one, leadership, all of those things. Everything in my world centers around practice culture. It’s such a crucial part of growing a healthy practice, building one out, et cetera.

Anyway, the podcast is basically all of those topics through a culture-focused lens. It’s just me shooting shit by myself. I want you to come on at some point. I really want to do some guest interviews and have people come through and talk about similar concepts, leadership, EOS, culture, et cetera.

So I would say, you can go to my website, taravossenkemper.com. You can find the podcast on there. And then in terms of if you wanted to work with me, there’s always one-to-one consulting. I have a culture-focused membership as well, where I do one live month of Q & A one live [01:05:00] training.

So people get me live twice a month. Everything’s in a portal. There’s a private Facebook group, et cetera. It’s $60 a month for this ongoing access, and any resources I have. So if somebody was like, can you share your client logs? Yeah. Boom. Done. There you go. Any resource I have, I just put there, usually on demand or prn, because I just can’t update things consistently. I can’t, tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you, but I’m not going to put shit on there just because …

Basically, the website is where you could find more anything out, but the podcast in particular is new. I have, as of this recording, I think 18 episodes so far. So there’s a few that people can listen to.

Dr. Sharp: For sure. You’re bringing the fire back to culture. I love it. I feel like culture got played out for a little while. It’s like, oh, that’s your culture, and all that stuff, but it’s bringing the [01:06:00] meaning back.

Dr. Tara: Its meaning and intention. That’s what it feels like. That’s what it’s. It’s like how do you do this in a meaningful way not just paid lip service or say this is your value. How do you live out these things? I’m not going to start; I’ll just keep going. Sorry. We’re wrapping things up, Tara. We’re not opening this door.

Dr. Sharp: Hey.

Dr. Tara: It’s me. Look at me reigning myself in.

Dr. Sharp: It just happened. We just saw it.

Dr. Tara: It’s good. I know. Check me out. I can catch it sometimes. I know.

Dr. Sharp: Well, great to see you. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Tara: You too, man. It’s good to be here. Thanks.

Dr. Sharp: All right, y’all. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Always grateful to have you here. I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life. Any resources that we mentioned during the episode will be listed in the show notes so make sure to check those out.

If you like what you hear on the podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever [01:07:00] you listen to your podcasts.

And if you’re a practice owner or aspiring practice owner, I’d invite you to check out The Testing Psychologist mastermind groups. I have mastermind groups at every stage of practice development; beginner, intermediate, and advanced. We have homework, we have accountability, we have support, we have resources. These groups are amazing. We do a lot of work and a lot of connecting. If that sounds interesting to you, you can check out the details at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting. You can sign up for a pre-group phone call and we will chat and figure out if a group could be a good fit for you. Thanks so much.

The information contained [01:08:00] in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.

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