Frustrated after a shift? A veterinary leadership coach says the issue may be an expectation gap

Why do so many workplace frustrations in veterinary medicine feel hard to explain? Building on last week’s episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, delve deeper into the hidden cost of unspoken expectations—how assumptions, unclear standards, and mismatched “mental bars” quietly erode performance, relationships, and culture. Together, they unpack why resentment is often a signal of unmet expectations, how identity can get tangled up in competence, and what practical steps veterinary professionals can take to create clarity, agreement, and healthier team dynamics.

Partial transcript:

Shaw: When you're talking about the challenges and the feelings of this mismatch in expectations and communication, some of the time, it can feel really personal. Why does it feel so personal sometimes when this happens?

Edwards: Yeah, it definitely can feel personal, and that's part of the reason why we get upset and blame other people. When we look at high-achieving professionals—which the majority of people in veterinary medicine and in every role fall into that category—we start to sometimes equate our competence with our identity. Who we are starts to equal what we know and how well we can do what we do. When someone is behaving differently than what we have said is our internal standard, or our standard for the practice, and that is not met, disappointment arises in the form of frustration and annoyance. It can feel personal and start to trigger thoughts like, "Why am I the only one holding the bar up around here?" or "How come I'm the only one who cares? Why do I care more than everybody else does? Why am I the only one carrying this whole team and this whole practice?"

Of course, that's rarely true—those generalized statements—but in the moment, it can start to feel that way because other people are not upholding the standard or the expectation that you have. It feels like they just don't care and that it doesn't matter. What happens is it starts to lead to a lot of blame and maybe even a victim mentality, as if almost like they are doing something to you and there's nothing you [can] do about it. But the truth is that while you're upset because a person isn't upholding the bar, the vast majority of the time, they don't even know that there is a bar. Or they know there's a bar, but it's this constantly fluctuating bar that they don't really even know what it means or what it looks like....