Keynote speaker provides tips on building successful veterinary teams
Dr. Jason Coe says the quality of all relationships across the veterinary practice drives performance
By Ashley Mayrianne Champagne
Dr. Jason Coe has dedicated his career to researching the key to building successful veterinary teams.
Time and time again, the evidence underscores a similar theme: relationships.
During his keynote presentation at the 2026 AVMA Veterinary Economic and Business Forum, held virtually October 7-8, he invited attendees to start by getting to know their colleagues on a deeper level.
“Our geography, beliefs, values and views are all what we bring to the table,” said Dr. Coe, Mars Veterinary Health chair in relationship-centered veterinary medicine at the University of Guelph Ontario Veterinary College. “All of us bring a different perspective based on our lived experience.”
The power of positive relationships
How veterinary leaders engage with their staff affects team wellbeing and job satisfaction. Team dynamics also impact efficiency, practice revenue, and retention, he said.
For example, associate veterinarians who believe their immediate leader values their personal and professional success are more likely to remain with the organization over the next five years, according to data from the 2026 AVMA Census of Veterinarians.
Those same individuals also report higher levels of job satisfaction when their leaders routinely show that their work matters and provide clear expectations and meaningful control over how to meet them, the data show.
In contrast, toxic team environments have a higher rate of burnout, especially among veterinary technicians, Dr. Coe said. Burnout has a notable economic impact, costing the veterinary profession an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion each year.
Implementing change must be done on an organizational level, he advised.
“My concern is if we give individual resources but we don’t address the source of the problem, the culture, the environment of the veterinary practice that is leading to burnout … then we’re not going to get ourselves further ahead,” he said.
Relational coordination
Dr. Coe presented the relational coordination theory, which focuses on how interdependent roles are managed, regardless of the individuals within each role.
The theory operates on relationships built on shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect, he explained. These relationships should enable communication that is frequent, timely, accurate, and problem-solving.
“That communication then builds the relationship and this is a self-fulfilling process that really leads to coordinated work,” he said.
Industries that face high levels of uncertainty, time pressures, and interdependency in delivering the work they do tend to benefit the most when implementing relational coordination, Dr. Coe said.
“There are a huge number of relationships that exist within the veterinary practice and it’s that interdependency and how we work together that really allows us to achieve,” he said.
Every practice is its own ecosystem, with its own strengths, opportunities, and needs, Dr. Coe said.
While there is no “blanket solution,” he introduced fundamental concepts that can be considered across practices:
- Create shared goals and reward performance as a team.
- Share knowledge across roles, including veterinary technicians, veterinary assistants, and client service representatives, through cross training when appropriate.
- Define clear job responsibilities with flexible boundaries.
- Hire candidates who demonstrate a team-oriented mindset and train current team members on teamwork.
Implementing these concepts can help keep the focus on team problem-solving and reduce finger-pointing, communication breakdowns, and a “that’s not my job” culture, he said.
Dr. Coe also advocated for the importance of inclusive, in-person team huddles, akin to rounds in the hospital setting. Face-to-face interactions help information surface and foster stronger connections, he said.
Teams thrive when each member understands and subsequently appreciates each other’s roles, he said. He recommends that practice leaders evaluate the current state of their workplace, especially with a lens toward the complexity of each role and identify its connections to other roles. Then, owners can see where there might be opportunities for change and identify what the desired state of the practice would be. Finally, he said, they can experiment with implementing strategies—small ones at first—to close that gap between the current and desired realities.
Fonte: www.avma.org
