Dr Andrew Ciccolini is a Medical Director at the
National Mill Dog Rescue, a non-profit that rescues and rehomes discarded breeding dogs, and also the Director of Non-Profit Initiatives at Galaxy Vets. His background includes serving in the U.S. Army, where he worked his way up from Associate Veterinarian to VP of Operations. In addition to his veterinary degree, he also has a Master’s degree in Organizational Leadership.
In this conversation Andrew takes us on a wild ride through his career with detours into what it’s like to be a military vet, working with high-performance dogs, why choosing not-for-profit work works for him, why it might work for you, and how incorporating some of it in your business might work for your team. We draw on Andrew’s military experience and his leadership Master’s to talk about leadership styles, finding the right ways to motivate a vet team beyond money (but also including money!), and Andrew tells us about his current work for the
Galaxy Vets Foundation to support pet owners in Ukraine.
1. Bad decisions, good stories. 6:00
2. Life as an army vet in the US. 9:00
3. Working with high-performance dogs 12:15
4. What Andrew learnt in his time as a military vet. 14:46
5. Leadership lessons from the military. 16:00
As you move up and you start having more direct reports and you’re responsible for a 100, 150 people – if you try to be a servant leader, you’re just gonna burn out. There’s just no way possible to do that. You can’t take calls in the middle of the night: “oh, there’s this problem going on.” I’m coming right to your house right now…
6. Can you change your leadership style? 23:19
What we commonly see is people don’t necessarily. choose a leadership style and try to lead in that way. They just kind of act as themselves and they kind of self-select themselves as leaders. But I think it’s really important that people look into these different styles and figure out which one works best for them and adapt to this situation.
7. Motivating veterinary teams: beyond the $$$’s. 26:41
I think in the veterinary community we’re over reliant on intrinsic motivation to get our employees to work.
8. National Mill Dog Rescue. 31:40
9. Dealing with ‘divided’ teams. 33:30
10. Not-for-profit work. 35:54
I was just able to help people and their pets and it was amazing and it was rejuvenating and so it’s been an awesome experience.
11. Galaxy Vets Foundation and its work in Ukraine. 39:58
12. What we’ve learnt about Telemedicine from their work in Ukraine. 41:07
13. Rediscovering your passion through charity work. 43:24
14. Being okay with being okay. 49:10
15. The pass-along question. (Chihuahuas!) 53:00
16. Andrew’s podcast choices. 56:20
17. The one question. 56:56
Resources and links:
Join the mailing list to hear about new opportunities at Galaxy Vets
here, or volunteer to provide telehealth services to the pets and pet owners of Ukraine
here.
Get your clinical skills nudged way beyond okay with our clinical podcasts at
vvn.supercast.comWe love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at
info@thevetvault.com, or catch up with us on
Instagram.
And if you like what you hear, please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this.
