Small Animal Seminar: Leadership and Communication
In-person and Virtual registration options
CE = 6 hours
The MTG Space, Greater Lansing Association of REALTORS
4039 Legacy Parkway200
Lansing, MI 48911-4336
United States
* Registration open until 4/14/27 at 7:10 AM (EDT)
Join us in-person or virtually to for the fifth seminar of the 2026-2027 Small Animal Series on Weds. April 14, 2026!
Invest in your team, strengthen your leadership, and elevate your practice. Join us for a day of practical learning that empowers veterinary professionals to communicate with confidence and lead with purpose.
Exceptional patient care begins with exceptional communication. Join us for an engaging, in-person seminar designed for veterinarians, veterinary technicians, practice managers, and support staff who want to strengthen their leadership skills, foster a positive workplace culture, and improve communication across the veterinary team.
Through interactive discussions, real-world scenarios, and practical exercises, you'll learn strategies for navigating difficult conversations, delivering effective feedback, resolving conflict, leading through change, and creating a culture of trust and accountability. Whether you're an experienced leader, an aspiring supervisor, or simply looking to become a stronger communicator, this seminar will provide actionable tools you can use immediately.
Discover how effective leadership and communication can improve team morale, client relationships, operational efficiency, and patient care. Connect with colleagues, share experiences, and leave with practical techniques to help your team thrive in today's demanding veterinary environment.
MEET RON SOSA, CVPM, CCFP, PgD-CLD
Life Coach & Speaker
Ron Sosa spent more than two decades in veterinary medicine as a practice manager, minority business partner, and executive. Over that time he built the C.O.S.T. framework, a structure for understanding the four patterns that accumulate most in high-performing care leaders: Chronic Self-Monitoring, Overadaptation, Self-Criticism, and Tension. That framework is the foundation of everything Syn-APT does.
When Ron was diagnosed with ADHD and autism as an adult, it gave language to what he'd been studying and living for years. It also sharpened the coaching work by addressing not just the behaviors of burnout, but the internal architecture underneath them. He holds certifications in compassion fatigue, coaching and leadership development, and life coaching, and has spoken at national veterinary and leadership conferences.
Agenda
| April 14 | |
| 9:00 AM | Greeting & Introductions |
| 9:00 AM - 9:50 AM | The C.O.S.T. of Looking Fine: What Your Best People Carry That You Never See Your most reliable person is the one you never worry about. That is usually the problem. This session introduces the C.O.S.T. framework, four named components of the internal load that high-performing veterinary professionals carry all day without a word for it. You will learn to spot chronic self-monitoring, overadaptation, self-criticism, and tension in your team and in yourself, and you will leave with a selfassessment that makes the invisible thing measurable. |
| 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM | Behavior Is Data: Reading What Your Team Is Actually Telling You The tech who "has an attitude." The manager who suddenly forgets routine tasks. The person who pushes back hard on a policy everyone else accepted. Every one of those behaviors is communication, and most leadership training taught you to correct it instead of read it. This session gives you a protocol for decoding what a behavior is protecting before you respond to it, including the two patterns most often misread in veterinary teams, justice sensitivity and demand avoidance. |
| 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Say the Real Thing: The Conversations Nobody Trained You For Most veterinary leaders are not bad at hard conversations. They are so careful about being kind that the message never actually lands, and then the same issue comes back in six weeks. This session is handson practice in saying the true thing clearly, with warmth intact. You will build feedback that names impact without asking someone to become a different person, and you will learn how to have a needs conversation with a team member who has not disclosed anything and should not have to. |
| 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Lunch Break Lunch is included for in-person attendees. |
| 1:00 PM - 1:50 PM | The Toilet Paper Rule: Designing Workflow People Can Actually Use If the toilet paper is not within reach, the design has already failed. Nobody blames the person on the toilet. In practice, we do exactly that all day, and call it a training issue. This session applies Universal Design to veterinary workflow, physical space, and communication, then puts you to work on one real process from your own hospital. You will leave having redesigned a single point of daily friction so it works for everyone without anyone having to ask. |
| 2:00 PM - 2:50 PM | Rewriting the Rules: The R.I.S.E. Model for a Practice That Does Not Run on Most practices stay upright because a handful of people quietly absorb every gap in the system. It works until those people leave. This session walks through R.I.S.E. (Reflect, Implement, Sustain, Empower), the leadership model from Rewriting the Rules, and turns it on your own policies, meetings, and onboarding. You will audit one existing practice for the hidden capacity it demands and build a plan you can start on the Monday after the seminar. |
| 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Your Capacity Is Information: Leading Without Grinding Yourself Down You have spent the whole day thinking about your team. This hour is about you. Your capacity is not a character trait and it is not a weakness to manage around. It is data about the conditions you are working in. This session closes the day with the honest math on what leadership is costing you, one boundary you can set that does not shove the cost onto your team, and a thirty-day plan built from everything the day put in front of you. |
| 4:00 PM | Wrap Up and Final Questions Seminar ending time will vary depending on audience interaction. |
Access to electronic proceedings will be found here. Only registered seminar attendees will be provided access (log in required).
In-person registration ends at 5:00 pm on Monday, April 5.
Virtual registration ends two hours before the seminar start.
Small Animal Series seminars (SAS) are presented in a hybrid format. Attendees may register to participate in-person or virtually via Zoom. SAS seminars are not recorded for on-demand viewing.