Belonging vs fitting in

Elizabeth Chosa, DVM, cofounder of Veterinary Hope Foundation, sat down with dvm360 for an interview at the Fetch conference in Nashville, Tennessee. She explained what belonging in your workplace can look like and provided practice managers with some tips on promoting a more inclusive work environment for everyone in the clinic.

Below is a partial transcript of the video.

Elizabeth Chosa, DVM: Belonging and fitting in are not the same thing at all. And it's actually pretty simple. True belonging is where you can show up and be your most authentic self and know that you are going to be accepted for exactly who you are. Fitting in is when you don't think you can be accepted for exactly who you are and you have to change yourself or deny certain parts of your truest self in order to try to be accepted into an environment where you don't naturally feel like you have that deep sense of belonging.

So practice managers, I think the most important thing is just to remember that we are all whole people. So look at your staff, not just as veterinarians or technicians or employees, but complicated people who have lots of different things happening in their lives behind the scenes. Who have different personalities, different needs, different strengths, different responsibilities at home and outside the workplace, and that all of those things affect us on a daily basis.