Every veterinary leader knows the feeling. Someone suggests a huddle, a quick coaching moment, or a small change to improve the day, and the answer is, “We don’t have time for that.” It sounds reasonable. After all, you’re busy. But the problem usually isn’t a lack of time. It’s that we haven’t started thinking about how to invest it yet.

So how do you make time in a busy veterinary practice? The answer is to spend a few minutes in ways that multiply back hours.

Why Veterinary Leaders Feel They Don’t Have Time

When the pace of a shift feels overwhelming, it’s easy to get stuck in survival mode. - you’re just trying to make it through the day without falling behind. In that mindset, anything outside of the immediate work feels impossible.

That’s normal. Most leaders find themselves in survival mode from time to time. The problem comes when it becomes an everyday pattern. In that space, nothing really improves, and each day starts to feel like a repeat of the last, only a little more exhausting.

That is why it helps to pause and ask: am I spending time to survive today, or am I investing time to build better days tomorrow? Leaders who choose the second option often discover they get far more time back than they put in.

How to Reframe Time as an Investment

Ask yourself this: Am I taking time away from work to coach, or am I investing time in better work by coaching? Am I losing minutes by planning, or am I gaining hours by having a team that is accountable for success?

The difference shows up fast. When you watch teams that use huddles and coaching well, you see higher capability, stronger communication, and smoother days. Problems get solved without the leader stepping in every time. Workflows speed up because the team already knows what comes next.

One small huddle can eliminate wasted minutes spent hunting for information or wondering who will start the next case. A short coaching moment can prevent the same problem from showing up again tomorrow.

Do those things take time? Yes. Do they pay off? In spades.

Three Simple Ways Veterinary Leaders Can Create More Time

Here are three moves you can start using today. Each one takes only a small effort in the moment but gives back far more than it costs.

Plan Tiny, Win Big

Take 90 seconds before each shift to identify one coaching moment and one communication win you want to create. That brief plan saves hours of back-and-forth later. It turns your day from reactive to intentional.

Once you plan, your brain shifts. Instead of thinking “I don’t have time for this,” you start seeing opportunities to make it happen. Even small plans open space for leadership work.

Be Transparent About Leadership Work

When you step away to coach, fix a process, or work on the schedule, tell your team. Say it out loud: “I’m taking 20 minutes to work on something that makes us better. You’ve got triage until I’m back.”

Transparency makes leadership visible. It shows your team that coaching and improving the practice is real work, not extra work. And it challenges the belief common in veterinary medicine that the only valuable work is hands-on with patients. Leaders need to help their teams see that building capability and improving systems are just as essential to great care.

Use Micro-Coaching to Stop Repeating Yourself

Telling people the answer feels faster than coaching. But it guarantees you will be answering the same question tomorrow. Instead, ask one quick question: 

• “How would you solve this if I wasn’t here?”
• “What’s your first step?”
• “Who else could help with this?” 

These micro-questions build capability. They create a team that solves problems on their own, saving you from the treadmill of repeat interruptions.

Think of it like helping a kid with homework. If a child brings you a math problem and you just tell them to write down “12,” they may finish faster today. But tomorrow they will be back with the next problem, still unable to solve it themselves. If instead you help them learn the process, you invest once and save countless hours later. Coaching your team works the same way.

How to Make Leadership Time Stick in Your Practice

Investing time only works if you keep doing it. Here are two ways to make that happen.

Burn the boats. In the old legend, soldiers burned their ships so retreat was no longer an option. You can do the same by scheduling leadership conversations directly with your team. Once a conversation is on the calendar, you are accountable to follow through. Saying to a new team member, “Let’s meet tomorrow to talk about your goals,” means you have made a visible commitment. You will feel the urgency to show up.

Use team huddles. A five or ten minute huddle gives everyone clarity and helps you find the best moment for coaching during the day. It turns leadership time into a shared commitment instead of something you try to squeeze in alone. Involving the team in deciding when you step away also reinforces that leadership is part of the job, not a distraction from it.

Remember, the status quo does not require leadership. If you are comfortable with today being the same as yesterday, you can keep doing the work and staying busy. But if you want something better - calmer days, stronger teams, more engaged people - leadership matters.

Invest Minutes, Gain Hours in Your Veterinary Practice

Leadership is not about doing more. It is about doing the things that make the future different from the present. When you plan, when you are transparent, and when you coach instead of telling, you are investing in a better practice.

Those small investments save time tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. Leaders who commit to investing time discover their practice grows more capable, their team feels more engaged, and their own stress drops because they are no longer fixing the same problems again and again.

Start today with one coaching moment, one clear huddle, or one micro-question. Watch how quickly the hours come back to you.

Ready to build more time into your leadership? Start your free 30-day veterinary leadership challenge now.

What do you think? Other veterinary pros want to hear from you! Share your experience in the comments below.