Transforming Vet Clinic Culture Through the Power of Forgiveness

Welcome to the Vet Staff podcast, the place where veterinary professionals can join me, julie South, in discovering how we can all get our head screwed on straight, get excited about going to work on Monday mornings and lead less stressful and more fulfilling lives at home and at work. Today, episode 150, marks the fifth installment of our ongoing series where we delve into forgiveness at work in the vet clinic and how it affects clinic culture. Because culture and forgiveness are so entwined and interrelated, we're going to break this into two sections, this week and next week. Today we're looking at different types of forgiveness, cultures or lack thereof, and next week we'll look at the Vet Clinic Forgiveness Matrix, the 2x2 quadrant I formulated, where forgiveness sits on one axis and then relationships, impact, complexity and severity, the risk factors, risc sit on the other. But before we dive into the culture of forgiveness in the workplace, let's have a quick word from the Vet Staff podcast partner, vetclinicjobscom. Then we'll have a look at culture and clemency in the Vet Clinic today. Stay tuned, because having a culture of forgiveness can truly impact your clinic's ability to recruit and retain staff. The Vet Staff podcast is proudly powered by vetclinicjobscom, the new and innovative global job board reimagining veterinary recruitment. Connect in veterinary professionals with clinics that shine online. Vetclinicjobscom is your go-to resource for finding the perfect career opportunities and helping vet clinics power up their employer branding game. Visit vetclinicjobscom today to find vet clinics that shine online so veterinary professionals can find them. Visit vetclinicjobscom. The power of forgiveness in the workplace. Sometimes it's easy to think that forgiveness is only required at home, not at work, but when you think that we spend possibly more time with the people we work with than those we share our personal lives with, it makes sense that sometimes we're going to screw up, make a mistake. Sometimes, catastrophically, people are going to get hurt, maybe even a life is lost, and then blame, accusation and resentment fire up, which is when forgiveness needs to be a happening thing. Whenever people are involved, it's likely someone somewhere at some point will feel aggrieved by someone else. Let's have a look. We all make mistakes. Like I said last week, we're all human. Unfortunately, the time will come, if it hasn't happened already in your clinic, when someone makes a professional mistake. This could be administering the wrong medication or the wrong dosage, or missing something entirely in a diagnosis. Forgiveness then becomes necessary, of self and of others, to address the faux pas without assigning blame and to support the people involved, as well as improve learning and systems or procedures. So there's no repeat. Without forgiveness, resentment and toxicity start to build and fester when there's interpersonal conflict. Most often, it comes down to a miscommunication between the parties involved. For resolution to take place, forgiveness is required, firstly by starting with the acknowledgement that there's been a miscommunication, then for agreement to be reached to find a solution, rather than hold or bear a grudge or hold onto resentment. The more diverse a team, the more likely that personality clashes will happen. Forgiveness means that people can navigate these conflicts by promoting understanding, empathy and the willingness to work together despite differences. Sometimes clients may be dissatisfied with the level of service that's been provided or when they've lost their beloved pet. In these cases, forgiveness is essential in addressing these complaints professionally and finding resolutions that prioritize the wellbeing of everyone involved. Oh my gosh, don't we know about this right now? Staffing challenges. This can bring about things like scheduling or rostering conflicts, caseload distribution, scheduling management or even mismanagement, and maybe disagreements about job roles may arise, Especially when everyone's tired, like many are right now, especially when the phone won't stop ringing, like it just always seems to be right now, and noise is stressful when you've got people stressed about the cost of everything. Right now, getting to work is just getting more and more expensive each week. Putting food on the table just keeps going up and up. Couple all of these things with the stress of being human and you've got a perfect storm. You've got a phone that doesn't stop ringing. You've got the perfect storm for flare ups to happen, resentment to kick in and then, sadly, forgiveness goes out the door. However, it doesn't matter what the initial thing and I'm using air quotes is, whether someone screwed up or someone miscommunicated. Without forgiveness, you'll have continued problems. But when forgiveness is part of your team's culture, it allows people that's, your team members to work through these challenges collaboratively rather than holding grudges or fostering resentment. What about when leaders, management perhaps a lead vet or the head nurse make decisions that not everyone agrees with, or when leaders themselves acknowledge mistakes? How has this dealt with in clinic? Forgiveness isn't just a peer-to-peer event. It can be top down and bottom up as well. When this happens and leaders are forgiven, you're more likely to have a culture of respect and cooperation than not. It's no secret to anyone who knows anything about the industry that veterinary professionals will, at some point during their career, encounter difficult clients, people who are upset, anxious or confrontational. Back in the first episode of this series on forgiveness I'll put the link in the show notes I talked about the different steps of forgiveness, one of which is walking into someone else's moccasins, walking a few moons in their moccasins. Forgiveness is absolutely crucial to maintaining professionalism and empathy in these situations. You need to recognize that your client is probably experiencing their own stress and concerns. Then you have, possibly, situations that involve ethical dilemmas relating to patient care, shock bills and any number of other scenarios. Again, spending a few moons in someone else's moccasins is a good first step, and that's the pun intended to be able to consider and resolve differing perspectives and to be able to find ethical solutions. In each of these situations and in many more that I haven't even mentioned, forgiveness, when used, serves as a tool for conflict resolution, for growth and helping to maintain a positive workplace culture and environment at your clinic. Hopefully, you can see that it allows people to move forward, to learn from experiences and then continue to provide high quality care to their patients. I think that in today's fast-paced and competitive veterinary industry world, the significance of forgiveness in professional settings is often underestimated and or overlooked. Yet forgiveness plays a pivotal role in the workplace. It impacts leadership, it impacts team dynamics and overall clinic culture, and it definitely impacts the bottom line. Forgiveness in a professional context means the act of letting go of resentment, of grievances or negative emotions towards your colleagues, managers and or direct reports. Now, just to clarify forgiveness doesn't mean excusing harmful or willfully damaging behaviour or neglecting accountability. That's not what I'm saying. Instead, it's about finding constructive ways to address and then move beyond workplace conflicts and or misunderstandings. In any clinic workplace environment, you've got team dynamics already playing out, sometimes in a healthy way, other times totally dysfunctionally and unhealthy. Team dynamics, though, are fundamental to your clinic's success and, believe it or not, forgiveness kicks in and plays a pivotal role in shaping culture. When employees are willing to forgive each other's mistakes or conflicts, you'll have a more open and supportive work environment. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that teams characterised by trust and forgiveness tend to have higher levels of cooperation and collaboration, which leads to increased overall team performance. I'll put the link to that in the show notes if you'd like. So, if you'd like to investigate that further. And it makes sense, really. The more individuals within a team are forgiving of themselves and of each other, the more likely they are to work together in sync to share ideas, to solve problems collectively and collaboratively, as you'd then expect. This improved teamwork translates into higher productivity because everyone feels safer. Taking calculated risks and contributing to innovative solutions is how it's done, or not? All of this is good for everyone's mental and physical health and it's good for the clinic business as well. Individual leadership styles have a huge impact on clinic culture. Following on from that, the integration or not of forgiveness profoundly influences leadership dynamics. For more information on different leadership styles and attributes, check out episodes one to two through to one to five. I'll put the links to those in the show notes for this episode. It stands to reason, I think, that leaders who embrace forgiveness automatically create positive clinic environments. That's because they're the ones prioritizing growth and development over punishment. When everyone knows they're not going to be hauled into the head honcho's office and or face harsh consequences for making mistakes, they'll be more inclined to take calculated risks and, in turn, will be more motivated to learn from any mistakes that happen. In a Harvard Business Review article, leadership expert Michael West discovers the in, or discusses the importance of compassionate leadership, which includes forgiveness as a key component. So that is back in 2018. According to West, compassionate leaders who forgive mistakes foster higher levels of trust, improve employee well-being and enhance overall team performance. The article is entitled compassionate leadership is necessary but not sufficient. I'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. To illustrate the impact of forgiveness in a clinical setting. Let's consider this real-life scenario. I had a phone call last year I think it was late last year or early this year from a reasonably experienced vet nurse. She told me the story about, or the situation where she was prepping for a reasonably straightforward routine surgery. It was a rescue dog who was about to go to his forever home. His new two-leagered parents were excited about giving him a home where he was going to be oh so loved. The vet arrived late, which was typical for him. He charged into the room as he always does, cranked up the music through the doors wide open, tied up his scrubs and welcome everyone with much passion and enthusiasm. He was one of these always on very loud extroverts who's the life and soul of the party, but not always the easiest person to work with in surgery. The nurse asked the vet to sign off on anesthesia, which he did. This was when the first catastrophic miscommunication happened. It related to the combination of different meds being used. That day the nurse intubated the patient. She watched and listened out for the breath sounds as one of her checks for correct ETT placement. Over the noise of the music and other conversations going on at the time she thought she had it right. You can imagine the self recrimination, resentment and all the other bitterness that came about when they lost that patient. For the nurse, she was resentful against management and the vet. He was always late but no one ever caught him out on it. She went through a stage of hating herself. She gave herself the hardest of times for not asking all the questions she would have if she could have that time all over again. The deepest sadness for her was because that family that was so looking forward to welcoming their new rescued fur baby home wasn't and couldn't. The culture in that clinic was to sweep things under the carpet and pretend they didn't really happen. The vet met with the family but had emotionally shut down, so the family didn't think the clinic cared. It was probably his way of dealing with things, or was it? He continued to show up late for work without management ever saying anything. And if they did, it didn't make any difference because nobody saw any evidence of his behavior changing. The nurse never forgave herself, or management or the vet. She resigned not long after the incident. She asked for a debrief type meeting. It was promised, but it never took place. Now imagine if the leadership team had an overarching culture of forgiveness instead. We all know that it's not going to bring that patient back, it's not going to lessen the pain everyone is feeling, but it would probably have resulted in that clinic not losing one of its very valuable team members and it would have provided a way going forward to ensure the likelihood of repeat incidences like that would hopefully never happen again. To help you visualize what forgiveness in a vet clinic could look like, I formulated what I refer to as the Vet Clinic Forgiveness Matrix. It's a 2 by 2 grid of risk RISC, times, forgiveness. Risk stands for relationships, impact, severity and complexity. These are on the x-axis, increasing in severity from left to right. Forgiveness runs up the y-axis. In the top left quadrant we have low risk, high forgiveness. A catch phrase in a clinic setting here with the people on this team might be something like let's forgive and forget. Across to the top right, we have high risk, high forgiveness. Teams sitting here would say something like this is an opportunity for personal and team growth. Bottom left is low risk, low forgiveness. A team here would say something like let's not sweat the small stuff. And the bottom right is high risk, low forgiveness. And a team here might have words or phrases like consequences will follow this kind of mistake, because there's a lot to unpack in each corner of the matrix. Please tune in next week, where we'll look at each quadrant in more detail so you'll be able to see what type of forgiveness culture fits in each or lack of forgiveness culture. Again, we've barely scratched the surface of forgiveness. We've peeled off another layer of the onion. As I said last week and the week before, think of forgiveness as being like a cloak woven from diverse threads of psychology, philosophy and human experience, a cloak that, when you wrap it around you, has the power to heal wounds, to mend relationships and to set you on a path towards growth. Please join me next week as we look at the Vet Clinic of Forgiveness Matrix. Until then, remember that forgiveness is a journey, one that begins with the in and radiates outward, touching lives and transforming hearts. Please, if you like this podcast, please help us get the word out there by leaving a comment and sharing it among your friends. If you're not following us yet, then please do that as well. It's free and it doesn't hurt, I promise. It just means that you won't have to go looking for next week's episode, because it will show up in your podcast feed as soon as it's released. This is Julie South signing off and thank you, thank you. Thank you for spending the last 20 minutes or so of your life with me today. Take care kia kaha. The Vet Staff podcast is proudly powered by vetclinicjobscom, the new and innovative global job board reimagining veterinary recruitment. Connect in veterinary professionals with clinics that shine online. Vetclinicjobscom is your go-to resource for finding the perfect career opportunities and helping vet clinics power up their employer branding game. Visit vetclinicjobscom today to find vet clinics that shine online, so veterinary professionals can find them. Take care kia kaha.