layout: true background-image: url(../../images/slide_background.jpg) background-size: cover class: middle --- # Dealing with difficulties and conflicts ### Medium Quotes --- ### “… dealing with complaints or problems, that takes a bit more happiness out of your day. But usually we can resolve most of those problems ourselves. If you just listen to the farmer, you can take a bit of the heat out of a situation.” --- ### “Any complaint… we usually sit down and have our own little investigation ourselves. Speaking to the farmer without accusing him, or blaming your own vets, or making any assumptions whatsoever. We usually sit down and have a discussion with them, get them to put everything down in writing. If it does become clear to us that they’ve done something wrong, if it’s a large claim, we’d consult the VDS. If small, we wouldn’t.” --- ### “Communication skills are really, really important. You touch on it at vet school, but nothing prepares you for what it actually is. And you look at other people in the service industry, who didn’t go to university for 5 years, and they are so much better at it than us. I can tell you a lot of things, but I can’t communicate with a farmer who is yelling at me and telling me to get off his farm.” --- ### “One of the things I tell young colleagues to do is to be brave and ring the farmer the next day or in 48 hrs and ask the farmer how the cows doing. And I say, even if it’s gone terribly and the cow / animal has died, it shows the farmer that you care, that you’re interested and that’s important. Some of my best clients have been born out of adversity, out of disasters, and that’s because we’ve communicated properly after the disaster.” --- ### “I try and disassociate myself from it. It’s my role to advise them of what I think should happen. It’s not my role to be on their farm holding their hand for them and doing everything for them because you have to draw the line somewhere.” --- ### “I got my boss on board (one of the partners) who knows the farmer much better than I do, and he knows him more personally. And he basically went out there and smoothed things over and essentially he did exactly as I suggested he do but from a different tack.” --- ### “I would caution them to stop and say, “hang on, I’m just going to phone R___, or B___, or the senior partner”, and take a bit of advice and see what they reckon. Or, “I don’t think that’s the right way to do it, do you mind if I get someone else to help me?” At least go for a phone call first. And, if needs be, put the farmer on the phone.” --- ### “The relationships between partners and directors could be challenging – no major fallout but was difficult. In a large practice, and in any business, there will always be a handful of difficult clients and we weren’t immune to that.” --- ### “I’ve had times when it’s happened to me. When you’re an over-achiever and you get out there and things don’t go right, that’s when you’re more likely to fall into a hole or leave the profession. You get hardened to it and you get to realise what matters the most (family). You need to be fairly mature to be able to cope.” --- ### “we’re always getting unpredictable stuff thrown at us when we’re not expecting it and we all learn to deal with that in different ways with various degrees of success but you have to accept that it’s part of the job. Do your swearing then just accept it and do it.”