Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Vet Chat. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Olivia Oginska. Liv graduated in 2016 from the University of Poland, and shortly after graduation, moved to the UK to undergo surgical training.
During her career development, Liv was exposed to various workplace environments and worked with veterinary professionals with diverse backgrounds, cultures and nationalities. During the years of her professional training, Liv has been mentoring and providing mental health support to her colleagues. Her passion for veterinary wellbeing led her to undertaking a master's degree in applied positive psychology.
Where Liv received the life coaching and appreciative inquiry training credentials. Following several years of veterinary and peer support experience, combined with positive psychology training, Liv created the vetone Re platform through which multiple individuals and veterinary teams receive coaching and mental health support. Liv is deeply passionate about veterinary workplace wellbeing, emotional intelligence, psychological safety, and creating tools that help veterinary practitioners to thrive in their career and their personal lives.
So Liv, welcome. Thank you for joining us today on Vet Chat. Thank you so much, Catherine, it's amazing to be here with you.
So today we are going to be chatting about dealing with bullying in veterinary practise, and this is something that, to be honest, I had no idea and could be so common in practise. So, let's start with bullying. What does bullying mean to you, Liv?
First of all, it's a very, very delicate topic when we start talking about that, I am aware there will be people out there listening and thinking. This might be about me. So I just want to acknowledge that it's a very, very delicate issue.
And also very close to my heart because I've been bullied. I experienced bullying in my life, so I can tell you firsthand what, what that involves. And bullying, it's, it's a, let's say kind of incivility.
I think we can put that in a big bucket of incivility, and there is a blurred line between incivility and bullying. When we define incivility as just rude behaviour, bullying steps into more serious area. Where it becomes really severe, it's intentional most of the time.
Someone who is the bully, they are aware that that behaviour is very negative, harmful, and it has many different forms. It can be defending someone openly, it can be talking about someone behind their back, but it's always really harmful and can change somebody's life in the the worst possible way. Mhm.
No, absolutely. Are there certain signs that you think are quite consistent, you know, that you can identify with somebody who's being bullied? So someone who's being bullied, so the, the victim of that situation, those people very often withdraw.
The most common effect it has on the person is, first of all, confusion. Because when you're being bullied, you might not know why. You might not understand what is actually happening.
Have I done something wrong to that person? Did I deserve to be treated that way? So it's causes a lot of confusion, decreases the performance, we are not self-confident anymore because we are so full of doubts, so that influences our whole professional life, and those people can be obviously sad, there, there can be tears, they can be anger.
Because of the unfairness of the situation, different people deal with that in many different ways. Mhm. Yeah, absolutely.
What would you suggest somebody does if they spot these things in practise? If we witness bullying, or let's call the general severe incivility, if someone is being treated unfairly, if someone is being threatened or harmed. Then it definitely should be spoken about.
It should be notified. It should be brought to the attention of our leaders, because if we don't talk about that, if we try to swipe that under the carpet, we will perpetuate the process. So it's so important to bring that to the light.
Mhm. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a lot, isn't it, for leaders to, to take on board as well, especially leaders who might not necessarily feel equipped to manage these situations.
Yeah, 100%. I feel really, really bad for the leaders who need to manage those situations, but incivility and bullying, it's type of conflict and conflict is a part of our life. So because we are different people with different points of view, different needs, when those clash, and there's a lot of emotions, high stakes, high emotions flowing, then there will be conflict.
And unfortunately, leaders, they need to manage people, a group of people with different, different, needs and different desires. So this is where the conflict happens. And it's really challenging for the vet leaders because first of all, when we hear the word blink, if someone comes to us and says, I, I'm being bullied, it's frightening.
It means something terrible. Very often the leader can take that personally. Am I doing something wrong?
Am I, am I not leading this place correctly, that this occurs? Have I missed something? So it causes a personal reaction to a lot of leaders, and then we find ourselves in a situation where between two people, probably with strong opinions, both of them probably suffering, and we need to manage that.
So that this is where we step into pure conflict mediation. Mhm. OK, brilliant.
And what would you say to owners, how could you encourage them to be proactive to prevent bullying in the workplace? So everyone who's in a leader position, practise owner, head nurse, head vet, anyone who is taking care of a group of people can try to prevent incivility first of all, through increasing the awareness. What what is it that being rude to someone, it's not without repercussions, that there is echo that we can hear afterwards that ripple effect.
There's always there. But also one of the very, very important ways of preventing incivility is in. Increasing self awareness.
And this is the part of my specialty, which is emotion intelligence, because most of people up to 96% of people who, exhibit uncivil behaviours, they have no idea that this is what they're doing. And that comes from the simple fact that we react instead of responding. We, follow our emotions that are flowing instead of controlling them and being really in charge of our life.
We just react very quickly and automatically, and that is very often seen as incivility. So our own suffering, our own pain turns into others pain. So increasing self-awareness can really prevent incivility.
Mhm. OK, brilliant. It's fascinating, isn't it, how different people are and how they respond so differently to different situations.
No, it's been interesting. And do you think bullying can have a really negative impact on the culture and the productivity of practises? 100% on everything, every aspect of the practice's life.
It's something that we don't always see straight away because it can be indirect. But first of all, people who are involved in that in and civil behaviour, in that bullying. Situation, the victim obviously suffers.
Even the person who is the bully or who is suddenly called a bully, even though they might not have been entirely cautious of the the repercussions of their behaviour, suddenly they could be ostracised, and it can be a punishment, not always fair also because it's challenging to do it fairly to resolve the situation. So those two people suffer, they might even lose their job. But also the whole team, they observe those two people, the situation, they talk about that.
There's gossip, the morale goes down. It means that this workplace allows that type of behaviours, so employee retention, encouraging new employees coming, that everything is influenced by by that bad egg, bad situation, the negative vibe that suddenly resides within the team, and because of that, obviously. Money goes down, business is not thriving anymore.
It has repercussions everywhere. Mhm. No, absolutely.
I guess even, you know, right at the very beginning when you're hiring people, you should really consider the questions that you're asking people and really sussing out, is this person the right fit for, for your culture and your living, you know, your values? 100% like you said you said the word values. Oh, that is so so important.
To even know what my employees' values are, do they align? But there's a caveat, because we are human. And no one is perfect.
Some situations can take this to to another situation, create a situation in which we just don't control ourselves. So we cannot expect from someone to be always perfect. We need to be prepared that sometimes we might fail.
And incivility will come to the picture. So there are things that we cannot control and being our humanity, it's not something that we can control entirely in a team. We need to embrace it, understand it, and support it, so that that's all that we can, we can't control it entirely.
Mhm. OK. And do you have any tips around, say you people listening might be in practise right now, they, they might be the leaders of, of a team.
Do you have any sort of tips or advice around how you would manage two parties who are sort of engaged in bullying behaviour? Yes, it's a very complex process to start with. So I'll try to, to give you the general advice, what you can do straight away and always apply in any difficult conversation because it is a difficult conversation, really charged emotionally.
So when you're a leader and you've got a bully and a victim, you need to speak separately to both of them. Absolutely. The conversation with the victims seems easier because that is the person that we know that's obviously suffering.
We want to help them. We open our hearts, we turn our compassion on when we step into that conversation, which is wonderful. However, when we step into conversation with the bully, we tend not to have as much compassion as we should.
And I really want you to know that that's the person who's called a bully, they're probably suffering. There's very little people in the world who are just thinking, I'm a bit bored, maybe I should bully someone. There's really not many people out there.
There is some really well hidden reason behind it. So I would say if you go into that conversation, have your mind and heart open because we don't want to cause even more harm. To listen to that person, to give them space to talk to us, to explain themselves, to state from the beginning.
Listen, I'm here to understand what happened. I'm not here to punish you. I want to have a conversation and dialogue, making a safe space for that.
And absolutely whenever you talk to either a bully or a victim. Create a space, time, no distractions, and no one just coming to your office, no messages coming because they can be tears, there can be a lot of suffering coming like an avalanche. Be ready for that and be really human and understanding.
Mhm. That's great advice, thank you. And I've, I've never worked in practise, but I guess is there, does there generally tend to be like systems in place or should there be systems in place where employees can report bullying if they see it or, you know, if they're, if they're in this situation themselves.
I'm sure they are and every practise is a little bit different, so it's more the job of the HR department, they try to introduce some ways of notifying safely that there's something happening. What I would encourage everyone to make sure that they have is there is a safe way to chat to your leader about a situation that was harmful, that was painful, and really prioritise those one on one meetings and to do that timely. If we leave it for the next month or the 6 month review, it makes absolutely no sense.
There'll be even more harm happening there. So please do that timely. OK, wonderful, thank you.
Another question that we've had in, I think we've, we've touched upon it broadly but any advice, how we can prevent it in the first place? So like I said, the awareness, that's 100%, the self-awareness, so that actually we might not know that our behaviour is, is annoying, is harmful, that we disrespect someone inadvertently. It might be something that is our blind spot.
So if we have a healthy workplace culture where we really prioritise candour, when we prioritise cooperation, when we talk openly about our behaviours, this is where the space in which those conversations can happen. So I would much rather hear from my colleague at work telling me that, listen, Liv, what you did in that theatre, when you rolled your eyes, I think it wasn't right. It just felt, it felt wrong.
Maybe someone could suffer because of that. I would much rather hear that rather than repeating myself again and again. No one telling me that I keep doing this.
And then really, It would take me to the situation where my team would. Not like me, they would avoid me. They would refuse to work with me, and I would be left in darkness.
What is happening? And then I suffer as that uncivil pass maybe even called a bully. So having open conversation, and I call it a team constitution, so it's kind of an agreement where we all say, in this workplace, when there's a situation that is uncomfortable, we talk about that.
We are honest and we accept that as a learning process, not the way to to judge someone or to offend them. No, it's a learning process, have that growth mindset that, you know, we all love now nowadays. Love it.
No, that sounds good. And I guess a good place to start if people are not at that stage yet in practise would be just to have like the regular one to ones, the regular check-ins, keep those lines of communications open so people can give this feedback back to the managers. And also, I would say, to have an open conversation during one of the, the team meetings.
Listen guys, we became more, Aware of the incivility in our industry, we would love to prevent that. We would like to make sure that it's not happening in this workplace. How about we've got this, this and this in place?
How about we've got that type of meetings? Do you agree? You need to have your team on board.
This is why I call that a constitution that. Needs to be signed by every single person. And this is where the values align.
We're going back to the values. And then, if everyone agrees, then it's acceptable to have conversations. So just, just, yeah, start with a simple conversation.
How about this? Are you fine with that? Is anyone uncomfortable?
If you are, let's talk about a different way. Take everyone on board. Brilliant, thank you, that's great advice.
So just to switch it around a little bit, if somebody is in the safe, you know, they're listening right now, they're in the situation where they themselves feel like they are being bullied, what would you recommend that that person does? Mm I would have a conversation with your leader, but I would get prepared for that conversation, because there's one more thing that sometimes happens in our industry, which is really dangerous, and I haven't mentioned it before, but sometimes a person who feels bullied goes to the leader and what they hear from the leader is, oh, just, you're exaggerating. This oh it's just Janet is like that.
She's always been like that. This is the most painful thing that a person can hear. So if you feel bullied, get prepared, collect the facts, what is actually happening?
Putting your personal evaluation on the side for a second, your emotions on the side. And then to have a clear kind of proof of what is happening, and then you can add your emotions. This this behaviour makes me feel like I'm worth nothing, that I'm worth that that that person.
I feel really dishonoured. There's, there's a lot of things that we could express as our feelings. So get prepared, facts and then our feelings, and also know that you're not going to that leader to get the punishment for the person.
You're going there to open their eyes and open the dialogue. Like every conflict mediation is a dialogue. OK, brilliant, that's great advice, thank you.
Are there any like resources or any websites that you'd recommend to people if they did need some further advice? Depending on how far we've gone into that process of bullying, how, how severe it is, but there's so much so many resources out there that are more HR oriented about for the leaders what to do, what are the policies, absolutely you can just Google that, that's absolutely fine. But if you're a person who's been bullied and you feel that you're really suffering and you can't even communicate communicate that well.
I would suggest, getting support from a counsellor or a coach, someone who will help you to get prepared for the conversation, because sometimes even our friends are not enough. Our friends are biassed. They love us.
They will kind of nurture and expand that negativity within us, even though they don't want to, but this is what happens when We tell them about the situation, they suddenly say, oh this is horrible. I'm so sorry for you, it must be horrendous, and you're thinking, yeah, it is horrendous and makes you feel even worse. So get some external support that will help you prepare for those difficult conversations.
OK, that's wonderful, thank you. And we've already run out of time. I'm sorry I.
I could have spoken to you all day. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing all of your, advice and some tips.
I'm really, I know that people in our community will really have enjoyed listening to you. And yeah, hopefully they'll share it with their colleagues, share it with their friends, and hopefully we can start to, you know, promote a positive change in veterinary practises. Thanks so much for asking those questions because they are so important.
We need to speak up about them. Increase that awareness and if anyone needs more support, please feel free to reach out and send me an email. I'm happy to help with the individual cases, especially those really tricky ones.
I'm here to help. Oh, thanks so much. That's so kind.
We'll definitely put all the information on our blog when we release this, so if we'll have your contact details there as well if if anybody needs them. Thank you. Oh, that's lovely.
Thanks so much. Take care. Thank you.
Bye everyone.
