Honey vs. vinegar
I love Google News Alerts. They’re certainly not the end-all answer to everything, but they are a great way to have relevant news articles and web content delivered directly to my inbox. It’s an almost instant way to see what people are writing about me and my association, allowing me to respond when necessary or simply keep for future reference.
Tuesday was a great example. I came into the office and began going through my emails from the long holiday weekend. One of my Google Alerts indicated that osteopathic medicine had been referenced in an article in one of the Detroit papers. I clicked the link to see what was written and, unfortunately, discovered that the article repeated a common misconception about how osteopathic physicians are trained, and in doing so, could have led readers to believe that osteopathic physicians (D.O.) are somehow lesser than their allopathic (M.D.) colleagues.
I was instantly outraged. This required an immediate letter to the editor! No, wait! I was going to write an editorial and demand they publish it! I could not allow this OBVIOUSLY intentional slight to stand. Heads were going to roll. Roll, I tell you.
Then I took a step back. I reread the article. The offending statement (just a sentence, really) was just a small part of an otherwise good story about how one Detroit medical school was looking to innovate in its approach to physician training. It was not an attack. It was not intentional.
I also thought back on my career and some of the things I had done that I later regretted, such as overreacting to a news story (oh yeah … definitely guilty of that). On those occasions, had I cultivated a new contact or had I alienated a reporter? I think the latter.
So I tried a different approach. I decided to become a resource rather than an adversary. I composed a quick email to the article’s author thanking her for a great story, but gently pointing out her error. I told her that I understood that trying to explain how osteopathic medicine is different from allopathic medicine can be extremely difficult and that I sympathized with her. I then offered to help her whenever she needed it.
She responded very quickly and apologized for the error. She even asked if I had a kind of concise statement that explained how the two types of medicine are different so she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. We exchanged a couple more emails throughout the day and I really feel as though I’ve fostered a potentially good new contact in the media.
This is one of those lessons that they teach you over and over, but it can be so hard to exercise in practice. It’s especially difficult in today’s world where we can be so quick to judge others for their shortcomings without acknowledging our own.
There are several cliches running through my head at the moment, mostly having to do with old dogs and new tricks or honey vs. vinegar as a fly attractor, but I’ll leave it at that.
In this all-too-instant world, I think most everybody is guilty of jumping to a quick judgement. If people focus on the larger picture rather than the 1% that pissed them off, the world would be a much saner place.
One of my old bosses used to jump on things like this, and burned a lot of bridges because of it. I actually pulled a letter she wrote out of the mail once to keep from alienating a business we were working with… I still have it, sealed, and keep it as a reminder to myself to take a step back and look at the big picture. She would have fired me if she knew I had done that, but we stayed on good terms with the business and looking back, I think I made the right decision.