Last week I saw a cat that had gained 2 lbs since her last visit. I stood at the computer and double checked what I was seeing. Why would this 4 year-old cat suddenly gain 25% of her body weight in 6 months?
I decided then and there that I would have an honest conversation with this pet owner. I’d tell her how worried I was for the cat and how unacceptable an increase in weight like this was. Clearly the rules were not being followed, and this cat was the one paying the price!
I marched into the room ready to talk pointedly about why fixing this problem was vitally important.
It turns out that the person in the exam room was not the cat’s owner, but his daughter. She looked at me sheepishly and said “I know she’s gained weight. My father loves her so, so much and he has dementia. Whenever the cat meows at him, he gives her a treat… and forgets that he’s just done it.”
We had a good-hearted laugh about how the cat has been so effective at getting her father trained.
Of course we still talked about how important weight control is, but the conversation was night-and-day different from how I imagined it being. That’s often the case in medicine. We think we know people or that we can guess what’s happening behind the scenes in the lives of those who walk through our doors… but we can’t.
One of my favorite pieces of advice on working with other people is to “seek first to understand.”
Whether it’s talking to pet owners, team members, or significant others, I don’t know that I’ve found better insight into not just being effective as a communicator, but also into genuinely enjoying being around others.
The next time we think we know what the story is, maybe we can remember the clever cat and take a moment to investigate before passing judgment.
