Deciding A Client Isn't A Good Fit Is Not Failure

 

Having a conversation with a canine professional colleague the other day, and she told me about a recent experience where she realised that a potential client wasn’t going to be a good fit and it got me thinking.

I suspect many of us who are working as canine pros, whether in training, behaviour work, grooming, or whatever aspect of the canine world we are involved in, have encountered clients or potential clients and we knew early on that it was unlikely to work well or get the results everyone wanted.

This can feel like failure, especially if working in training and behaviour. People are coming to us for help with their dogs and to turn them down can, in our own minds, mark us out as not good enough at the job, that we are kidding ourselves about our levels of knowledge and competence.

The thing is that this could not be further from the truth. Understanding our own limitations and having the ability to judge when we should refer on or decline to take a client on because we know they won’t be a good fit for us is the furthest possible thing from failure. It is a massive strength to know when to say no, and to follow that through.

One of the most important reasons to consider saying no to a potential client or telling an existing client that you no longer wish to continue the professional relationship is due to the protection that can provide for our mental health.

It’s all too easy, especially early on in our careers, to fall into the trap (entirely well meaning) of worrying what is going to happen to the dog if we don’t keep trying to show their caregivers the best way to work with them. To educate guardians away from the use of aversive tools and techniques. I absolutely understand that urge to keep trying. As an educator, I am always trying to show people, whether students or dog guardians, the reasons why positive reinforcement and reward-based methods should be used with all dogs.

There is that awful feeling of guilt that comes if we think about ‘giving in’ knowing that the dog will continue to be exposed to these other methods. But, when it comes to these clients that aren’t listening to us and aren’t following the advice and training plans that we give them, who aren’t willing to put the work in to get to where they need to be, no matter how much we try to educate and persuade them, they will not listen. It makes no difference how much we try. Those clients are not going to get to where we would like them to be. The sad truth is that whatever effort we put in those clients will not match it.

It is far better to realise this fact and make the decision to refuse to take on or to sack a client. There are plenty of dogs out there needing our help, and with guardians and caregivers who WILL listen to our advice, who want to achieve the sorts of relationships with their dogs that we know are possible.

Save your energy and time for the (human) clients who deserve it and make the difference for them and their dogs. Your mental health will be far better for it.

Don't forget the Imposter Syndrome workshop available through my Good Guardianship site (alongside others). An hour long presentation that explains what imposter syndrome is, how we can tell if we have it, and some tips and ways to help combat its influence and impact.

I'm Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway

Today it’s my turn to write about having confidence wobbles. I’m in the process of writing courses (as well as some other exciting stuff that I will hopefully be able to talk about soon) and it has woken up my imposter syndrome. It’s taken me much longer to get to the point where I’m ready to start putting things together to market this course because: 

• Who the hell am I to write courses? 
• Doesn’t everybody know what I know? 
• Do I really have anything to share that people don’t know already?

Who Gets to Decide If You Have Helped?

It has been far too long since I blogged here. A few things have been going on, positive and negative, and some of them things that have brought my own imposter syndrome raging to the forefront of my mind.

The Link Between Anxious Dogs and Imposter Syndrome

The majority of people I know reading this blog are dog people, so this time I’m going to talk a little about dog training and behaviour methods as understood by kind and ethical canine professionals, and how that applies to us with our imposter syndrome. It’s a topic that has come up in a few of the workshops* that I have run, and so I think it’s worth exploring here.

Dogs Have Emotions Too

I know this comes as no surprise to the educated dog people among us. For a long time many refused to believe in the idea of dogs having emotions and personalities. The perception of dogs was that a single dog varied only minimally from every other dog. The concept of individuality was not one applied to dogs.

We are now far more aware of our dogs’ emotional capacities – proof having come in the form of functional MRI scans, analysing the brain activity of dogs in real time. Training dogs to wear ear protection and lay perfectly still for a scan is also a fantastic illustration of the power of positive reinforcement reward based training.

We know that our dogs have the cognitive ability roughly equivalent to a human toddler, and they experience some of the same emotions as us (although not so much the higher emotions – that dog in the funny video with the ‘guilty’ expression is not feeling guilty but trying to appease the humans so bad stuff doesn’t happen to them). Our dogs can be happy, sad, frustrated, and scared. Dogs can also experience anxiety, and this is where the discussion of canine emotion and imposter syndrome meets.

Most canine professionals working as trainers or behaviour practitioners (and a proportion of dog guardians) encounter dogs with anxiety or fear related behaviours. We understand that these are not failings on the part of the dogs, but are the result of a whole combination of potential causes: genetics, epigenetics, prior learning and experiences to name the most commonly discussed factors in canine reactive behaviours.

A Connection Between Reactive Dogs and Imposter Syndrome?

We understand as experienced dog people that reactive behaviours, those times when dogs may show what looks like aggressive behaviours, or try to run away or hide from something are based in fear and stress. When these things are encountered repeatedly, a dog can become anxious. This means that rather than reacting to something stressful that is obvious in the environment, the dog is anticipating the stress arriving. Stress is building before there is even anything concrete to be stressed about.

Sound familiar?

All of the anticipating things going wrong. Stressing about events that haven’t even happened yet. Worrying about showing ourselves up when there is no actual need. Thinking we don’t know enough when we absolutely do.

Be Kind to Yourself

Isn’t it time we started applying the kindness and gentle methods we use with scared and anxious dogs to ourselves?

Just as we don’t blame anxiety and fear on the scared dogs, we shouldn’t keep beating ourselves up about imposter syndrome. The same basic physiological processes underlying the stress response take place in both our canine friends and us. Those same innate reactions triggered by the approach of something stressful. We are both mammals, with the same structures in our bodies and brains, although laid out a little differently to account for the different number of limbs and different evolutional origins and paths.

For scared and anxious dogs, we take the pressure off. We give them a break, to let the stress hormones drop back down and let the body recover from that stressed state. We work on building their confidence and resilience, letting them learn that they are safe, that they have choices, and that the world isn’t the scary place they took it to be. We need to find ways to give ourselves at least a little of that.

If nothing else, a bit of counter conditioning by applying your treat of choice can’t be a bad idea!

* For more information on the imposter syndrome workshops or my mentoring membership, you can join my Facebook imposter syndrome support group, see the Workshops page on this blog, or see the 'Conquering Confidence' page on my website.

To start gaining some control over the imposter syndrome thinking and reducing the influence it has over you, have a look at my article '5 Tips to Start Gaining Control of Imposter Syndrome'.

I have some imposter syndrome related designs live and available in my Redbubble store, which you can find by clicking the link above.

3 Reasons We Should Stop Comparing Ourselves to Others

 

One thing that can be so tempting is to compare ourselves with others around us.

For many of us, this is something first instilled in us as children. Whenever a test came up at school, huddles would form afterwards specifically to allow the participants to compare results. I remember (more years ago than I care to contemplate now!) making the move from secondary school and GCSEs to 6^th Form ready to start A-levels at 16 years old.

5 Tips to Start Gaining Control of Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is incredibly pervasive and persistent. It drags at our minds, nipping away the strands of our self-confidence and self-esteem. If it keeps doing this unchallenged, our perception of our worth in professional and even personal lives is in danger of severe damage.

Are You Hooked on External Validation?

Getting good feedback, whether from a client or a peer, is a great feeling. Having your effort and skills noticed and acknowledged can put a real glow on your day (if on that day you can allow yourself to believe the compliments – imposter syndrome does love to be contrary in that way!) The problem comes if we come to rely on that external validation.