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The Tiger Woods’ Lesson

By Katherine Dobbs, RVT, CVPM, PHR

So I know what you’re thinking, there are probably several lessons we can learn from Tiger Woods’ recent fall from grace. But it occurs to me as professionals in veterinary medicine that there is one lesson in particular we can learn. Tiger Woods is not unlike hundreds of other people who are unfaithful to their mate, but the problem for him was that he was already representing what we thought were noble traits of a seasoned professional. He was on a pedestal that was quite high, so his fall was unexpected and rather painful for his career as advertisers pull him from their products left and right. It’s an interesting dilemma, not unlike Bill Clinton’s fall from grace; does the American public actually expect certain people to be above simply “being human?” Apparently so.

Well guess what, your practice expects you, as a professional, to represent that practice in the most professional way possible. We may scoff and say, who cares what we do on our time off? Or we may say, when I’m not in the practice, I should be able to do what I want, perhaps up to and including venting on Facebook, piercing an eyebrow, and yes, even using drugs or drinking from time to time. Why does your practice have a say in what you do even when you’re off the clock? It has to do with that same representation responsibility that Tiger failed miserably to realize as his private life was broadcast into everyone’s living room. He may not have been wearing sponsors’ logos on his clothes as he neglected his marital vows, but yet those advertisers placed a certain amount of trust in the fact that he would act like a professional both on and off camera. Our employers expect nothing less.

Is it fair, you may ask? Perhaps not…but then, life is not fair. As long as you want to work in a certain place, or pursue a certain career, or expect to be paid by others, you have some type of image to uphold. That image, while hopefully spelled out in the employee policy manual, has been decided by the leaders of that practice to represent the qualities of their practice that they hope to display to the general public. And now, you are one of their representatives and must take that position seriously.

While we may not be making the millions of dollars that Tiger is (or was), we are similar to him in that we are pursuing success doing something we love. While I enjoy restraining mean cats and wrangling employee issues more than hitting a little white ball around a golf course, I learned that within this profession, certain things would be expected of me from my employers. I choose to abide by those expectations in order to do what I love. Besides, I’m not sure I would know what to do with Tiger’s millions…except have more pets!  (And we’re up to 12 now in my house, with the recent addition of a Beta fish named Angel, an aquatic snail named Sheldon, and two aquatic frogs that are still awaiting their names!)

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