I recently witnessed something that has stayed with me. Not because of the medicine, but because of what happened after it.
Employee A was yelling. Not raised voice, not frustration venting into a rough afternoon. Full, irrational, echoing-off-the-walls yelling. Employee B stood there, stunned. The trigger was a routine ear exam. At a doctor's request, Employee B had rechecked an exam Employee A had already performed. Same patient. Same ears. Different findings. Employee A did not pause, did not ask questions, did not consider the possibility that two skilled people might see something differently. She escalated.
If you have led a team long enough, you know exactly what happened next. The emotional temperature spiked and everyone suddenly became very busy. Heads down. Eyes averted. An urgent need to inventory gauze appearing out of nowhere.
When I pulled Employee A aside for what I expected to be a calm, direct conversation, I asked for something straightforward: an apology to Employee B. At minimum. She stood up before I finished, gathered her things, and walked out of the hospital. No discussion. No resolution. No return. This was not a new hire. This was a long-term employee, and rather than offer two words to the colleague she had humiliated in front of the team, she chose to end her employment. We never even got to the apology she owed the rest of them for the scene she had created. That was her line in the sand.
Later, Employee B, who had been her friend, said something that reframed everything: "I've seen this before. She cannot apologize. Ever."
That was my introduction to a very specific and very disruptive personality trait.
What This Actually Is
Let's be precise about what it is, because it is easy to mislabel. This is not stubbornness. It is not a strong personality or a bad day. Some people experience being wrong as something much larger than a simple mistake. To them, an apology does not feel like repair. It feels like defeat, like exposure, like weakness, like something that must be avoided regardless of the cost to everyone else in the room. So instead of repair, you get protection. Protection of ego, protection of identity, and protection that comes entirely at the team's expense.
Why It Matters in Veterinary Medicine
This matters acutely in veterinary medicine because our work is built on constant correction, and that correction is not optional. It is the mechanism by which patients stay safe.
We recheck each other. We question findings. We catch dosing errors, missed findings, and faulty assumptions before they become outcomes. A technician who notices something a doctor missed and speaks up is not being insubordinate. A colleague who says "I'm getting a different reading, can we look at this together" is doing exactly what the job requires. That kind of culture, where anyone can flag a concern without fear of a disproportionate reaction, is not a soft team-building value. It is a clinical safety standard.
If one person cannot tolerate being wrong, that standard collapses around them. Every correction becomes an attack. Every difference of opinion feels like disrespect. Every recheck is personal. And eventually, people stop rechecking. They stop speaking up. They let the uneasy feeling pass because it is easier than the alternative. In a hospital setting, that silence is not just a morale problem. It is a patient risk.
This Is Not a Training Problem
Let's be equally precise about what this is not: a training problem. The instinct when you encounter this pattern is to coach it. Explain the expectation more clearly, give more specific feedback, find the right words, circle back. Then circle back again with better wording and improved eye contact. Say it kindly. Give them space. Surely now they will understand.
Early in my career, I believed most people could be coached into accountability if I just found the right approach. Spoiler alert: some people are not confused about the standard. They simply do not agree that they are wrong, and no amount of leadership finesse is going to change that. The distinction matters because it changes what you do next.
The question stops being "how do I help them grow?" and becomes "can this person function on a team where accountability is required?" In a veterinary hospital, people must speak up, be corrected, and correct others. If one person cannot tolerate that, everyone else will start to shrink. They stop questioning. They stop engaging. Not because they do not care, but because it is easier than getting yelled at over an ear exam.
Spotting It Before It Costs You
This trait is easier to spot in hindsight than across an interview table, but it does leave clues if you know where to look. Ask a candidate to tell you about a mistake they made. You are not listening for the story. You are listening for ownership. If they cannot identify a single mistake, that is not nerves. Everyone in veterinary medicine has made a mistake, usually before lunch, and most of us have made a memorable one before the end of the first week. No mistake means no self-awareness, and that is not a yellow flag. That is a red one.
Ask how they handled difficult feedback and watch for minimization, deflection, or the subtle art of making every hard conversation somehow the other person's fault. Offer a gentle counterpoint mid-interview and pause. Curiosity is a green light. Defensiveness over something that does not matter yet tells you a great deal about what happens when something does.
And if every past workplace was dysfunctional, every manager was incompetent, and every difficult coworker was the problem, you are not listening to someone with extraordinarily bad luck. You are listening to the common denominator introduce themselves.
What References Actually Tell You
Reference checks get wasted on safe questions. Nobody calls a reference to hear "she was a pleasure to work with and we were sad to see her go." Ask instead: "How did she handle being corrected?" Then stop talking. What follows that silence will tell you more than anything on the resume. Hesitation, careful word choices, praise that somehow never gets specific, the slight inhale before a very measured answer. People will try to tell you something without saying it directly. Your job is to hear it.
Watch the Pattern, Not the Moments
Once someone is on your team, watch the pattern, not just the moments. This personality rarely announces itself with one dramatic incident. It announces itself with tension that walks into the room before they do. With conflict in which they are somehow never at fault. With reactions that are three sizes too large for the correction that triggered them.
Healthy team members mess up and come back with "that wasn't my best, I'm sorry." This personality does not come back at all. They wait for it to pass, they reframe it, or they find someone else to blame. And if there is no apology, there is no repair. If there is no repair, there is no team. It is just a group of people who have learned to stay quiet around one person, which is its own kind of damage.
What I Learned
I went into that conversation expecting to coach an apology. What I learned instead was more useful: some people would rather leave their job than admit they were wrong. Once you understand that, you hire differently, you protect your team more deliberately, and you stop mistaking a values problem for a training opportunity.
In veterinary medicine, technical excellence without the ability to be corrected is not an asset. It is a liability.
— Dr. V
The Gray Oak Journal