How to Uncover Your RoF Blind Spots

Hey, it's Chris and I'm back with videos. So thanks for everyone for taking part in the recent email newsletter experiment I've been doing where I tried some written things and especially everyone who voted and those of you who are kind enough to actually email me back and let me know your thoughts. It's a fun experiment. It's been nice putting out two lots a week. It's been nice to sort of share a bit more content with you guys and it's been a nice break for me. I enjoy video. I've missed this. I'm looking forward to doing more, but it's been nice to try a little experiment in a different medium. And like I said in the last email, I'm going to try a little bit of both. So going forward I'm going to do I'm going to aim for one written and one video per week. We'll see how that goes. I might change it around a little bit, but it seemed like most people, even if they had a preference, one or the other, said they'd be quite happy to do a little bit of a mix there. So anyway, let's dive into today's video. Today's video actually comes from a BCA session that I did with my friend and colleague Rosie Pearcey just a couple of days ago. Some of you may have caught that and we were talking about how to help clinic owners get better results with their associates. So how they could better train and retain the kind of associates that are a real asset to their practice and help them develop long term. Now, not all of that is going to be relevant for everybody here. If you are a clinic owner and you did miss that, then don't worry, it's only for BCA members. But I am actually, if you see in the link below this video, I've recorded a little bit of extra content just for you to add help you better approach the mentoring relationship. If you take this one tip, it will really help improve your relationship with your associates and actually improve their ability to understand you, take on your advice and get better results. But anyway, a good chunk of you watching this aren't clinic owners who have associates. So I wanted to share something that I shared in that seminar that's really relevant for everybody. And this is a great way to spot your blind spots to realize the things where you think, oh, I didn't even know I was doing that. And we're going to apply this particularly to the report of findings. Now you could use this with any visit, but to me the report of findings is really the linchpin. It's the one I teach and coach practitioners on the most. And as you already know, it's probably the most important point. Whether you do that at visit 1 or visit 2 doesn't matter from this perspective, but if you get this right, you're off to a great start. If you get it wrong, the patient may not come back. And the problem is, I'll often give advice to people and they go, oh, yeah, I'll do that. Oh, I do that. I do a pretty good job with that already. And sometimes our perspective of how we're doing doesn't actually fit reality and we don't realize what's happening in the moment. You know, when I'm training associates, I get them to write out example scripts. I get them to send me recordings of role play stuff. I get them to role play in front of me. And that's all well and good, but when you're in front of a patient, it's unavoidably different. It's not the same thing. And I got this great tip from a friend of mine who has been training his associates this way for a little bit. And this is to actually get recordings of what's happening with an actual patient. So getting an audio recording of a genuine live report of findings, which I thought was great, but straight away I was going, oh, that's got to be tricky. That's a bit awkward to kind of get their consent and do they have to sign a form or something like that? And you know, in my head, I'm already building up this resistance, going like, yeah, sounds great, but, oh, that's got to be tricky to get. And he said, no, no, it's simple. It's one line. And I'll tell you that line, do you mind if I take audio notes? That's it. That's all you have to do. You don't have to get written consent or anything like that. Those notes, you know, that audio file that you're going to record forms part of their notes. It's got the same things. Every PC has a voice recorder, voice memo, audio recorder app built into it. You know, Macs will have this as well. He said they often use their phones. If you've got an iPhone like I do, you can just go on here and go, you know, voice memos. And they can literally have that loaded up here, sat on their desk. You can do this yourself as well, and I thoroughly recommend it. And just you come in, patient sits down, you say, you know, hey, nice to see you again. By the way, do you mind if I take some audio notes? That's it. You say it as if it's the most normal question in the world. If they say that's fine, you hit record and off you go. If they say, oh, I'd rather not, that's fine, you put the phone away. That's all it has to be. And some patients do decline, but the majority say yes. The key is to just say it as if it's quite routine. The bigger you build it up, the more likely it's going to seem like a thing to the patient. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is even if you don't have associates, maybe you are an associate, maybe you just practice on your own. You've got a solo thing going on is you can use this exact same thing to listen back and spot where you maybe might want to make some tweaks or changes. Because every time I've done this with somebody, they've listened back and gone, oh, I didn't realize I say that a lot, or oh, actually yeah, I could have handled that better. Oh yeah. When they ask that question, I should have done it differently. But in the moment you don't because you're focused on what's coming next. It's only when you look back and reflect that you'll start to think about what you did differently. But you're relying on your memory. And just like patients don't have a great memory for what we tell them, that's why things have to be written down for them. What you remember of that reporter findings conversation is going to be quite small. So using this means you can hear absolutely everything that goes on. Yes. Video would be slightly better to get some of the body language, but. But that's a little bit harder. You can't sort of put that down as audio notes. You have to go, this is part of training. Explain why you're doing. It might be a bit different for the patient as well to be on video. So in terms of bang for your buck for this, I'd recommend just going, do you mind if I take some audio notes? Because you'll get a lot of the non verbal through the tone of your voice, the way you convey it anyway. And then you can listen back to it and you can go, am I doing as well as I think or are there some areas I didn't realize I could improve? So it's my challenge to you. It's getting you out of your comfort zone a little bit. But every, you know, I've made our new Graduates do this and yeah, the first time they're kind of freaked out about how to do it. I promise you, once I've shown them how easy it is, they do it and go, oh yeah, actually it's fine, it's not that hard at all. It's nice and straightforward and you know you can delete it as soon as you've listened to it. You don't have to keep that, you don't have to upload it and store it on the files. You can get rid of it very quickly if you want. But if new graduates who've been with me for like literally two, three months are able to do this and find its fine, I promise those of you who are more experienced, it's really not a big deal and you can get some really valuable information from it. I've learned from myself as well, going, oh wow. Actually I might tweak the way I say that. I sort of fumbled that a little bit or I didn't convey that as clearly and confidently as I wanted to. So give that a try. Just remember that key phrase. Do you mind if I take audio notes? Said as if it's the most routine question in the world. Give it a go, listen back and if you do this, you know, because I can say this and you'll go, yeah, that'd be a good idea. And I know that, you know, 80% of you won't do it, but if you do, let me know how it goes. Let me know. What did you find? Did you find that, oh, I'm actually doing something a little bit differently that I'd like to change? Or are you going, hey, when I listen back I'm actually a little bit better than I thought at this bit because you may recognize where you're doing well. So give it a try. But please, please, please, if you do, let me know. Just drop me a quick email and let me know what you find. I love hearing from colleagues. I love hearing from people saying this stuff works and they've discovered new things. So give it a try and practice. Remember, those of you who are clinic owners, click the link below if you want a little bit of extra content, specifically on how to mentor your associates using this. I promise you, I've been trained a couple of hundred people through the PLT webinars now and quite a few one to one as well. Using this has made a big, big difference to my approach and it's really helped them get better results as well. So it's a win, win, win for you, your associate, your patients. So if you're interested, click the link below. Otherwise, I'll see you soon for another written email. Alright, take care, guys.