A practitioner explains how tone of voice builds trust with patients and reduces malpractice risk, drawing on Chris Voss's negotiation techniques from Never Split the Difference. The video includes exercises to improve your tone flexibility.
Okay, let's talk tone of voice here. Because we all know that tone of voice is really important for communication. You know, the majority of communication is non verbal. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. But I read this amazing study the other day that really blew my mind that highlighted how important this is. Essentially with the study, what they did was they looked at the risk of malpractice suits being brought against surgeons. And what they did was they listened to audio recordings of surgeons interactions with patients and they found from just having a sample of two 10 second clips, they were able to accurately predict based purely on the tone of voice alone, whether the surgeon was likely to get sued or not. So this is how important the tone is. It's not just about how does the patient feel, do they feel reassured? It actually affects the risk of complaints as well. So it's absolutely vital, it's fundamental that we get our tone of voice right and we know how to do that with patients. Now we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours. But I want to give you two things that you can practice right now to improve this. Because there's two tones that can be really, really useful when it comes to building trust with a patient. Now Chris Voss talks about these in his book Never Split the Difference. It's a great book. It's really good about communication and empathic communication. And he talks about these two tones. The first one is positive and playful. Positive and playful is where you're quite upbeat, you're fairly up and down. You're the way I'm talking, it's quite, quite positive, it's quite playful, it's not monotone, it's not static. Your tone will vary quite a bit. Now using this is really good for showing interest, it's really good for showing curiosity as well, while showing you're relaxed with the patient. Because when you're, when you're up and down like this, it shows interest. You're not like, I've got all the answers, everything's fine. But equally you're relaxed enough to show some enthusiasm. And this is really, really useful, particularly during the history process when you're trying to understand what's going on with the patient because they'll see that you're interested, they'll see that you've got some enthusiasm. That's what they want from a practitioner. So that's one, the other one is the opposite. And this is the late night DJ tone, as Chris Voss calls it. So it's 11pm at night, Tuesday evening, you listen to a DJ and he's playing some smooth jazz, I don't know. And it's that, it's that low level kind of tone. It's, it's not monotone, does go up and down a little bit, but it is slower, it is calmer and there's quite a lot more silence. So there's a tactical use of pauses here. Obviously they could go on too long, but most of us find that we're actually trying to fill the silence a lot of the time. So this is really useful when you've got an anxious patient, when you've got somebody who seems quite concerned, maybe they've had a flare up and they're coming in nervous and they're looking to you for reassurance. It's also really useful to use at certain stages in the report of findings. A really good report of findings will vary. It will have elements where you actually get more up and down, you get a bit more animated, that positive and playful tones coming in. But you do need to bring it down to the late night DJ as well. Now, we're not going to go into how to structure that because that's, that's a huge long video. That's something I teach in the courses a lot more. However, some people will find that you are better at one tone than the other. If you are somebody who struggles with positive and playful, here's a way that you can do that. Now, I'm going to warn you, these exercises are goofy, they're a bit weird. You do them on your own, you don't have to tell anyone you did them. But essentially for getting a bit more positive and playful, we need to bring more energy, we need to make you more animated, more enthusiasm. So the way you do it is this is you're going to practice, you're going to role play a report of findings on your own in a room with nobody there, okay? But when you do it, I want you to imagine that you are an amateur actor, you know, who has landed their first leading role in the local panto and they are hamming it up completely. Massive overacting. Think Jim Carrey. If you're old enough to remember Jim Carrey, you're really over the top. You want to be standing up, you want to be gesturing wildly as you're delivering this report of findings about. Here's what we found and here's what's going to happen. You know, ridiculous expressions get very, very animated, move around the room. It's a theatrical report of findings. Now, I would never, ever Ever recommend you do that with a patient? Obviously that's going to be really weird and totally over the top and nobody would ever take that advice. It would be terrible. But here's why you do it, because you're going to get out of your comfort zone. Your comfort zone might be to be a bit calmer and not bring that positive, playful energy when you need. So by doing this and turning the dial up to 11 and really stretching it as far as you can, then actually bringing it up a little bit when you're with a patient is much easier. You'll realize, oh, okay, I can do a little bit of that. And then see how patients respond. See that you often see a bit more enthusiasm from them as well. So that's if you need help with positive and playful. If you're somebody who tends to be quite animated, quite extroverted, like me, you may well need to practice that late night dj. And this is exactly the same exercise, but you practice it with the late night DJ voice. So you deliver a report of findings that is designed to send the patient to sleep. You're just doing it quietly, you're doing it slowly. Still some variation in the tone. We don't want to be monotone, but it's delivered like you've got some smooth, classic jazz tracks you're about to put on or something like that. And again, this is going to teach you to practice slowing down and add uncomfortably long pauses when you do this as well. Well, because you want to get out of that comfort zone. You may be somebody who struggles with both. If you're just a bit nervous. Generally, I would do both because this will really help you. I promise you. Every time I've had a mentee, I've had a chiropractor, I'm coaching do these exercises. They've looked at me like, really? Oh, God, that's horrible. And then they've done it and gone. Actually, that was really helpful. So I promise you, if you do it, this will help you. So give those a try. You know, the positive and playful, up and down, upbeat voice, enthusiasm, curiosity and. And that a late night dj, Smooth, calm, mellow, adding in the pauses. Give them both a try and I promise you, you'll be much more flexible with your tone with patients. You'll be able to adapt it more easily. That, as we know, will get you better results. Also, as an added benefit, reduces the risk of you being sued. So let me know how you get on with that. Any questions? As always, I'm here. Otherwise, I'll see you soon. For another video. Take care.
