Style Needs - the secret to understanding “difficult” patients

How can you predict how your patient's going to respond to different types of information? This is really, really key if we want to be proactive in terms of actually empowering our patients to get the best results possible. Now, yesterday I talked about a concept that comes from Carl Rogers called unconditional positive regard. This is something that separates the idealists who tend to really struggle in practice long term, who are more likely to get burnt out, who get frustrated with patients who just don't enjoy practice as much as from the realists. The people who understand that the patient might be bringing different values and priorities to the table, to them might be showing up as a different version of themselves and realizing that if you can work with that and you don't have to try and get them to change their mind, you actually have a much more fulfilling practice. The realists of people who love what they do 20, 30, 40 years from now. Now we're going to pair that today with this concept from a very, very different area. This is something from the social style model, which is another course that is going to be released soon. Something that I already teach from the Certified Patient Centered Practitioner Program. Social style model is the best model I found for adapting your communication to each patient in front of you. And one of the powers of the social style model is it posits there's only four different social styles. Makes it very, very easy. It's not like 16 personalities, Myers Briggs. You can't use that on a patient. It's too complex. Social styles is nice and easy. Now I've got a whole course coming out that teaches you how to identify each style, how to understand them at a deeper level. How do they modify your entire, like your history, process, reporter findings, your exam, your treatment to that style. We're obviously not going to dive into all of that right now, but I do want to pull up this concept called the style need. Because when you pair the style need with unconditional positive regard, your results skyrocket. It gets so much easier. So basically, the style need is the underlying need that the person with a particular style is trying to meet. And when you understand that, that they may be trying to meet a different need and that it is probably a different need to your own, you will understand why some patients do different things to what you'd expect. And you will understand why some patients actually you have a tougher time connecting with if you're just going on autopilot and assuming they're the same as you. So basically, very quickly, the four social styles are driver, style, Analytical style, expressive style and amiable style. Now, don't worry about the names, we're not going to dive into them, but each of those has a need. Now, before we go into this, I do want to say all of us have all of these needs. It's not like each of us only has one. The style need is the one that we tend to prioritize the most, most the time, and that's connected to our style. So let's go through them. The driver style, their need is to get results, they need action. These are the people who tend to be very short term focused. What can we do to get it sorted? Now? They're not necessarily interested in the bigger term picture. They're not necessarily interested in how other people might feel about that. They need to see action soon because their worry is that if I'm not seeing results soon because maybe I'm wasting my time and I should be going to see somebody else. So they can be a little bit pushy, they can be a bit difficult to deal with if you're not used to driving style. They can be a little bit, especially if you're newer in practice, can put you on edge there. But it's because their need is to get results quickly, otherwise they worry that they're wasting their time while they're doing something wrong. So that's one need there. The analytical style is a little bit different. Their need is to do it right the first time. They are prone to perfectionists, so unlike drivers, they do want to take some time to think things through. If you go to all the details with a driver style patient, you'll frustrate them because that's delaying them from getting results. However, if you push somebody who's an analytical style to action quickly, they will panic because they will feel like, I haven't had time to think this through. These are people who may go, I need to think about it, but then come up and see you next time and say, I've thought about it, let's do it. So their need is to get it right the first time. They're very worried about making a mistake, whereas a driver style is very worried about wasting time. Then you have the expressive style, the expressive style. Their need is to be recognized, to be appreciated. They essentially the worst thing you could say to someone who has an expressive style is that you're no different to anyone else. You're not that great, or that you haven't really put in the effort. They really want to be a good patient. They want to be seen to be somebody Who's a little bit different, who's putting in the effort, they need to stand out for the effort they put in because they do put in a lot of effort. But, but the recognition is key. They don't care about results if their part in it is not being recognized. And then you have the amiable style. Their need is for connection and personal security. They need to feel safe in the relationship between the two of you. They need to feel that things are good, you like, you respect each other and that you're not judging them, you're not upset with them, you haven't written them off as a bad patient. You know, they're prone to the people pleasing side of things and they will often say what they think you want to hear even when it's not true, even if it's going to get in the way of the results. The opposite to the driver style, who will be blunt and direct because they just want to get the results. The amiable style will maybe say, yeah, I'm getting better when it's not. And then you get to the review and they say it's not really better and you're sat there going, well, you lied to me all this time. It's because they were really worried about the judgment that might occur there. So those are the four style needs to get results, to get it right, to be recognized and to have that connection, that security between the two of you. Now you will tend to prioritize one of those styles over others. And because of that you'll assume most people do the same. But you can see how 75% of the time you will probably get that wrong if you assume they're like you. So use this, add this to the unconditional positive regard. Because when you do this, when you start to spot that ah, this person's style need might not be about getting it right the first time, they may just really need to feel that I recognize and I appreciate them first of all. Then you can start to go, ah, suddenly their actions start to make sense. Suddenly I can have that unconditional positive regard because even though I'm not them, I can see what the world looks like from them. When you put these two together, it gets so much easier. Not just to build rapport and connection, understand your patients, but these difficult patients that you have, they just become normal people with a different style need. And that might become a bit of a difficult conversation at times, but I promise you it will be a lot less difficult when you realize the reason why that they have a different style need. To you. And you don't subconsciously blame the patient as being a difficult patient. Doing that, it sticks you in the idealist camp again, ironically. But that means the practice gets so much more frustrating and it's just not a lot of fun. It's a lot more stressful place to be. So yes, you will get much better results with patients. Yes, they will get better outcomes. Yes, you will get more reviews, referrals, build a busier practice by identifying style needs and being more of a realistic and using that unconditional positive regard. But most importantly, it will actually make your career something you enjoy. It'll be something you love. If you've fallen out of love with it, you can get it back. So have a think about that. Remember, those four style needs to get results to be right, to be recognized and personal security. If you keep those in mind, then when you have a difficult situation with a patient, you'll start to think, okay, maybe there's a different style need here. It will change the way you approach it. Now if you want to learn more about this tribe members get access to the social styles course. Now. This is a brand new course I put out this year. It will be available for everybody else a little bit later on, not that long from now, but members of the tribe get it now as well as that. If you are on the certified patient center, sorry, the certified patient centered practitioner fast track, you'll get access to it now right away as well. So getting certified you can join the fast track. There's only two days left for that though. Sorry, no, one day left for that. That closes tomorrow evening. So you're running out of time. Although if you join the tribe you can join the certification self paced study. That's more for newer graduates, people who aren't so confident with their communication skills. If you're somebody who is and wants to get certified right now, then you'll need to do that by tomorrow night. Thursday 11pm that's the cutoff there. If you have any questions about these, you're not sure about which one to do, then just shoot me a message and we'll work out the best solution for you. Anyway, hope that's useful. Keep in mind unconditional positive regard from yesterday. Keep in mind the style needs and how they might be different and I'll see you tomorrow for another video. Take care.