27: Becoming an Influencer

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and I'm so excited to be with you today. Internally at Community Dental Partners, we have what we call the ultimate dentist professional group. It's really our clinical university and it's ran by our clinical team. And recently they asked me to speak about being an influencer. Being an influencer, I love that topic, even that word, how to be an influencer. And I thought of what other words sometimes get associated with being an influencer. Maybe someone might think of that as being a negotiator, you know, how do I negotiate? Might be around a salesman. If you think about clinically, being an influencer is about being a scheduler, really being a treatment coordinator. But when I really stepped back, I thought being an influencer is about being a leader, no matter what position you might hold. Now, some of you might have seen that video going around on Facebook. I absolutely love it. It's a mom teaching two of her boys how to dive into a swimming pool. If you haven't seen it, probably if you just go on Facebook or go on YouTube and do mom diving into swimming pool. Right now, it's very much trending and viral, but it's awesome. On leadership and the realities of leadership, what you'll notice is mom stands up there and does this nice dive into the pool. Her then much younger son does kind of a middle ish kind of dive with a belly flop. And then the last little boy simply holds his arms to his sides and face plants right into the pool. So many times when we're trying to be an influencer, that's what it can feel like. Maybe our practice manager understands a little bit of what we're saying, does it pretty well and then by the time it gets down to staff, it just totally flops. Maybe the patient somewhat understands what we're trying to achieve by the time they explain it to their spouse and it totally flops. Or maybe we just never even make it that far. Influencing other people is just something that we struggle with. Think about different situations within a clinical office where you're trying to influence that mom who doesn't understand why her child would need three crowns. She, she reminds you that she's a good mother who always taking care of her children and they brush their teeth as often as they'll let her. The grandpa who doesn't understand why his denture doesn't fit the first time. Are you stupid? What's your problem? Team members who don't really appreciate about what needs to be on your tray setup for you to do a crown prep appropriately. That X ray tech who can't get those X rays just right in all these scenarios, we're trying to be an influencer now. I think one of the problems is that so many of the business books, leadership books, don't really represent how you influence people today. I think of books like the Art of War or even the biography on Steve Jobs. But so many others really portray this alpha male, you know, hard female personality type who sets the vision, tells people what to do and you either do it or you're out. So much of Steve Jobs story is I think told almost out of order in the fact that the reality is to the extent he was that kind of leader, he ended up getting fired from his own company and it was really with a lot more transparency and vulnerability that he built Apple the second time. So let me give you the principles that I work off of in influencing others and I have found gets me a lot more momentum than some kind of alpha male hard charging a type personality, which frankly I naturally am very revved up. A type personality. So these have been things I've had to learn, oftentimes the hard way. Now I'm going to use an acronym cave like you have to come out of your cave C A V, E. But I'm going to reverse it to evac. Like you have to evacuate the cave, right? So we're going to do it in that order. E, V, A, C. And the first one is E for empathy. Empathy is proactively understanding another person's perspective. This might seem really simple and intuitive. I mean we're both humans, right? So how hard can it be to understand how you think, what your belief system is, what your perspective is, what your paradigms are? And the reality is this can be very difficult because there is so much assumption built in that we do just naturally understand one another. I took a poll of our dentists and ask them, if you have a mom who's come in with her child, what is the number one concern that that mom has around treatment for that child? Now, I got great answers. They're concerned about the amount of pain that child would have. They're concerned about, you know, what the treatment would cost and many things around the child themselves. So I've taken the time to interview many of our patients as well as some of our staff members who are in our same patient demographic. And I can tell you that the number one concern that a mom feels when her child is being treated or even examined, excuse me, examined, is am I a good mother? That's her primary concern. Do you perceive me as being a good mother? Now, you might think this is a dental office, not a psychiatric institute, not a counseling session. Really, your primary concern is whether the dentist and the staff think if you're a good mother or not. Absolutely. I can promise you that when you say that that child needs three stainless steel crowns, that the first thought that that mom has is not cost, that might be the second or third. And the first thought is not how much pain will that child have? That might be the second or third. The very first thought that that mother has is, do you think that I'm a bad mother because my child needs that treatment? And if you don't address that issue, if you don't have that level of empathy, then you're going to find yourself crossways with that patient, with that mother, and you're not going to understand why. And she's not going to say, well, doc, before we move forward, can you tell me that I'm a good mother? So obviously that example is in a, a parent, child type relationship. But even in just a direct patient, adult situation, people want to know that you believe that they're smart, that they, they're wise, that they're doing their best in their life. They feel natural shame and judgment in a clinical environment. And so having empathy. And again, I'm giving this example around a doctor patient type experience. But having empathy removes defenses and barriers that neither of you want to have there. So you can move on to the influencing. So think about that. What are areas where you could be more empathetic and have some of that perspective, whether it be with staff or with patients. What is the human component that maybe you want to go a little bit deeper on? I can tell you this works wonderful for marketing plans, too. Before you do a marketing plan, go deep on the empathy of what is it that this patient really cares about, where they go to school and work and what concerns do they have and how do we address those from a patient experience perspective? So the E is for empathy. Now one of my favorite books on this is called Leadership and Self Deception. We've given that out to all of our clinicians and our leadership team and it's just one of those core books. So if you haven't read it or it's been a while, that's one I would definitely dive into. It's called Leadership and Self Deception. All right, step number two. So E for empathy, V for validation. Validation is really taking empathy and putting it into action. You've got to make a statement to that patient, to that staff member that validates them and where they're at. Now, in the example I gave around a mother child situation, validation statements might look like this. What a great mom that you brought them in here today, man. There's nothing here we can't fix. You know, a lot of what's happened here is genetic. Maybe turning to the child, you have a great mom, you know that, right? Maybe a statement like I know how difficult it can be to get crowns on your kid's teeth. Just know that I have crowns on my own kids teeth as well. Or just know that this is very common for kids this age or something like most kids never get this work done and then it causes huge problems later. How awesome that you care enough to get this done. Now I'm giving that specifically around a mother child relationship. But those are some of the most difficult to manage in a clinical, clinical environment. But think about that in terms of any patient, they want that validation from you. All right, so E is for empathy, V is for validation and then A is for alignment. Now I'm just going to give four principles on alignment. Number one, we agree on the end result we are targeting. So often we end up talking past people and we get to the end and what they thought the scope of work was and what we thought the scope of work was. We realized we didn't take the time to really map that out. We tried to do drive by delegation. We just didn't really put in the effort to make sure that we were thinking about the end result the same way. Think about that in terms of tray setup, marketing plans or patient engagement, whatever it might be. Are we clear on the end result we're targeting? Number two, we agree on the process we will use. Now oftentimes with staff, I want them to be okay or come up with the process. I don't necessarily want to control the how we get there, but I want to be aligned, that we both agree on the process that's going to be used and if they need support in that process, that I'm there for them. Number three, we agree on the time it will take. How often does a team member start working on something way before the priority is something else and it's because they thought your time frame was you wanted it now, or they take much longer on something than you were expecting and maybe that's because it's a lot more effort than you thought. So really understanding the end result, understanding the process, and then what is the timeframe that we think this will take? Now on a much more focused area, you could think about doing this with patients as well. Are we clear on end result? Are we clear on the process? Are we clear on the timeframe it will take? And number four, we agree on the potential negative side effects. Hey, these are the byproducts that could come out of this that might be negative. One thing I'd say about alignment is alignment requires consistent check in from the leader when the project has longer time frames. Don't think because you talked about it on Tuesday that a month later the scope hasn't changed, etc. So constantly fighting to make sure that you're completely aligned, that you can't misalign or misunderstand one another, is critical in being a strong influencer. And the C, the last one stands for coaching. Now, honestly, if you've been empathetic, if you have that mindset and you've been validating, you've taken that action and you've ensured that you have alignment using those four steps, then the coaching is going to be minimal. But the one thing I'd say is with that level of alignment with patients or staff, you're going to be able to coach to a higher target. Now, I have a saying that I use, which is never let your expectations be higher than your willingness to support your team. Never let your expectations be higher than your willingness to support your team. So I am careful that I'm not setting expectations beyond the support I'm willing to give my team. But that's where coaching comes in, is setting those new expectations. So hopefully this is helpful. And being the influencer that you want to be, I'm sure there's several areas in your life you want to be a stronger influencer, a stronger leader. Try these principles, see if diving in a little deeper on the empathy, coming up with some validation statements, making sure you have total alignment and then coaching to that higher level, if that doesn't help you get to that next level and get out of that cave and start influencing more people. Always love your feedback and questions. Feel free to join us on our private Facebook group, DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook at DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any dso, go to our website at dsosecrets. Com and we will get that emailed to you. 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