PelviBiz Podcast #103 How to Be A Better Communicator

Welcome to Pelly biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I've grown my pelvic health practice, orthopelvic physical therapy, and now I'm helping pelvic health professionals do the same. Each week I give you the knowledge you need to grow your practice. Let's get into today's episode.

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Today I'm going to talk about how to be a better communicator. We're going to talk about the do's, the don'ts, stories of communication. Why sometimes is freaking communication so hard? I feel like most of us are like yes, I'm a great communicator. Of course I communicate well. I mean this was me. I feel like I overly communicate all the time. But in some cases that is definitely not the case and things can be done a lot better. So oh, I have so much to say over this. All right, so number one, what I've learned when it comes from a business standpoint and communication, personally I think you should over communicate rather than under communicate. Overly communicating to me has much better outcomes than under communicating when there is under communication happening. Okay, and let's just say it's a team member and you and the team member, you're both doing your tasks that you have and the team member is not communicating to you what's happening. Well then how do you know what that person's task is doing and then how do you know that you're not double dipping on that task? Or how do you know what person, what that person's experiencing when they're not sharing anything of what they're doing all day long. And you're like, huh? What are they doing all day long? I don't really know because they're not communicating that with me, even if you do ask them. So what I found, there's like three different scenarios that can happen. You got two over communicators that come together and. And they're. They both overshare. They get the oversharers. You got the other people that are under sharers that are just like, huh? Yep. Yeah. And they just give you one word, like feedback, and you're like, great. And then there's the couple that's like, one's the oversharer and one's the under sharer. And one person just dominates the conversation. And the under sharers have lots of thoughts going on in their head, but they don't say anything. So to negate any, you know, any scenarios coming down the pipe is you really want to, number one, learn how people best communicate because every single person is different. So when anyone comes on my team, I always am asking them like, hey, how do you like to communicate? Are you a virgin person? Do you like to do list? Do you like an email? Do you want to put in boxer? Like, how do you want to communicate? Because that way they like to communicate tells me kind of a little bit about their personality. So for me, I personally am a verbal communicator. If I have to write something down, it does not come out like it's in my head. But if I can just talk it out with you, it comes out exactly how it's in my head. Maybe too much, because I will just say things that maybe you probably shouldn't say out in public, but it will just come out okay. So I tend to be the over communicator in typically in real life, but sometimes in business, I will hold back and be more. A little bit more reserved because maybe I feel like everyone doesn't need to know everything, even though they believe they should know everything. So just remember that, like, number one, what kind of communicator are you? And if you have staff or if you have employees, you should ask them how they would like to communicate so that we can all be on the same page and work together as a team. So I think that's important. Number two, I would develop systems, whether or not that's on like a slack channel or trello board or voxer and have a system of if this happens, or they have a question of this, how then can you communicate better? So let's say I have a person on staff and they have a question about treatment. What's the best way that they're going to communicate to me? Is it going to be through the voxer? Maybe people that don't know the voxer? By the way, it's just an app that we, it's like a walkie talkie and you can verbally talk into. Okay, is it, are they going to talk to other employees and bounce ideas from them? Are they going to save it for the meeting? So like what systems do we have in place when people have questions of the hierarchy of how we're going to communicate? So another system I have is everything goes through my manager. Any questions that anyone has. It could be as simple as what shirt are we going to wear tomorrow? Or oh my God, the ceiling is leaking, who do we call for maintenance on this? Or whatever else. Like everything filters through the manager and then the manager filters to me. So you want to have a hierarchy. Otherwise you're going to get the, the smallest questions every single second of the day and you're going to be like, look, I can't handle this. There's no way I can answer all these questions. So you need an in between. Between you. And I believe maybe not everyone's like this, but I believe that you do need some kind of manager to help manage everyone and that you are not like the go to person when you get to a certain level. Just so you guys know. So I think that's big. Having an in between communicator. And even I'm trying to go even bigger than that of having my manager communicate to my personal assistant, which then my personal assistant communicates only with both companies, with Pelvibiz and Orthopelvic and I only hear from my executive assistant what's happening with them. So that way it's very structured and there's no communication loss and there's a hierarchy to where you are helping really solve. Like a problem shouldn't come to me unless it was something that's really, you know, big because I have other people in place that are going to help solve those problems. And then it saves my headspace so that I'm able to think, try to move the company forward and continue, you know, to progress. I think that's very important to have systems in place and then also too like people may have boundaries. Just remember that. So let's just say I'm at work and I'm like, oh, or maybe, okay, it's after 5 o' clock and I'M at home. And I was like, man, I really need to tell the staff something. Is it okay for me to send a voice message to all my staff at 7, 8 o' clock at night? And is there an expectation that they need to respond? So my staff does not have to respond to that, but is there an expectation for that? And you know, what's the communication around that? Are we going to, you know, use that outlet or if only anything important goes in there, that we were going to get a text at 7:00, clock at night if something happens. And then everything else needs to be an email form. So what system? Again, this goes back to systems and some of this is trial and error too. You may not know what system are you going to have in place so that you guys can better communicate internally with each other to have better outcomes. Another, another thought of this is we use Jane as our software, right? So we use software called JN App. And how we better communicate internally is we have, you know, six different pts. And instead of, you know, writing out all of our notes and all that kind of stuff, we have where you can star it and when you hover over, over the person's name, it can come up like quickly what you would do with them. So what we do, we have an internal system that's like step one, visceral mobilization. Step two, pull at the labias. Step three, internal exam and hit 11 o'. Clock. Step four, take them to the gym and do 10 jumping jacks, 20 squats at this weight and blah, blah, blah. So like the next therapist that sees them, everything is clearly laid out in two seconds. They hover over the name and they are able to just implement what they need to be doing. So that is an internal communication system that we have. And then in addition to that, it tells us what part of the program that they're on. So we'll also put in parentheses and we'll set, put like pressure control. And then that means they're in that membership that we have created in that product. And then we know that they're, that they're getting access to this membership. So there are so many internal communication systems that maybe you guys have as well, maybe you haven't spelled it out as clearly, but this is the systems you've got to lay out to help build a company, to help move it forward. And everyone's gotta be on the same page. So that's huge. And if they're, they also gotta be motivated to like do the thing so that they're not the, the slacker of the group to where they're like, oh, I'm the one holding everyone back because I can't communicate well. Like, you just don't want that person on your team. You know what I'm saying? Like, so that's huge. What else do I have to say? Let me think here about communication. Let me think. Ask good questions. Understand people. I think that's big. Understand where people are coming from rather than just thinking it has to be one way. Let's see. Have a log, I would say that shows, like, let's say someone's remote. Let's say if you guys have a virtual assistant, have a log that shows every single day what that virtual assistant's doing so that you know, that you know, like, hey, this is what they did today. Otherwise, if they're like in a different state, how do you know what's getting done? And not that you don't trust them, it's just like, how do you know what was done for the day? You don't know. So just have them, like, write out quickly, like, hey, I spent 15 minutes doing paperwork today. I just had 15 minutes posting on social media. I spent 15 minutes replying back to leads like, okay, great, now I know what was done so I don't have to think about, hey, I gotta do that. So I think that's huge. It's like just being aware of what everyone's doing, but you not actually having to do the thing. Hopefully that makes sense. You have to be aware of what everyone's doing, but you're not physically doing that task. Okay, so you have a broader view and they have, they're in on that. They're doing the task. Set expectations that when you are growing a company that you don't know everything and that potentially you have to quickly pivot and things can quickly change. And everyone's got to be like, good with that. So you want people that, A, not only are communicators, but B, are able to handle a change like that and they're able to quickly change. I think just communicating that up front that, guys, we're a new company, we are growing, and I don't maybe know all the things that are ahead, but we're going to try our best and all we can do is try. And if it doesn't work out, then we do a different thing and we. We pivot and go a different direction. So I think that's important. I think communication's everything. And if you are an effective communicator, if you teach your team and build out systems of how to effectively communicate. There is no reason why your company cannot continue to grow and thrive and excel when you have great communication. Your patients are only going to benefit from it because especially with there's therapists overlap, like it's just going to be so much better. I wouldn't just expect everyone like there's one communication style, that's it. I wouldn't expect everyone to do that. Don't under communicate. People will feel like you're doing something behind their back. People will feel like, well what is she doing now? They won't trust you as much. So again, I personally would over communicate that under communicate. Watch your tone. Maybe like sometimes I'm really loud cause I can't hear. So sometimes I don't mean to be that way. Sometimes I can come off like really aggressively and blunt. But I don't mean that way. When I get really excited about something, I get louder. And sometimes that could be a little like, whoa, Kelly, whoa. That's a lot coming at me. But I'm not, I'm just getting excited. And so just explaining to people, hey, these are my tendencies. This means nothing. Making them aware. Yeah, I would say those are the big things. And communicate, communicate more and more and more be on the overly side than the underside. So hope you guys learned some stuff tonight and we'll talk soon. Bye guys. I consider myself a business and life coach. Are you ready to live the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur? If so, let's chat. See the episode notes below and go ahead and book a call. See you all next week.