Vanessa Van Edwards breaks down how Dr. Essel builds patient trust through deliberate body language. He uses a technique called "fronting," aligning his toes, torso, and head toward patients to signal respect. Mixing warmth with competence makes patients more likely to follow medical advice.
We say, I only care about a smart doctor. No, actually their warmth is just important. So Dr. Essel, who's off the charts in smarts, he had to create a nonverbal protocol for warmth because he knew if he's examining a patient, that's very high competence and it's very intimate. So he has a step-by-step process he's developed for himself, starting in the waiting room, getting them all the way into his office to try to create warm moments before they get into whatever they're gonna say. Because he found that if he was able to create warmth moments peppered with competence, they were more likely to take his recommendations. They were more likely to actually take the medication that he wants them to take. They were more likely to take care of their health in the way that he was hoping they would do it. A couple of things he does is he very purposefully engages in what's called fronting. When we angle our toes, torso, and head toward the person we're speaking with from the moment they enter the room, he angles his own body to always be in alignment with the person he's speaking with. That is a very subtle way of showing respect.
