Does Your Dental Team Listen To You?

When learning to Seek First to Understand, we reach an "AH HA" moment within ourselves. The moment of "I really wasn't listening." This Habit will require your undivided attention as we understand how to seek first to understand in all of our relationships. One of the most crucial Lifelines within your Dental Practice is COMMUNICATION. Fundamentally, it is the most pertinent skill in life. It comes in many forms yet the impact is crucial. We have spent most of our lives in the early stages learning to speak, read, and write. Very little attention to the imperative "listening skills" necessary for communication to be balanced. By listening, we develop a deeper understanding of the other persons views. In order for the entire Dental Team be effective in communication amongst one another or with patients they must learn to balance the communication.

Every Relationship within your dental office requires an Emotional Bank Account.  Once recognized, you will begin to understand the importance of carefully establishing accounts for every individual within your life.  This includes your dental team and dental patients.  Preparation for each account is imperative.  The giving of time and thoughtfulness will effectively enhance learning, build achievement, and allow healthy change to occur.  Once prepared, move forward by making deposits of trust, thoughtfulness, and a willingness to understand.  So that over time, when you make withdrawals, by asking someone to change something, you won't deplete the account too much.  It is important to make deposits first, build healthy relationships, etc… before allowing any withdrawals to occur.

Whether you are seeking to understand a Team Member in the Dental Practice, a Patient, or even someone very close to you; remove your egocentric viewpoint.  Our mind must understand their thought process and then take a walk in their shoes to fully comprehend their feelings.  Try to completely LISTEN to the other person.  When we gather our next thought; the tendency to fire off a response explodes.  You must learn to listen and genuinely concentrate on the conversation taking place. 

Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind in Your Dental Practice

When you understand how the mind works, you can leverage this to create some amazing results within your dental practice. All things in life are created twice - first the mental creation then the physical creation comes next. Without first the mental creation, the physical one will never happen. This is something all dentists understand very well when it comes to clinical dentistry. When they look into a mouth, they all have a pretty good idea of what the outcome will look like. When it comes to the business side of the practice, this step often gets skipped, unfortunately. An example of the two creations would be with a building. The mental creation of your building is the architectural plans, the physical creation is the actual building. Everything in life is created this way.

I thought this article on Social Media might be helpful to all Dental Offices.    ~Darren Kaberna 

How to Run a Successful Social Media Sweepstakes

1. Adeel Vanthaliwala
   Published November 4, 2013 
   

Do you need a guide to ensure that you don’t miss the crucial elements of a successful sweepstakes promotion?Are you planning to run a social media sweepstakes to make your business stand out this holiday season?

Habit 1 Be Proactive Within Your Dental Practice

When looking at your dental practice you can choose to be Proactive in your approach or Reactive in how you handle things. Too often we tend allow the world around us to push us into Reactive behavior. This might sound silly and too superficial but how we respond in life is predetermined by how we think on a daily basis. Hence why the type of language we use and how we think is important. Let's explore more of what I am referring to.

The reason why this programing is important is when something happens to you in life, there is a very brief moment where you have the ability to respond before you see the outcome of that event. An example might be, you see a car accident. Immediately you have the ability to do a few things. Do you run over to the car and help, do you stay where you are and dial 911 or do you do nothing and just keep going about your business. We all have the ability to respond to everything in our lives, the question becomes, what do we choose. Another example I hear in dental offices all the time, "The economy stinks and because of that my business is struggling." I would argue that you are allowing the economy to negatively impact your business. Have you heard of the Lottery Curse? About 70% of people who win the lottery within 5 years declare bankruptcy. How in the world is it possible to take such a great problem and end in such tragedy? Poor decisions is the answer.  This is why I believe even with a tough economy you can make great decisions and have a positive outcome.