It is a long, difficult, tedious and expensive journey to earn the right to practice dentistry. It is then only understandable that you want to dig right into those teeth and get some work done. You know you’ve learned it all, invested it all and it’s time to reap the benefits of it all. But, maybe not just yet. Most fresh graduates are starry eyed, very confident and believe they are on the other end of the learning curve. And this enthusiasm more often than not leads them to make the wrong decisions. 

There is only so much you can learn at school, the rest you just have to rely on your own experiences, and perhaps the experiences of others. This list comprises of the top mistakes dentists fresh out of graduate schools, and perhaps even those a little seasoned too, tend to make. 

Don’t Think about Making Money Initially

If you are like most fresh graduates, finally getting some returns on your investment is somewhere on the top of your priority list. But doing that might come in the way of learning or compromising your work ethics. Think of it this way, you still have a few years of residency left before you can start reaping those much awaited fruits of labour.

Don’t Push Your Boundaries Too Much

You have naïve invincibility of being a fresh grad, you think you can do everything. So you want to do it all; put all your knowledge to practice all at once, but in the beginning it would make sense to play it safe. To manoeuvre in safe territory before you can dig into the more complex processes. You should focus on building up a reputation as a reliable practitioner before making one as a sophisticated and seasoned one. 

Don’t Build Bad Habits, Stick to Your Principles

This is especially true for dentists starting out in the corporate sector. Corporate dental jobs offer security and a stable number of clients. However, they require you to meet certain numbers, which can put added pressure on you. As a result, you may be tempted to rush through patients or not provide optimum care, which can be detrimental to your career in the long run. 

Not to say you shouldn’t go for the corporate side, in fact it is a great place to start so that you can get your hands wet, brush up your skills and build up a reputation for yourself as a skilled artisan. 

Discussing the Financial Aspects

Unfortunately, dental schools don’t teach you how to take care of the financial aspects of dentistry. So you have no idea how to speak to clients about the costs of a procedure; and all of it can become quite daunting and confusing. Be willing to ask how your practice owner wants price and finances discussed with patients. The practice will have policies and processes and you need to learn what these are and follow them.

Entrepreneurial Training

Many of us plan on opening up our own practices at some point in our careers, but not many of us are trained or even well versed on how to start or run a successful dental clinic. As a result, we learn on the go at the cost of easily avoidable mistakes. A good idea would be to read as much as you can about the entrepreneurial aspects of it, network and take up any courses that may offer entrepreneurial training.

Effective Communication

You have been taught how to get your hands into people’s mouth and fix their problems, but you are rarely taught how to calm their restless nerves or talk them through the processes so they can trust you with something so personal. Effective communication is as important for your practice as knowing your craft. Again, this can be achieved by educating yourself, networking and mentoring. 

Try to Connect with Someone

As mentioned above, mentoring can guide you through the rough patches of dentistry. In current times, the best ways to connect is through social media. There are plenty of dental forums and support groups and great mentors who are ready to help that you can reach out to on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn among others.

Value Being Busy Over Location

You may be tempted to get a fancy office at a great location that would look absolutely amazing on your visiting card and professional photographs. But if the view of the ocean or the metropolis is not generating any clients, you may want to switch it for a location that would help you more professionally. If that means moving into another community, city or state, do it! 

Focus On Structured Learning Rather Than Random Small Courses

You may have realised by now that there is still a little more learning to do in order to become a successful practitioner. Fortunately, there is a lot of help available out there, especially online. And while it is great to fly to different states to attend seminars or weekend courses, you would benefit more from a structured form of learning. This can be achieved by following a specific path, that can either be different levels of a designed course or following a mentor and taking up their tutelage and attending any seminars or courses they provide. 

So there you go! This list may not prepare you for the bumpy ride ahead, but will definitely help you be aware of the path so that you can make more informed decisions. Each day will be an opportunity to learn and brush up your skills, and as long as you keep using them to your advantage, you will only go upwards and onwards! All the best and don’t forget to have fun!

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

Nobody likes uncertainty; no one likes to not be in control of what tomorrow will hold for them. And this is the number one reason why people become complacent and unwelcoming of change. But whether you like it or not, that is the only constant in your life. Life will remain uncertain because it is forever evolving; so the best way to deal with it is to evolve with it. 

Living in the Digital Age has its perks, but it also means life has become a lot more fast paced, or at least so it seems. It looks like there is always newer technology being introduced to the world, new information pouring in from left, right and centre, and newer trends being introduced through your social media feeds. 

Slow Down

But is everything really that fast paced? Or is it just that you have been made to believe that it is? Is your new phone really different from the one you had switched to only a few months back? It may have a sleeker look and a finer finger print sensor but does it really add value to your time or the quality of services that it provides? Probably not! Same is the case with most gadgets available which claim to take your business to higher levels! They may seem like necessary changes you need to make in order to stay relevant in your business, but those are generally just passing fads and great marketing gimmicks that make you believe that. So before you jump on the bandwagon and make big investments to embrace technological ‘changes’ be sure to ask yourself if those changes would add value to your patients or your business for that matter.

Your Lifestyle Vision

What is your lifestyle vision? Sure you want to earn more money, do better business, have a successful practice but for what? What is you why? What are your short term and long term goals? Before you can even be comfortable about change, you need to know what it is that you are heading towards and how it contributes to the big picture. Ideally, you should have a pretty clear vision of where you want to be two years ahead, and what current practices, habits and more importantly required changes would get you there? You will only be welcoming of change when you know where it will lead you.

Survive, Thrive and Succeed

As business owners, our ultimate goal is to succeed, and in order to do that, we make it our mantra to stay away from failure. And this sometimes results in disaster management and efforts to put out fires rather than work towards personal and professional development. What if you changed your approach towards it just for a second? What if you rather focused on surviving and not succeeding? Since your focus would be to move from one day to the next with your integrity and business intact, you’d be more conscious and cautious of the external factors and upcoming changes that can come in the way. This will take away the risk of failure by a large margin. This approach allows you to withstand a lot more uncertainty, risk and challenge, which inevitably leads to thriving and succeeding. 

Road to Self-Mastery

Any control over change or any other external or internal factor affecting your personal or professional life begins with the art of mastering your own needs, desires and wants; to be able to determine a path that leads to the fulfilment of your goals and then to take the desired steps, and make the required changes to get there. The best way to get better control of yourself is to assess your time, your choices and your experiences in one category. 

So you choose the way you are spending your time and the experience you are getting out of it. It is basically an equation. If you actually look at your time and look at your choices, you can see what kind of experiences you will be getting.  All you have to do then is change the choices that you are making and change the amount of time that you are using for the choices that you are making and you will get a different experience. It is a simple equation that can do wonders to help you get where you want to be.

New Beginnings, Transition and Transformation

Generally, we use the terms change, new beginnings, transitions and transformations interchangeably- but they do not mean the same thing by a far margin. While a change can be something as simple as a new office chair, a new beginning is something a bit more complex.

While all these processes mean change, they are all at different levels. And each change is more difficult than the previous one, but equally rewarding and a stepping stone towards your ideas of happiness and success. 

Do You Want to Change or Does the World Want You to Change?

So what IS your idea of happiness and success? Is the incorporation of new technology in your dental practice making you unhappy? Then there is no reason for you to opt for it! A digital workflow can be really helpful and an amazing opportunity to learn new techniques, but don’t adopt it only because that is the general idea of a successful dental practice. As long as you provide quality care, your patients will keep coming back to you! Define your own success, and only opt for changes that help you work towards it. 

Change can mean whatever you want it to mean. There will be times when you’d have no other option but to accept the changes. The key is to get more in control of you, so as to be able to deal with all kinds of situations more objectively. 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

The first step to mastering any skill is to first be aware and accept that there is still a lot of learning to do. This is especially true for people in leadership roles. They are so hardwired to believe that they need to have all the answers, be correct all the time and have the tendency to always be right. And this belief sets them up for miscommunication, failure and bad blood between them and their team members. 

We see businesses and institutions failing all around us, and the reason is mostly quoted as ‘lack of leadership.’ And it is for this reason that I touch up on the topic of leadership every now and then because it could be at the core of the make or break of a company. So today we’d discuss some personality traits, technological interferences and communication barriers that can come in the way of a well performing leader. 

Mindset

The first step to becoming a great leader is to adopt the right mindset. Leadership roles come with a lot of responsibility and expectations; and it is only natural for the person to feel overwhelmed and nervous. And these feelings affect performance and decision making processes. Leaders who keep a positive, supportive and focused mindset understand the difference between knowing the solutions and finding the solutions with the help and support of their team members. They don’t let their ego or negativity come in the way of taking the right steps and making goal-oriented decisions rather than self-oriented reactions.

Take Small Breaks

There are only so many minutes in an hour and so many hours in a day. And while you might think your motivation and desire to be the best at what you do is all the fuel and energy your body needs, it is not entirely true. There is only so much you can push your body to do before it starts fighting back; and when it does, it will take a toll on your ability to think rationally and logically. 

You need to take mental and physical breaks from time to time in order to function optimally. And if you think you “don’t have the time for a break,” or “you can’t afford to take a break” then know that it will eventually lead to you working all the harder and longer to rectify the wrong decisions you took because you were exhausted. So see those small breaks as an investment in yourself and your business.

Map the Percentage of Time

So how do you really take time out for breaks? One very effective method is to map the percentage of time. Start by visually mapping your current role. What has your activity been like for the past week or so?  Get a better understanding of where you have been spending your time. Now make a list of things that were either counterproductive or did not contribute in any way to your personal and professional growth? 

You will be surprised by how much of that time is actually spent on your devices going through unimportant emails and social media posts. Research shows that the use of smartphones and other similar devices gives you a dopamine rush, which tempts you to keep on clicking and scrolling- resulting in wastage of valuable time. 

So once you are done mapping out how you have been spending your time, break it up into percentages. What percentage of time was most effective? What percentage of time was least effective? What percentage of tasks will help you and your business grow? Now take a piece of paper and start mapping out your time on the things you want to focus more time on. 

Delegating Effectively 

A research by Harvard Business Review found that 50% of companies surveyed were concerned about their manager’s ability to delegate. And the number one reason why most of them were failing to delegate was the idea that ‘I can do it faster’ which they probably can, but that means you are spending more time in the business than on the business. 

There are four levels of delegation which can easily be broken down into the commands or statements that leaders often use. So at the top is- ‘I need you to do this.’ It is a command where you expect your team member to know exactly what you want, how you want it and when you want it done. 

The team member will not only lose motivation because he wasn’t involved in the process but will also be confused because he hasn’t really understood what is expected of him. And at the lowest level is ‘You know what? Don’t do it. I’m going to take it back.’ This is you giving up and getting frustrated and resorting to do it yourself. You not only end up overburdening yourself but also losing valuable resources because of your inability to delegate effectively. 

And between these two levels are where productive delegation lies. It is you asking rather than telling. So level two is where you sit with your team member and say ‘how about we map out the process for completing this task?’ By doing this, you not only involve your team member but also outline what is expected of them. And then, with time, you could move it up to level three where you go ‘How about you map this out and then run it through me?’ 

Secrets of Effective Emailing

Emails are a common form of communication between leaders and team members. There are five expected outcomes for any email –  to inform the team members of something, to collect information, to request a decision, an action or a meeting. The effective way to do this is to inform the other person what the nature of the email is in the subject line as well as clarify the purpose in the first few lines. Also keep them small and to the point- always!

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Purpose Oriented Meetings 

Meetings are often considered a waste of time, and they can be if they are not purpose oriented. I have dedicated an entire blog to conducting effective meetings. But the gist of it is to write down the goal of a meeting and focus on that goal only. For instance, if you are meeting for updates, then focus on reporting and check ins only rather than trying to solve problems. Similarly, if you are conducting a meeting for problem solving, or decision making or strategy development, then make the meeting about that purpose only. 

This is not to say you need to conduct four meetings a week, you can have them all at the same time, but designate a specific amount of time for them, and then excuse the team members who are not part of the other issues. 

So after going through the reporting, the receptionist should be allowed to get back to work, while the rest of the relevant team members continue with the next leg of the meeting.

As is evident, effective and impactful leadership starts with respecting and heeding to your own self. If you are not in tune with your body’s needs and demands, and waste valuable time on tasks that do not progress your own personal and professional growth, you will not be in the right mindset to delegate and lead effectively.  Always prioritise yourself, because that’s where true success lies.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

It is never easy to go back to square one; to tell yourself to start again. To accept that things did not turn out as they should have and it is time to do things differently; to reinvent yourself to be able to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face and the desire to actually go to work.

Bet you are thinking, ‘Great! I have found the go-ahead, someone else also thinks I need to make big decisions in order to find the fulfilment that has been missing from my life! But….’ Yes, in most cases, this ‘but’ and the stream of questions, insecurities and indefiniteness that follows stops your trail of thoughts before they carry you away to a point of no return! And the responsibility of making such big decisions without any assurances is way too scary to even think about, let alone act on. 

If you often find yourself on a similar rollercoaster ride, then I have got you covered today! Read on to see how you can take big decisions with minimum risk and rewrite your success story that rates five stars for satisfaction and fulfilment. 

Freedom of Choice- Keep Your Finances Strong

In most cases, the only thing that stops you from pressing the Send button on your resignation letter are the piles of bills on your coffee table. Your expenditures really put shackles on you and limit your freedom of choice. By making your finances strong, you can break those barriers and allow yourself to take big leaps fearlessly. 

Many a times, talking about money is considered a bad thing. You might tell someone you want a change in your career, or open up your own practice rather than working for someone ‘But I can’t because the money is good right now’ and you can get ready to be judged. Money definitely is good, and research shows that a certain level of money does indeed buy happiness. If you don’t have the ability to put food on the table or pay your bills, you cannot find fulfilment in the most desirous of situations. So it is better to get stronger at the financial end before investing in a total makeover of your life.

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Freedom of Decision-Tap Into Yourself

Many a times, people stop themselves from making big decisions because they are unsure/scared/financially weak yet unhappy. They continue to lead those unfulfilling lives rather than take action to do things differently. The moment you decide not to do something about your current situation, you’ve made a decision there and then! Not taking an action is making a decision too, the only difference is that you’ve made a decision to put yourself in the backseat and tagged yourself as unimportant. 

Not to say you should make instant decisions to transform your life, but waiting too long to make a decision can also waste valuable time. You need to be deliberate. When do I make a quick decision? When do I really need to sit down and plan it? But also when do I really need to tap into myself and listen to myself? 

Freedom of Options- Asking the Right Questions

Before you do type that resignation letter or close down your dental practice, you do need to make sure if a career change or relocating to a new place is actually what you want to do. Some of the questions that can help you make this decision are:

• How much do I want this change?
• What is my risk appetite? What is the level of risk I am willing to take?
• How much does this new path matter to me?
• What is stopping me from achieving these goals?
• What do I want from myself in the next 12 months, 5 years, 10 years?

Freedom for Contemplation- Quieting the Uncertainty

You probably have a lot of questions going through your mind just about now. But what if the market changes? What if I slow down to make big decisions and someone else takes over this position? What if I am no longer employable if I get out of the market for long enough? Your mind is always rambling; there’s just way too much uncertainty in all of this. But if you don’t slow down, if you don’t give yourself time to think, to reflect, to feel, you’re just going to do what you’ve always done because it’s easy. 

It is only when you silent your mind, that you can actually listen to yourself and what you want from life. Always take time out to connect with your inner self and with nature, because it really is meditative.

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Freedom for Contentment- Fulfilment vs. Achievement

You may tick all the boxes for a successful life according to basic standards of success, but if you aren’t happy, you aren’t truly successful. Everyone has different career drivers. What are your career drivers? Are they financial security, being challenged? Love of learning? Helping others? You can only be content if you find fulfilment in what you do. If not, then you could be sitting on the highest positions of the corporate ladder, earning truckloads of money and still not be truly happy. And it is the most difficult position to be in, to seek fulfilment when you could continue being successful.

At the same time, we also over-complicate our lives by thinking what people would think of us or using money as a scorecard for success. You may have achieved your goals, but because you aren’t earning enough or living a certain standard of life according to other people, you may not be truly content. By doing that, you set yourself up for a lot of pain because you are following other people’s ideas of success.

Understanding the Equity Theory

The equity theory evaluates a person’s sense of fulfilment from the value that he offers. Work is an exchange of value. You turn up, you deliver, and in exchange the work gives value back in terms of money, remuneration, compensation etc. Equity theory is a psychological term that estimates if the value exchange is actually balanced. So say, you believe that the value you give to the company is not balanced out by the value they give to you, because you feel you are being underpaid, overworked, lesser incentives etc. Then you might feel the need to ‘even the scales’ by not working hard enough. The theory estimates that people who believe are not paid fairly either go slow or become less productive or even resort to stealing in extreme cases.

Freedom to Say NO

As important as it is to say Yes to big changes that will move you towards a more content life, it is just as important to say no to the things that are not going to help you. There will always be a lot of noise and people out there trying to distract you, or dissuade you or wanting you to get involved in fulfilling their goals; and it is great to get involved and be helpful. But there is only so much time we have; and we can either spend it trying to be someone’s assistant to a great life or pave our own pathways. Of course you should be helpful! But if it comes at the cost of putting yourself in the backseat, then learn to say no!

It is only when we are uncomfortable, that we are learning. So try to do new things every day, things that might be scary but rewarding. And never think it is too late to reinvent yourself! 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

How often do you really pay attention to what other people are saying? Our social media news feeds are swarming with people filling us in on their lives, but the moment you open the app, you get busy posting your own updates. You may scroll through the feed, like a picture, comment a customary compliment and then move on without giving it a second thought.

Even in your day to day lives, you may ask your kids how their day was, but then you move on to heating up dinner or setting the plates while your kids fill you in. How much of it do you really remember? What were they trying to convey to you. Was it a happy day or a sad day for them? Do they feel insecure or hurt? Do they need a little more validation that particular day on how talented and amazing they are? You wouldn’t know because you aren’t really listening.

It is only when you pay attention to what your team members are bringing to the table, their enthusiasm and reservations can you truly move onwards and upwards. And this is particularly true for dentists; arguably deep listening is one of the most important skills, apart from the obvious clinical techniques that a dentist can have.

What is Deep Listening?

The biggest misconception about deep listening is that many think that it is a characteristic rather than a skill. People are not just ‘good listeners;’ they become good at it through practice and conscious effort. So how do you become a really good or deep listener?

By listening to all that is unsaid.

You truly listen to someone when you understand all the thoughts that are running through their head but fail to make it to out of their lips. From a person’s body language to the tone of their voice, to their silence and even the gleam in their eyes, they all convey messages that require skills to recognise and understand.

In a dental practice context, we put our hands in someone’s mouth, which is a very personal thing. It may not seem like a big deal to you, as a dentist, because you do it all day, but it’s usually something quite uncomfortable for your patients, so you need to make sure you understand what they are saying, even if they the words are unsaid.

By allowing them to open up to you, share their stories and their concerns, you get a better understanding of your patients needs and wants, fears and apprehensions and hence can provide better care.

The Science of Listening

We spend on average, about 55% of our day listening. Our work as health professionals in dentistry requires a lot of interactions with patients so you could spend up to 80% of the day listening. According to research, the biggest barrier to listening is not focusing on the speaker.

On average we speak about 125 words a minute, up to 200 if you are auctioning cattle. You can listen to up to 400 words a minute. So immediately, you are programmed to be distracted. You fill 300 words in while you are waiting for the speaker’s speed to catch up with the speed at which your brain can process it. The speaker is equally frustrated because they can think at 900 words a minute but can only get 125 out of their mouth. So the chances are they are only saying 11% of what’s going on in their head, which means there is a good chance that what they truly intend to say is not being conveyed.

Five Levels of Listening

Do you see your patients getting all fidgety when you talk about the process of a root canal? Do they look nervous? What can you do to make them more comfortable? The chances are you do notice all these things but don’t pay much attention to them because you have a list of other needs to heed to, and your job is to fix their teeth, not their apprehensions. And these are exactly the kind of values and thoughts that can be coming in the way of not getting enough repeat patients or referrals. Just going the extra mile can really help in understanding your patients and serving them better.

There are five levels of deep listening. Only by practicing all these five levels can you truly understand what is being said. Most people just get stuck on the first two, which is why they miss out on deeper listening.

Level 1: Listen to Yourself

Before you can focus on what the rest of the world is saying, you need to be aware of your own voice. If your mind is preoccupied with your own thoughts, like the grocery list or a phone call with your mother then there are chances you won’t be an attentive recipient.

Level 2: Listen to the Content

The content not only consists of what comes out of a person’s mouth, it includes a person’s body language, their energy, and their visuals.

Level 3: Listen to the Context

The context is the rest of the 775 words that failed to make it to their lips. Those are the things that you really need to focus on.

Level 4: Listen to the Unsaid

Listen to the meaning. This requires some level of interpretation. Not just what you are presented with, but what’s the backstory? Why did they actually come to you? Is there something that they want to say but are not able to convey properly? By asking them questions, you can really understand what they are saying?

Ask short questions; as a rule anything more than five words means you are letting your judgment get in the way. So questions like ‘what do you think?’ or ‘how can we do this?’ or ‘How can you help?’ or ‘Is there anything else?’ allows them to truly open up to you and provide solutions.

Level 5: Listen for Meaning

Meaning is the true purpose of a person coming in to speak to you. A patient may have they come to you to get their teeth polished or is it because they have an event coming up and they want to look their best? If you take the time out to find the meaning, you would get the opportunity to guide them through the right process, help them get the procedure done prior to their big event, or meet their true goals more accurately.

Tips for Deep Listening

• Remove all other distractions. Like your gadgets or devices, your journals, the newspaper etc.
• Keep the brain hydrated.  The brain consumes 26% of the blood sugars of the body with only 5% of the body mass. So it is a very hungry organ when it comes to the physical requirements. And we place a very high cognitive load on the mind when it comes to listening because we haven’t been taught how to do it. Drink a glass of water before going into a team meeting or taking an important phone call and between appointments.
• Breathe with mindfulness. Deep breathing provides the mind with much needed oxygen. Take about five deep breaths before going into your listening sessions, because the deeper you breathe, the deeper you listen.

Truly listening to the people that we are interacting with is fundamentally important and can make all the difference in how we serve them. By practicing the five levels of listening outlined here today, you can truly break the barriers of miscommunication and lead more effectively.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here