Episode 507: Communicating About Communication

Question: Is your practice like a lot of practices out there — is communication a struggle?

Kiera is joined by Brit! The Dental A-Team is hearing a lot about practices’ struggles with communication. In this episode, Kiera and Brit discuss ways to enhance communication in a practice, and even reach a breakthrough point. They touch on the following:

• Establishing ground rules of communication in your office

• Stop assuming everyone knows how to communicate

• How to bring up that you want to have better communication practice-wide

• And more

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Transcript:

0:00:05.6 Kiera Dent: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession, with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner-and I have a team of traveling consultants, for we have traveled over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.

0:00:52.0 KD: Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and you guys, I have a really, really fantastic consultant on the podcast with me today. If you don't know her, you should get to know her. Her name is Britney. Brit has joined our team... Gosh, it's almost been a year, rolling in on our year. And Brit is just a breath of fresh air on our team, she is somebody that inspires me, pushes me to be a better consultant as well, so obviously, we're jazzed to bring Brit back on the show. Brit, how are you today?

0:01:17.3 Britney: I'm good. Thanks for the introduction, Kiera. Always fun to hear what you have to say, 'cause it's always delightful.

0:01:24.6 KD: I know. It's probably the best part of the whole podcast, actually. I just get to rave on our team, on the podcast, which is something I definitely love. Brit, you are a unicorn of a human. It's kind of funny, guys. The way we interview consultant is pretty an in-depth process. We have an initial call, then we encourage them to go through an online course, then we do a mock coaching call where they have to actually coach the consultants as if we were a team, and then typically, we have them fly out and go to a practice with me, to see if traveling is in their DNA, because I've had a lot of people say, "I can travel," and it just is not their thing. There are people who can travel and then there are people who really can travel. And so, Brit, you kind of skated right through that. We interviewed you, and it was just just this, "Yep, we're gonna hire her," and lo and behold, here you are, a year later. It just... I'm shocked at how great it worked out, 'cause you're just a dream, and I love it, it worked out so well.

0:02:16.1 Britney: But lo and behold, I could actually travel.

0:02:20.5 KD: [laughter] I did ask you the question of how many bags do you take when you travel. 'cause you can tell if somebody is a traveler or not a traveller. But yeah, you are a solid traveler, you and I...

0:02:32.0 Britney: I've been stuck in a foreign country, yes, so I feel like that's a pretty good qualifier.

0:02:39.6 KD: But no, guys. If you have not met Brit, Brit is one of the traveling consultants and offices genuinely loved Brit. When she goes to offices, I love getting emails or text messages from those offices, saying that Brit just knocked it out of the park. So today, I'm excited, Brit. You are really fantastic on this, and you and I actually just consulted a practice together. I need to stop saying we don't see each other that often, because you and I actually do run into each other quite a bit on the road.

0:03:05.8 Britney: We luck out.

0:03:07.6 KD: We do. It's pretty fantastic. So we were just at a practice together a couple of weeks ago, and I thought this was such a cool thing that you did with this practice. So just to give a little bit of a background, we were with a practice and communication was just a struggle, which I'm not going to lie, every single office. Brit, you tell me if it's on your end, but every practice before we go visit them as the Dental A Team, we send out an anonymous survey. Well, it's actually anonymous. It's not anonymous, we know who you are, so they know your name. But it's a survey sent out to all the team members, to find out what are their issues in the practice, things that they love about the practice, and I will tell you without... It's happened 100% of the time, at least one person says communication on every single office, so I know this is a big deal. Brit, how about for you?

0:04:00.1 Britney: Absolutely.

0:04:00.1 KD: Every time.

0:04:02.3 Britney: And it comes up often, and communication is a constant effort, which is why it comes up often, because it's so important.

0:04:10.5 KD: For sure. If you think about it, communication is what we do all day long, whether it's with our patients, whether it's with each other, whether it's with our spouses or our families, communication is super important. I just think it's always interesting when people say communication, I feel like it's this really broad umbrella for problems and I'm like, "No, no, no, let's get to the nitty-gritty. Is it communication on... " 'cause there's great communication, but I think it's just such a large, vast net that we cast, that it's hard sometimes to pinpoint what is the communication. Because I'll have practices that will over-communicate, everybody knows this, this and this, and they still deal with communication. So with this practice, I think it was just a lot of missed expectations, which I found is typically the reason communication comes up. People are expecting or assuming other people will do something, and then when that's missed, that's when people get frustrated. And so, it tends to fall back under communication. But Brit, take it away. You did a full team training with this office, it was kind of a retreat style, which I don't know what you've been doing right in this world. You're getting a lot of those.

0:05:10.2 Britney: I don't know either, but I'm glad it's working.

0:05:13.0 KD: So typically, our style is, we go in, we'll consult, we're doing hands-on training with an office, and then we usually do a two-hour meeting, but Brit's been getting a few offices that are wanting these three to four hour meetings, which honestly, as a consultant, that's like when you guys see your schedule and you just have crown prep after crown prep... Not crown prep. Crown seat after seat after seat, where you're just like, "Oh, that's gonna be busy." That's like a four-hour meeting for a consultant. I would equate that to, "Oh, all right. It's gonna be a busy day." But kinda walk us through with this practice and other practices, it just wasn't this one particularly, but kinda walk us through what you did to help enhance this communication and really bring some breakthroughs to this practice.

0:05:52.0 Britney: Yeah, for sure. I think you hit one really key point, which is expectations when it comes to communication, and I think the other thing that goes hand-in-hand with that, when expectations aren't being met through our communication is when we start to lose trust with our team members, and we start to lose trust and communication, and so people really just start to shut down. And it's hard to kind of get that motor going again, because everybody goes into a protective mode, and so we're all just walking on egg shells, we're nervous to have conversations that need to be had, and then it just starts to kind of spiral unfortunately, into a place where we don't know how to get out of it. And so, with this office, I was realizing that that's kind of where we were. We had hit the point where we kind of lost our trust, we talked about some tools on how to have uncomfortable or crucial conversations with team members, but they were just still really struggling to see, "How does that actually go into play?" because it's kind of like, "I've been there, I've tried it and I got burned." So I was... You're telling me...

0:06:57.6 KD: You said something that I thought was... I've never thought about this because you said people lose trust and then we spiral downward, and I was thinking, "And what's bummer, and also awesome is, the only solution to it is communication." So the thing you've lost trust in, is the key to your success and freedom and happiness, but if you lose trust in that, there's really nowhere else to go, 'cause if you're not communicating, things won't get better. So I had never thought about the thing that caused the problem is the thing that's going to get you out of the problem as well, but you have to really regain each other's and you're right, it's kind of like, "But how?" I logically understand it, I conceptually can see this, but how is this really gonna work? And I thought you did a brilliant job of breaking down this how.

0:07:43.1 Britney: Yeah. And so it comes down to, "Yes, at some point, someone's gotta put themselves out there and be vulnerable to try it," and it can be really hard when we know there's old habits in play, so we went back to the basics of communication, to where we created... And it was with the team, we had their input, "Alright, what are our ground rules gonna be, for communication?" Kind of like a rules of engagement, "what are the things that all of us right here right now today, are gonna agree to, so that we can feel more comfortable to start engaging in conversations with each other, that need to happen?" And so, we created it, we typed it out, everybody signed it, so we all agreed that we're gonna comply with those rules, and it's basic things that just needed to kinda be said and be put out there so that we know we're all on the same page, which are things like, "We're gonna give each other the benefit of the doubt and give each other the benefit of the doubt, understanding that we're all coming with the best of intentions, we all care about this team, we all care about this practice, this business, and so we are ultimately having these conversations to solve things and to work together and to make improvements."

0:09:00.8 Britney: Some of the other rules we had in place are, we go talk to the person who can help us solve the problem. So a lot of times, when we start to lose trust, we'll go and talk about something with our buddy or our friend that we trust, and at that point we're just gossiping and we're not actually having a conversation with someone who can actually help to solve the problem. So we're actually just feeding into the problem instead of solving anything. Some of the other rules we had are, we speak respectfully, which means in volume and tone, so we control our volume, control our tone, so that our conversations are productive. We listen to each other, so we listen to what the other person has to say. And you don't interrupt them. You hear them out. We also put into place, I think, if it gets too heated, someone can call a time out and we could step away for a minute, but we're gonna come back to that conversation that day, to solve it.

0:09:54.3 Britney: Right, and we come together, whatever conversation we're having, we come to solve it. And some other rules, when someone comes to us with a topic or something they want to discuss, we always say, thank you. "Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for being willing to have this conversation," which also just helps to set the tone. So any team that's kind of struggling can come up with some of their own rules of engagements that the code of communication that we're gonna stick to and agree to. So then, we know those are the ground rules and I can be more comfortable even if I get burned in the past, to give my team members an opportunity to change and to start to have those conversations.

0:10:36.3 KD: Are you guys sick of trying to figure it out on your own? I know I am. When I'm trying to run a business, sometimes I just think, "There's got to be a better way to do this." And so for me, my answer has been, to find someone who's done it and does it really, really, really well. I'm talking, the best of the best of the best. I want someone who's been in my shoes, somebody who understands what I'm going through. When I was looking for the consulting business, I found a coach who literally has run a consulting business. Well, that seems like the perfect fit. So you guys, right now, we have a few spaces open in our platinum consulting, that is in the consulting where we actually come to your practice. We help you get systems implemented. We don't just tell you what systems to implement, we actually implement them with you and for you. Guys, it is one of the best investments I've ever made is to hire a coach who understands the business I'm in, who's lived it, who's done it, and that's what we in the Dental A Team do. We literally, physically fly to you.

0:11:36.2 KD: So if you're sick of trying to figure it out on your own, if you just want somebody who understands you, join our platinum, I'd love to have you, I'd love to have our consulting team come out and see you, be in your office, be with your team, and truly help you get on to the easy path of dentistry. It doesn't have to be hard. So join us in the Platinum, we'd love to have you.

0:11:57.8 KD: And I think it's really brilliant, how you did this because hearing this... I wasn't actually there when you did this meeting, but I know the team, and so what's cool is, I can hear rules from different people on that team because sometimes I might not think it's super important to actually listen to somebody. Now, you guys might laugh and be like, "Kiera, whatever," and I'm like... I'm actually super intuitive, 90% of the time, and I can pick up on things very quickly, and it's just come from years and years of training. But for Britney, she might want me to actually... That's something super important, 'cause she never feels like I listen to her. And so, for all the team members to be able to put their rules into plate in a safe place, where we're just creating rules of communication with each other, versus it being a one-on-one, so it's the entire team working together, building it together, and I would say, these are for teams like...

0:12:45.4 KD: I think this is a really important thing to do, no matter what size your practice is, no matter how long you've been in practice. As you were saying it, Brit, it made me think of my family. You go to some people's homes and they have, "Our home rules. We love each other, we have each other's back". And my family didn't technically have something like that, but I knew. My mom always said, "Our home is a place where it's a safe place to be," so we wouldn't make fun of each other, we wouldn't yell at each other, it was a place... You can get made fun of all day long at school, but you know when you walk through those doors to my parents house, it is a safe place that all of us are safe to be in, and I just thought, that's pretty much what you did with this practices, you created a spot... Ironically, just knowing those things can actually fix a lot of the problems because now it's like," Okay, great. We all know the rules of the game."

0:13:32.8 KD: Ironically, Tiffany gave me this really cool calendar and it has a quote, so every day I flip it, and today's quote, it says, "You have to learn the rules of the game and then you have to play better than anyone else," and I think with this... Learn the rules of the game, learn what and how to communicate, and then I really do love that This is play better than anyone else. So listen better than anyone else, because what's going to happen is, I'm not trying to elevate myself above you, I'm really going to listen to Brit, and I'm going to listen to understand, I'm not going to listen to respond. Let me hear what she's saying, and then let me... Also, not come with heated emotions on this. Let me come to solve it. Let me come to really have that. So I think it's important for practices, when you have this... I would say this is like core values 2.0, because it's just helpful. We all assume that everyone knows how to communicate with each other, but they don't. We all come from different backgrounds, different lifestyles, different ways to communicate. In my family, it was always one of respect and you better believe, if we burped at the table, we were doing 25 push-ups. I'm not kidding. It was kind of a joke, but it was just... It wasn't this strict household, but it was one of very high respect, and so I just assume everybody does that.

0:14:47.2 KD: Of course, nobody will burp at the table, you're gonna have to do push-ups, obviously, but not obviously. People don't grow up the same way. So I thought it was really brilliant, Brit, that you did that. And I've heard from this practice that they've said that they do feel safer, communicating with each other, and you were rebuilding that trust, and I also think, if nothing else, sometimes I think our dental practices can be little petri dishes of growth. They can teach us how to be different types of humans, out in the world with our families, with our communities, and in the practice, sometimes it's almost safer than even practicing on family members, so I bet you did a great job. Brit, if you were a practice listening to this, how would you even go about this? 'cause it's kind of an awkward thing to say like, "Hey, I feel our communication is terrible in our practice, and I wanna do this," but nobody else in the practice might think our communication is bad. So how do you even go about... It's a super awkward conversation that needs to be had, so how do we even broach this in a practice?

0:15:46.2 Britney: Yeah, and I think it can even be approached from... Maybe it's not like that, we've gotta probably gotta a fix maybe in this situation, maybe it's like, "Hey, we wanna create an environment where our team members feel comfortable being able to communicate and have conversations with each other." So we wanna work together and get everybody's input to kind of set some ground rules and help to give you some guidance on how we can most successfully communicate with each other. And it might even be people who communicate well, sometimes it's even just giving each other feedback of, "Hey, pick your timing right. In the middle of the day when I am running like crazy from room to room, probably not the standard approach me about a conversation, I'm probably not gonna give you my best response." So, finding a time that works or even letting me know, "Hey, I need to have a conversation. Let's find the time to have it." Even working through just some of those tips for each other can be really helpful for a team, and it's amazing with teams, once you create the opportunity for them to give some input, the things that start to come up. And there's usually... Even in a well-functioning team, there's still usually feedback that a team member would love to give, but they haven't maybe had the right opportunity, and so by just creating the space for it, you'll be surprised at the input you get from your team members.

0:17:02.4 KD: For sure. As you said that, I was like, "Alright, next traction meeting, my team's gonna write up our communication rules," because as you said that, I was thinking like, "Shoot, we've got a great team. We all communicate, in my opinion, really well. I feel like there's very little drama within our company because I just refused to tolerate drama, and our team knows, we will go toe to toe at any moment, and it is not a bad thing. Bring it out, hash it out." But as you said that, I thought there might be some team members on our team that aren't as outspoken, that maybe don't feel as comfortable, and maybe they would have some input of how we can communicate better as a company and as an organization. And so I think even for those offices, like you said, that are high achieving, they do well, I think sometimes it's worth it, to bring up and then make it very simple. I thought you did a good job, Brit, of having it very simple.

0:17:54.1 KD: And for me, I'm thinking, "Hey, this is great, 'cause this is great onboarding for people when they come on to our practice, like this is how we communicate, this is how we operate when we have issues and concerns," because I think if we don't realize, every practice has issues, every practice has an opportunity to grow, and every practice is going to have miscommunication. If you're a practice, you will have those issues and concerns. It's just, do you have a plan and play of how we solve those, or do you wait reactively hope and pray that they sort it out, or the wind shifts and changes and they'll come back happier tomorrow. But guess what, those things sit and they boil and boil and boil until they'll explode, and that's what we don't want to have. We wanna be proactive versus reactive, especially right now, when I think that there's more stress on practices than there ever have been before.

0:18:38.1 Britney: Yep. And for practices, and I think especially right now where we've had a shift, there's been a lot of turnover in offices, it's just naturally for offices that are really trying to one, either keep their culture or two, build a culture, this is one of those soft skills and those soft things that help you build your culture. It's a clear expectation that you guys stick to and it is expected of the team, and that builds your culture.

0:19:04.8 KD: And I think it also... I was thinking, 'cause I'm like, "I'm sure there's some skeptics listening that think, Okay, so what happens if they don't do it?" And I'm like, You just got a freaking grading rubric of like, "Hey, this is what we've committed to. You signed your name on this dot, so you tell me what you think the solution to this problem should be. I don't have to sit here and make it up." It's like, "Brit, you committed to doing this, this is what your actions were, you have a very awesome opportunity to give me a good game plan of how you're gonna fix this moving forward." And then if Brit chooses not to, guess what, this might not be her dream practice, but I think it becomes a way easier way to hold a team member accountable and give them ownership, because they've signed off on it, they created it, and now, if they're choosing not to follow through, that's on them. They built this. You didn't build it. Your job is just to ensure everybody follows along with it.

0:19:53.7 Britney: And then you can come up with a plan on how to fix it, how to change it, and how to grow it, 'cause often, these things, just like everybody has some unwritten rules and everybody grew up differently, our skill levels are gonna be different when it comes to communication, and some people just really don't know how to make the change. So if you've got someone that's still struggling, then being able to sit and coach with them, to really get to know them a little better, see what's making them tick and give them some specific ways to help them improve.

0:20:26.3 KD: Absolutely. So I would, say action item from here would be, set up a meeting for... Like you heard, we have a full team traction meeting every single quarter, and so things like this, that will take some building time, last time we did a team activity of take however many pieces of toilet paper you think you'd need for the meeting. Brit was the winner of that. Brit, how many squares did you take? Do you remember?

0:20:51.2 Britney: I don't remember, it was a lot. Was it... I wanna say it was like 20, but I feel like it was more than that.

0:20:57.5 KD: It was so many. And what the rule of the game was was, however many squares you took, you had to say something positive about yourself. So if Brit had over 20, she had to write down 20 awesome things about herself and share, and Brit was like, "Look, I thought we really had to use this for today. This is how much I needed." So then we turned it into a fun game that everybody only could use that many squares for the rest of the meeting, so you better pray, you're not having to use much in the restroom time if you were Kiera and only chose, I think like four squares.

0:21:25.1 Britney: Honest people.

0:21:29.2 KD: But thinking, I know we do that every quarter, so this could possibly be the activity that we do as a team of like, "Let's write the rules of communication, because I've heard... And I think about relationships, don't wait until your relationship is in danger, to solve and proactively prevent problems. Do it now, while your relationship's great. Same thing with your practice of whether you're on the side that's struggling on communication or you're on the side that you feel you've got a great culture that's humming along; either side of the spectrum, set a date. Write up the rules of communication. It really didn't take long. I would say, probably planned about an hour of it, how people think of what kind of rules of communication would we want here.

0:22:06.7 KD: Again, we had very productive communication. For me, it's like no drama central. If you've got an issue, go to the person, talk about it and solve it and move on. There is no blame, there is no judgment, but that's my approach to it. That's how I tend to lead. But I think it's more than just leading. It's actually having it written. So I'd say, all of you set a meeting, write the rules of communication where everybody builds the roles of communication. Brit, what would you say? I'm thinking less than 10 rules, 'cause I hate too many rules. Oh my gosh. It can't be too many, or otherwise I'm not gonna wanna talk to anybody 'cause I'm like, "Shoot, I didn't say this... " I'm thinking, five or less, but what's kind of your take on how many rules you should have on there?

0:22:44.4 Britney: Yeah, I say 10 or less, sometimes, depending on the state of the group, we need to define things a little bit more clearly, so you might need up to 10, for some of our groups where it's like, we really just did the core things down because we are functioning pretty well. It might be fewer.

0:22:58.4 KD: I would say less is more on this, because you want people to feel like they can achieve it versus feeling like they can't say anything for fear that they're not doing it correctly. So set that up, type it up, print it out, have everyone sign on it, and then I would say, add it to your onboarding, so when you do bring on new team members, they know it, they sign off on it as well, and then I probably review it maybe once a year, twice a year, whenever you feel like that communication might be slipping up a little bit. And I will promise you, signs of communication going down, our team members who are frustrated, there's kind of like attitude in meetings or there's quiet in meetings. Oftentimes, teams that don't feel safe will be very quiet, you'll have your few people that will chime in but not the whole teams participating, when it comes to group activities. Those tend to be my tell-tale signs, somethings off, when the body language has shifted, it's more closed off, they're very quiet in meetings, and they're just kind of like a come in, don't really wanna talk to anybody and take off.

0:23:53.6 KD: Usually, there's something going on with communication. Those are mine. Brit, you have anything of when communication starting to suffer that are your, "Hey, we might need to fix this," as just some quick like warning signs that you've seen beyond what I just said?

0:24:05.7 Britney: Yeah, I think you hit some important ones, frustration for sure, and I think... When your team is just a general lack of engagement, and for some of our teams where we might have one person who's speaking up even when we ask and they're like, "Yep, nope, everything's fine" if it's my person that I know is usually more outspoken and they're the only one saying that, then I also know I've probably got something more going on, why people just aren't wanting to chime in.

0:24:30.9 KD: I think that that can help you guys. I feel like we really went over how to do this, what to do, what to look for, and I would say, it's just... I think it's more relevant right now. Like Brit said, tons of teams have transitioned and we've got a bunch of new people, which means a lot of opportunity to have miscommunication. So let's get that communication dialed in. That way, you guys are proactive versus reactive. Brit, I love it. I love what you bring to the table, and I love that you are such a fantastic communicator. I think that's something you do very well, and you're also good at spotting problems and creating solutions, so thanks for bringing that to the table today. I loved it.

0:25:05.6 Britney: Yeah, thanks for having me.

0:25:07.0 KD: Always. Alright guys, go implement this, get your communication on par, and if we can help you, if you're struggling and you want somebody to mediate, I thought it was helpful that Brit was there, because sometimes it is hard to bring these things up, if you don't have open communication. So we can be helpful for you guys facilitate some of those conversations. Give us a call, email us, [email protected], we'd love to help you out. And as always, thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time, on the Dental A Team Podcast.

0:25:34.0 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.