leadership
ATTITUDE IS ALTITUDE
by Travis Campbell , DDS
Life is all about how you respond to the challenges you face . We all are going to end up with bad things that happen in life – challenging patients , toxic team members , failures in our careers or business . Everyone has negative situations arise . What determines the flow of our life is how we respond to those situations .
You have probably heard of the “ is the glass half full or half empty ” metaphor . The general idea is whether your normal outlook on something is positive or negative . Here are some examples that we tend to deal with as dentists often :
Patients
Mr . Jones comes in the office in a sour mood . He is short with everyone and generally not a pleasant person . One possible and common reaction is just to refer Mr . Jones out and rationalize how he was just a difficult person . Or one could treat it as a learning experience and discover why Mr . Jones was unhappy and see if there is anything you could do to either help the current situation or prevent the situation for the next patient .
The Mr . Jones I am remembering came in as an emergency patient . Had multiple previous poor experiences with dentists and was in pain . I just stopped the discussion and offered to numb the problem area . I walked away and came back a few minutes later . Mr . Jones was a completely different person . He apologized immediately to me and talked about how he had not had any sleep the past two nights and his prior experiences were ones that took forever with minimal or poor results . We ended up solving his problem and he apologized to everyone on the way out . He has been a great patient since for several years .
Now , not everyone has a problem that can be solved . There are some patients that we just have to escort off the boat . What we try to focus on is staying positive even when recommending they find another office and we wish them luck . Harboring ill feelings towards someone only hurts yourself , not your target . ( Yes , it took me years to figure this out ).
Teams
Post-Covid , most of us dentists have had to deal with more frequent team changes . You could look at having to replace a team member as a negative experience requiring a lengthy process to fill . Or instead , one could look at this situation as an opportunity to find an even better team member . My main communication with our office team members is to convey that the office culture is the absolute most important variable that attracts and retains people . It isn ’ t money . Keeping a positive atmosphere within the office is huge in being able to build an effective team .
This includes avoiding gossip or complaining . If you would not say something directly to someone ’ s face , it should not be uttered at all . Again , the negativity only serves to hurt you , not the intended target . And when it comes to teams , the negative focus affects the atmosphere not only for the team but even more importantly affects our patients .
Insurance
The bane of all dentists ’ existence , right ? Well , I am never going to say insurance is a “ pleasure ” to work with , however it also doesn ’ t have to be a day-to-day source of frustration . The key to
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