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675: How Do I Respond Within My Core Values When Bad Things Happen? – Katrina Sanders
Episode 675 • 5th January 2024 • The Best Practices Show with Kirk Behrendt • ACT Dental
00:00:00 00:53:11

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675: How Do I Respond Within My Core Values When Bad Things Happen? – Katrina Sanders

Sometimes, things don't go as well as you planned. What can you do to not lose your mind? Your first step is to have core values, and Kirk Behrendt brings back Katrina Sanders, The Dental WINEgenist, to share how her core values helped turn one of her failures into an opportunity. Challenges will always happen — so choose how you respond to them! To learn how, listen to Episode 675 of The Best Practices Show!

Episode Resources:

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Register for Katrina’s live workshop (March 9, 2024): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/act-dental-hygienists-live-course-march-9-2024-tickets-732186328017?aff=odcleoeventsincollection

Read The Trust Edge by David Horsager: https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Edge-Leaders-Relationships-Stronger/dp/1476711372

Main Takeaways:

Challenges are opportunities to demonstrate your core values.

Communicate your core values consistently to your team.

Let your reaction to challenges echo your integrity.

Learn to listen and validate during conflict.

Ask your team for input.

Quotes:

“Dentistry is a terrific example of where there are complications that arise consistently. How many times [are we] sitting in the morning huddle and it's like, ‘So-and-so is in for their crown seat, but we haven't gotten the crown back from the lab,’ or, ‘So-and-so is coming in, and their stitches are coming out, and they're not happy about this,’ or, ‘So-and-so is coming in. Their insurance didn't pay for this, so they want to sit down and talk to you, Doctor, about what the issue is?’ Dentistry is this beautiful balance of — we're performing art. We're also treating human beings where failure happens because we, it turns out, can't control what our patients are going to eat. There’s stress, hormone levels, tobacco habits, whatever is going on.” (13:05—13:51)

“Our schooling taught us how you run a dental practice, or how you treat patients when everything is going perfectly, when you've got plenty of time to sit down and talk to that patient about their medication list, when you've got plenty of time to talk to the patient about how to realign their denture the correct way, et cetera. What we are not fully prepared for or have not been trained to do is, how do you show up when those things are not in perfect alignment? And I implore you to consider, they rarely are in perfect alignment. We have processes in place. We build the scaffolding, we build the process, we build the templated schedule, we build who is in charge of this — but things still happen. There are errors, there are human beings involved in this. And so, the conversation now becomes how do you show up when a stimulus happens, and you now have to choose how to respond?” (13:56—14:50)

“I used to do theater, so I feel quite prepared if anything happens to me on stage. I'm ready to go with how to respond to that. But how do we do that in dentistry? How do you show up when your patient is not happy, or when the procedure didn't go the way — and it can be anything from as simple as you drop the saliva ejector on the floor, and it's like, ‘Augh.’ How do you respond to that? Because here's the thing: people are watching. Your team members are watching. Your patients are watching. This is where you have the opportunity to demonstrate the true essence of what your core values are.” (15:40—16:16)

“It's the concept of thinking about buying a red Honda, and then all of a sudden on the road, it's like you see red Hondas all the time. And there is a power to that, the attention of what your brain or your mindset is pointing to that you've now called out an awareness around. The same is true inside of a dental practice. What you put your focus on will amplify.” (18:19—18:46)

“The deeper question that I would like to ask these doctors or these professionals who are saying this is, are you inspecting what you expect? And by that, I mean, in our practice, we will talk about our big, hairy, audacious goal for the month, and how close we are to our BHAG, and what patients accepted treatment yesterday, and let's look at the schedule, and talk about the bottlenecks. We do those things. But then, we also have a segment of our morning huddle where we have the ability to highlight or amplify somebody who showed up inside of our core values within our practice. And every time, it's something like, ‘I want to call out Jenna because yesterday, I was running behind. This patient had a failure. I couldn't get the suture out, and Jenna came along and said, how about I do this? That showed up inside of the core value of excellence and integrity. Jenna, thank you so much for that.’ That is called out. That is measured alongside how much money we're bringing into the practice, or how much money we want to bring into the practice.” (18:48—20:08)

“David Horsager in his book, The Trust Edge, says if the leader of the practice, the leader of the business, the leader of whatever you want to say, if you are not communicating what your core values and your mission statement are to your team every 30 days, they will not be able to recite it back to you. They can't. And it's one of my favorite activities to do where I'll sit in a lecture hall, and I'll look at the lead hygienist, and I'll say, ‘What are the core values of your practice? You're the lead hygienist. You should know,’ and the lead hygienist is like, ‘I have no idea.’ Okay. So, it wasn't communicated. And then, also, how is it being communicated? How are you actually demonstrating how these core values are showing up? Because they're fine if they're just listed as a bulleted list on the wall. That's like me, as a speaker, just standing there and reading off of my slides. Nobody wants that. You want me to give you the meat, the essence of what all of these bullet points mean. So, inside of a practice, as a leader, are you showing your team or are you even calling out?” (20:13—21:14)

“I think you would see a lot of surprised faces if at your next morning huddle you said, ‘You know what? I'm going to call out this one person,’ because the first thing they're going to think is that you're going to say something negative, right? ‘I want to call out this one person because they showed up inside of our core values in this way yesterday. Here's the experience, here's how this happened, and I want to acknowledge you for that.’ When you create that call, now your team is aware of it. They're looking for the “red Honda” they want to see. Or, rather, they have the opportunity to deliver that red Honda to you. So, you're creating an essence of putting attention on the correct things inside of your practice.” (21:15—21:53)

“The main message here is challenge will happen. It's how you choose to show up inside of that that will let you continue to soar, or that challenge will just break you.” (23:36—23:43)

“I, too, have gotten reviews like that. I've gotten the, ‘Katrina Sanders is bad news. Don't ever bring her back.’ And it's like, okay, come on. We've all gotten that. There's a difference between, am I going to hold on to that and have that one review or that one person be the thing that breaks the Jenga blocks of what I've built inside of my business, or am I going to use this, fuel it, and make this something that makes me greater, better, stronger, et cetera.?” (23:44—24:10)

“There's this quote that I remember early on that I think about a lot when I run into a challenge, and that is, ‘Don't let your reaction echo their integrity. Let your reaction echo your own integrity.’ Like, how many times do you get an angry, belligerent patient or somebody who is just unreasonable, and they're frustrated? And doctors, they're talking about your work. They're talking about your training. They're talking about your skills. They're talking about how beautifully you placed that composite, or how well you seated that onlay. Or hygienists, they're talking about your ability to scale and root plane, whatever it is. Oh, that hits so personally as a speaker when you get a terrible review. Oh, that hurts because I built this course. I built these slides. I thought about who is sitting in the room. I thought about the heads nodding because I did a great job with this research point. I put myself on the plane. I picked out the outfit I was going to wear. I picked out the shoes. I did the whole thing. I took this so seriously. And, oh, doesn't that hurt your soul a little bit when it hits you like that? But don't let your reaction echo their integrity. Choose how you want to respond, and you get to do that inside of your core values.” (24:11—25:32)

“Things happen. Now, I will say, when adverse events happen — when we're talking about a medical emergency, okay, a little bit different. That is not your time to sit and have a one-hour pity party while a patient is having cardiac arrest — within reason. But when do you get to dance with that and say, you know what? It sounds like that patient was having a difficult time yesterday. I'm going to give him a call and say, ‘Hey, I hope everything is okay. Can I send you a $5 Starbucks gift card? I'd love to send a coffee, on me, because you matter.’ What are the things that you can do? Let's have fun with this. And ask your team, doctors — you're not alone in this. I ask my team this all the time. We just had a challenge with that this week. I asked my team, ‘What are some of your ideas about how we can show up inside of our core values with this client situation? How do we do that?’ Now, you get to see that sizzle. You get to see the team show up, roll up their sleeves, and go, ‘Well, we could do this. We could do that.’” (26:35—27:36)

“When you have the privilege of playing with — something is not perfect, aligning, whatever that might be, when you have the privilege to do that, it is a telling aspect of your brand.” (29:25—29:38)

“My brand is, I'm going to make sure that, at the end of the day, I take full responsibility and accountability. I will apologize when I screw up. I do. I don't apologize if I didn't screw up. Dentistry, we're not good at that. We like to apologize for things when we didn't screw up. ‘I'm sorry that your gums didn't heal from that SRP.’ I'm sure you're sorry. But the patients, medical, all these other things, are impacted in that. We apologize for a lot of things that are not entirely our fault. And yet, there are, ‘You know what? I'm sorry. We scheduled you before we could confirm that your crown came in from the lab. I'm sorry. This was absolutely a misstep on our part. Your time is valuable to us, and to you.’ So, apologize for the things you are apologetic for, and be kind and high integrity around the things that you do have control over and you can fix and repair.” (30:52—31:45)

“There are two key factors to what the person on the other side of the conflict actually wants. The first is to be heard. And so, reflective listening is so important. We always want to talk and say the things to fix it. I think dentistry, we're healers. We're fixers. We want everybody to be fixed and happy. ‘Did you have a great time? Send us a good Google review. Thank you. Bye.’ We want that. So, we want to talk our way out of this situation instead of that reflective listening, making them feel heard.” (33:16—33:46)

“We are taught conflict resolution. ‘These are all the things you should do, or how you do them.’...

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