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 not to 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!

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Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Register for Katrina’s live workshop (March 9, 2024)

Read The Trust Edge by David Horsager

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.’ But when we can be more authentic and we can sit down, relax your shoulders, listen to that person, nodding, paying attention, ‘I hear you. Give me a few moments. I would really like the opportunity to review your chart so that I can better understand what's going on. We're going to work together to make sure that there's a solution that makes us all feel whole.’ Oh, that just validates them. ‘Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I hear you. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience this caused. You matter. You are absolutely spot-on to be concerned about this area in your mouth. You are absolutely correct for being frustrated. We did not communicate that we respect your time, your schedule, your healing,’ whatever is going on. Validate that. The moment you validate somebody, and you say, ‘You are correct. I hear you. This is not how it should have been. This is not how we do things, and I'm dedicated to making this correct for you,’ oh, it just disarms them. It does.” (34:21—35:22)

“Sometimes, people are unreasonable because they have other challenges happening to them. So, always think about, ‘How can I approach this with kindness and empathy?’ because I don't know this battle. I don't know what this person is experiencing. However, if it is somebody where you know they are an unreasonable person, and you know that because they're, ‘Oh, here we go. This person is coming. Okay, here we go,’ if you're so misaligned and you're using so much in the way of your team's resources, your mental capacity, your joy — dentistry is one of the number-one professions for suicide, folks. If all of this is so emotionally draining and you experience such compassion fatigue around your patients because of this, maybe that's a patient where you say like, ‘Listen, you matter. I want to make this right. Let's get you set up with somebody who can get this over the finish line for you. I don't know if that's us, but I don't want to just abandon you. So, let's find a way to patch this up and make this right. I want to find you somebody who is a bit more in alignment with what your expectations are because you deserve to have your expectations met, even if they're not by me.’ That's a reasonable thing to say.” (37:37—38:51)

“You never know who is watching. And the beauty of the core value of integrity is doing the right thing no matter who is watching. So, integrity means that you're going to do the right thing whether your boss sees you or not, whether the person who signs your paycheck sees it or not, whether it means you'll get a raise or not. Doing the right thing, that integrity model, is such a valuable piece.” (41:21—41:49)

“Integrity can't be taught. So, you can take somebody who has those core values, and you can teach them anything inside of that because you know you can trust them, and they will show up. So, never forget that when we're looking for that in a team member, patients are looking for that in their providers. They want to see that integrity show up. They want to know that you are constantly doing the right thing. So, what is your opportunity to continue to show that whether patients are watching or not?” (42:13—42:44)

“Patients don't want to be treated against an average standard. They want to feel as though you looked at their medical history, that you looked at their medications list, that you looked at their dental history, that you looked at their risk profile, and that the care plan that you're presenting to them is specifically designed for them. That's how you move patients to excellence, to health, and to say yes.” (45:37—46:01)

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

2:09 Katrina’s background.

5:05 Why this is an important topic.

11:49 Demonstrate your core values with how you respond.

17:45 Consistently communicate your core values to your team.

21:53 Ask your team for their input and ideas.

28:07 Don't apologize for things you have no control over.

31:46 Listen and validate.

35:22 Ways to respond to unreasonable people.

38:55 Final thoughts.

43:21 More about Katrina’s workshop.

47:02 Be a partner in your team’s learning.

Katrina M. Sanders RDH, BSDH, M.Ed, RF Bio:

In the ever-changing world of dental science where research, technology, and techniques for patient care are constantly evolving, dental professionals look to continuing education to provide insight, deliver actionable steps, empower, and create a dramatic impact within their clinical practice. With wit, charm, and a dash of humor, Katrina Sanders enchants dental professionals with her course deliverables, insightful content, and delightful inspiration. Her message of empowerment rings mighty throughout her lectures and stirs a deep sense of motivation amongst course participants.

Katrina is the Clinical Liaison for AZPerio, the country's largest periodontal practice. She performs clinically, working alongside Diplomates to the American Board of Periodontology in the surgical operatory. Katrina perfected techniques during L.A.N.A.P. surgery, suture placement, IV therapy, and blood draws. She instructs on collaborative professionalism and standard-of-care protocols while delivering education through hygiene boot camps and study clubs.