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822: A Great Formula to Reduce Conflict – Dr. Christian Coachman

Are you tired of friction in your practice? Do you have frustrated and disappointed patients? There's a formula to fix it, and you can use it beyond your work life! Today, Kirk Behrendt and Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, explain their favorite formula, E – R = C and how using it will reduce conflict in all areas of your life. To learn how a few changes can improve life at work and at home, listen to Episode 822 of The Best Practices Show!

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Episode Resources:

Main Takeaways:

  • Not meeting expectations is the biggest source of conflict. Keep the promises you make.
  • E – R = C is the most important formula you need to use for every aspect of your life.
  • Don't try to do everything on your own. Find the right people who can help you.
  • Learn to say no. Don't say yes to everything and make yourself miserable.
  • Remember that you are not the most important person in your practice.
  • Underpromise and overdeliver in order to give yourself a buffer.
  • Use numbers to close the expectation and reality gap.
  • Be clear. It’s the nicest thing you can do.

Quotes:

“I'm going to give everybody that's listening the equation right now, and I want you to write it down. It's E – R = C. “E” is expectations, “R” is reality, and “C” is conflict. I want you to think about this in your life today . . . Expectations and reality, when they meet, there is little or no conflict. When they don't meet, there is conflict. So, if you tell your spouse or significant other that you're going to be home at 5:00 but you don't show up until 7:00, you're in a lot of trouble.” (2:10—2:45) -Kirk

“Underpromise and overdeliver. The best businesses in the United States and the world are growing because they're overdelivering. They're making promises and keeping them.” (3:12—3:21) -Kirk

“I have to take my son to an appointment tonight. I promised my wife I was going to do it. That's going to be at 4:30. I know exactly what time I have to be home. I'm going to arrive a little bit early, thus being in the plus zone. Does that make sense? My wife wants to go to dinner tonight at her favorite restaurant. I already made reservations. I'm going to make sure we go early. All of those things, I'm managing. So, let's do the simple stuff. It's with your spouse or significant other. I have to make promises and keep them. Now, there are times where I go, ‘I'm not going to be able to do that.’ So, I'm going to give myself a little space to screw up a little bit.” (10:56—11:35) -Kirk

“Let's say you're a dentist and you have a morning huddle. If you show up late, you're blowing up the E – R = C. If I'm a team member, and you're consistently late for the huddles, and you've told me the huddles are important — E – R = C. I'm completely out of equity with you. I don't trust you. You tell me a story about all these things that you have to do, and all you're telling me is this isn't important. (11:49—12:11) -Kirk

“When you're late for anything, it screams, ‘I don't care.’ It doesn't matter what you're late from or late for. When you're late, you don't care in a dental practice. I think with patients, with your significant other, with kids — my son thinks I'm going to pick him up today at 4:00. Now, I have to be there in order to establish trust. I could show up at 3:45, and he'll go, ‘That's my dad, being a little bit early.’ You can do it with patients. Patients think in a hygiene appointment, ‘I'm going to be here for an hour.’ What if they finish in 55 minutes? Then, you're ahead of schedule. So, I like knowing it, and then, secondly, calling it out. You're never going to be perfect. You're going to blow it up. But then, using the formula, expectations and reality and conflict, going, ‘Wow, that was bad. How do I diagnose this and make this better?’” (12:14—13:08) -Kirk

“When I was in my 20s, I was having conflict with people I really liked — and it was because I was making promises and not keeping them. I'm a wuss. I don't like conflict. So, one of the things I learned, I'll give you a quick tip here, I tell people I have a hard stop. When there's a meeting, I go, ‘I have a hard stop at the top of the hour. Let's go.’ So, we can go whatever we want. We can go in every direction. I used to let it go, and then go over, and think, ‘I'll manage this later. I'll apologize to the next person.’ That is not healthy. I've also learned that whenever I make a promise, I've got to make sure it's a promise I can keep.” (13:37—14:13) -Kirk

“Applying it to a dentist, I think what I see happening is not that the person is bad — you're right. When you are late, whatever excuse you use, at the end of the day, the other person is like, ‘He doesn't care like I care about this moment.’ That's the gap. The problem that I see is that dentists, for obvious reasons, have a feeling that they are the most important person in the practice among the team. When you feel like you're more important, even unconsciously, it gives you that allowance. You say, ‘I can be five minutes late. I can be ten minutes late. My team will understand. My staff will understand. I'm busy. They know I'm busy.’ So, they interpret it in a way that they have that allowance. They have those “credits”. And that, for me, is a big, big problem.” (14:31—15:33) -Dr. Coachman

“With the patient, the dentist doesn't fool around that much because, ‘Damn, I need their money. They need to be happy. They need to trust me.’ The staff is seeing that — that the dentist is caring a lot about every minute with the patient, but when it comes to the staff, the dentist is allowing themselves to cancel last-minute, not show up, not let them know, not send a message, be late, be on a phone call with family or friends. And the assistant hears from the other room that the dentist is with the friend on the phone and is five minutes late to a meeting again. Then, the dentist is like, ‘I'm the dentist. I own this. I'm working more than anybody else. I have these credits.’” (15:35—16:26) -Dr. Coachman

“Your future, if you're a dentist listening to this, is built on one thing: it's trust. People have to trust you. They have to trust that you're making promises. They have to trust that you're going to behave the same way. Consistency is what builds that.” (17:36—17:49) -Kirk

“Being busy is not an excuse. Even if you own the practice, even if you own the company, not thinking that you're the most important person is also a great mindset, a great strategy. But I would say that even if you are the most important person, and you know that, and everybody around you knows that, it still doesn't give you the right. It's still not smart to take advantage of it and say things and not deliver, even if you're the most important. If you are the most important person in an institution, in an organization, your goal should not be to be the most important person as soon as possible. That's the smartest thing a business owner can do, is to organize things and work on strategies to transform you from being the one and only most important person to not being one, because that's when you can leverage your business. That's when you can make more money with working less.” (18:11—19:25) -Dr. Coachman

“In the past, I was being exposed to so many opportunities, so many ideas. And as a yes person, I was always creating the excitement, ‘This is fantastic. Let's do this. Let's make this happen. We need to take the next steps.’ I was leaving and, in half an hour, having another conversation. And, of course, impossible. I couldn't follow up with all these ideas. So, I was creating the conflict because I was not following through. Today, I'm much better. As somebody is offering me an opportunity or explaining an idea, I'm immediately connecting in my mind, ‘Who is the person on my team that can connect to this opportunity and take it from there?’ I'm immediately saying, ‘I love this. We need to bring this person on board.’ I'm immediately sending the email, copying the right people, creating a WhatsApp group, or calling the person, ‘Come here and listen to this,’ and immediately showing the person that if that person doesn't convince my partner or doesn't give my partner, my collaborator, the right information, it's not on me anymore. I'm going to be supporting and giving advice, but it's not on me anymore to give the next step.” (22:14—23:45) -Dr. Coachman

“It's really important, if you're listening to this, to use the formula yourself. Use it at home. Use it. Be aware of it. And you're going to see things will fail, and you'll go, ‘How did that fail? It failed because I didn't say no.’ I used to tell people, ‘Come and stay as long as you want at our house.’ Then, I would feel miserable. Now, I tell them, ‘Come and stay for two nights. You guys can leave on Sunday.’ Now, I tell them exactly. I have learned, tell people the truth right away, ‘Here's how it's going to work.’ You tell them upfront, and it minimizes or mitigates all the conflict. They already know the expectation.” (23:50—24:27) -Kirk

“Anticipate the things that can go wrong, ‘We can do this. I want to do this with you. But just to clarify, this and this and this may not work. I'm pretty good with that, but maybe I'm not going to deliver at the level that you're expecting. I'm going to do my best.’ So, you're managing expectations by also becoming a master at identifying the things that can go wrong and explaining it in a way that you're not ruining the whole thing. You're still pursuing that path, but you are anticipating possibilities that if they happen first, the person will say, ‘Yeah, but you did mention that this could happen.’ Or if you go a little bit better than that, even if it's not ideal, people will be happier because, ‘You mentioned about this happening very badly. It was not ideal, but you did better than you explained.’ So, I'm actually not frustrated. I'm actually happy that the outcome is X, Y, or Z.” (24:40—25:45) -Dr. Coachman

“E – R = C. Get to know it as a leader yourself. Use it with your family, use it in business. Then, the X factor becomes when you teach your team this rule. So, my team all around here will say, ‘That was an E – R moment.’ They know the formula. They use it every day. We use it with our clients. So, now they know that diagnostic, pragmatic formula to improve things.” (25:49—26:16) -Kirk

“I ask for numbers. So, they will bring me a project, and it will be a graphic design. I'll go, ‘Ah, it was good.’ They'll go, ‘Give me a number.’ I'll say, ‘Seven. It would have been a ten.’ Because I used to say, ‘Oh, that's good,’ and it wasn't. Or the food, ‘It's great,’ when it wasn't. So, by using a number, I'm telling you exactly what the expectation and reality gap was. And they will say, ‘What would make it a ten?’ It would be linen napkins. It would be a perfectly grilled filet. So, now I'm creating a great picture, and I don't leave them in the gap of the E – R.” (26:19—27:03) -Kirk

“Two-thirds of my problems today, this week, last month are due to this issue — overpromising and not meeting expectations. I have a horrible time saying bad things to people. I always want to be so nice that I want to only give the best possibility, the best version, the best outcome. My wife gets so mad at me because I'm scheduling three things at the same time that only if a miracle happens, I can do the three things in the same day. I'm motivating people to accept an idea by creating a vision of a possibility that, many times, only if we do everything 100% correct, becomes reality. And that, at the end of the day, is generating on me an unbelievable, huge amount of chronic stress. If I don't think about it, it's in the back of my mind. Even without thinking about it, I know that I'm creating [high] expectations on everybody around me in so many moments that I'm constantly under pressure to overdeliver every day of my life. So, I need to learn how to say no, and how to say the bad side of the story, and anticipate these issues, and give me that room.” (29:03—30:36) -Dr. Coachman

“This is the number one thing my coach told me years ago. Don't be nice — be clear,’ . . . because what you do is you trade one for the other. I used to go, ‘No problem,’ when this is a huge problem. Now, it's better to be clear. And I'm not telling you to be mean. Just be clear, ‘I can't do those three things. I can only do this, and I have to be done at 6:00 p.m. Let's go.’ People like clarity. We can say more with fewer words.” (31:30—32:04) -Kirk

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

1:23 E – R = C, explained.

5:11 Keep your ideas in check.

8:14 Know who you are.

10:10 How to use E – R = C in your everyday life.

14:30 You are not the most important person in your practice.

22:06 Don't try to do everything yourself.

23:50 Learn how to say no.

28:43 Final thoughts.

Dr. Christian Coachman Bio:

Combining his advanced skills, experience, and technology solutions, Dr. Christian Coachman pioneered the Digital Smile Design methodology and founded Digital Smile Design company (DSD). Since its inception, thousands of dentists worldwide have attended DSD courses and workshops, such as the renowned DSD Residency program.

Dr. Coachman is the developer of worldwide, well-known concepts such as the Digital Smile Design, the Pink Hybrid Implant Restoration, the Digital Planning Center, Emotional Dentistry, Interdisciplinary Treatment Simulation, and Digital Smile Donator. He regularly consults for dental industry companies, developing products, implementing concepts, and marketing strategies, such as the Facially Driven Digital Orthodontic Workflow developed in collaboration with Invisalign, Align Technology.
ACT Dental Team

ACT Dental Team

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