Questioning Authority: Q&A with Leading Authorities for Entrepreneurial Excellence
Question and Answer sessions with leading Authorities in health, business and relationships to help service based professional entrepreneurs achieve peak performance in biz and in life.
Authority is a word that has many connotations. For this reason Authority in this context is defined as an expert + influencer= Authority. Someone who has expert knowledge on a particular subject AND has the characteristics to influence others.
Host Dr Scott Vatcher questions Authority figures to help entrepreneurs, business owners and service providers with achieving higher levels of success and fulfilment both in their business life and their personal life.
Exploring unique health challenges that service based entrepreneurs face such as fatigue, burnout, and finding balance between work-life struggles.
Exploring business and financial challenges such as marketing, sales, employees, investments, real estate, hiring and firing, when to scale and when to pivot.
Exploring relationships with self, business partners, romantic partners, your kids and your customers.
Questioning Authority: Q&A with Leading Authorities for Entrepreneurial Excellence
Unlocking Influence: Emotional Connections and Authority in Healthcare with Martin Harvey
Unlock the secrets of genuine influence and effective communication with our special guest, Martin Harvey. In this episode, Martin demystifies the notion of influence, proving it's not about manipulation but about understanding and empathy. Curious about how being intelligent and kind can sometimes limit your effectiveness? Martin shares strategies to turn these admirable traits into powerful tools for connection in both your personal and professional life.
Join us as we explore the critical role of emotional connection in healthcare practice. We dive into why manipulative tactics fall short and how building genuine trust can lead to long-term client retention. Martin introduces practical methods such as maintaining eye contact, using personal names, and the "Retention Recipe" program to enhance client satisfaction from the get-go. Plus, we share heartwarming and humorous anecdotes, including lessons learned from walking dogs, underscoring the essence of connection in healthcare.
We also delve into the nitty-gritty details of establishing authority in your field. From crafting the perfect espresso to adopting a structured approach to patient care based on soft tissue healing timeframes, we demonstrate how meticulous attention to detail can elevate both professional success and patient outcomes. Tune in to hear Martin's entertaining stories, like the time an elderly patient accidentally grabbed him, adding a humorous touch to our insightful discussion. Don’t miss out on learning how to wield authority and boost your influence in ways you’ve never considered before!
I'm Scott Vatcher, the host of Questioning Authority, where I question authority figures about health, wealth and relationships. This episode is brought to you by TheAuthorityCocom, helping health professionals be seen as the go-to authority in their community. I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Questioning Authority podcast. I'm your host, Scott Vatcher, and I'm here to question leading authorities in business, relationships and health, to help you, the listener, achieve greater levels of authority and success and fulfillment in both your business and your life, and I got a special guest with me today. I haven't screwed that up so badly before.
Speaker 1:I'm honored I'm, honored, I'm in awe.
Speaker 2:That must be what it is. That's how I'm choosing to interpret it, Scott.
Speaker 1:I'll go with that one too. Welcome to the show, martin Harvey. Thank you so much for having me. Let's get into the conversation. If anyone who's listening, who knows a little bit about you, they know that you're the influence guy. Yeah, and I love what you're doing. We've had chats before in the past.
Speaker 2:I've been on your podcast.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, we're going to talk about your podcast, but if somebody is tuned in and they don't know who you are, heaven forbid. Um, what kind of? If they're thinking in their own head, they're like listen. I don't know if I've got the next 45 minutes or however long this episode is going to be to to listen. What kind of value are you going to provide for them in a little snippet so that it gives them enough to go? I'm going to stay here.
Speaker 2:Excellent. So I think that the tool that we have, the skill that we have to achieve anything in whatever sort of professional domain or, almost more broadly than that, their life, requires the skills to be able to influence other people to either do things for you or do things for themselves that impact you. And the skill to have that impact is essentially influence skills. They're skills that help you to present offers, to present suggestions, to present opportunities to other people in a way that people are more likely to see why it's valuable for them to say yes to you, and that's an area that I've gone deep into for the last 25 years. So I'll be able to give them some simple ways of understanding how influence works, how influence doesn't work, so they can stop doing things that are ineffective, so that they can have more impact themselves, and it's such a cross skill, isn't it?
Speaker 1:So it's something that if you're listening through your business ears, you'd be like geez, that sounds good. But then, if you even you're listening through your personal life, you're like that'd be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well every relationship, it's influence. Skills are essentially the way of you first of all understanding the other person's perspective, so that you can then look at where's the crossover, that something works for them and works for you. And that's the same in a business context, where we're looking to create a win-win deals, in a sense, but also in personal relationships with your family, with friends. We want to make sure that we're communicating things in a way where they see the value for them.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the words win-win in there, and I know some people when they even hear the beginnings of a conversation like this, they go oh, that's just manipulation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually interesting.
Speaker 2:There's one of the things that I think makes communication challenging, makes influence challenging, particularly for people who are health providers, is that there are a couple of really big misunderstandings that people have around what effective communication is or what effective influence is. And because we're healthcare providers, we tend to come into it because we're smart people, we're intelligent people, and that's actually a handicap in understanding influence. The second thing is we tend to come into it because we're smart people, we're intelligent people, and that's actually a handicap in understanding influence. The second thing that's also a handicap is that we tend to be in it to help people we're kind people, and so there's another handicap connected to that. So if I can unpack that for a minute, I might do the kind one first.
Speaker 2:Often we look at this idea of influence and have that reaction that you were saying about win-win. It sounds like a manipulation. It sounds like effective communication works by trying to trick people into doing something that's not in their best interest, and what the influence literature tells us is that it's the opposite of that, that we are actually wired, that we actually wired. We have these sort of genetic wiring of hunter-gatherers and hunter-gatherers survival relied on their ability to kind of read people and stay on what their intentions are. And it creates a thing where, if people feel like they're being manipulated, even if they can't identify exactly why it is, if you have that just little bit of a spidey sense that I feel like this person's trying to push me into making a decision that I don't necessarily want to make, it creates what's called reactance in the psychology literature, which is, even if academically it seems to make sense to do something, we push back and go no, no, no, I don't want to do that. So first thing is effective communication is the opposite of that. It's really looking for how do I genuinely understand what would help Scott? And is there a way, is there a Venn diagram of crossover, where what I provide will actually be genuinely something that's going to help him? And I'm going to focus on, first of all, understanding what you want and need and then how do I kind of use your frame of reference to explain or connect what I'm offering. So that's the first misunderstanding, that it's actually the opposite of that. It's really leaning first into that piece of empathy and understanding truly them and what would constitute a win for them first, rather than focusing on your win first.
Speaker 2:The second thing, in terms of the intelligence factor and this sort of links in with the other one, is that often, when we have gone through this advanced education that most healthcare providers have, we're very strongly trained in critical thinking and logic and this sort of idea that the way that you influence people, persuade people, encourage people to do something that would be in their interest to do. That is, you provide logical reasons for it and unfortunately, in that interplay between logic and emotion, emotion trumps logic. So Daniel Kahneman, who's a Nobel Prize I say what is was unfortunately passed away in the last couple of days Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist and he talks about it as thinking fast and thinking slow, or type one, type two reasoning or thinking. I prefer the language of another behavioural economist called Zoe Chance and she talks about it as we have a judge brain and a gator brain and the judge brain is that sort of educated that I'm going to get a spreadsheet and break down all the reasons why I should do something.
Speaker 2:Or, in our case, as healthcare providers or chiropractors recommending care to somebody, we sort of map out all the reasons, that the data around, why we've recommended a care plan and and we think that that should be persuasive, whereas actually, if that doesn't match their emotional reasons, like people are filtering through their emotions, so if they're thinking all this time, money, energy, that I'm being asked to invest in having this chiropractic care, but I'm a mother and all my priorities should be on looking after the rest of the family, I should put the family first, so it's wrong for me to be taking all this focus on myself.
Speaker 2:Then there's no chance of them taking on that care that will definitely benefit them unless we understand that interplay. So that was a really long way of saying influence literature and understanding influence skills. First of all, manipulation doesn't work. People are way too primed on when it's coming and where it's coming from to be influenced by that over the long term. And secondly, we've got to start with people and their reality. We've got to learn to understand that before we even think about how we want to present our perspective for it to be impactful.
Speaker 1:Is there anything in the research you've seen around like what stuck out to me a little bit? Is that idea around, that gut feeling?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah. So yeah, there's a stack of research into it in that. When we look at that sort of gut feeling, and is it? First of all, is it accurate? But we have a very strong predisposition to be safe. So we will tend to have if a gut feeling says that doesn't seem like a good thing to do, we're more likely to be risk averse.
Speaker 2:So there will be some times that we feel like somebody's manipulating us and they're not. They're not trying to, it's just we got a wrong sense. So there's a lot of false positives when it comes to gut feeling. But it is fairly sensitive in that it will typically pick up most people who are trying to manipulate you. If you're open to it, you know most people will pick it up, which is kind of why a lot of those very strongly manipulative sales approaches rely on a real sort of machine of generating a lot of leads and then this aggressive sales approach and trying to paint people into a corner and then doing something to offset buyer's remorse and all this psychology that's understood about it, whereas I'm very much an advocate for the opposite, that if we want to have long-term growth in our business, long-term growth in our practice, we actually need to do the opposite of that. We need to put people before any of those sort of procedural bits. So, yeah, bottom line is there's a lot of research into that gut feel that people have.
Speaker 2:It's often triggered by things that are unintentional, and so, as an example, 70% of people across pretty much all businesses leave, not because they're necessarily dissatisfied with the results of their care. They leave because of perceived or real indifference. They feel like you no longer care about them, and so that's an emotional response. It's a gut feel of I don't really feel like this person cares about me. I feel like I'm being processed. I feel like I'm just a number, and we have a lot of things on our side of the fence as providers that make that fairly likely to happen, in that this person comes into our office and their focus on their experience in the office is 100% on them, whereas we're coming in and we're like, all right, I've just finished with this person, I need to finish the notes with them and I know that I've got this other person coming in and I've got an MRI that I need to look at for that. I just got a message to say I'm running 10 minutes late. I know I've got to pick up the kids after work, I'm a little bit concerned about the arrangements for the weekend, and so we've got all this other stuff going on in our head.
Speaker 2:And if, when we come into with this sort of broad array of plates that are spinning and the other person's got their focus on I just want to be seen, I've got this need for you to acknowledge me as a person.
Speaker 2:If we seem distracted or we don't do any of those things like that are really simple, like just that moment of acknowledgement, of eye contact, of using their name that communicate.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, where you see me as a person, then it's easy to set up a misunderstanding of, like that gut reaction of you don't care about me, and so part of the skill or the process that I would suggest people as healthcare providers go through is, first of all, that understanding that emotion trumps logic and you could provide the perfect approach to care.
Speaker 2:But if you don't wrap it in a repeatable procedure that makes sure we put their people needs before their clinical needs, then we can trip ourselves up and have people leaving prematurely just because we were busy, and so prioritizing things like making routinely the first thing that I'm going to do before I do anything clinical is just make sure that I have something that creates a point of connection, as simple as eye contact, use your name, touch, getting close, those sort of things. Because connection is one of those things that once you have it, you've kind of ticked that box and people are on board. But if you miss it it's very hard to then loop back and get it because people are already feeling disconnected. So it just needs to be prioritised at the beginning the beginning of care, the beginning of a visit, all those sort of things.
Speaker 1:And you've got a process that you use, like your first 12 visits.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So within that context, I would look at connection as being something that anybody in healthcare wants to create, because we will be busy life, especially if you know most of us want to be busy in practice and so you want to be prepared for that, so you want structure that sort of almost frees you up to then be just present with people. So if we're looking at in that two contexts I think I stepped over the top of you speaking there, but I have a program, online program, called the Retention Recipe and it sort of talks through how you apply these ideas across the first 12 visits. Now it's not a script for 12 visits, it's like understanding where people are coming from and how do you ask questions in a particular way that gets insight into what's important to them. And the connection piece of it is the first thing that happens. When in that program is we go through a process of look, scott, you're coming in to see me as a new client. How can we?
Speaker 2:Most people, when they present for care, are a little bit on edge, they're a little bit anxious, they're a little bit. Have I made the right decision? I have a health complaint that's putting me a little bit on edge, and is this the right person for me, I don't know. And so we want to kind of get that gator brain calmed down so that we can then move beyond it. And so it's really just treating them like a person first, and there's a few things that we might do to do that, so that if people were wanting to take notes, to apply stuff, this would probably be the point that you want to kind of drill down a little bit. Some of it would be really simple, things like don't have people who are there for the first time ushered off into a consult room by themselves so that you, the doctor, can come in and then it sounds. I think it might have a benefit in building your authority, but it makes people feel uncertain. So I would be more inclined to walk out to the reception area, make sure I made eye contact with somebody rather than looking at a clipboard while I'm coming into their space. Eye contact, because eye contact creates a sense of connection and validation in a microsecond. Then I'm going to look for an opportunity for touch, like shaking hands is the best way, because it's then this sense of where these hunter, gatherer people, that physical connection, essentially starts to say yeah, where we have this connection with each other.
Speaker 2:And then the third step might be, rather than leaping straight into what's going on for them clinically, I would make a point of seeing a way that we are in the same tribe. So people are basically very tribal. I mean, you go onto any social media platform and you see the dark side of it, but there's a light side too, where you and I are in the same tribe of chiropractors. We're in the same tribe of people who are looking to help other people in that broader tribe be more impactful in their ability to communicate the value of what they're providing. And we could probably find other things that we're in the same tribe of. We're in the same tribe of people who do CrossFit, for instance. We're in the same tribe of people who have been to a particular seminar. Now, if we apply that to people that we're meeting for the first time, you can get creative.
Speaker 2:But there are a lot of clues. So on the intake form, it'll normally say who referred them clues. So on the intake form, it'll normally say who referred them and we can now be part of the tribe of people who are friends of that person. So it'd be like oh Scott, I see that Dean referred you to me. How do you guys know each other? Oh look, we're part of the same CrossFit gym. Oh, wow, yeah, I'm a CrossFitter too. How long have you been doing CrossFit for Blah, blah, blah. Or, if they've not referred, referred.
Speaker 2:We can then look at their job of being. Let's say, you're an architect, are you, scott? What sort of architecture do you do? Is it commercial, is it domestic? Oh look, we're more commercial. So what's like industrial commercial? But I'm part, I'm connecting with them as a person, as a, as part of the tribe of people who believe what you're doing as an architect is an important, interesting thing. So that's an application of it. That's really simple.
Speaker 2:The next step in that program that we would do would be then going into a history as less of an inquisition and more of a conversation, and what the influence literature tells us is that people who have a health complaint, their number one thing that they they want, they need, is to be heard. So if, instead of doing the, is the pain lancinating? Is it sharp, is it dull? Does it referred here? Does it do this ball like? If we just say, scott, I can see you having some issues with some back and neck pain, tell me all about it, and I just leave it open frame and you stop to. You say your first few things and then I stop for a minute, I go look anything else and if I say anything else three times, without a doubt you are going to feel like you had an opportunity to be heard. So it's that sort of human side of it.
Speaker 2:If I can just finish off the rant on connection with one last thing, that's how you create connection at the beginning of care, is that sort of sequence and putting some thought into how do I want to do that, and then also some practice and almost sort of role play on how you do that, so that you can get really good at it.
Speaker 2:And then, if we were doing that on a visit to visit basis, I'd want to look at well, do I have this is for chiropractors specifically but do I have people lying face down while they're waiting for me, in which case eye contact is going to be tricky what else am I going to do to create that sense of connection? Or if they are sitting up but you're in a more open plan environment and you're taking notes, how do you do that thing of you've almost sort of moved from seeing one person to taking notes. How do I do the visual eye contact? And do that so that it's not this clunky weird thing. So just putting a little bit of thought on it, because it's way more effective to create that connection initially and then, rather than trying to chase it later where people are feeling disconnected.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a few simple things laid down at the beginning can make all the difference. And when I think back to the people that have been around for years because you know, I don't know any practitioner that doesn't have people that have been around forever, yeah, and then people that just don't stick around, yeah, lots of variables why that might be, of course, yeah, but looking back, probably that initial connection, something there that um got feeling whatever you want to call it, uh, was probably there for most of those people who have been in practice for you know, the last 10 years or whatever it might be, yeah, absolutely yeah and so, um, we both have another love, and that's of dogs.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely, I've got a little little cavoodle, yes, and um, never had a dog before. Oh, wow, this is my first dog ever and, uh, I did. I didn't know what to expect really, but my god is the best thing ever yeah, yeah, I really, am such a super fan of all dogs now, I never really was a dog person, but, um, you had a good experience, or or uh uh, an interesting experience walking your dog, didn't you?
Speaker 1:absolutely walking your dog in the park and it changed change it yeah, yeah, go ahead let's talk about your dog story.
Speaker 2:So so this is going back three dogs. So we currently have a Border Collie called Rupert, who's a super cool puppy. He's 16 months old. And we had another dog, macy, who unfortunately died, and Rupert is her replacement. But this is the dog before Macy, called Soho, who I was.
Speaker 2:This was when I was fairly early on in practice and I was out walking Soho in the park, and the story probably makes most sense, though, where, a few years before that, I was in that transition from university to going into chiropractic practice and I was super keen to help as many people as I could and be successful in practice. And when I went to seminars or when I asked successful chiropractors in practice, you know what was the key to them being as successful as they were? Almost universally they would say it was their certainty in chiropractic, and it's a topic that's spoken about a lot in chiropractic, topic that's spoken about a lot in chiropractic, and I think it applies to healthcare providers in general that the more certain you are in your clinical decision-making, the more certain you are in the value of what you're providing. It has this intangible impact that you communicate differently and your communication is perceived differently and all those subtle non-verbal things are different. You could say the same thing, but with a as somebody. Somebody with high certainty can say the same thing as somebody with low certainty and there's but it's still indefinable but that there's a difference in the impact of that communication.
Speaker 2:So I was really keen to understand that and I think a lot of us, as new graduates maybe don't have a huge level of certainty and I wanted to know well, what can you do to increase your certainty? And the frustrating bit about it was I was told different things by different people. There were a lot of people who would say, look, you really need to dive deep into chiropractic philosophy and understand these core principles of chiropractic. And there are other people who are saying, oh no, you need to just get really, really good at your technique and that's where certainty lies, that you'd need to be, just technically, the best adjuster going around.
Speaker 2:And other people would say, no, it's really in understanding the science, in sort of understanding exactly what happens when the spine is subluxated and what happens when you apply an adjustment. And I look at that and I thought, well, I can see that you want to be good at all of them, but it doesn't make sense that they're all the path to certainty. Then I'd get probably the most frustrating response, which was you just need to experience is what gives you certainty that just gradually your certainty will go. And I'm thinking it doesn't make sense that something that says core to your impact can't be trained. So I thought about it and I was kind of just going through different ideas. But I had a few things happen all at once around the time of that walk with Soho in the park that came together to give me a different model of certainty. And the first one was I was out, I was just driving around earlier that same day and the football was on the radio.
Speaker 2:So this is Australian rules football and some player had gone down clutching his knee and the guy who was the expert commentator, who's an ex player, is making all these prognostic decisions around. What's happened with this guy? He's like, oh look, he's holding went down and he sort of went his knee sort of buckled inward there so he could have done a medial ligament. Oh gee, I hope it's not an ACL, or he could have really just, you know strained part of his hamstring. We won't know now. If it's a hamstring, it's probably going to be out for anywhere from three to maybe seven, eight weeks. If it's a medial ligament, then we're probably looking at 12 to 14 weeks, but if it's the ACL, it's a better part of a year that he's going to be out of the game. The power of their recommendations, which is informed by a detailed history and examination, won't be as categorical as this boofhead radio ex-footballer who's got no anatomical training at all, and it just didn't give me any conclusions. But it gave me pause where I was thinking. It's bizarre. This guy has this absolute certainty in what somebody's path in is, without having this understanding of, you know, philosophy or neurology or any of the other things that we've spoken about.
Speaker 2:And then later that same day, as I was walking around the park with soho, there was another young woman who was also walking her dog. And you know as we do when your dogs are playing. We started having a chat and it, and you know as we do when your dogs are playing. We started having a chat and it emerged that she was a physiotherapy student doing her last stage of her clinical placement and she was working in an outpatient rehab. What they were providing and the frequency that they recommended, and these people needed to be there for three to six months for input, for care, five days a week while they were there, so very intensive care.
Speaker 2:But I was also really struck as a chiropractor looking at what they were doing and going. Oh my God, that sounds so bad, like it just seemed so ineffective compared to the sort of tools that we had. And if you're a physio listening to this, I don't mean any insult by saying this, but it just seemed pretty, pretty crap. So what I came to realize was that certainty is one of those things that actually requires a structure, and one of the things that, in some ways, physiotherapy has traditionally done way better from a certainty perspective than chiropractic is that they base their certainty on soft tissue healing timeframes. So if somebody has a knee issue or a hamstring issue, the first thing they look at is well, if I'm going to change the way this system works, it's going to be determined by the adaptation of the soft tissues.
Speaker 2:And so for us as chiropractors, traditionally we haven't even really looked used that as a framework, whereas I think the first step to having a certainty is having sort of an understanding of the paradigm that you're working in. What's happening when the spine isn't working properly, what's happening when I provide an adjustment, and how do those soft tissues adapt? Then we can start to create certainty around expected timeframes that an initial response is probably going to be guided by muscle healing timeframes which, depending on severity and chronicity, are going to be somewhere between six and 12 weeks. But for anybody with any degree of chronicity, then realistically things are going to take anywhere from three to 12 to 24 months. And once you have that framework in place, then we can go a whole lot deeper in terms of well, if we've got systems of tracking how people are going, then it doesn't really rely necessarily on our philosophy or us having mastered one technique over another. It's a framework of giving us feedback so that we are certain that we are delivering results to this person in front of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely think certainty is key, and you're right within our own profession, there's a lot of conflicting conversations that go on around everything we do and, honestly, the further I'm in it, I think all professions probably have these types of conversations. Yeah, that's just our tribe, so we see much more of it. But I think the issues that we experience are not necessarily unique. They are part of a bigger picture. So, I mean, certainty is absolutely key and I think there's a fine line between certainty around structures and systems and what the body can do, and then going too far and that becoming ego. Yeah, absolutely, and you used to be what you consider a chiropractic arsehole. Absolutely. I'm guessing that might have something to do with ego, but I'd love to hear that story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it. Yeah, chiropractic asshole was again similar sort of era to my revelation in the park, which was I was one of those people who came into chiropractic without perhaps the broadest perspective of what it was about. I just to. To be honest, it just sort of looked like a nice lifestyle where you got to help people, which appealed to me, and you got these days off in the middle of the week and you were working for yourself and there was sort of a feeling of some degree of freedom associated with that. And it wasn't really until I got a fair way into my training that I connected with some of those bigger picture perspectives around chiropractic that chiropractic say. You know, one of the people that was influential was Reggie Gold, who many of the chiropractors listening will have heard of, but just really seminal around the impact of what you do can impact people in every way, that their whole life works better when their body works better, and that perspective was really quite transformative for me. And I also went to a program called dynamic growth, which was a seminar that was amazing at connecting chiropractors with skills and approaches to help them have more impact.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I came out of it with this idea of everybody needs to know about this. Their life would be better if they understood that their nervous system runs their whole body, that their body's set up to be healthy, and if they have regular chiropractic care, then everything works better. And one of the ideas connected to that, though, was that our job was to tell the story, and it was kind of centered on this idea if people knew people knew what you knew they'd do what you do, ie, if we tell them what they should be doing, then their life will be better and the whole world will be better. And what it meant, though and the translation of that that I think was commonplace in chiropractic at the time was that you became a chiropractic arsehole because people were coming to you for whatever reason, or you were interacting with people because they were curious about chiropractic, and the idea of telling the story was, if people's understanding wasn't around what you thought chiropractic was, if people coming in saying you know, can chiropractic help my back pain. The telling the story part of it was almost I'm going to ram chiropractic down your throat before first understanding why you're curious, and so it would be.
Speaker 2:Chiropractic is not about your back pain. It's about your spine functioning optimally so that you can express your genetic potential. It's about universal intelligence, innate intelligence and all these things that I thought were super important. Thought was super important, but it meant that often I was having a conversation with somebody who was curious about what might be, what uh might be in it for them, in them exploring chiropractic. But I was placing so much emphasis on that you have to first of all know about chiropractic before you can really, and I don't want to hear what your reasons are.
Speaker 2:So that was my chiropractic asshole era and what it led to was me trying to use these tell the story approaches in practice.
Speaker 2:And you know it loops back to the conversation we're having earlier, where if you don't have nuanced communication, then some people are going to go this just, I don't feel like I'm being seen as a person and this isn't for me, and so I kind of ran into quite a bit of resistance, and it was that resistance and frustration that really led me to ask the question.
Speaker 2:Surely there's other people who are trying to change people's behavior and having more luck at it than we in chiropractic seem to, and that's what led me to explore outside the profession. I happened to walk across the street from my practice at the time and there's an amazing the bookstore is still there the Avenue Bookshop and phenomenal bookshop and I went to their section on communication and personal development and I came across Cialdini's influence book and that was the start of this journey into actually we want to communicate the value of something. It starts with understanding what they want and need first and then coming back and so it's not telling, you're telling the story. That's the important thing. Telling the story makes you a chiropractic asshole. It's understanding their story first and translating your story to see where the crossover is.
Speaker 1:That has impact yeah, I agree, I was very similar at the beginning of of my career as well. Tell the story, tell the story, tell the story, doesn't matter what they say. And then, on top of that, yeah, that fine line between certainty and ego was I had said to people oh God, I look back and I'm like God, did I really say that kind of stuff? Like that I was going to be able to be everything for them. Yeah, like you don't need massage, you don't need physio, you don't need it, you don't need physio, you don't need it. It's just, you know, let's just, let's just get to work. Yeah, and now I just I'm all over it. I'm like man, I see a physio, I see massage therapists. They're fantastic, they're just different. What we do is different and a lot of it's complimentary and works well together.
Speaker 2:It's amazing, isn't it? It?
Speaker 1:is, and that book is a brilliant book. If there's somewhere you want to start Now, it's not the lightest book Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Actually, there's one book that I've because for years I've recommended for people who want to dive deeper into this area. I've recommended Cialdini, and I think Cialdini is a phenomenal book, but, you're right, it can be a bit of a slog. The book that I actually suggest people start on now, if this intrigues them, is by Zoe Chance, who I recommended earlier. It's called Influences, your Superpower and it's an amazing book and some of the metaphors that she uses it's all uh, based on literature. It's not a fluffy book, but she's a master at using simple metaphors to change. You know daniel kahneman, who's the complete uh, analytical sort of person who comes up with system one and system two, thinking like wow, that's such an evocative term, whereas her version is gator versus judge, which is much easier to sort of understand the context. And the whole book is like that, where she outlines a lot of these ideas of successfully, ethically, in a client-centered way, communicating the value of what you do, but she does it in a way that's much more accessible. So I'd highly recommend that.
Speaker 1:And earlier you mentioned Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. Is that the book as well? Because I have the audio book that I haven't listened to yet yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's Daniel Kahneman's book, thinking Fast, thinking Slow, and that's essentially his unpacking of the literature around system one and system two, thinking so, thinking Fast is the gator brain, thinking Slow is the judge brain, and the book is really his unpacking of that whole area of how the interplay between the two. Again, it's, on the denser end of it, a worthwhile book to read, but I would suggest for people who are starting in this area, zoe's book is the king as far as, or the queen, perhaps, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll put a link to all those books in the show notes for if you are looking to dive deeper into it. But also obviously check out Martin's podcast called Under the Influence. Been going for three, four-ish years.
Speaker 1:We were discussing it earlier and we don't know exactly how long, but a long while, yes, and it is a brilliant podcast, but a long while, um, and it is a a brilliant podcast there's. There's such good, uh, bite-sized pieces in there to, you know, digest on an on a weekly basis. So definitely check that one out. I want to, I want to uh, go down a little funny story route. Now, let's, let's, let's, learn something, but have a laugh at the same time. I once recently actually it was, I'm gonna say it was a couple of months ago um had this lady come in. She's been coming in a long, long time.
Speaker 1:Super amazing woman, super nice, she's about 75 and she just, you know, has had some health challenges and, um, but is, you know, taking life on and she's doing amazing things, traveling and doing all this stuff, and she's such a huggy, feely kind of person. After every I'm not so much a hug somebody after an adjustment type of chiropractor, but she would hug after every, and she wouldn't just hug me, she'd hug the staff at the front, you know. And yeah, she's, she's beautiful. And one day I don't know what she was saying, but all of a sudden whack grabbed my ass and I and it was. It wasn't just like a. Was that a?
Speaker 1:no, it was it was very definite, definite yes and um, I couldn't wait to tell my staff afterwards and we both just had a huge laugh at it and we just just said that's her. She's just such a beautiful lady. I did not think anything more, but just to have a laugh about it. You had something similar, didn't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did very much so. So this is going back a few years and I had a really lovely older client who was in her early 80s and she was getting to that age and some health and mobility challenges, where you know you start to dress more for comfort than for impressing people and she'd found that a Melbourne winter and a lot of polar fleece suited her. So she had not only the polar fleece top but she had the polar fleece track pants and shoes that she didn't have shoelaces she could just slip into not quite slippers, but kind of the outdoor version of slippers and she'd come in and she'd been living in the area for years and years and years. And the area that I practice in South Melbourne is one of those inner city areas that's been very much gentrified and she'd been there throughout that. So she'd come in and she'd sort of say, oh, you know, this place used to be a news agency and you know these were the people that had it and just shared really interesting chats.
Speaker 2:But she had quite limited movement and so some of getting her on and off the table was a bit of a challenge and we sort of looped back to that thing of you know you're going to connect with people and you've also got the realities of running a practice that I don't have forever to adjust to. So she came in this day and she's doing a little download of what the area and her memories of it and what's happening and whatever. We get her onto the table and she's talking away. I'm checking her, adjusting her and then I needed her to turn onto her back and as she turned over, I'm aware that you know that a chiropractic adjusting table and people with limited movement isn't always. They don't feel super stable, it feels narrow for them. So I'm right next to her as we're doing this so that there's no chance that she can drop. I've been doing this now for 33 years. I've never had anybody come off the table, so I wasn't concerned, but she doesn't have 33 years of knowing that.
Speaker 2:So as she turned over, the combination of the sort of relatively smooth adjusting table fabric and the slickness of her polar fleece conspired so that she got partway over. But then there was a little slip. Now I was there, she couldn't go anywhere, but with that she swung her arm back and grabbed what she thought was my leg, but was actually a little bit north of my leg. So she basically had the frank and the beans in an 82 year old death grip and it was one of those things where you know when you're not anticipating something but it hits and you have that drop feeling in your stomach and that almost visceral response of oh my god, this is hurting, um. But so my thing was to almost try and push her away so that I could get away from her grip.
Speaker 2:but every time I and she was still stuck at, you know, halfway from her front to her back.
Speaker 2:She wasn't quite flat on her back but she wasn't assured, and so every time I tried to push her away she would grip harder and we got into this really bizarre tug of war, so to speak, in an open plan adjusting area. So it was kind of interesting. But what I realized was, before I could actually influence her behavior in this circumstance, I had to make her feel safe first. Make her feel safe first that there was no value in me trying to get her to do what I needed her to do until she felt safe. So I almost had to do what my genitals definitely didn't want me to do and get closer to her to make her feel safe, to get her lying flat on her back before she was prepared to let go.
Speaker 2:And then finally we got her on her back, she felt safe to let go. And then finally we got her on her back, she felt safe, she let go. And then afterwards I felt really, I guess, a little bit of a validation where she goes. Oh look, I hope I didn't bruise your thigh there. So I'm choosing to lean into her assessment choosing to lean into her assessment.
Speaker 1:But um well, what? What popped into my head early in that story was that's a.
Speaker 2:That's quite a definition of a third leg. Yes, absolutely, but with a lesson to it. I think it's the just. People need to feel safe. They need to have that emotional need met first before they're open to any of your suggestions or attempts to move them in any direction.
Speaker 1:I love how you finished that story and wound it up with your teachings. Love it Now. I would be remiss if we didn't have at least a tiny little conversation about our biggest mutual love and our biggest tribal connectiveness. Can you think of what that would be?
Speaker 2:I've got a few. I'm guessing it starts with C. It does start with C, so it could be. I'm going to work through all my C's and I'm going to end with the most likely. It could be comedy, it could be communication, could be chiropractic. I'm guessing it's coffee.
Speaker 1:That is it, and I don't know exactly what we're even going to talk about, but we've got a couple of minutes left. So you know that I put a post out recently looking for somebody who really knows the science the science of coffee and a lot of people piped up and said your name.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and I actually opted out of considering myself an expert in that, because I think you were specifically interested in looking at the health implications of it. And there's another C that I'm very aware of, but in this case and in most circumstances I try not to have it, but in this circumstance I'm completely happy to, which is cognitive bias. Which is cognitive bias is where, if you have a certain belief about something, you tend to discount any evidence against it and go looking cherry picking the evidence for it. And so when it comes to the health benefits of caffeine, I think there's mixed literature around there. I'm very much on. I only read the good stuff. Anything that's critical of it, it just filters out. But in terms of the, the other side of the science of it, the making of it and the nuance around what makes phenomenal coffee, I'm your guy hmm, not with that.
Speaker 1:That part I know, and so is there anything in the latest in in your world of coffee that's new and exciting?
Speaker 2:well, I guess there's. It's not new in the coffee world generally, but I think it's one of the core of really great. My chosen type of coffee that I love most is espresso. Now, I'll drink most types of coffee, but espresso is the one that really has my heart, and espresso is really very much about following a process of just dialing in your grinder, looking at your dose size and trying to get a very predictable espresso shot, where you're looking at time and developing what my sort of recipe is, and I use more or less the same blend the whole time so that I've got a very predictable response. And then just recently I added one other thing to it, which is a distributor, which is essentially before you tamp the coffee, you distribute it. You make sure that it's kind of evenly across the bed of it, and so I've just added a distributor and the improvement is way more than I anticipated.
Speaker 2:I sort of thought I'm not even convinced that this will stay in the workflow if it's an extra step, but it does make a meaningful difference. So I guess that we're looking to continue to pull out lessons from everything. I would say that the devil is in the details, that paying attention to everything, whether it's how you create connection with people on every visit or how you distribute your grinds in an espresso details are important.
Speaker 1:Details. The devil is in the details, that is for sure. Thank you so much for joining us in this conversation. I definitely want to continue and I know we could dive deeper into so many things, and maybe I'll get you on a panel one day and we'll do a panel discussion of coffee. Because, I'll be honest, I'm exactly like you in that if I hear any like, my ear goes bing. If I hear something positive about caffeine and if I hear something negative, I go, nah, they don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the lived experience of motivated reasoning and cognitive bias.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:My cognitive bias is through the roof with that one, maybe a little bit of chiropractic too, but it's okay in certain cases, absolutely, particularly if you're aware of it. This is true, yes, very aware of it, but choose to not change it absolutely. So, yes, like I said, thank you so much for being on here. Um, you know, you've been a mentor of mine over the years. You've done so much for chiropractic. You've had all these super special awards that I didn't mention, but they'll be in the show notes just to show one of your levels of influence, which is authority, because you are a true authority within this chiropractic space and we are so lucky to have you in our profession. So again, thank you for for the time that you've given us, and is there any last words you'd?
Speaker 2:like to say oh no, just to thank you very much for what you're doing. I really enjoyed this and I feel like what you're doing with your project of helping people have more impact by understanding that point around authority is incredibly important part of the conversation so that people see the value of it. That one of those ideas of the interplay between judge and gator brain gator brain trumping the judge brain is that one of the filters that people say use to say, look up, should I be trusting Scott as a healthcare provider is authority. If you position, if you are an authority, then people buy you before they buy your message. And understanding that dynamic and having active strategies like your teaching and helping people connect with to establish themselves as an authority is one of the most impactful influence strategies you can use. So, yeah, I just want to acknowledge it and appreciate the opportunity to kind of have a conversation around things that I think we both realize are super important.
Speaker 1:Couldn't be said better by myself. So thank you so much and we will see you soon on another episode of Questioning Authority. Thanks for listening to this episode of Questioning Authority. I hope you enjoyed the show. Stay tuned for the next one coming out soon. This episode has been brought to you by the Authority Co. Helping service providers increase authority and revenue. Check out theauthoritycocom for more info.