https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWx-4zM-xDs

Below, we’ve compiled the key points discussed in the Jameson Files Episode 140. To enjoy the full conversation with our very own Carrie Webber and Kathrine Eitel Belt you can watch on YouTube or listen to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify

How to Have Courageous Conversations

Carrie Webber:

Welcome back to the Jameson Files. I'm your host, Carrie Webber. I am so pleased today to have a colleague, a friend, and an expert in her field—Kathrine Eitel Belt—to talk about courageous conversations. Effectiveness in how we communicate is something that we at Jameson have believed in from the very beginning.

And that I think is where Kathrine and I connect on such a deep level. We believe in developing our communication skills and entering into these courageous conversations feeling more equipped so that we can have a successful, healthy conversation that moves us forward. So, Kathrine, thank you so much for being with me today.

We weren’t born with communication skills.

Kathrine Eitel Belt:

Oh, it's my honor. What a fun thing this is to come together with you, Carrie! Everything happens through communication—everything. So what could be more important than learning that? After all, we didn't come out of the womb knowing how to do this at our highest level, and most of us didn't take a class in school. Many of us didn't even learn it at home. Maybe we didn't have a great example at home. And so, it's not surprising if we find ourselves in the middle of a team, an industry, a community where people have just come to conversations sort of helter skelter.

It just turns out that there's a simple, fairly straightforward and easy way to upgrade these communication skills and get a lot better results really quickly. So, we're on a mission to spread this word that there are some systematic ways you can approach these hard conversations. They can actually go much easier and, surprisingly enough, you can get to a place where you even look forward to those conversations because you have some skills that will likely lead the conversation to success.

Carrie Webber:

And you know, Kathrine, we are in a season where our communication skills are the pivotal piece to relationships, to team building, to patient retention. The ability to communicate is making such a difference for successful practices and practice leaders. Are you finding that as well?

Kathrine Eitel Belt:

For sure. I think we're societally in a space where people struggle to have a civil, respectful, successful conversation when their perspectives or opinions differ—just turn on the news, and you’ll see it. So we're surrounded by it in our society, but also in our industry and at a local level with our community, dental practices and with families. And so, there couldn't be a better time to give this a little attention. 

These conversations impact your bottom line.

You know, we talk to a lot of people who say, “Yeah, well, I know it's important, but I've gotta really work on my scheduling systems or on my insurance or billing systems. And it seems as though they often pigeonhole conflict resolution skills, these courageous conversation skills as just a soft skill.

But we have found some research that really shines a light on how giving this training to your teammates actually has a direct effect on your bottom line. In fact, one of the studies that we looked at showed that most employees in the United States are spending up to four hours a week, either thinking about conflict, worrying about it, being agitated by someone, or actively embroiled in the conflict. That adds up to two weeks per employee, per year. 

So if you multiply that across all the employees you have, what would it look like if you could get two weeks of productivity back from every employee in your practice? Where their thoughts were not on conflict, not on worrying about conflict, and not having an argument?