This morning my strongest employee wouldn’t look me in the eye. This sounds minute, but coming from an employee who always greets me with a warm smile and a bubbly hello, it raised a big red flag for me. I asked her how she was doing and she answered with a flat “I'm fine.” I gave her about 20 minutes and then I called her into my office and asked her if she was OK. She immediately opened up about a problem she was having at home. She cried and vented to me for about 10 minutes, then she thanked me for listening to her vent and volunteered to go back to the front desk and tackle the day. The remainder of the day she handled everything thrown at her with a smile and a sincere effort.
Sometimes, people just want to be understood and heard. You do not always have to truly understand their struggle, you do not have to really know where they are coming from. They usually want to talk and feel like someone understands and is there to support them. You can make eye contact, be direct, and check in frequently. Even if you have no idea how to read people, you will be able to keep tabs on how they are doing with work if you instill trust and ask them frequently.
The same is true for patients. Sometimes patients demand to speak to a manager or the owner directly. Usually these people just want to be heard and to feel like you are excited to hear the feedback and you are planning to fix their problem. Sometimes you really don't have to say anything.
Often times patients complain about something that feels so insignificant we want to just shut it down and explain the “simple” solution. I often have patients complain that they have to wait a month to be seen for a routine eye exam. I am always so tempted to shut it down with “that’s how you know Dr. Smith is good! He is popular!” But usually patients just want to feel like you hear and understand their concerns. A better solution is to let Mr. Jones tell you how he is down to his last pair of contacts and how his glasses were bent when he fell asleep wearing them. These scenarios are not by any fault of your own or your practice and certainly do not constitute an emergency eye exam. Perhaps you could let the patient voice all their concerns, then reassure them your optician can adjust the bent glasses for now and you can provide Mr. Jones with a trial set of contacts until his appointment. Learn to listen to understand and the solutions you provide will go over much better.
Listening to understand is a great tactic to resolve conflicts. You can begin to listen to understand rather than listen to anticipate how to respond to people. If someone starts to give you a complaint, do not cut them off with a solution. Let them voice every problem they have before you offer any solutions or feedback. Allow for a full five second count before you respond to allow a person to finish their train of thought. Learn names. If someone gives you their name, respond and address them by it.
Another good tactic is to take your leaders in your office when you have to talk to a patient with a complaint, or when you are working to resolve staff problems. This empowers your team leads or managers to feel capable of handling drama when you aren't around! You can also equip your staff with communication skills and tools to resolve interpersonal conflict. I encourage my staff to confront each other with problems and try to get to the bottom of things as soon as conflict comes up. Not allowing gossip to circulate and drama to build up really cuts back on negativity and bullying in the workplace.
Let Sol Operation Solutions help you perfect your people skills and get your staff up to speed and empowered to handle conflict without your intervention! #CreatetheSolution #PracticeLeaders #LeadershipSkills #CustomerService
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