“You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.” — Doug Floyd
This week I want to extend on the conversation we had last week around harmony. Last week I stressed the importance of difference of the individuals in order to create harmony of your practice team. This week we will look at the value of difference in your practice members.
Harmony of your practice comes from the multitude of phases and stages of their personal evolution. As they say, variety is the spice of life and this is no truer in the context of a practice’s mix of patrons. While we may dream and goal for a practice full of people who have got the chiropractic message I propose that this state of everyone ‘singing the same notes’ would become very boring very quickly. Not only that but it would dull our senses and skills and take the thrill out of the game.
I know that it is frustrating to have people in our practice who don’t get ‘it’, who march to a different drum and have a whole different range of ‘notes’ than us. The frustration often comes from our way too high expectations of their knowledge potential, behavioral capabilities and actions coupled with the timelines we expect them to be attained.
Here are some tips on embracing this mindset:
- Recognize that we are all on a journey of learning and we are here to learn from each other.
- Recognize that the ‘odd ball’ or ‘square peg’ as they may be referred to have a place in their relevant shaped place within your practice.
- Know that they (and you) have the capacity to change and grow.
- You don’t have to give up on your values and philosophy, this simply means that you must be flexible to support and challenge people with sometimes very different paradigms to yours whilst guiding them towards the outcomes you have for them.
- Have a structured program of education and chirocentric enlightenment for every person you care for (including your team) and make sure that it rolls out like clockwork.
Chiropractic recognizes and respects the uniqueness of all individuals and our greatest service is to allow that uniqueness to be evident by removing interferences to it’s expression. Enjoy the different notes.
