One: Sidebar
Dental World Second Supplement
One-Sidebar
If you have trouble feeling sincere with all of this
At this point, you’re probably seeing that small things matter, and that smiling and being personable are good things to do for reasons besides sharing the song you keep in your heart.
So getting comfortable smiling and projecting positivity is well worth the effort. It’s a clinical skill. It’s the invitation to connect, so it’s the prerequisite for comfortable care.
Some of us come from households or backgrounds where we are, for one reason or another, hesitant to smile and be friendly with people we don’t know personally.
How many times have you said or heard someone say, “clinical excellence speaks for itself,” or “That’s just not me,” or “It feels fake?”
If any part of that tendency still remains in you, if your best attempts at smiling, making eye contact, and making small talk are still being sabotaged by these conflicting feelings, take heart.
Set yourself free by understanding the professional purpose of mindfully positive verbal and nonverbal communication.
You’re not trying to convince people you’re cool. You’re not blurring the line between your social and professional self by being friendly.
You’re communicating effectively, making someone comfortable, and building credibility and trust.
When you focus on what happens when you can be sincerely compassionate, your skepticism evaporates.
Forget about “customer service.” Forget about“being nice.” Think about what these touches actually communicate. Think about what they make possible.
A patient can’t sense your command of the scaler. They don’t know how much you know, and telling them doesn’t help, either. But they can sense how capable you are of seeing them, guiding them, and protecting them from.
It’s Instinct
We are animals. We predictably respond to cues in our environment, including the cues that come from other people.
When we see a person who seems uncomfortable, withholding, or unhappy, we automatically look for reasons why this is. We tense up, assuming that this other person knows something we don’t, and is reacting to an unseen unpleasantness we should prepare for. The sympathetic nervous system wakes up.
On the other hand, for the same reason, your warm and open nonverbal cues and your calm, pleasant confidence are contagious, and these positive feelings keep their nervous action down and directly reduce the amount of discomfort and pain the patient will feel.
If you communicate with positive and inviting verbal and nonverbal language, people will feel comfortable around you. They won’t if you don’t.
If you’ve been holding out on this, make a commitment to try all of what we’ve talked about here, keeping what it can accomplish in mind.
It’s worth it. You’ll take your performance to a whole new level and find a deeper satisfaction in your career.