One of my main sources of inspiration on leadership is author, blogger and marketer Seth Godin.  I feel his ideas on change and leadership are not only timely, but very relevant to the chiropractic profession.

I do not believe our profession has an identity crisis. As a chiropractic coach, consultant and speaker in our profession, when I survey the crowd we mostly all agree on what we do and what we are trying to accomplish. What tangles us up is the ‘how’ we do it.  We know who we are, but the rest of the world does not know what we do. We don’t have an identity crisis but a communication crisis! How do I know? For the last 100 years, although the profession has grown, we have not reached our Tipping Point. Still a measly 10% of the population in North America sees a chiropractor regularly. If we didn’t have a communication crisis, most people would know what we do! But they think we’re back doctors…

In Seth Godin’s recent talk at TED, he dives into concepts that are essential for chiropractors to embody if we are going to have a health care revolution and change the world!  We no longer can persuade and push people into our care using Scare Tactics. Rosen’s Care vs. Scare approach is the cutting edge of communication and leadership for chiropractic practice management.

Are you challenging the status quo?  We need to lead people, be a heretic and do the opposite of what ‘everybody’ else does and what ‘everybody’ else knows. Why do you want to be just like ‘them’ anyway? Trying to appease and belong to the status quo is what has damaged our profession in the first place.  If you are not stepping up in your community, speaking your truth and sharing the story, we need to address your mission, vision, values and Certainty. This is the first step in becoming a true leader in your community.

Are you creating a culture and connecting a tribe of people? If they are in your office, they want to be lead. What is the culture you’ve created? At my office, we had a culture statement about what we stood for. And then we created a tribe of people who wanted what we were about!

They key to building strong tribes is two-way communication. Have curiosity about the people in your tribe, help them share and connect their stories to spread the word. Ask questions of your tribe. At Rosen Coaching, our entire communication model is centered around asking questions! Long gone is the ‘I’m the doctor, you’re the patient’ approach. We are human beings first and doctors second. Let us help you connect and communicate in a way that is consistently building relationships with your tribe.

What do most people want? They want to be heard. They want to feel important. They want to be missed. Make them a part of something. Make them a part of our movement to change the world with chiropractic wellness care. Our philosophy of living is one that needs to be heard – the health of the world depends on it.

Tags: care tactics, Care vs. Scare, Certainty, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Consultant, communication, Culture, Leadership, Seth Godin, Status Quo, TED, Tipping Point, transform, Tribe

Do you remember what finals week was like in chiropractic school?  Long hours, pushing through exhaustion, getting your studying done. Not that it was healthy, or how you would want to function long term, but sometimes we have to hear Dr. Sid’s voice saying, “Do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, whether you like it or not”.

I find many chiropractors forget what it’s like to have the pedal to the metal. They are used to being on cruise control.  As chiropractic coaches and consultants, we work with our chiropractors to shift their communications and procedures to a TRUE Wellness Model of practice. And sometimes they get halfway through establishing a new (and stronger) foundation of Visit 1 and 2 and get stopped.  They feel overwhelmed and frustrated. And we have remember that, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.

The truth is, having a successful chiropractic practice is simple, but not easy. If it was, everyone including you, would already be thriving.  Keep in mind your results in practice are directly proportionate to your communication skills and our level of certainty.  And if we want to change the results we are getting, we have to not only change our procedures and skills, we have to also change ourselves. Sometimes we have to push through with motivation like it’s finals week, to get to the next level. Without this push through The Dip, we’ll never get the results and changes we are looking for in a timely manner.  And we all want results yesterday!

Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Do you want to thrive in a TRUE Wellness Model? If you’re ready to work, we’re ready to help!

Tags: Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Consultant, finals week, frustration, hard work, overwhelm, Results, The Dip

In the book, Change or Die by Alan Deutschman he studies the 3 keys of change, and what works and doesn’t work.

In a recent blog post, Ask vs. Tell, I explored the power of asking questions to shift consciousness, beliefs and therefore behaviours.   This follow-up post is meant to look at the two types of questions we can ask: Scare Questions or Care Questions. What do I mean?

A good portion of our profession and practice management companies uses scare tactics and fear to manipulate people to do what we want.  Our perspective, at Rosen Chiropractic Coaching is that fear and manipulation have no place in a chiropractic wellness model.  We stand for clean communication with compassion.

In Change or Die, Alan Deutschman explores the three “F” words: Force, Facts and Fear and why they don’t work. When the three “F” words become too much, people go into denial as a protective mechanism. They make irrational decisions that could cost them their life (only 10% of heart attack patients changed their lifestyle despite the fear and threats).  In contrast, Dr. Dean Ornish had 75% of heart attack patients change their lifestyle with the three “R” words: Relate, Reframe, Repeat.

So we need to relate to the people we care for. We need to build rapport, bond, connect, offer hope and relieve their fears.  We need to reframe their consciousness and beliefs about health, and ask questions to shift their current paradigm, to plant seeds and teach under the radar. And we need to repeat these questions in our daily interactions, our Touch-Tell-Ask-Teach and find ways for people to become successful every visit, working towards a new goal. We as their doctor, need to lead them, inspire them and empower them.  And we need to create a culture in our office creates a supportive community.

Because making changes in life can be challenging and these new behaviours need to be reinforced with love and support, not fear and commitment. This is exactly what we do at Rosen Coaching to help you have a thriving wellness practice! We address the 3 R’s in the LAASR Mastery process. If you want a communication system based on the 3 R’s then give us a call!

Tags: Alan Deutschman, Ask vs. Tell, care tactics, Change or Die, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Coaching, Chiropractic Practice Management, Chiropractic Wellness Model, communication, Denial, Facts, Fear, Fear Tactics, Force, Leadership, Reframe, Relate, Repeat, scare tactics, Scare vs. Care, True Wellness Model, wellness chiropractic practice management

What Do Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and a long list of other celebrities have in common? Harmless prescription drug and painkiller abuse in volumes and mixtures. These famous celebrities are the ones you hear about in the media.  However, the fact is, many medical errors are not reported, including death by such medicines deemed ‘normal’ to use by society.  Tylenol, Advil, Demerol, Oxycontin, Dialudid, Panadol are just a start. Throw some antidepressants, antianxieties and sedatives into the mix and voila! You have a highly addictive cocktail of deadly drugs. Do we have a global problem? I think so. We just hear about the famous ones…

From the Death by Medicine Report by Drs. Null and Dean in 2003), as few as 6% of adverse drug effects are ever reported.  Sadly, deaths estimated in 2003 due to adverse reactions to prescription drugs is 2.2 million per year. And the leading causes of adverse drug reactions were antibiotics (17%), Cardiovascular (17%), chemotherapy drugs (15%), and anti-inflammatory agents (15%).  Can you imagine what this number is now, six years later, with more and more ‘advancements’ in medicine and big pharma?

As wellness chiropractors, doctors of ’cause’, we want to be addressing the bigger picture in our offices – that health and life come from the inside-out.  If you are not teaching this principle to the people you serve, you are just another modality to them.  Health does not come from taking medicine or cutting things out of the body. It comes from the life force, carried unimpeded over the nerve system reaching to every cell, tissue and organ in the entire body. Do they know this? Do they understand the physiological implications if this nerve impulse is impeded? Do they know that it is your job to remove this interference and allow the fullest expression of life?  If they don’t, they need to.  Or they could end up like Michael Jackson, just not as famous.

How are you using this most recent, tragic death of an icon as an educational opportunity in your office?  We coach our clients to ask thoughtful questions to the people in their offices to illicit a response, rather than just lecture them about the overuse of medicine in our societies.  We need to shift their consciousness and beliefs about health and wellness.  How about the following as a start to get your mind going:

• What do you think killed Michael Jackson?
• Do you know that prescription drugs are just as dangerous as recreational drugs?
• What happens when you give a healthy person medicine they don’t need?
• If drugs can make a healthy person sick, how do they make a sick person well?
• What do you think, can medicine make someone healthier or just take their symptoms away?
• Where does health come from? What causes us to be healthy? What keeps us alive?
• What does the Nerve System control? What part of your body could live without Nerve Impulse?

May I suggest that you look at our LAASR process of communication (Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Solution, Resolution) when educating, answering difficult questions and in all of your interactions within and outside of your practice.  It will literally transform your level of communication and results!  It is what we teach and how we coach chiropractors to great levels of success! Let’s start to manage your chiropractic practice in a true wellness model.

Tags: Adverse Drug Reactions, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Consulting, Chiropractic Practice Management, Death by Medicine, Elvis Presley, Health, LAASR, Life Force, Medicine, Michael Jackson, Nerve System, Prescription Drug Abuse, Subluxation, Wellness Care, Wellness Chiropractors, wellness practice management

For many people, their understanding of health, where it comes from and how to stay well is as deeply ingrained as some smoker’s beliefs about smoking.

We are living and practicing chiropractic in a medical world. Although we are in a shift of a wellness revolution, the majority of people who show up in your chiropractic office are bombarded by big pharma advertising and years of thinking that health comes from drugs or surgery.  And it is your job to change their mindset and beliefs about health and healing, where it comes from and how to get it. Good luck!

Most chiropractors I coach and consult, or speak with in the field tell me that they educate the people in their office.  And the usually follow up with, “but they still don’t get IT.”  And if they did get it, our entire profession would already have thriving, true wellness chiropractic practices.  So something’s not working in our approach…

What does educate mean? To most chiropractors, they lecture and talk ‘at’ their people until they are blue in the face and the person is tuned out. There is an important distinction to make, between educating by telling or educating by asking good questions.

Try and convince a smoker that smoking is bad for him.  Tell him all the things he already knows (or doesn’t) that it is killing him. Use fear. Use threats. Use your authority as a doctor. Lecture until you’re blue in the face.  Does anything change for the smoker? Nope, he still doesn’t ‘get it’.  That’s right, his beliefs and mindset haven’t shifted one bit from all of your telling.

And this is what most chiropractors who are not having high retention, thriving wellness practices are doing.  Trying to educate by telling.  I gotta tell you, from my experience, that’s never going to work. Why? Because it’s from the outside-in, it is your idea and not theirs. Because how do human beings do react when someone tells them what to do? Resist. So you get decreased compliance, they like you less and wonder when you’ll use your authority again to get them to do what you want.

Remember a smart guy named Socrates? His philosophy was one of asking questions to have the person think. And since doctor in Latin means ‘teacher’, it’s about time our profession stopped lecturing and started asking better questions to really teach the chiropractic principle of health. Why? Because when a person thinks, processes and answers a question, it comes from the inside-out and they own it.  Since it was their idea, there is no resistance, they feel valued and given a voice. There is increased  compliance and likeability and you don’t use authority, you use leadership. How’s that for congruence with chiropractic philosophy?

But oh wait, there’s one more benefit.  Not only will they ‘get it’, understand health, healing and chiropractic at a deeper level, but do you think that it is easier for them to refer their friends and family if they can articulate their newfound understanding themselves?  And the practice itself grows from the inside out by high retention and high internal referrals.

So the trick is to find out how to ask better questions during every interaction of Visit 1, Visit 2, Daily Interactions, Re-Assessments, Re-Reports and in handling difficult questions. We coach chiropractors this day in and day out.  It will transform your practice, your relationship and your life. And you’ll help shift the consciousness of the world. Let us know if we can help.

Tags: Asking, Authority, Beliefs, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Consultant, Chiropractic Philosophy, Chiropractic Practice Management, Chiropractic Practice Success, Chiropractic Principle, communication, Convince, Educate, Fear Tactics, Health, High Retention, Inside-Out, Internal Referrals, Lecture, Medicine, Mindset, Outside-In, Questions, Results, scare tactics, Shift Consciousness, Socrates, Telling, True Wellness Practice, wellness revolution

Are you a pessimist, an optimist or a leader?  We need to look at how you deal with challenge and adversity to find out. Most people say they are optimists when asked, but if we look at the proof of their external results we might find out otherwise.  John Maxwell, one of my favourite authors on leadership, says this:

“The pessimist complains about the wind.  The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”

Sailing without a charted course is like driving without a map or GPS, and like setting goals without an action plan.  It leads to circular action, unintentional sabotage, and rarely reaching your desired destination.

Not only do leaders have a vision and mission, they set long-term and short-term goals with a definitive action plan.  AND they consistently take intentional action, stay on the charted course, adjust the sails and the course as needed.

To manage your chiropractic practice like a leader we need to ensure you are the captain, keeping the big picture about what practice growth you want and what you are trying to achieve.  You need to look at the conditions, the charted course, and take consistent action AND you need to lead your team!  A world cup skipper cannot sail the ship themselves.  They need a solid team with the same vision, desires and willing to work hard and be rewarded for it. As chiropractic coaches and consultants, we help office create and manage a Dream Team and help Get The Team To Grow The Practice!

If you have been being a pessimist or an optimist during the stormy conditions of the past 6 months, it’s time to step up your leadership of yourselves, your practice management and your team!  People in your community need your help. It’s time to lead the chiropractic wellness revolution!

Tags: Action Plan, Charted Course, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Consultant, Chiropractic Practice Management, Dream Team, Get The Team To Grow The Practice, Goals, Leadership, mission, Optimist, Pessimist, Sailing, Taking Action, vision, wellness revolution

We are at the halfway point of 2009, are you on track to reaching and exceeding your goals?

Maybe you didn’t set goals for yourself and your practice at the beginning of the year.  If you didn’t, don’t beat yourself up.  Take some time to pull together some goals for the back half of 2009.  What do you really want to achieve? What do you want to look back upon? How much growth are you looking for?

If you did set goals, are you halfway to achieving them?  If so, congratulations! Maybe you should celebrate with your chiropractic coach and recalibrate in case you set the bar too low! Or maybe you’ve been working so hard to reach your goals that we’ll exceed them by the end of the year!  Spend some time with your coach to figure out what IS working?  What is the “Winning Formula” that you’ve found to help you create such success?  What else can you leverage to get more results, success and momentum?  For the first six months of this year, we have been consulting offices that are expanding and having record-breaking months!  It’s time to put the pedal to the medal.

If you set goals and you’re not on track to achieving them by the end of the year, why not?  What do you we need to change to make it happen? Is it your action steps and follow through?  Have you been resistant to changing the way you do your communications and procedures because it’s outside of your “comfort zone”?  Are you stuck on perfecting the foundation because you are afraid to make change?  Has your vision gotten cloudy?

At this halfway mark you’ll want to re-assess your initial goals.  Do they still fit for this year? Do they need to be altered because of life changes?  Are you still passionate about them?  Do they need to be recalibrated from this halfway point? 

If you’ve been stuck in a rut of old pattern or thinking, talk to us and get out of it!  There is no point doing the same thing and expecting different results! They called that insanity!  Now is the time you have to stretch yourself, for growth and change only happens outside the “comfort zone”.  If the ‘old way’ worked, you’d be as successful as you want to be, already!

Tags: change, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Practice Management, Comfort Zone, consultant, Goals, half time, halfway mark, Insanity, Internal Resistance, practice success, resistance, Success

It’s easy to be mediocre.  A mediocre person, a mediocre mother, a mediocre friend, and certainly it is easy to be a mediocre chiropractor.  Look around, most everyone is doing it.  Mastery however is difficult.  Mastery takes hard work, dedication and keeping a big vision in the forefront of your mind and the stamina to follow through.  To be an overnight success takes 10,000 hours of work.  It means you have to push through The Dip. 

What does it take to be a master in the art, science, and philosophy of chiropractic? Even more importantly is what does it take to be a master of communication about our truth of health, healing and chiropractic?  As a start you need to understand personality types and communicaiton/behavioural styles of people. You need to LAASR your Visit 1, Visit 2, Daily Interactions, ReAssessments & ReReports communication to lead people forward.

Do you know what the common denominator of all successful chiropractic practices have? Chiropractors with certainty.  They are clear on their vision and how they are going to achieve it.  They know what they bring to the table.  And they speak their truth boldly and in a way that people can hear them.

Are you the best chiropractor you can be?  Are you communicating chiropractic to the people in your office and community so that they ‘get it’?  Can you turn people on to a healthy lifestyle that includes chiropractic care for them and their families for a lifetime?  Write down what having mastery in your chiropractic career would look like. Then write down the things that would need to change or improve to get there. What support do you need?  A coach?  A consultant?  Practice management tips?   An action plan? Accountability?

Most people get successful ‘enough’ and help ‘enough’ people.  They hit a plateau and get comfortable.  Are you pushing yourself towards mastery?  It’s your life. It’s your practice.  You get to choose. Let us know if we can help. There are too many people sick and dying in your community because they don’t know what you know.

Tags: 10000 hours, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Coaching, chiropractic profession, coach, communication, consultant, LAASR, Leadership, mastery, mediocre, mediocrity, Motivation, Practice Management, Success, The Dip, wellness chiropractic practice management

 

 

A More Effective Swine Flu Vaccine

When it comes to the newly-hyped media craze of swine flu, how are you communicating it in your chiropractic office?  Are you part of the chiropractic profession getting caught up in the fear tactics propagated by the government and media or are you grounded in your chiropractic principles?  How is your certainty as a chiropractor?  It’s easy to talk about chiropractic and immune function when people are well, but what about when faced with the proposed ‘Swine Flu Pandemic’?  Can you keep yourself together, use your emotional intelligence skills and not allow the panic to hijack your amygdala?  Can you keep your critical thinking about cause and effect, and your common sense approach to health, wellness and disease to lead your community through this challenge?

My friend, Alain Desaulniers, D.C. has used this photograph and made a poster for his office that says at the bottom, “Chiropractic Care Strengthens Your Immune System. Stay Well Adjusted!”  (He has given permission for other chiropractors to use it, so email me if you would like it).

The last time Swine Flu made an appearance was 1976 and the government quickly pushed through a flu vaccine (doesn’t this normally take time to manufacture “safely”, if there is such a thing?), used fear to mass vaccinate and 25 times more people died from the flu vaccine than of the flu itself. Congressman Dr. Ron Paul’s video on Swine Flu recalls this event and states, “The government shouldn’t be in the medical business”.  This time it is an interestingly more complex virus, a recombinant H1N1-H5N1 avian/human/swine flu virus never to be seen before.  My microbiology might just be rusty but I can’t help but wonder if this is natural genetic evolution or a laboratory virus gotten free?

Let’s look to chiropractic’s history and originating philosophy to on understand the cause and effect of disease, especially infectious illness:

“One question was always uppermost in my mind in my search for the cause of disease.  I desired to know why one person was ailing and his associate, eating at the same table, working in the same shop, at the same bench was not.  Why? … This question has worried thousands for centuries and was answered September, 1895.”    ~D.D. Palmer, The Chiropractor’s Adjuster (1910)

Dr. Fred Barge continued on this theme when he used to say, “Do rats cause garbage or does garbage cause rats?”  Dr. Kevin Donka of Chirothots has continued Dr. Barge’s message with a twist, “Flies don’t cause garbage!”  

Common sense tells us that rats and flies are attracted to dirty places where there is decaying matter to feed upon.  Just because rats and flies are present at a garbage dump or a dirty restaurant doesn’t mean they caused the garbage, they are an effect of the garbage!  So why do some people get sick and some people stay healthy? It depends on the cleanliness of the body’s environment!  If your body is weak, your resistance is down, and your cells are decaying, doesn’t it make sense that the germ scavengers would find home, food and shelter there?  Of course it does!  The germs don’t cause the disease, they are present when disease is!  It is your internal resistance of your immune system that determines whether you get sick or not. Keep in mind it is called the ‘Germ Theory’ not the ‘Germ Fact’!

Whether or not the U.S. Homeland Security is appropriately given the power to make decisions about the health of Americans, (a political discussion of its own), what are chiropractors doing to coach the people they care for about strengthening their body’s own ‘Homeland Security’?  As a Wellness Chiropractic Coach and Consultant at Rosen Coaching, we coach chiropractors to not only communicate and educate people about the 3 Dimensions of Stress and what causes subluxations, but to provide ongoing communication about the ingredients for a healthy body, first and foremost clear nerve system communication.  What else can people  do to strengthen their immune systems and promote health? Proper nutrition, vitamins and minerals including high doses of vitamin C, movement and exercise, hydration, rest and relaxation, fresh air, sunshine/vitamin D, mental clarity, stress management, emotional peace and fun!

As a chiropractor looking to lead your community to health and wellness, to have practice success and growth as well as to have the life of your dreams you need to stand up, tell the truth and show people there is another way! Let us know if we can help!

Tags: Amygdala, care tactics, Cause and Effect, Certainty, Challenges, Chiropractic Coach, chiropractic profession, communication, Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, Disease, Emotional Intelligence, Fear Tactics, Germs, Immune System, Internal Resistance, Leadership, rosen coaching, Success, Swine Flu, wellness chiropractic practice management