Reclaiming the Chiropractic Dream, Episode 11

 What separates thriving practices from struggling ones? Their cultures.

One attracts more people while the other repels them. One practice engages people at extraordinarily high levels of energy day in and day out, while the other practice let’s their energy get drained day in and day out.

One axiom of success is this:

If we help more people get what they want they will in turn help us get what we want.

The truth is your success in practice is determined not only by helping more people but also in how well you help them.

And in order to exceed their expectations you have to be able to create consistent and powerful connections on an emotional level with every person in your practice.

To do this you will have to know how much energy to expend, be crystal clear about the role you play in their lives and have enough left in your emotional bank account/ to take care of your other relationships.

This is a big deal. Opening, defining and developing healthy doctor-patient and staff-patient relationships requires a high level of personable energy.

Most people assume that “knowing your patients,” means having more mental ram. The ability to memorize bytes of clinical data and personal information is important yet we have a natural capacity to store all of this information. And over time this must be enhanced.

The challenge in maintaining vibrant doctor–patient relationships, and all relationships for that matter, is that every day we expend an enormous amount of energy worrying about our place in our social world.

According to the anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, most primates are limited to small groups of individuals because of the amount of neurons in their cerebral cortex.

In these groups social time is spent grooming one another, being valued and being valuable.

Building upon that theme we can learn a lot as chiropractors dealing with a diverse populations from the research that Dave Logan et al. presented in their book, “Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization.” Give it an extensive read and discover your level of leadership.

Emerging research suggests that, on average, human beings have the capacity to maintain between 150 -220 relationships at any given time.  This is known as the Dunbar number.  It is the sum of all of your relationships.  It includes the relationships you have with family, friends, staff, colleagues and the patients you serve. As you can imagine it can fill to a natural capacity very quickly.

We don’t groom in the same manner as other primates do. We groom with language and emotional intelligence.

We can sustain a greater number of relationships and are more effective because we have over 18 billion neurons in our neo-cortex.

What the research further suggests is once we reach the “Dunbar Number” of 150 our neo-cortex cries for help because our emotional bank account is depleted.

The good news is that with soft skill training and an increase in emotional intelligence you can exceed these numbers. In fact if you are to thrive as a chiropractic entrepreneur you have no choice but to get better.

The post Dunbar’s Number: Is Your Personable Energy Capacity Limiting the Growth of Your Practice? appeared first on DC Mentors.