This article is particularly focused at dentists and helping them improve performance in their dental practice using an understanding of NLP and communication techniques.

What’s your CHUNK SIZE?

Chunk size… Horrible name I know, but that’s what this ‘filter’ is called. We all have filters in our brain that filter the world around us so we can make sense of it.

This filter looks at the size of the chunk of information that we can process at any given time.

There are two discernible chunk sizes:

1. Big picture. This is the largest chunk of information that it’s possible to give anyone about a specific topic. It gives the overall plan, the big picture, where are we going, what’s the point? A good example is a full mouth treatment plan where the big picture might be to restore function to the patient’s bite, ease TMJ pain and improve the smile line.
2. Detail. This is the smallest chunk of information that it’s possible to give anyone about a specific topic. It is essentially the contents of the big picture. In our treatment plan example the detail could be crowning the upper anteriors with zirconia crowns, & opening the bite with a dahl appliance.

Most of us will want all of the information, but it’s in which order we like to receive it – that’s the real key to understand.

1. Some people like the big picture first. They like to know the overall plan of where they are going and can’t cope with the detail until they know where all of that detail fits in with the big picture.
2. Some people like the detail first. They like to know the fine detail and can’t conceive of the big picture until they know what the detail is, they can then work out how it all fits together.

Neither is wrong, and it’s important to understand that different people like to perceive and receive information differently.

Some patients might prefer a big picture first treatment plan, which leads gently into the detail.

Some patients might prefer a detail first treatment plan, which gently leads into the big picture.

So ask them, “When I present this treatment plan to you, would you like the big picture or the detail first?”

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DENTIST

This is where I think it gets interesting. Dentists are often brilliant at going from BIG PICTURE to MICRO DETAIL in the blink of an eye.

“Hello Mrs Jones, I haven’t seen you for 6 months, what’s been happening in your life?” (Big picture) – “Now let’s look at the mesio-buccal cusp of your LL6” ( micro-detail)

You do this everyday – Big picture > Micro-detail really fast.

It’s what you do.

But not everyone thinks the same way.

So be aware – dentists have a tendency to think big picture down to micro-detail incredibly fast!

We can now understand this in a clinical setting, but it also works when communicating with your team and thinking about your business, it’s easy for dentists to miss out a whole load of incredibly useful information that sits in the middle of the big picture and micro detail – and when we are communicating with others or thinking about managing our business, that information in the middle can be vital to our success!

If you’d like to help with your thinking, achieve more in life and business and restructure the way you communicate then book a discovery call to talk about Elite Breakthrough Coaching, it comes at no cost and no obligation!

This article is primarily focused at healthcare professionals, particularly dentists although the content is relevant to anyone in business.

Did you know there are four primary ways that we make sense of the world around us:

1. Visually
2. Kinaestheticly
3. Auditory
4. Auditory digital (logical structured)

When you understand which one you are primarily it makes it far easier to recognise why you think in certain ways, it also will help you communicate with people which represent the world around them differently to you, but when you think the plans patients or dealing with other team members.

Visual

People that represent the world around them visually think primarily in pictures. Most of us do this to a certain degree although some people do it far more than others. Visual people will often be artists, designers, photographers or anything to do with visuals.

When these people think in pictures they will literally create a picture in their mind’s eye… Even a visual speller will visually see the letters of the word in their mind (by the way, this is the strategy to use if you are not a great speller, visualise the letters in the word rather than try to use simple memory).

A visual person will often say things like:

• “do you see what I mean?”
• “do you get the picture?”

The words they use literally explain how they represent their world.

Top Tip: if you are presenting a treatment plan to a visual person then use plenty of photographs and diagrams to explain what you mean

Kinaesthetic

People that represent the world around them in a kinaesthetic way are more connected to feeling. This is both emotional feeling and physical feeling. Kinaesthetic people will often have touch related jobs e.g. massage, reflexology or even something like a potter. They may also be counsellors and connect with feelings and emotions in their job.

A kinaesthetic person will often say things like:

• “does that feel OK?”
• “What do you feel about that?”

Top tip: If you are presenting a treatment plan to a kinaesthetic person have study models that they can hold and feel, have physical models of implants and crowns so they can touch and hold them.

Auditory

One of the least common representational systems. Auditory people will be very focused on the way the world around them sounds. They may be musicians or work in jobs relating to sound. An auditory person will also a very distracted by sounds around them and will often want to work in a quiet environment. If you’re talking to an auditory person they may find it difficult to hold a conversation with you if other people are also talking in the background.

An auditory person might say things like:

• “How does that sound?”
• “Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Top Tip: If you are presenting a treatment plan to an auditory person it will be absolutely fine to explain by voice alone what the treatment plan is. You could also record your explanation and send it to them as an auditory file.

Auditory digital

This relates to internal dialogue and logical thinking. Auditory digital people will often be engineers, scientists or people which think in very clear, logical straight lines. An auditory digital person needs order, flowcharts and processes.

I’ve run many courses looking at these different types of representational system and by far the greatest percentage of dentists are auditory digital. Auditory digital people like to think, plan and organise.

An auditory digital person might say:

• “there is logic in what I’m saying”
• “does that make sense?”

Top Tip: if you are presenting a treatment plan to an auditory digital person use statistics to back up your argument for example, success rates, number of treatments completed etc. Present your treatment plan logically using reason, systems and analysis to present it. And above all, if you are a dentist the chances are this will be your primary representational system, so be flexible in the way you communicate.

So how do you represent the world around you?

Which of the representational systems looks, sounds, feels or logically is more like you? (See what I did there!).

If you do some digging around online you should be able to find a representational system preference test (alternatively send me an e-mail and I can provide one for you), this will give you an idea of what your own representational system is.

And the biggest tip I can give… Just because something seems right to you, does not necessarily mean it is right or make sense to someone else… Remember, most dentists are logical auditory digital thinkers, and most people in the general population are visual. Remember to present your treatment plans in a way that makes sense to the person you’re communicating with.

The basic difference is that a consultant will tell you what to do:

• Put this system in place.
• Implement this protocol.
• Change this in your life and everything will work.

Very basically, a consultant says “I know best, so do what I say”

A coach on the other hand works on a different principle:

• I will help you discover the best systems that could work for you.
• I will work with you to make sure you implement the protocols that you discover.
• You know what is best for you and I will work with you to make that happen

Very basically, the coach says ” I will work with you to get the best out of you, help you discover the best way to do things for you”

So let’s look specifically at coaching, and more specifically at personal development coaching.

Personal development and breakthrough coaching works on the way you think & the way you approach problems that will help you break through barriers that are holding you back.

Classically, you might choose to use a coach if

• Your business is stuck
• You are stuck in your business or situation
• There are habits you have that interfere with day to day business
• Business or life isn’t happening as it should
• You have a lack of direction
• You are not succeeding or achieving what you want or deserve
• You have a lack of self belief causing you to not push forward with new projects
• You’re not feeling worthy
• You’re not feeling like a success which then holds you back
• You have a loss of self confidence which holds you back
• Stress is leading to a lack of sleep which then impacts the business

Let me give you an analogy which might help explain. Let’s say a client has come to me because they want to lose weight. I could simply give them specific instructions:

• Eat fewer calories
• Burn more calories

Weight loss is actually very simple and yet so many people struggle with it because of the way they view the problem in their mind. The key to losing weight is to first change our mindset, then the actual practical side is actually quite easy.

Another example of the mindset not being right is yo-yo entrepreneurs. You see so many people make a real success, and lots of money and then lose it all. They then bounced back and do the same thing again. The cycle repeats itself until they sort their mindset out and stop self sabotaging their success.

Solving your problems is actually very simple:

• Stop doing those habits that interfere
• Make a plan and get direction
• Tell yourself you are worthy
• Put in the systems you need in the business to make it work (There are many courses to go on to do this)
• Stop working in the business so much
• Be happy and not stressed

And yet, even though solving those problems is actually quite easy, it doesn’t get done… Why is this?

People go on course after course with consultant after consultant, being told to do so many different things but, as a coach I believe they’re looking in the wrong place.

These people are looking outside of themselves, they taken years to acquire all of the skills and yet they just can’t seem to implement them.

When we look inside ourselves we can remove those habits, remove that self sabotaging and begin to actually implement all of the skills we’ve implemented… THIS is coaching and this is why it is so powerful

I’ve had 3 discovery calls in the past week and I thought I’d share with you some common themes that so many people experience, do you recognise any of this?

1. Freedom vs Security. It seems so many people want to have both. Freedom – to live life as they want and freedom from having to work all hours. Security – that there is a regular income. If these two parts are not reconciled then they will continuously pull in different directions and you’ll find business and life does the same. This way, that way, never really getting anywhere.

2. Not having a clear goal. Unless you know exactly what you want to achieve in life, and have it shining brightly as something to walk towards, almost magnetic, pulling you irresistibly towards it then focus in life can become difficult. As soon as things get tough you will lose focus if you’re not absolutely crystal clear about what you want to achieve in LIKE. (and I’m not talking about a five-year goal with a business plan!)

3. Past experiences/emotions holding us back & becoming a barrier. Even if we have a shining bright goal that we know where we are going in life, if we have unhelpful thoughts, experiences or beliefs these can hold us back and prevent us achieving… Even if we think we have all of the business tools available to us.

If you recognise these things, you aren’t alone.

If you recognise these things, the good news is that something can be done!

And so, I’m off to coach myself… Today I’m writing my 10 year, 20 year and 30 year goals.

I love all this stuff 🙂

There’s lots of talk about manipulating people, how bad it is & how we should never do it.

The problem is, the people that say this are often the worst offenders and manipulate all of the time without even knowing it!

You see we are born manipulators and by the time we reach adulthood we are expert at it.

A baby realises quite quickly that if it cries in a particular way it gets fed, or changed or put to bed.

As the baby turns into a toddler it begins to experiment with other ways to manipulate its parents to get what it wants. It tries the two-year-old tantrum lying on the floor screaming, if that doesn’t work, our darling toddler resorts to the doughey eyed “oooh mummy I love you” look, you know that look, the one that parents can’t resist!

As the toddler works out which strategy works best to manipulate its parent it begins to use those manipulation strategies more and more. The parent learns and the parent adapts… And so as the toddler grows and turns into a teenager the teenager adapts its manipulation strategies too.

In an attempt to get what the teenager wants the use of classic “It’s not fair, all of my friends have got one!” manipulation strategy gets used – and if you have kids I’m sure you can think of many others.

By the time our stroppy teenager has turned into adult it has become a master manipulator. Our adult can now manipulate without even thinking about it, and therein lay the problem!

The manipulation strategies we use as adults may be more subtle, but they are there:

• That knowing look you give your assistant over the top of your glasses when they ask you a dumb question.
• The obtuse reply you give someone when you want to tell them you disapprove.
• When you ignore a comment completely.

The problem is, we cannot not communicate.

It’s absolutely impossible to not communicate anything at all. Even the act of ignoring someone and not speaking or messaging, is still communicating (I’ll leave you to decide what it communicates) and is still manipulating.

The cleverer person amongst us realises that.

They realise that they accidentally manipulate situations all day long.

They become aware of how they communicate, they become tuned in to the other person, realising that they have accidentally manipulated the other person, they then adapt their communication strategy to communicate their true intention without manipulating at all.

So is this person manipulating? Well, yes… It’s inevitable, it’s what we all do, the difference is that they are manipulating the conversation with positive intention to allow the other person to understand the true intention, and to communicate in a way that makes sense to the other person. It’s a complete win/win.

It’s what the expert communicators do without even thinking. Some people have learned the knack of doing this implicitly, all we are doing is making their unconscious, conscious.

So which do you choose? Conscious Competence, where you are aware of how you communicate, the problems you can accidentally bring about and are actively working to make a difference to communicate better… or do you wish to stay completely in the dark, ignoring the fact you do it and remain unconsciously incompetent?

I’ve recently started to run the Park Run 5K, it’s quite incredible that I’m actually at this stage as just over one year ago I wouldn’t have been able to run to the bar for last orders!

I did the Couch to 5K program using the the BBC app and have managed to get my time down to about 31 minutes.

But I hate running. Oh yes, every step is pain!

So I as I’m running my first Park Run 5K I’m thinking, “This is so demoralising, there are people SO far ahead and I am SO sloooow”.

I’m beginning to wonder why I even bothered to run in Park Run, there’s no way I’m going to get a good time.

And yet, when I crossed the line I realise I’ve taken nearly 2 min off of my best ever time and I ran it in 28 minutes 10 seconds.

I’m absolutely astounded.

So now the question, where does our motivation come from?

In NLP we have a series of meta programs. These are programs or filters we all run in our mind e.g. big picture thinking vs detailed thinking… And one of those programs is called a “Frame of Reference Filter“.

An internally referenced person will draw motivation from themselves, they will know when they are doing well and don’t need other people to tell them. Many entrepreneurs are internally referenced, they go about doing what they do and stay motivated despite what others say.

An externally referenced person will draw motivation from others. They will seek affirmations from other people. They know they are doing a good job when they get confirmation from others.

I know that I have a tendency to be externally referenced. I know that I like to hear that I’m doing a good job from other people and I use the external world to tell me whether I’m doing okay or not.

Isn’t it interesting that during my first Park Run my external reference predisposition informed my internal dialogue to tell me I wasn’t actually doing such a good job.

It turned the whole 5K into a disappointing slog… Right up until the last minute when I realised that my internal dialogue was wrong and I’d actually run faster than ever before!

Wow, it was all in my head…

1. So are you internally or externally referenced?
2. Do you need other people to tell you you are doing a good job, or do you just know?
3. How does this then inform your internal dialogue?

The first stage in utilising and changing how we think is to recognise these patterns in ourselves.

Now that I recognise that my external referencing leads my internal dialogue to speak negatively to me… I can choose to ignore it.

Or I can choose a different external reference, rather than referencing myself against other people I can reference myself against my own timings, my own pace, my own personal best.

Every day is a new day to learn something new… And isn’t that amazing?

I talk more about meta programs on my NLP personal development membership program, it looks at how we can use these basic filters to improve success for ourselves and our teams.

Should you win at all costs?

Absolutely YES.

And, definitely NO.

Okay, slightly confusing, let me tell you a little story…

A little over 18 months ago I started the running program “Couch to 5K“, it takes a non-runner through a training programme to be able to run 5K.

I can now run 5K quite comfortably in 30 minutes and am indeed pushing harder to improve my time.

One of the things I wanted to do when I began this training was to join the Park Run movement, to join hundreds of other people locally all running a 5K on a Saturday morning.

Due to Covid restrictions Park Run is not up and running yet but I’m planning in my head how I can win.

I’m competitive you see, if I do something I need to compete. And I need to win at all costs.

I’m planning on winning Park Run. Oh yes, you bet.

At least I was until I saw the fastest runner had run it in 14 min. Jesus, that’s a sprint!

There is absolutely no way I’m going to win, at least not for a considerable amount of time, and possibly taking 20 years off my age!

So what do I do, give up, just because I’m competitive and stand no chance of winning?

Absolutely not, I compete with myself instead.

I change the focus from competing with other people, to competing with myself. As I’m running I watch my pace on my Smart watch, checking to make sure I’m at least staying within a 6 min/kilometre pace, ideally running closer to a 5 min/kilometre pace.

Each time my pace slows, I push myself to compete with the last kilometre.

So I’m still competing. I’m still winning at all costs… so here’s the thing, it’s not actually winning at all costs that’s the problem… It’s who we decide to compete with.

Should we win at all costs competing with other people?

Or, is it kinder to ourselves to win at all costs by competing with OURSELVES?

And who knows, if I keep competing with myself, winning at all costs to reduce my time to a 25 mins 5K slowly edging towards 20 minutes, then pushing a bit more to reduce the time even more, I may actually achieve my 16 min 5K after all!

So who do you decide to compete with?

Who makes up your rules?

For more personal development courses and resources for learning how to change the way you think, please visit THE PERFORMANCE ACADEMY, this is my learning resource hub where I have up to 80 hours of content and learning for you to implement… Click here to get started.

Yes, this is what the gurus tell you to do. I did it.

But I missed one of the biggest questions – are my values conducive to running a business and making money?

Bugger… I never thought of that!

Before I started coaching my values were:

• Fun
• Challenging
• Excitement

Money was nowhere to be found.

My business was a little bit pants.

How can we have a successful business if money isn’t part of the values?

So, with my coach I changed my values around. I added in money at my number 3 value, and guess what’s happened since?

To work with me as your coach, illicit your values and work out if your values are conducive to doing what you want, book your free discovery call.

In this edition of ” in conversation with…” I’m privileged to chat with Dr Grant McAree, a highly successful dentist and entrepreneur.

A few things to really listen out for:

1. Watch out for our discussion on self sabotage, there are some really interesting points made, can you notice any of these in yourself?
2. Possibility or necessity? How do you think Grant views these in his mind? This is another meta program to really take notice of.
3. Decision-making strategies. We all run strategies in our mind all of the time, notice how Grant is quite aware of the first part of his strategy but then it becomes unconscious. Can you notice your own decision-making strategy?

If you would like to gain verifiable CPD for watching the full video of this interview, simply sign up to The Performance Academy where we have a range of mindset management courses to help you and your business grow.

If a system is to be stable, the number of states of its control mechanism must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled. Ashby states the law as “variety can destroy variety”

Wikipedia

In this first edition of mindset Monday I talk about how we can overcome communication problems with other people, improve performance and generally continue to be more successful, all by using the power of flexibility & the law of requisite variety- you might call it “mindset yoga”

I’ve found this technique to be one of the most powerful tools in my life, I’ve used it so many times in so many different situations.

Is this something you could use?