How to Create REAL Team Buy-In in Your Chiropractic Practice (Stop Being the Lone Wolf)

  Welcome to the Chiropractic deep Dive.

It’s great to be here and just to set the stage for everyone listening, whether you’re, you know, driving to the clinic or unwinding after a long day. This Deep Dive is brought to you by Five Star Management. That’s us. We live and breathe chiropractic success. So getting to break down this material, it is right in our wheelhouse.

Absolutely. We are unpacking a, well, a high level zoom training call. It was led by the legend himself, Dr. Noel Lloyd. Mm-hmm. And the topic we’re tackling today, it is. Arguably the holy grail of practice management. It’s that thing every doctor wants, but I mean so few actually figure out how to get it consistently.

Yeah, that’s for sure. We are talking about creating team buy-in. It is a massive topic, and let’s be super clear about what we mean here. We aren’t just talking about compliance. Oh. It’s not about getting people to just show up on time or wear the right shirt. We are talking about moving from a staff that just clocks in and out to a team that is

fiercely protective of the practice’s mission. It’s the difference between having employees and having believers. Right? Exactly. And Dr. Lloyd, he starts this training by identifying a feeling that, let’s be honest, I think almost every single chiropractor has felt at some point. Oh definitely. He calls it the Lone Wolf syndrome.

The lone Wolf. It’s such a painful place to be. It’s that sinking feeling You get maybe at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday where you, the doctor, you just feel like you are the only one pushing that boulder up the hill, right? You’re the only one going the extra mile, the only one sweating the details. It’s that voice in your head going.

Why does it feel like I care more about this than anyone else in the building? And it is so isolating. And the symptoms, they’re pretty obvious, aren’t they? Yeah. Low motivation on the team, tasks, getting left undone. Patients not getting that five star experience because the, you know, the energy just isn’t there.

And for the owner. It’s just pure exhaustion. You burn out. You’re carrying the emotional weight of the whole practice. But Dr. Lloyd, he flips the script right away. He introduces the antidote to the lone wolf syndrome. He calls it high esprit decor. Esprit decor. We’re getting a little fancy with the French today.

I like it. It sounds fancy, but break that down for us. What does that actually look like in a real clinic? It literally means the spirit of the group. In the military, you’d call it morale. In sports team chemistry. Okay. In a chiropractic office, it’s that shared culture where the team cares about the mission, the patients and each other just as much as the doctor does.

That sounds like utopia for most practice owners. Yeah. A team that cares as much as I do. I mean, where do I sign up? Right. But you can’t just demand that people care. It doesn’t work that way. No, you can’t. And Dr. Lloyd drops this, um, this golden nugget right at the start of the call that I think frames this whole thing perfectly.

If you’re taking notes, you need to write this down. What is it? He says, teams don’t buy into instructions. They buy into a mission they’re proud to be a part of. That’s it right there. Instructions versus mission, it’s everything. You can instruct someone to file a chart. You can instruct them to answer the phone with a script, but you cannot instruct them to care.

No caring comes from inside. It comes from buying into something bigger. Okay, so. Let’s unpack that. How do we actually build this foundation because have a mission. Sounds nice, but Dr. Lloyd gets very practical, very fast. He does. It starts with having a written attractive mission statement, and I wanna be super clear here.

Dr. Lloyd was emphatic about this. It can’t just be a generic, we wanna help people, right? That’s too vague. It’s vanilla. Nobody gets fired up about vanilla. No. He shares a specific example from one of his clinics and listen to the difference here. The mission he shared was, we improve the lives of men, women, and children, by delivering high quality chiropractic care with extraordinary patient service.

Okay, that’s specific. Men, women and children. Yeah. Extraordinary patient service. It’s clear, it’s direct. Exactly. But here is where it gets really interesting. It’s not just about having the statement on a plaque on the wall. It’s about how you use it. Right. Dr. Lloyd talks about using this mission as a heavy booty filter during the hiring process.

This is the Do you Get It Test. I absolutely loved this strategy. It solves the buy-in problem before the person even gets hired. It really does. So picture this, you’re in a group interview. Usually doctors are asking about like typing speed or previous hourly wage and typical stuff. Dr. Lloyd changes the whole game.

He reads that mission statement aloud to the group. But he doesn’t stop there, does he? No. He immediately follows it up by reading three emotional patient testimonies. Mm-hmm. And we’re talking about the heavy hitters, stories about misery turning into hope. Sick babies who recover, parents in chronic pain, who get their lives back.

Real tear jerker stuff. The stuff that reminds you why you got into healthcare in the first place, right? So he reads the mission, he reads these emotional stories, and then what? He just stops. He stops, he looks, the candidates right in the eye, and he asks a simple three word question. Do you get it? Do you get it?

That’s it. And he says, you have to watch the reaction like a hawk. You’re looking for a visceral response, not just a nod. No. If they connect emotionally, if you see that spark in their eyes, that is a potential hire. That is someone who vibrates at the same frequency as your clinic. And if they don’t. If they just look at you blankly, they’re not the right fit.

I don’t care how fast they type. You are filtering for emotional buy-in from day one. It’s such a smart filter. You can teach skills, but you can’t teach empathy. You can’t teach passion. You hire the heart, you train the hands, but okay, let’s say you’ve hired them, you found the people who get it. Now you have a team.

Dr. Lloyd makes a point that you cannot get sustained buy-in without training, right? You have to train them on it constantly, which leads to how meetings are run. This was a fascinating part of the call hearing from some of the participants, you know, successful CAS team leaders, and a common thread was that the doctor shouldn’t be the only one talking about the mission.

That is so critical. If the doctor’s the only one talking, it’s a lecture. If the team is talking, it’s a culture. One participant mentioned that at their team meetings, a team member reads the mission statement, not the doctor. It’s random. You never know if you’re gonna be called on. Wow. So that forces ownership.

You have to be ready. It stops being the doctor’s words  and becomes becomes  our words. Exactly. But they take it a step further. It’s not just reciting lines. They have to connect the daily grind to the big picture. This is where their weekly meeting schedule comes in. Yes. I love this structure. So on Wednesdays, they read patient reviews right after the mission. On Fridays,

oh, I love what they do on Fridays. The Friday clinical case. Yes. This is brilliant. On Fridays, the doctors share a specific clinical case they’re working on with the whole staff. Now, let me play devil’s advocate for a second. Why is that so critical for say, the front desk team? They aren’t adjusting patients.

That is the million dollar question, and the answer is yes. They absolutely need to know. Think about the life of a front desk ca. Their job can feel so administrative. Phones, scheduling payments, dealing with insurance rejections, getting yelled at because a copay went up. It is so easy to disconnect from the healing part of the business.

That’s a great point. You get bogged down in the paperwork and forget there’s a. Person attached to that file. But then on Friday the doctor stands up and says, Hey everyone, I wanna tell you about Mrs. Jones. She came in with a frozen shoulder, couldn’t lift her arm. We did shockwave adjusted C five. And yesterday she told me she picked up her grandchild for the first time in two years.

And suddenly that CA isn’t just the person who swiped Mrs. Jones’ credit card, they’re part of the team that helped Mrs. Jones pick up her grandkid. Boom. That’s it. Dr. Lloyd calls it getting marinated in the philosophy. It connects the dots between I answered the phone, and Mrs. Jones got her life back.

Speaking of connecting those dots, there was another great strategy mentioned miracle of the Week. I made a big note of this one. It’s such a powerful way to reframe success. A participant shared a story about a baby who couldn’t latch to breastfeed. For any parent listening, you know, that is a full-blown crisis.

Oh, absolutely. High stress, high emotion, and after one adjustment, the baby latched perfectly and the team celebrates that. As the miracle of the week. See, words matter. When you label a clinical success as a miracle, you are elevating the job from administrative work to healthcare heroism. Yeah. And who doesn’t wanna be part of a team that creates magic?

So true. Yeah. So we’ve got the mission, the hiring, the emotional connection through stories. Now let’s get into the nitty gritty of operations, the daily flow. Right, and this all revolves around the daily huddle. The huddle is essential. Mm. If you aren’t huddling, you’re just reacting all day. The agenda mention was simple and fast.

Team win, patient wins, stat win, start with three wins, but then comes the operational secret weapon. The traffic report. The traffic report, and this is where the hierarchy gets flipped on its head a little bit. This might be uncomfortable for some doctors. Oh, for sure. The ones who like to be commander in chief.

Right. The traffic report is when the front desk ca tells the team, including the doctors, what the day looks like, where the new patients are, where the power hours are, and Dr. Lloyd shared a personal story about this that was just fantastic. He talks about going to his front desk ca and asking. What was it?

Where do you need me next? Where do you need me next? And when she told him, I need you in room two, his response was simply, yes ma’am. Yes ma’am. From the boss. It sounds small, but it’s huge. He said, an associate who was observing him got offended by that. The associate was like, you let her push you around, you’re the owner, but that’s missing the point completely.

Dr. Lloyd’s perspective is that if you’ve trained someone to run the flow of the clinic, you’d be crazy not to listen to them. It empowers them. When a doctor respects their answer, the staff feels taken seriously. They own the schedule. That is a massive level of buy-in. It creates a partnership. It says we have different roles, but we are equals in this mission.

And that leads right into recognition and rewards, doesn’t it? Oh yeah. But it has to be done right. Dr. Lloyd references the classic book, the One Minute Manager. The core principle catch people in the act of doing something right. It sounds cliche, but so few bosses actually do it. And the key is it cannot be, as Dr.

Lloyd puts it, phony bologna. Phony bologna. I love that. It has to be legit. Mm-hmm. Staff can smell fake praise a mile away, but when you see it, you praise it and you praise it publicly in the huddle. Did everyone see how Claudine handled that? That was masterful. And then there’s the gamification side of it.

I love hearing about their goals. One team had a goal of 28 new patients and they hit 41. 41. That’s a huge over delivery. And what struck me was the team’s attitude. They said the goal is just aligned to surpass. They wanted to crush it, not just hit it. And the rewards were fun. Lunch for the office, a half day off on a Friday, that half day off is a powerful motivator.

But they also had smaller rewards like the Hustler of the Week. The Hustler of the Week. I love that name. And the prize is simple, right? Like a $20 gift card. Exactly. It’s not about the money, it’s the title. The badge of honor. They gave an example of a team member who spearheaded a difficult software implementation oof anyone who has changed EHR software knows that is a nightmare, an absolute nightmare.

But this team member just owned it. She went the extra mile and Dr. Lloyd dropped a quote here that everyone needs to hear. He said The extra mile is never crowded. The extra mile is never crowded. That is so profound. It frames hard work as an elite status. Exactly. But, and this is the hard part. What happens when you do all of this and there’s still someone who just doesn’t buy in the bad apple.

The bad apple, the person who rolls their eyes. When you read the mission statement, Dr. Lloyd didn’t mince words here. He asked the group, have you ever been on a team with a bad apple? Everyone knew exactly what he meant. It just sucks the oxygen out of the room, and his advice is tough, but necessary. He says you cannot hold the entire team hostage to one negative person.

His rule is one eye roll will get you a ticket to someplace else. Wow. A ticket to someplace else. I think a lot of doctors hesitate there. They think, well, she’s toxic, but she knows how to build insurance, and that is a trap, a dangerous trap. Dr. Lloyd’s point is that keeping the bad apple destroys the motivation of your high performers.

That’s so true. Your hustlers see the eye roll, and if you tolerate it, you are telling your best employees that their hard work doesn’t matter. You devalue their effort. It’s a cancer in the culture. He says, the kindest thing to do for everyone, including the bad apple, is help them find a new place to be.

You have to protect the culture. It’s the defense mechanism for that esprit de corps. It really is a complete ecosystem. So let’s just recap this formula for everyone listening. Yeah, let’s break it down. Number one, create a written emotional mission statement number two. Use it to filter hires with the Do you get it?

Test number three, train Constantly connect every meeting back to that mission with stories and case studies. Number four, empower the team to direct traffic. Let them tell you where to be, right? And number five, catch ’em doing something right and reward the hustlers and finally have zero tolerance for the eye rollers.

That is a powerhouse blueprint, and it all goes back to the core thesis. Teams don’t buy into instructions. They buy into a mission they’re proud of. That is the big takeaway. If you give them a mission worth fighting for, they will fight for it. Now, if you are listening to this and you’re thinking, man, I need to tighten up my systems, or I need to get my team on the same page.

Just remember, this expertise comes directly from us at Five Star Management. We help doctors do this every single day. We are right there in the trenches with you, and the best way to start is to get some personalized guidance. You can actually book a free call with Dr. George Birnbach.

We’ve put the link right in the show notes. It’s a total no brainer. If you wanna grow, you don’t have to figure all this out by yourself. Absolutely talk to Dr. Birnbach, get a game plan and if you are hungry for new patients. Which, let’s be honest, who isn’t right? We have something huge coming up. The too many new patients event.

It’s a live two day event happening in Chicago, Illinois, and the entire focus is exactly what it sounds like, getting a lot of new patients fast. If you feel like your marketing is stale. You just need a massive injection of energy and strategy into your practice, you need to be in Chicago. The link for that is also right there in the show notes.

It is going to be a game changer, and of course, make sure you hit that subscribe button on the Successful Chiro Podcast. We are constantly dropping tips and deep dives just like this one. We want you to stop being the lone wolf and start leading a pack that really dominates. Thanks for joining us on this chiropractic deep dive.

See you next time. Bye for now.