The #1 Communication Mistake in Chiropractic Offices

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Chiropractic Deep Dive, which is, uh, a proud part of the Successful Chiro Podcast. Absolute. And you know, as part of your team here at Five Star Management, we are a premier chiropractic consulting company, and we really are just on this relentless mission to help your clinic thrive. Not just survive, right.

But operate at its absolute highest potential. Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re aiming for every single day. Right. And so today we’re doing something really cool. We are pulling apart an exclusive masterclass Zoom call that was led by Dr. Noel Lloyd. Oh, this is a great call. It really was. And it was focused entirely on, um, office communication because the mission of this deep dive today is to.

Basically extract Dr. Lloyd’s strategy so you can get your entire team completely in the know, moving away from those stressful surprises. Right, exactly. Moving from a clinic full of like constant surprises to a really low stress flowing operation where honestly your team practically reads your mind.

And [00:01:00] I mean, that is such a critical mission because usually when we talk about running a high performing clinic, there’s this, uh, this expectation of flow, you know? Yeah, totally. You kind of picture this perfectly synchronized orchestra. The patient walks in, the team knows exactly what to do. The doctor steps in at just the right moment, and everyone is moving to the exact same rhythm.

But I mean. Let’s be real. The reality on like a random Tuesday morning often looks entirely different. Oh, completely different. The orchestra is wildly out of tune. You’ve got the doctor sitting in the back office just frustrated, wondering why things aren’t getting done the way they envisioned. Right?

And meanwhile, out at the front desk, the team is equally frustrated. They’re whispering to each other because they are essentially just guessing at what the doctor actually wants. Yeah. The friction is just so high. It really is. The handoffs are awkward and the day-to-day routine just feels like, I don’t know, way too much work for the revenue it generates.

Yeah. And before we can [00:02:00] even build that perfect, you know, in the zone clinic, we have to diagnose the underlying mechanics of that breakdown. We have to find out what’s broken. Exactly. So during his masterclass, Dr. Lloyd asked the participants to identify the core communication mistakes that are driving this exact chaos.

And it wasn’t just a bunch of random complaints, right? No, not at all. What surfaced were these very distinct systemic failures. So the first major theme that emerged was, um. What we could call the assumption gap. Okay. The assumption gap. I like that this is rooted in the idea of expecting knowledge without actually providing training.

Yes. Because Dr. Lloyd shared this really fantastic non-negotiable rule on the call. He said, you have absolutely no right to expect a task to be done if it isn’t written down and trained on, and it sounds so simple. Right? Right. But it is violated constantly. I mean, a doctor will ask a clinical assistant or a ca

why a Report of Findings packet wasn’t prepared a certain way. And the CA is just baffled. [00:03:00] Totally baffled. Yeah. Because they were never explicitly told to do it that way. The doctor just assumed it was common sense. Yeah. But we have to remember, you know, the doctor has a decade or more of clinical context.

And the CA might have what? A few months. So common sense is not a training protocol. No, it’s not. It really is the curse of knowledge. It is. And tying directly into that assumption gap. Is the failure to actually allocate time on the clock for that training. Oh, this is huge. You cannot expect pristine, highly calibrated results from a team if you are just.

You know, shouting instructions over your shoulder while you’re walking between treatment rooms. Yeah. That drive by management. Right. And that casual approach leads directly into the next major theme from the call, which is message degradation. Message degradation. Yeah. Relying on oral tradition instead of written systems.

Yes, exactly. We all know the telephone effect, right? Oh, for sure. You tell one team member a new protocol and you’re just kind of hoping they train the next person and by the [00:04:00] time it reaches your newest hire. The instruction is just completely deleted. It’s missing crucial steps, and it’s fundamentally confusing.

And what gets lost first in that degradation is the why. Ah, yes, the why. There was this really compelling example from a participant on the call. Um, regarding booking outside events. Okay, so suppose you tell your ca to go book 20 community events, huh? If they don’t understand the underlying strategy, the actual why, they’re just gonna blindly check boxes, right?

They’ll just look for any 20 events. Exactly. They might book 20 events at locations that are completely disconnected from your ideal patient demographic just to get to the number 20. Exactly. But the moment you explain that the ultimate goal of booking those events is specifically to acquire new patients, I mean, everything shifts because you’ve given them the context.

Right? Suddenly that CA is making strategic qualitative choices. They are vetting the locations. They aren’t just completing a task [00:05:00] anymore. They’re fulfilling a mission. Yes, exactly. And that shift from order taker to strategic partner is massive. But you know, to cement that shift, there has to be a mechanism to guarantee understanding, which brings up the validation loop.

Right. Dr. Lloyd brought in this personal aviation analogy that I thought was super interesting. Oh yeah. Tell ’em about that. So. As a pilot, when he receives an instruction from the control tower, let’s say turning 30 degrees to the right for traffic avoidance, he cannot just nod his head. Right. They can’t see him nod anyway.

Exactly. He has to verbally repeat the instruction back confirming his identity, who he is speaking to, and the exact action he’s taking. Wow. And clinic communication he argued, requires that exact same validation because it forces an immediate audit of the communication. Yes. It guarantees the transmission wasn’t just heard as background noise, you know, but accurately decoded.

Right. But I do wanna push back [00:06:00] on this a little bit here. Okay. Let’s hear it. Because the aviation analogy, it paints a great picture, but we have to look at the actual environment of a bustling chiropractic clinic. Yeah. I mean, phones are ringing, walk-ins are happening, the schedule is packed. Is it genuinely realistic to expect a busy practice to operate with the rigid stop and repeat precision of an air traffic control tower?

It’s a highly valid concern, honestly. And implementing it does feel really uncomfortably rigid at first. Yeah. However, the stakes in a clinic are exactly why that repeat it back to me. Level of clarity is basically non-negotiable. Okay. How so? Well, when an airplane miscommunicates, the results are catastrophic, obviously.

Right. When a clinic miscommunicates, the damage is slower. But it’s still highly destructive. Yeah. I mean, you get dropped, patients compromised care plans, lost revenue, and just massive staff burnout. Oh, totally. The burnout is real. So the friction of taking five seconds to repeat an instruction. Prevents five hours of [00:07:00] repairing a blown schedule later.

Wow. Okay. When you frame it around the cost of repairing mistakes, the rigidity makes perfect sense. It really does. So if we recognize these systemic breakdowns, right, the assumption gaps and the lack of validation, how do we bridge them? Well, that was one of the most revealing segments of Dr. Lloyd’s masterclass.

Yeah. Hearing directly from the CAS about what they secretly need from their doctors to actually succeed. And it is just a fascinating look into workplace psychology. It really is. They aren’t asking for the doctor to be nicer. Or to buy the office pizza. Right. They are practically begging for specific structural guidance to reduce their cognitive load, which starts with expected outcomes.

Yes. I mean, a CA doesn’t just want a task. They wanna know what a successful result looks like before they even begin. Exactly, because working in a state of ambiguity is mentally exhausting. It drains you. They don’t wanna spend half their day guessing if they’re heading in the right direction, only for the doctor to look at the finished product and [00:08:00] say, you know, this is entirely wrong because ambiguity is the enemy of execution.

That’s a great way to put it. And alongside expected outcomes. The team craves finality in the masterclass. They really emphasize the need for clear instructions and measurable goals, so they know exactly when a task is officially done. Right, without a clear finish line. Tasks just feel like an endless loop.

Exactly. Which is a primary driver of that staff burnout we mentioned. They also highlighted the need for follow-up checkpoints. Oh, those are crucial. Yeah. If a doctor hands off a massive multi-day project, the team needs scheduled moments to review the progress because it provides psychological safety, right?

They need the leader to verify they’re on the right path early on. Rather than facing a total reset a week later, and perhaps most critically, they desperately need the doctor to establish a level of priority. Oh, this is a big one. Think about the reality of the front desk. The team has a list of routine daily [00:09:00] tasks, plus patient interactions, plus a new list of ideas.

The doctor literally just handed them. It never ends, so they need the leader. To step in and define what is a 9 1 1 emergency that requires dropping everything and what is just a background project that can wait until Thursday? Okay, but we have to look at this from the doctor’s perspective for a second though.

Fair enough. If a chiropractor is adjusting patients back to back all day, they’re managing clinical notes and they’re running a business. Finding the time to meticulously define outcomes, set checkpoints, and map out priority tiers for every single operational task. Sounds overwhelmingly difficult. It does, it sounds impossible, really, right?

Which is why attempting to manage all of that verbally is a complete trap. Ah, the solution discussed in Dr. Lloyd’s call relies entirely on shifting that burden to paper, okay? Through standard operating procedures and formal project sheets, which creates an accountability trail precisely. When a doctor has a new idea or a complex [00:10:00] task, they don’t just verbally toss it over the front desk as they walk by, no drive by delegating, right?

They take a few minutes to fill out a project sheet detailing the objective, the timeline, and the checkpoint. Oh, man, I like that. It takes the ideas out of the doctor’s working memory and puts ’em into an objective document. It clears the field, sets the timeline, and instantly eliminates the telephone game.

It fundamentally shifts the dynamic. It really does. Yeah. But you know, communication in a thriving clinic isn’t just about the doctor handing down perfect written mandates, right? A high performing system is a two-way street. The doctor desperately needs. Upward feedback to actually steer the business effectively, which is exactly where the masterclass flipped the script.

Yes. Dr. Lloyd asked the doctors what they need for their teams, and the responses highlighted how much leaders rely on their staff for operational reality checks. The very first thing doctors asked for was constructive pushback. Yes. And it’s such a familiar scenario. Mm-hmm. A doctor goes [00:11:00] to a weekend seminar, gets incredibly inspired, and walks into the clinic on Monday morning with 10 new initiatives they wanna launch immediately.

Ah. The classic shiny object syndrome. Exactly that. And the doctors on this call openly admitted they need their team to push back on that momentum, right? They need a ca who feels empowered to say, um, I love the vision doctor, but is this executable right now? Yeah. Like here are three nuances regarding our current patient flow that might make this really difficult today.

And along with that pushback, doctors need the team to track the ROI, you know, the return on investment on routine tasks. This is so important. Doctors want the staff to be brutally honest. If there is an item on the daily checklist that has been done for a year, but it no longer moves the needle financially or improves the patient experience, the doctor needs to know so they can eliminate it.

Right, because doing a useless task perfectly is still useless. Exactly. It really paints a picture where the doctor [00:12:00] is the accelerator of the practice. Okay. Yeah. You know, providing the energy, the ideas, and the forward drive, but the team acts as the steering wheel and the brakes. I love that analogy.

Because if those two forces aren’t communicating, the clinic just crashes into a wall at full speed, that is a phenomenal way to visualize it. Mm-hmm. The doctor provides the propulsion, but the team provides the navigation. Right. And to navigate effectively, the team must consistently anchor the doctor regarding current priorities and their own plate capacity.

Because the doctor’s brain is constantly generating new ideas, right? So the team has to be the ones to say, well, where did we leave off on the last project? Exactly. They must feel totally safe telling the doctor when their operational plate is completely full. But the doctors in the masterclass attached a very crucial caveat to this.

What was it? They want solutions, not just problems. Ah, a participant shared a brilliant rule for their own clinic’s culture. If a team member identifies a system going [00:13:00] sideways, they document it immediately. Good. But when they bring that problem to the doctor’s desk, they’re required to bring two or three potential solutions with it.

Man, it is a profound cultural shift. It moves the staff from a mindset of complaining to a posture of active collaboration. Yes, complete. And one other detail from the call that we really shouldn’t overlook is just a simple reminder that doctors are human too. Very true. A participant pointed out that leaders absorb a massive amount of stress and they rarely get positive reinforcement.

Almost never. Right. So a high level team member knows the value of thanking the doctor, whether it’s acknowledging how they handled a difficult patient, or just expressing appreciation for their leadership. It builds deep mutual respect. It really does. So we’ve put all these operational needs on the table, right?

Yeah. Huh. We know the team needs clarity and priority, and the doctor needs pushback and solutions Exactly. But without a daily operational habit. Those desires just [00:14:00] evaporate the moment the clinic doors open. Right? Everybody just goes into survival mode. Exactly. So how do we synthesize all of this into a structure that actually sticks?

Well, this is the operational anchor of Dr. Lloyd’s entire masterclass. It’s the structured daily check-in. Yes. It sounds deceptively basic, right? Yeah. But the specific mechanics of how he designs it are what make it so effective. Let’s break down those mechanics. Okay. So first is the setup. Whether it’s done face-to-face or via a platform like you know, MS Teams, the core rule is that it is the team member’s job to initiate the check-in.

Okay? But it is the doctor’s absolute responsibility to be available for it. That boundary is so critical. It is. The doctor shouldn’t have to chase staff around the office begging for updates, right? However, when the staff member approaches for that check-in, the doctor must engage. They cannot sigh. Look at their watch or tell the team member to wait while they go

adjust the McGillicutty family of seven. Right. No excuses. [00:15:00] The leader has to protect that time. You have to pause for the team in that moment. Yes. The structure of the meeting itself is remarkably tight. It is designed to be just 60 seconds long, 60 seconds, and Dr. Lloyd mandates that it always starts with wins, and he is very specific about the psychology behind starting with wins.

Okay, tell me more about that. It isn’t just about feeling good. It serves as a rapid emotional barometer. A barometer, right takes the temperature of the team member’s current mental state, and forces the interaction to begin with a positive forward-looking tone. I have to ask about the reality of that though.

Okay, sure. Mandating a win every single day. Doesn’t that run the risk of breeding toxic positivity? Like if the clinic is having a genuinely stressful week and systems are breaking down all over the place, forcing someone to smile and present a win feels a bit artificial, doesn’t it? It is a great observation, and honestly, Dr.

Lloyd addressed exactly that scenario on the call. Oh, he did? Yeah. The [00:16:00] brilliance of asking for a win is that even if they don’t have one, it provides vital data. How so? If you ask a CA for a win and they just stare blankly at you, or they really struggle to find one, that in itself is an immediate diagnostic indicator.

Wow. It tells you they are underwater. Exactly. It signals to the leader that this individual is overwhelmed. It’s the doctor’s queue to step in, provide coaching, or actively clear, busy work off their plate. Oh, I see. So the lack of a win is actually a highly successful check-in because it prevents a silent meltdown later on.

That reframes it completely. Yeah. So following the wins or you know, the emotional check-in, you pivot straight to the schedule and the projects, right? Rapid fire review. Exactly. What are the patient numbers today? Are there new exams? What specific projects like making reactivation calls or mapping out social media content are prioritized for the day and then the check-in concludes with the most powerful mechanism of the entire process.

A magic question. The [00:17:00] magic question. The doctor must look directly at the team member and ask, is there anything you need from me? I love that it acts as a bulldozer for bottlenecks. Yes, exactly. It gives the team member explicit permission to hand the ball back to the doctor. They can say, yes, I need your signature on this protocol, or I need you to call back that specific patient.

Right, or simply, you know, no, my path is completely clear. It is brilliant because it guarantees that no team member is ever stuck waiting on the doctor without the doctor’s explicit knowledge. That’s huge because knowledge is only valuable when applied. The gap between a stressful high friction practice and a flowing high reveling practice is rarely clinical skill.

Right. The clinical skill is usually there. Right. It is almost entirely communication structure, which leaves us with a final really provocative thought for you to sit with today. Hmm. If you were to step back and ruthlessly audit your clinic’s communication right now, what would it actually look like?

Yeah. Be honest with yourself. Would it [00:18:00] resemble that? Well rehearsed. Synchronized dance or a chaotic, stressful game of telephone. Take a hard look at your operations and ask yourself, what unwritten expectation are you currently holding against your team? Simply because you haven’t taken the time to formalize it on paper.

And that is the exact question that separates the good clinics from the truly great ones. Without a doubt. Listen, if you wanna stop guessing and start building that well-rehearsed stance in your own practice, we are here to help. We absolutely are. As part of Five Star Management, I wanna invite you to book a completely free clinic strategy call with Dr.

George Birnbach. Yes. The link to secure that free call is right down there in the show notes. It is an incredible opportunity to get expert outside eyes on your specific practice bottlenecks, and really build a custom roadmap. It truly is, and while you are down in the show notes, clicking that link, make sure you hit the subscribe button so you never miss out on more actionable chiropractic tips.

Subscribe and keep growing. Exactly. Thank you so much for [00:19:00] diving deep with us today. We will see you next time.