Effective Communication Strategies for Physicians with Maiysha Clairborne, MD

Transcript YouTube English auto-captions. Hey guys this is Dr Mike boing welcome to another edition of bootstrap MD the podcast for physician and health care entrepreneurs if you've been a long time listening to the program thank you and if so you probably recognize my next guy she's a dear friend of mine and we had to have her back on the program she's an integrated physician a thought leader a master trainer in NLP which it stands for neurolinguistic programming and Hypnosis she's a founder of Mind remapping company she's helped leaders and professionals achieve transformational results by overcoming internal barriers and mastering trauma informed communication work emphasizes the power of language in shaping reality and fostering psychological safety within organizations she's a graduate of Emer University morous School of Medicine she spoken at tedex Asheville and served as a faculty facilitator for the acgme's equity managers project she's the author of The Wellness blueprint and Co-author of conscious anti-racism she's also of course a great friend of mine Dr mayisha Clairborne Maisha how are you doing today oh I'm so good it is good to be back it's good to be reconnected and I know it had has been some time you know we we have our big lives and and uh and and always though i' I've followed you for many many years and have always admired and so It's really just great to to be back with you on the show well again great to Great to uh to have you have you on and I know you wanted to talk about communication uh and and and how it pertains to in this crazy society that we we live in and we seem to be less communicable um you know everybody now just texts or you know nobody nobody's talking directly and We're always having some issues I even talked about this morning about some personal issues I've been having with communication in my practice so so so let's talk about it what what are some what what do you mean by um some communication issues or or how as Physicians can we learn by communicating better yeah well so I mean I I'll start by kind of sharing I I think some of the problems that I'm seeing in you know both in organizations and Within practices so you know whether you're a business owner whether you happen to be in that transition um what I do notice is that there is there are problems with with Physicians connecting connecting with their staff connecting you know the communication problems inside of the practices if in organizations there's a lot of toxic communication not so healthy communication between leaders and their teams and so so I I think one of the things that has been Amplified since the pandemic is the the isolation and the the way that we communicate is a lot more digital than we we used to and to be quite honest as as Physicians but as people in general we're not really taught overtly how to communicate effectively right so we learn how to communicate but We learn passively we learn by inherit our family's way of communicating we've learned to communicate by how we were communicated with during our residency programs during our medical school programs and it's not always the most effective way and so then we have a lot of this toxicity in our in our community um which leads to you know High turnover in practices you know not not being able to manage um teams between colleagues toxicity between colleagues and so It can be very challenging and and we can then this can pour over into our own personal relationships as well so I I still coach a lot of Physicians around um burnout and interpersonal leadership type type things and what I see a lot of is is is challenges with interpersonal relations particularly as it pertains to communicating so when you when you discussed it you said it accelerated uh during the pandemic is is there why do you why do you think that Is is it the way that we communicate is it mostly through the Internet or texting is it because we're using too many emojis now to describe our feelings what what exactly is it honestly I think part of it is that you know we are forced to to do more digital communication and but but I think more so is the trauma of the pandemic so you know if you already don't are not the best Communicator or you already have challenges relating and Then all of the things you know there's the pandemic there's the the the racial tension and violence there's the the isolation there's the mental health decline when you're not at your best self from a mental health standpoint then all of the skills that you may have had they kind of go out the window because you're just trying to survive so there's a lot of actually there's actually a lot of research around um the way burnout particularly and and People who are not at their best place mental from a mental health perspective so mental illness or mental health decline impacts the way we communicate with people it interrupts the decision-making process and collaboration and it in interrupts the our ability to put what's in our minds out into our words effectively because we're sort of managed by that that uh Amiga right that amydala hijack we're on hypervigilance we're we're looking over our shoulder we're not feeling safe and so When we don't feel safe when we're feeling that sort of always um experience of like someone's out to get us or like looking over our shoulder like we're constantly fatigued we can't connect to that higher thinking brain we just can't and so it's it's really I think a function of a lot of things but over overarching trauma um and recovering from the trauma of all of the things that happened during the pandemic not just covid-19 but All of the things that happened during that time and not and not having recovered from a mental health standpoint um it it it doesn't sets as a doctor I wasn't used to asking for help especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine but then I found physician coaches.com in an instant I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of Life on areas I was afraid to ask dealing with burnout starting a side gig money management even help With my marriage and the best part nearly all experts are Physicians themselves after reading their profile and a quick chat I knew I found the right Mentor for me at physici coaches.com help from professional yeah and and I I kind of see that you know specifically there's a couple instances that that I can think of it's like for example you know when we would talk with our employees we would only discuss it during work hours so 9 to5 or 8 to6 or whatever whatever that is and um there was with my my partner um she had texted out to our um employee something that wasn't as important but it was occurred like on a Saturday morning where they were not there and on Monday there was a lot of this miscommunication because they didn't respond until Monday and my employees felt that they were like oh should I have should I have contacted my boss on the Saturday morning and Then we had to step back and realize hey you know because we're always working we don't think about it but they felt bad they felt like oh my gosh we weren't available am I in trouble because I didn't respond to my boss for two days well they shouldn't have and we had to we had and so there was that kind of miscommunication and and such and I think now like with texting now You know I've had been accused of like I'm not responding quick enough because there's some people who want be you know what's what's going on and I'm just not that that type of person and I like like is something wrong did I you know silence you know they misconstrue it as is like I'm ignoring them or I don't want to do it which it's like I've just been busy or like I was on vacation I in the 70 where I didn't Have you know I'm on vacation and I didn't have the best you know uh you know our cell phone went out so there's a lot of there's a lot of expectations now that we're now in this we're not we're not dealing with a 40-hour work week now it's it's now like we should always kind of be available that's caused a lot more stress um and so is that is that the kind of things that you're discussing as well That oh absolutely absolutely I think that we're in this sort of instant gratification period of time where you know we because we have our devices available when somebody texts us they just expect us to no no matter what's happening to like text back or respond back or email back when I mean you know we're from a time where there was it was like you know landlines so You if no someone didn't answer the phone actually even I'm before the of course you know I think you probably can relate um the time before we had answer machines you know so if somebody went home the phone would just rain and then you just had to call back later there was no voicemail there was no answering machine you know when when somebody was on the other line it was a busy signal you just had to call back but so Then there was like a level of patience that that we had to develop as a skill and now with um this instant gratification ification with always having you know it started with pagers you know I paged you call me back but now it's like I text you text me right back and so there has to be these parameters set up I think another thing that um can get can can cause miscommunication or misunderstanding is that text text communication lacks context it Often lacks tone of voice and so what happens is is people commun if I'm communicating with you in this tone of voice which you know is it's a very conversational tone of voice but I communicate it through text message it could come off as overly direct or condescending or some kind of way that it's not meant because there's no tone of voice so a lot of miscommunications can happen in email threads and In text threads because there's no tone of voice and because we're in this digital age of communication people are less willing to pick up the phone to resolve those problems so one of the things I often teach and I often highly recommend is if there is and I'll give you actually a perfect example because this actually happened to me yesterday at the time of this recording I um was communicating through Marco Polo which is actually a video um messaging app with A with my partner in anti-racism and we were talking about a proposal that we were doing and so she communicated um she was giving me some feedback but the way she communicated didn't land well for me so I I uh messaged her back and instead of now I could have and what most people would have done was video message back all the reasons why that communication didn't land and I was in an upset state but What I did was I said hey I just want to let you know that commun made me feel some kind of way let's talk about it do you have 15 minutes to chat so that we can clear this up and she immediately you know text back and said yes absolutely I apologize you know in advance and we have that kind of relationship so Then we got on the phone literally we were on the phone for 15 minutes we worked it out and so I think that people think that these types of conversations have to take like hours or they have to be long and drawn out but often times miscommunication during uh through through text um communication can be easily resolved by just picking up the phone and having a quick conversation and I think that's what's missing so I think what to to your point when um we're in this instant gratification we expect for it to be fast and furious but then Mis misund understandings can happen when either a person doesn't respond at all or doesn't respond immediately and then it gets misconstrued as silence which means we have to set the parameters on how we respond like I tell my family I work during the day if you text me during the day it's going to be I'm not going To respond right right away if you call me in the middle of the day while I'm working I'm not going to be answering the phone or even your your voicemail until later on if you call me after 10 p.m. you will get voicemail right so I think it's useful for people in communication um to put parameters around how they are going to respond when they are going to respond so they set an expectation upfront and That's one thing that we don't do and we haven't done well in our society with this Instinct gratification yeah that that's a great example and that's something that I'm guilty of as well where I've gotten you know emails and you know it's like the way that it was construed it was like oh why are you being so emotional or like like anybody knows me I'm not an emotional person like you don't really know me I don't get that I don't get That emotional um so like you said there's this Nuance with with texting an email I think another thing to bring up too is I love the idea of setting barriers I also think the the mode of communication as well because because yeah I'll get you know texting I respond to you know you know quickly emails not as quick quickly but usually within the day but then I'm getting communicated through Facebook Messenger or LinkedIn Che you know right um and there's so Many ways that people kind of can communicate and then they like to they like to to communicate through the one they like like I know I have a client they just like Facebook messenger and I'm hardly ever on on there and so hey how come you're not responding so I think putting barriers is great but also the mode the way you respond letting him know you know this is the way that we would like for them to respond what you think Absolutely I think that's brilliant I think you kind of read my mind there because I was thinking that too like um you know I tell people well so when people call on the voice message at the end of the voice message it says if you like a faster response please text yeah right so these are for f friends and family members if they need a faster response but I say you know otherwise I will respond Within 24 hours right so I give them that parameter but when I'm talking to people like when I'm meeting people out I say well best way to communicate with me really is text message because I get so logged down with emails emails get lost now there are certain people I'm like will you please email me this right these are my preferred methods of communication and For me it's it's you know text email or LinkedIn messaging I'm not really on Facebook Messenger like that I'm definitely not on Instagram like that and so like in terms of the business this is from the business perspective it's best to catch me either LinkedIn or email first people in my you know so like this is what but I but I set these parameters with people I said okay This is the best way to communicate with me this is the best time to communicate with me and this is what you can expect on my response like I'm not going to be I don't sit by my phone and like I'm on a coaching call and I get a text I'm not going to be like hold on let me respond to you know we're we're recording a podcast be like hold on unless it's an emergency right so so I think that's that's exactly right like we need to put parameters around also our preferred method and it's also useful to say hey this is this is my preferred method what's your preferred method okay how can we meet in the middle right like what would you be willing to like if you want to get me and you really want to get me then you need to message me this way and If want to get you then I know I really know I want to get you then I'm going to message you that way and that way we both have this sort of Middle Ground of how receiving message in the in the best way that we receive messages yeah I mean I'm just looking at my phone and it's just like there's so many different ways from WhatsApp to you know Tik Tok Instagram and things like that um so You know I understand how on a as a professional sense is to have those barriers but then you got personal as well are you are you putting in the barriers to let's say your your relatives and such oh absolutely absolutely I mean they're the people that I most have to set boundaries with so so you know like I have and and I and I love talking to my family I love my family and and like so Like my mom lives in a different time zone so she knows uh I don't answer the phone after about 9:30 because after 9:30 it's my you know I'm winding down I don't want to talk on the phone actually I don't answer the phone after 9:00 p.m. unless it's an emergency now if it's an emergency you know like if my mom calls me after 9:00 p.m. I'm gonna answer because I'm like she knows not to call me after that time so I'm gonna be like you good she's like and then she's oh I forgot and I said okay well I'll talk to you tomorrow and I hang up the phone right my sister's same way um but like I usually I don't mind if they call me during the day but they have to know I'm most likely not going to answer the phone and I'm most likely not going to answer a text unless the text message say says it's urgent call me back then I'll do it at the next break and I'll usually will text and say call you on my break right and so um so that's like how I set those boundaries with my usually it's my my sisters and my mom I mean that's really the only people I think the people in my my friend Circle um they're like me you know text Before calling do you have a moment to talk right that's that's the etiquette that we use in in my friend circles hey do you have five minutes to talk or do you have 15 minutes to talk um and then if they say you know not now but later then we we figure that out and then we we get on the phone then so that when we're very clear about what our needs are and I think this is sort of like the theme of it when we're very clear about what our what our capability is and what our needs are then we can communicate that with the people in our lives and set those boundaries and then they honor them or they don't honor them now if they they forget that's one thing but if they're consistently railroading those boundaries um then the the the level of stringent if that's a word that you might need to um Enforce those boundaries maybe a little bit more dream than like say someone who occasionally forgets so if someone is continually railroading my boundary of not calling me after a certain time then I may distance myself from that person because that's that's information about how they're going to treat me in other capacities and uh and so that's that's another thing to note is that all communication is information that's a that's a that's a good point I think also to you know you Just keep giving me examples in my head head of people that had you know some struggles with communication wning point is I'm not the best person on the phone you know I'm much more comfortable doing like a zoom I like seeing face to face just seeing reactions when I'm saying something um uh my wife gets mad me because I never call for pizza like got make her a call for pizza I love the the apps now That you can order you know I have this one a friend who's actually you know a vendor of mine and I occasionally um train on this device that they sell or and U and so he he he communicates via voicemail and I can't stand it because I hate playing that uh voicemail game okay your tag you're it it we never get and and it tookes some time but yeah if I think if I had parameters and I love this and I'm going to start crafting it right now is this just you know when I'm dealing with somebody that I'm probably doing business with it's like hey you know if you need to get a hold of me an emergency you call 911 you know if you need to get a hold of me it's texting is best if if it's nothing something that's emergent email is is second and The specific email you know the other thing too is how many of us have one email address I know you've got a bunch of God I have like five or six email addresses so how how how do you what would your be your recommendation you know for that navigating email is definitely I think um more challenging because um I utilize different emails for different things correct now the the boundary that I have to set with emails is for myself and so You know one of the things that I have had to start doing is scheduling emails so like you know if you answer an email at 2 o'clock in the morning then people are going to start you're like training them to to to this instant gratification right so if if every time someone texts me or emails me I immediately respond um then they're gonna that's what they're going to expect and I'm not I'm not suggesting that you know to play games right To be like okay I'm gonna wait for a day to respond just to make them wait but what I'm suggesting is that you know if you're having dating right right right so we're not I'm not in that what I'm suggesting is that if you're on family time like maybe it's between 6:00 and 10: is family time um and someone emails you and It's not urgent rather than responding at 10 o'clock at night you wait till the next day or if if you are going to respond you're like oh well this is an easy respond schedule that email for the next day so we have this wonderful ability now to schedule emails in the future and I had to start doing that because I know for myself I'm a single mom Delson goes to bed at night I I come back to the computer and I do work for a couple more hours if I get an email I want to respond to that email um I have had to make myself as a as a as a boundary begin to schedule those emails for the next day to communicate like these are the hours in which I will respond to emails right yeah and so you know like weekends I will I have stopped emailing people on the weekends what I do is if I'm craft the email I Schedule it for Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. yeah and that way it communicates no I don't work on the weekends no I will not you know unless it's an urgency I will not work on the weekends and there's not a lot that's urgent about what I do these days right the con in the Consulting world in the training world there's not a lot that's urgent about that and so I think that's a um an important boundary to set as well Yeah and that that's and then speaking of that was our solution to that business partner who was emailing a satday morning and getting all of our employees all flustered was scheduling it that same email it wasn't immediate we're scheduling on Monday morning you know yeah yeah I think another thing that's important to talk about you know just as we talk about communication is this aspect of conflict and and and Difficult conversations um you know we kind of alluded to it when we were talking about you know context out of out out of context and text communication and I think that we don't do conflict very well we don't do difficult conversations very well I think we might do them well with our patients because we're trained to do them well With our patients when it comes to having those challenging conversations with each other or or when like when it comes to emotional responses and and managing with each other it it can be very challenging and we we go straight to the blame um you know the the you you did this you did that uh we we don't we don't operate from a place of of of equinity and calm we operate from this place of high emotion and I think one thing that's important because hard conversations happen every day like just as I shared with my partner Jill um you know she said something that sort of rubbed me the wrong way I mean it it's it's a partnership it's going to happen like it's the nature we talk with families we talk with our kids there's going to be stuff that Ruffles our feathers all the time and how do we self-regulate in order to be able to communicate and Reconnect with our thinking mind so I think that that that's another thing that um we're not taught that we have to learn as a skill and um and that's why emotional intelligence is so important to to like think about you know we think about emotional intelligence in our community like it's woo woo like it's the soft skill like it's you know it's not non-essential it's just you know it's it's that stuff out there that that woowoo stuff but There have been a lot of um research that has shown that learning how to regulate our emotions when we're upset connects us to the to our our communication centers a little bit better so that we can say hey this is what I'm experiencing um this is the way it lands for me rather than you know you did did this and you did that and you are this and You are that I like that does that is just going to activate the other person's you know survival response they're like they're they're G too and so I think that we could we could stand as a community to learn how to better regulate and communicate what we're feeling whereas I know that's been like a no no in our community no you don't we don't talk about feelings it's kind of like what was that movie we don't talk about Brun no no We don't talk about Brun no it's like we don't talk about feelings no no no but we should we should we should normalize talking about our emotions and it's not that we let our because if we don't talk if we don't name them and we don't name our experience then it gets bottled up and we're going to act it out anyway yeah yeah I I think too is is I I've been known to have my emails very very short know um I mean how do you feel when you get an email that's like eight paragraphs long I can't read an email that's eight paragraphs yeah and it's like why respond with another long email when obviously this person has something to say and hey received your email let's talk on the zoom schedule it for this so and so dat and so my my I joke about this because my my days are full of Zoom calls but I have to schedule communication for me and sometimes you you have to like train your person that's like I can't be available I mean I this is one person that I work with um and you probably know this person but he doesn't like to schedule and it just drives me nuts oh gosh and it's just over time is just taken some time to like hey let's plan this time at so and so I also think too it's like you got to respect that time too I know things can happen right but how many times have we had to reschedule or I'm five or 10 minutes late I know first time it's happened second time third time it happens then they're not respecting your your time that's right that's a discussion and then we have to discuss that yeah and and Put some things in place like you know hey if we can't you know if if you can't respect the the schedule we can't schedule we can't we can't work together like you can't work together if and so that's yeah that's to I totally agree with that that's another place to put in those boundaries it's like you know people want to people want to be heard people want to be seen people want to be respected and people to be valued and It's not just in our verbal language but it's in our actions and I think that a lot of people miss that communication is only 7% words and 93 3% everything else and so when you speak your words you're making a declaration but when you actually have your words and your actions be congruent then you're you're speaking a whole communication about what your your what you value how you value the person how you respect another person and so I think that's also a very important Point as matching our you know matching our promises to our actions um and listening for others promises and actions to be matched as well because people will say things and they will act another way and so I think that's um just as important as communicating is listening and not just listening with our ears but listening with our eyes as well yeah and again I face to face is often ideal but In this you know in this area you know a zoom or a Google meet or something is probably the second best yeah way to do it and then yeah um so yeah this has been a great discussion um on communication uh any last minute thoughts uh before we end the call today we get got gave us some great parameters what to use I'm now Going to start be using an email that I'm going to be sending out to to set up those parameters or just telling them these to the par yeah absolutely absolutely um I I think if what what I'd like to leave people with is that communication there's so many nuances um and intricacies to communication especially now that we have this sort of like digital aspect to it and You know I think a lot of us as doctors um as clinicians feel like Oh I'm a good communicator right and the question I have is are you like how good are you right like do you do when you communicate do people feel seen heard respected and valued and welcomed and if not then we have to look at our skill set and as I think as as Physicians and Clinicians we never we we need to never be too big to learn more never feel like there's there's not an opportunity to learn more so that's why I created the the coures that I created because I feel like you know like I've been working at communication for well over a decade I mean this is this is my this is the work I do NE neuroscience-based communication that's neural linguistic programming and um and In doing that like I've learned all these intricacies all these ways to frame things and and it's why I can work with the most difficult people and bring them over to um a different side bring them over to a different point of view a thought process help them to heal uh help navigate conflict help them navigate conflict between people and between people in their organizations is because I've taken the time to learn the intricacies and The nuances of communication that which includes listening body language all of those things so I want to leave the the audience with you know always be learning always be learning communication I love it I I love it uh if someone wants to reach out to you what's the best way or you don't communicate with anybody right I don't communicate no um I um so The best way to reach out to me um would probably be to go to there's two way to I'm G give you two ways the first is if you're on LinkedIn I love me some LinkedIn uh so if you're on LinkedIn connect with me on LinkedIn I do message on LinkedIn please when you do the connection on LinkedIn just say I heard you on Mike's podcast because people who like do connection requests and They have nothing I I will tend to scrutinize those a little bit more and maybe not accept them so just make sure you give me context um you can go to mind remapping academy.com mind remapping academy.com and there are several ways to to connect with me based on how you want to engage with me so I do have a uh communication course communication that transforms and it is all about the intricacies and New non nuances of communication it is CME accredited for up to 22 um AMA category 1 CME um credits so get your years worth of CME right and learn communication learn a good skill um and then you know if you're in an organization and you want me to come speak or you want me to come speak to your practice or a team training um I also do that as well so just go to mind remapping academy.com and That is where you can learn all about those various offerings including coaching or coach trainings as well mayisha again always a pleasure to talk with you uh you said you shared a lot of great nuggets I'm going to be implementing today I know my audience would be as well and again thank you for your time thank you for having me it's really good to to be here again and and Thank you all for listening as Physicians as entrepreneurs we're going to have ups and downs on our days just remember to do a little something each day to get you closer to your goals and