August 2006

Couple your leadership, double your volume

by Dr. CJ Mertz

Twelve years ago, I discovered a phenomenon within my clients that has revolutionized their growth. The difference between one‑dimensional leadership and multi‑dimensional (coupling) leadership is the difference between good and great in practice.

After observing the progress of several hundred practices, their leadership style and ability ultimately became the biggest factor in distinguishing their growth. Leadership has as much to do with how you perceive time, manage time and act on time as anything else.

There are five very specific and unique leadership timelines: Day‑to‑day, week‑to‑week, month‑to‑month, year‑to‑year, and multiyear‑to‑multiyear.

A chiropractor who functions primarily from the multiyear‑to‑multiyear leadership timeline is said to have "vision consciousness" but is largely unproductive. Someone who functions from the year‑to‑year leadership timeline has "goal consciousness," yet is still unproductive. One who functions with the month‑to‑month leadership timeline has "planning consciousness" yet because it's one‑dimensional, is usually unproductive. A DC who executes from a week‑to‑week timeline has "organized consciousness" and continues to be unproductive. Finally, someone who works on a day‑to‑day leadership timeline has "action consciousness" but is surprisingly unproductive.

Any leadership timeline largely determines your thoughts, communications and actions. Dominant or one‑dimensional leadership carries with it inherent limitation, which eventually caps your ability to grow beyond a certain level in practice.

Coupling leadership timelines refers to having the presence of mind to work from two distinctly different timelines simultaneously.

For example, if a chiropractic assistant couples day‑to‑day leadership with week‑to‑week leadership, she can provide phenomenal patient service while at the same time fill up this week's workshop. That seems simple, unless you don't naturally have this coupling ability,

People with day‑to‑day and month‑to‑month leadership coupling enjoy planning ahead while they work. Therefore, an assistant can be thinking about which patients should become "patients of the week" next month while running the front desk in prime time. Another assistant is looking to fill a spinal screening slot for next month's marketing after recalling a patient who missed his or her appointment.

Chiropractors who have day‑to‑day and year‑to‑year leadership coupling ability can be extraordinarily productive in the moment while still having insight about a major re‑engineering strategy of their office layout that may need to occur if they're going to have their practice where they want it by the same time next year.

Someone with multiyear leadership coupling can perform his or her daily work brilliantly and be creating scenarios whereby satellite practices will be built in the future. Perhaps you're beginning to sense which of the coupling patterns you most gravitate to, if at all.

Once you understand how leadership timeline coupling patterns work, the next step is to become multidimensional! This means you've already accomplished the ability to couple leadership timelines and are now capable of applying the "right" coupling patterns at the "right" time. Someone able to shift from one leadership‑coupling pattern to another has developed an enormous advantage for practice growth. At least 50% of the time in chiropractic practices, the best leadership‑coupling pattern for the moment is not executed. The number of missed opportunities is staggering!

If you are awesome in one particular coupling pattern and someone else in your team is equally amazing at another, how are you strategizing to make the best use of each other's talents? Which leadership‑coupling pattern do you not use currently but innately feel you could be really good at if you simply applied yourself?

Building a well‑balanced and motivated team of individuals who can access multiple leadership‑coupling patterns at will is the path to greatness. Preparing powerful team trainings, keeping yourself focused on a goal, maintaining a six‑month marketing plan, following up on leads from the last workshop, rescheduling a missed visit all require different leadership‑coupling skills. Without the proper skills, your practice will have holes in it and prevent you from achieving your potential.

Many of our clients in their first month of training experience leadership‑coupling skills for the first time and immediately notice the practice results that follow (don't be afraid to ask for help because the world's top DCs got there with coaching). Increase your leadership, build your skills, save more lives, double your success ‑‑ it's that simple!

Some chiropractors are great at day‑to‑day operations but horrible at planning in advance, while others are dreamers and goal setters who can't seem to get their feet planted firmly in the here and now. Whatever your situation, there are thousands of sick people in your in your community who need your help. It's time to develop the skills you need to help them.

(Dr. CJ Mertz is executive director of ChiroUSA, and founder and head coach of the prestigious Waiting List Practice [WLP] chiropractic training organization. See the WLP 300 patient per week opportunity on the back page of this issue. For information on WLP coaching services, call Tony Shinn at 877‑TEAM‑WLP.)