Scenario one during the Coaching Clinic: dealing with the patient who went 0-60. Context: Coaching Clinics are post-workshop-follow-ups so participants can go and practice what they learn in the OG workshop and then come back and report out how it went, what worked, what didn’t, and get coaching and crowd sourcing from me and their peers. (Sidenote: they are my fave.)

The participant (we’ll call her Sarah) described what went down. She was in-taking a new patient, describing the appointment procedure, when the patient all of a sudden got agitated and annoyed and mildly angry. Sarah explained how she tried to calm her down a bit, kept explaining what was going on, only to be then called names by the patient. Eventually, Sarah finished the call and then put word out amongst her colleagues that this patient might need a little handle-with-kid-gloves TLC going forward.

Overall, I give Sarah 3.5 stars for how she handled the situation. Good staying calm, good communicating with the team after.

There was that one moment that got me curious, though. When she was recapping the incident and got to the 0-60 part, my brain kept screaming, “What happened? What was going on?”

I had Sarah repeat what she said to the patient. It seemed pretty benign. Again, I wanted to know–what took this person from chill to shouty in just a few minutes?

None of us on the call had the answer. You know who might? The patient.

When you’re in conversation with someone – anyone – and things are chugging along nicely and then all of a sudden the switch goes off and the energy changes, the body language changes, the emotions change, stop the convo.

Pause and check-in.

Acknowledge the change.

Ask a curious question.

“Hey, I noticed you seem a little frustrated/agitated/aggravated/annoyed. (Pick your word of choice that won’t stoke or suggest more of that emotion.) I wanted to check in and see if there’s something up that you’d like to let me know about?”

Then pause. Shut it. Let the silence be. And see what happens.

“My dog just ran in from the backyard with mud all over his paws, and I just cleaned the floor! What were you saying?”

“The last time I scheduled with a provider, they read all of these policies and rules and didn’t follow them themselves, but they charged me late fees.”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you guys for weeks and really want to make sure my kid can get an appointment…”

“No–I don’t know what you’re talking about–everything is FINE. Can we just move on?”

Maybe it’s about you. Maybe it’s about them. Maybe it’s about the dog. Who knows?

The move here that’s going to get you to 5-stars in your conversations is to stop, get curious, and acknowledge that it’s happening.

More often than not, this is when we keep on reading that script and getting through the policies and procedures and rules to get them off the phone.

This is when we say, “Oh man, this person seems a little extra and I’m tired and don’t want to deal with it, so I’ll just keep on moving on.”

Instead of pausing, we tend to ignore the switch flip and plow through the conversation, pretending it won’t go away.

When you stop, get curious, and check-in, you give yourself an absolute advantage over 95%* of the people out there. (*Made up statistics based on my perception.) Even if they don’t want to talk about it then, that check-in shows you care. That check-in shows you’re paying attention. That check-in allows you to address their emotions, figure out what’s really going on, and move from a place of understanding.

It might be a little bit 😬 in the moment to check in, because you have no idea what might come at you. Put your potential unease aside and ask.

That moment is the first seed of trust, of concern, of care that starts a loyal relationship.

Which will have your clients, patients, and colleagues leaving YOU a 5-star review!