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August 2006
Does your health and wellness staff treat your clients, customers or patients
with respect and honor?
I bet you said "Yes!" right away.
Well, let me rock your boat for a minute.
Radial led a public workshop on building client relationships. Most
participants worked with overweight clients who also had health
concerns...diabetes, joint problems, etc.
Some attendees turned out to have very judgmental views of their
clients...described them as "lazy" and thought they should "just suck it up".
In fact, some participants - very fit, never overweight, no personal health
struggles - were quite smug about their healthy lifestyles.
Now, almost everyone enters this profession because they want to make people's
lives better, healthier, and happier.
But it's possible that some of your staff may lose sight of that purpose, much
as police officers say they start to see everyone as a potential bad guy.
Your team members may become jaded, impatient, or actually hostile towards
clients.
As managers and owners of wellness businesses, be alert for these warning signs.
Coach the offending employee, and get them out of the business if they can't
renew their commitment to a positive and supportive approach.
Nine Warning Signs
1) Poor listening skills
Look for staffers who consistently use reflective listening techniques.
Reflective listening emphasizes truly understanding client concerns, both what
they say and what remains unspoken.
Useful reflective listening techniques include:
- Echoing their comments to encourage more disclosure: "So it really felt bad when
you couldn't find an outfit you felt good about for your daughter's wedding..."
- Summarizing the client's comments: "Let me see if I understand so far..." or
"Here's what I heard..."
- Pay close attention to statements that suggest openness to behavior change, like
"I'm going to do something but I'm not sure what" or "If I can't lose weight
this time, I'll have to start medication."
- Invite them to share more information: "Tell me what I missed..." or "What other
points should we think about?
Professionals with poor listening skills often achieve poor results. They
immediately launch into action without enough information to choose the best
approach.
Watch for these red flags: professionals who want to jump right into action with
a client, who ask very few questions, tend to use yes/no questions rather than
open-ended questions, or don't consistently and effectively summarize what
they're hearing from the client.
These are skills that can definitely be learned, so focused training on client
communication skills should be the first approach when you have staffers who
fall short in this area.
2) Jokes or sarcastic comments to coworkers at the client's expense
You want staffers with genuine compassion and caring for your clients
and customers. Look for consistency in how they talk about clients in
public and in private.
Often professionals say the right things when they're with a client, but make
demeaning or critical comments behind the scenes. Take this inconsistency
seriously. It's giving you real insight into how they truly feel.
Even if employees say the "right" things, clients are often amazingly good at detecting
the underlying insincerity.
3) Poor client success rates compared to coworkers
The most effective health and wellness professionals are excellent at
uncovering the anxieties, frustrations and fears of their clients through active
listening and questioning.
The reason they're so effective is that they use the information they gather
with these techniques to adapt their approach for each client.
Compare the success rates across your team. Focus on the staffers with
unusually poor client results. Factor out anything that might distort the
comparison - for example, a staffer who always works with the most difficult
clients.
Then, start discreetly observing client interactions for team members with low
client success rates. Get input from their clients - what's working,
what's not, and are they finding their experience with your business to be what
they expected it to be.
4) Lower client retention and referral rates compared to coworkers
Clients who feel that their relationship with your business is
rewarding and productive generally remain clients. If they're extremely
pleased, they'll refer friends, family and coworkers to your business as well.
Compare client retention and referral rates for each of your staffers.
Zero in on the individuals whose clients typically turn over fastest. Look
for the employees whose clients rarely refer others.
Reach out to their former clients and ask for their feedback. Start with
the key customer loyalty question we described in our feature on
"The Best Customer Loyalty Metric For Wellness Businesses". Then explore
what they liked about their experience with your business, what disappointed
them, and what you could do better.
5) Limited prior life experience, especially with health & wellness concerns
The most effective wellness professionals often have direct experience with
their own health struggles. Perhaps they've battled to maintain a healthy
weight. Perhaps they take medication for a chronic condition like
diabetes, epilepsy, depression, or ADD/ADHD. They may themselves have
lower back pain, or bad knees, or migraine headaches!
This experience
often gives them real empathy for their clients. Their own lives have
taught them that you can want good health very badly and yet find it difficult
to achieve.
However, many health and wellness businesses feel that their labor budget forces
them to hire relatively inexperienced staffers who often haven't yet experienced
the full array of lifestyle commitments - family, friends, community, work,
school, self-care, eldercare, etc. - or serious health concerns.
Without focused training, it's often very difficult for these employees to
really appreciate the struggles of their clients. However, great listening and
communication skills can overcome lack of first-hand experience, so make sure
you invest in adequate training for these team members.
6) Judgmental or strongly opinionated beliefs about why people struggle
We constantly learn more about the causes of health concerns like obesity.
For example, the New York Times reported this week that intestinal microbes may
cause weight gain in some people.
Watch for staffers who resist or ignore new information when it becomes
available, preferring to hold onto the beliefs they've always had.
A red flag is often the word "just", since it frequently accompanies an
oversimplified or judgmental view of the client's situation.
Keep an eye on staffers who say things like:
"You just need to get up from your desk more."
"People who are stressed just need to spend less time on work."
"People who weigh too much just need to stop snacking"
"People who don't workout are just lazy"
"You just need to stick to your diet"
Another red flag: professionals who complain about the "excuses" that clients
use.
7) Pride that they "tell it like it is" even when it's uncomfortable
Effective wellness professionals tailor their communication to the individual
client and what they feel will be most helpful to that client.
Some staffers pride themselves on always "telling it like it is". That approach
may work with some clients, but it shouldn't be the default.
Clients usually respond to this tactic in one of two ways. They may
perceive arrogance - the professional's underlying assumption that they know the
ultimate answer. Or they may be intimidated, afraid to raise issues or
disagree, because they expect the wellness professional to "slap them down".
Either way, this behavior usually confirms their worst fear: no one's really
listening to them or paying attention to their issues.
Moreover, people who enjoy "telling it like it is" usually choose words that are
at best blunt and at worst rude and discourteous.
For example, we heard a wellness coach say loudly to a client, in front of
several other clients and a couple of potential customers:
"Listen, I'm just going to lay it on the line. If you don't get serious
about losing weight and getting in shape, I just don't know what's going to
happen to you. You've got to get it together or you're going to die early
of a heart attack."
No surprise that her client vanished after that session.
8) Impatient or aloof demeanor with clients
Effective team members stay "in the moment" with clients. They're engaged
in what's going on and patient as they explain and discuss the client's goals,
actions, and behaviors and demonstrate techniques and approaches.
Watch for employees who rush through explanations to clients. We've
observed nutritionists and dietitians who quickly dump enormous amounts of
information on clients, say "OK?", and quickly move on. And we've seen
personal trainers staring off into the distance while their clients do rep after
rep.
9) Conviction that they've seen it all before
The value of experience is that you start to recognize recurring patterns among
clients. It helps you develop approaches that will work for many clients,
not just one.
The risk of experience is that professionals sometimes operate on auto-pilot,
falsely confident that they've seen it all. They mentally pigeonhole
clients ("emotional eater", "frazzled mom", "frail senior", etc.) and stop
listening for new information.
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