I’ve been teased many times in my life about some of my guilty pleasures. One such guilty pleasure happens to be theatre. If you’re raising your eyebrows, well suck it up. If you love theatre, that’s awesome. I absolutely love theatre and especially live theatre. In fact, I love anything live. I’ve found that nothing quite captures the imagination like the enthusiasm in any arena.
The two areas in my life in which I say I truly forget or lose myself are live sports in big arenas (I’m a big rugby fan) and the theatre. Last week I took my daughter on a daddy/daughter date in London, at the theatre in Notting Hill, to watch Matilda. I cannot tell you what an incredible experience it was.
The theatre experience reminded me of the importance of being present. I often think about presence and performance. If you’re an open-plan practice owner, your practice is often a theatre where holding that space is like being on stage. All the preparation it takes to be on stage needs to be taken into account when you are performing at a high level. How consistently do you warm up? What do you do you to prep? How often do you rehearse? How constantly do you try to upskill? How often do you ask for feedback?
The activities of your front desk people in your practice can also be likened to theatre or a performance. Front desk professional, how consistently do you rehearse and role play your scripts to get feedback, observations, and critiques? How often do you ask someone to listen as you say your scripts to check on delivery and cadence? Your telephone script, your day one and day two scripts, and your answering objections scripts need to be memorised, rehearsed, and role played regularly. Practice is vital because the way you practice is the way you perform. That’s why one person can say a script and it lands, while another person does the exact the same script and it bombs. It’s not the script! It’s the delivery of the script. It’s the phrasing, the pauses, the tonality, and the voice inflection. It’s the enthusiasm with which the script is delivered and the salesperson’s understanding of the context within.
There are so many things from theatre that you can incorporate in your practice. More than anything, it’s important to understand that a script can be delivered by four different people with four different results. When you and your team make it a habit to rehearse and role play your scripting regularly, as an actor or actress does, when performing in a play, you will develop consistency and effectiveness throughout your practice, and you’ll achieve stellar results. Your potential patients and your practice members are your audience. Get standing ovations and rave reviews from them by performing at your best!
Look at your practice like theatre! Practice the way a famous actor does. Rehearse the way a star actress does. Make sure you’re scripted like a smash hit play. Get critiqued the same way the director critiques the actors. And boy, can magic happen if you look at it that way!
Hopefully this was helpful. Now go book yourself a daddy/daughter or daddy/son date!
See you soon!
Yours in Service,
Dr. Ryan Rieder, D.C.
