Mental Toughness

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
loss, lack of success. How do I outwit those things? How do I outwit failure? And the number one characteristic was what they call it drifting. Write down characteristics of who that person is. How do they communicate? How do they treat other people? How do they engage? What do people think about them? And then what are the behaviors that are required to do that? And then start looking at your day every day and go, how did I do? You want to stay in drive mode. Your mental toughness is driving, driving towards what? My ideal version of me.

00:30
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management and training.

00:39
Welcome to dental all stars. I’m Alex Nottingham founder and CEO of All Star Dental Academy. With me is Eric Vickery, the president of coaching at All Star Dental Academy, Mr. President. And our topic today is about willingness to adapt. Please welcome Eric Vickery. Hey Alex, it’s so fun to do podcasts with you where you’re the host, you’re the one to ask the questions. This is great. Right. And I appreciate all the podcasts you do for the channel. like

01:07
We take turns. That’s not just the old times. It’s nice. We’re not alone. Uh, so this is what’s fun about the podcast. I think the ones that do really well are the ones we’re just having a conversation and it was interesting. I texted you the other day, so we’ll lay out the issue and then we can kind of. It’s lot of it sparse it out, but we do a lot of disc training. So for those who are not familiar, disc is a very simple personality profile and we like it because it is simple.

01:35
And you can quickly identify yourself and others. And then we relate it to emotional intelligence and so on. And we’ll talk about this at the end, but every year. So we do this in our coaching program desk, but we do a deep dive in our leadership retreat that we do every year. And so we’ll put a link to the next one. It’s every January. It’s going to be in Fort Lauderdale. That’s upcoming one. We’ll talk a little bit more about at the end, but I just wanted to say that this is in the space where this goes. And.

02:04
I’m always asking people, friends, business people, someone about what is your desk and what’s mine. And then I came across a few discs and I’m like, woo, how do you deal with. And, and this is why this kind of topic about an adaptation, because I get, we get the disc. Now, what do you do with it? How do you, as individual work with it? How do you work with somebody else who has that? Uh, so just kind of maybe lay out for me, like,

02:34
some of the challenges around it that you see, and we can just talk about some solutions and go along with it. So let’s understand the concept of why we do DISC. First of all, it’s the gateway into emotional intelligence. So people will talk about, you can’t train EQ. Actually, if you think about the ultimate result of EQ is self-awareness, self-management. Manage what? Social awareness, relationship management. I’m managing my relationship. I’m better.

03:01
I relate better to you when I know your personality style and how you like to communicate. So we use disc as a communication tool, which becomes a relationship tool. So it’s moving us from communication to effective communication. that entry disc is an entry into EQ training. So that’s why we use it. The second thing I would say about leadership is everyone’s a leader. Sometimes people are like, oh, I don’t need to listen to this podcast. I’m not the leader of my practice. Hold on.

03:26
You’re leading your division. You’re leading your department. You’re leading your patient. You’re leading your children. You’re leading in lots of areas. What is leadership? It’s influence. So how do I influence people? I have to be in relationship with them to influence. And the stronger the relationship, the more influence I have. If someone’s just influencing me on social media, I don’t have a mutual win. It’s a partial influence. But you and I have a lot of influence with each other because we have a lot of interaction. We have a stronger relationship.

03:56
Well, I want to make sure my relationships are strong foundations that we have good understanding. have effective communication. Revert back to disk. That’s going to affect that relationship. So it’s all really interconnected in our DNA. Now, let’s talk about then the three levels of this that I need to know myself. I need to know who I am in my personality style. When I first took the disk assessment, you have not liked me, Alex. You would have been like, who’s this crazy cat? I was.

04:24
off the chart’s eye, standing up on chairs, cheering, way over the top, look at me, look at me, look at me. Imagine how crazy I used to be. This is subtle version of me. That would be very irritating. Exactly. When you learn that and you mature through that, you go, oh, I’m rubbing some people the wrong way. I have control of that. Let me tone that down. Now, can I turn that on? Absolutely. I could be out with my guy friends or whatever. Right. Yeah. And we use these

04:51
I don’t say buzzwords, leadership communication. at the end of the day, mean, they’re powerful words, but at the end of the day, it’s how you you become a more effective human being in your life and in your business. These skills apply to everything. A wise man once said, you’re only as effective as you can communicate. That’s you, Mr. President. communication is not just the words, it’s.

05:20
How do we, and that’s what we’re talking about, how does it get through? And so you might think that standing on chairs is communication. And to me, I’m like, okay, enough of that, right? But it depends on who it is. Somebody like you would like that. So we have to be able to adapt and to be able to do that. So I think part of it is, we were talking about this the other day in our mastermind group, why is so important? Why are we doing what we’re doing? And if you want a happier life, a happier business,

05:48
If you’re the doctor or the owner or an entrepreneur, you want to have your business. If you’re part of the entrepreneurial venture worker, whatever you want to have your business, you want to work with your coworkers. So that’s the outcome. And then part of it is knowing know thyself that’s disc, right? And so I just want to paint why everyone should be listening and why it’s important. And then we use, and then it comes down to the disciplines of communication and leadership and so on. So, um, all right, so that, that’s kind of the why behind it for sure.

06:17
Yes. Good clarity. Clarity of expectation creates excellent execution. There’s another good one. Well, clarity of expectation. How do you do that? Well, you have two choices, communicate or effectively communicate. Okay. So you’re talking about, we’re going to make effective communication. So understanding your disc as a D dominant direct person, I know style, you might think that was really clear. I was just precise. Boom, here it is. But it left a lot of vagueness for someone who likes a lot of detail.

06:48
And so now we’re ineffective communication because you’re the one reaching out to the C, conscientious, compliance, computer analytical personality, and they need more data to know why you’re saying what you’re saying. And you’re just like, just do it. Okay. So you have two choices. You can be willing to adapt your style, adaptive behavior, or you can use your disc as an excuse. I’m just an I, I’m at a party. This is me, baby.

07:16
This is the ABCs of me. You’re, there in or you’re out with me. Right. I think we layer and I love how you do it. Leading the speaking division and the train division is that you start with this, which is very simple, but it’s not the end all be all. This just tells you kind of like, you know, you’re six feet. the, you you get some inclinations. Then you look at the EQ, uh, and where are you weak or strong on that?

07:43
Like for me, I adapt very well. I’m pretty good with the adaptation area of EQ, like, um, in relating to others in sensing that situation, uh, other areas need some work, but you start to know thyself and then, and, I think ultimately, and this is the idea that we talk about willingness to adapt is that. If you don’t, if you’re just going to, like you said, just say, this is who I am and I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to adapt. I’m not going to change for somebody else.

08:14
I’m not willing to look inside. See, again, that’s another area I challenge the listeners is to be willing to look inside, to be willing to have feedback because yes, sometimes you might not like what you have to say. mean, we would have a meeting and ah you’d be like, okay, Alex, well, you dominated the entire meeting again. And I have a good team that’s very nice about it. Or they’ll just say, did I dominate that meeting? Yeah, he kind of did. Right. And, and so.

08:43
It’s encouraged. I think that’s part of as well. Another issue is in the workplace or in every home space as well, encouraging a culture of we want to improve. want to get better. Did I do that right? Was that, it’s not afraid to get feedback. Our step. And I think this is one of the challenges, Eric is our self worth is so tied to who we, who we think we are and that if we’re getting feedback,

09:10
That’s why I think it’s hard to get feedback is we think that we’re saying you’re not a good person.

09:16
And I would call that pride or ego, right? Sure. And now we’re going to start getting into, if you don’t like how I did it, I feel rejected. My pride or ego gets in the way. Now I resent you. I harbor resentment towards you. I resist what you’re giving me. And now I seek revenge. I’m going to, I’m going to lash out at you. I’m going to, I’m going to give you a zinger next. I’m going to withhold myself from you out of revenge because of how you made me feel. Instead of just receiving

09:45
that there’s a flex needed in that situation. Now we can go into all of that at a different time and get in those weeds. But the point is this, you said it, know, know thyself. I know who I am. I know to what level of disc I’m at. My eye is way too big. Now if I take the assessment, I went from high I to ID to now IC. Now I know the test so well that maybe I’m manipulating it, maybe I’m not, but…

10:14
When I really put myself in my frame of work, I’ve got to be as detail oriented as I can be, which is really hard for me, as you know. I don’t do well at creating PowerPoints or doing spreadsheets. It’s like, that looks pretty, throw it in there. So we have people for that. That’s where strength is better. into play. Well, our COO who runs the company, has it for years. He’s all under his slides. That’s right. She makes it all better. Anything we have, she just makes it better. Takes it up a notch. we’re going to say this, we can’t do it all.

10:43
I also can’t communicate perfectly all the time in just my style. So I know myself level one, I learn how to identify other people where they are very easily. And then level three is adapt. That’s the relationship management you’re talking about. What some people miss is level one, two or three. They don’t know where they are. They’re not very self-aware. They don’t know how to identify the room, read the room, identify others, or they don’t know how to relationally adapt. And you need all three.

11:13
You really do need all three. So we got to get our pride out of the way, our ego out of the way and say, okay, I’m not so worried about, you know, digging my feet and, know, just like, this is who I am, take it or leave it. That does not work. Think about a marriage. You have to flex and meet in the middle. Think about a team and leadership. You got to flex and meet in the middle. And when you have a patient sitting across from you and they’re terrified, you don’t just go, this is a dental office, you’ll be fine. That’s not what we do.

11:42
We flex to their need, we make them feel comfortable, and then we earn the right to do dentistry on them. It’s the same thing in communication. I’m going to probably slow it down a bit. I’m going to be more calming. I’m going to ask more questions. I’m not just going to come in, know, horns blazing and go, woo hoo, high five. I’m so glad you’re here. That doesn’t work for people. So the people who have the most difficult time are the furthest out, the highest percentages of that style.

12:12
So if you’re thinking about the four square grid of discs, the visual that we use in coaching, use like, you know, zero would be the cross the middle and the higher the D number, the further out they go away from the other three styles. It’s like this imagery of, okay, you’re 55 % D personality style. That’s way out there. I style at 60 % your way out there. It’s going to be harder for you to reach in the other groups and adapt. So we have to first know that extreme examples will have a challenge with this. And number two, the most,

12:42
The most likely liars, and this is gonna be, my name is Eric, I’m your friend. The most likely liars are people who don’t have either great self-awareness, so they’re lying on accident, or B, they don’t perceive themselves to be as drastic as they are. And that would be the D dominant style who’s very extreme. They’ll profile as an S, and you’re going, they’re not Well, I think what happened is there was a gentleman that I was working with and.

13:10
I think he was like super high D. Very high D, precise that. And it was like everything else was like minimal. And I was shocked because I thought he had I, but I guess not. And I think that the other issue is, and I think that the disc is secondary to this, and I’ll tell you what it is, the willingness, again, the willingness to change, the willingness to, I mean, I’ve seen you go full I.

13:40
And it is a spectacle. It’s fun at an event, but it’s amazing how you can tone it down and like almost eliminate it when necessary and just be respectful and straight and clear and, and, and yes, sir. You know, or, or you go into an S mode or an R C mode. Um, and I think it takes incredible, uh, I know your wife works with you a lot too. She, she’s tough. mean, she, she, she’s a psychologist and she does, you can’t get with anything with her. Um, brilliant woman and um,

14:08
So you have good training, but the thing is, that the challenge is when someone doesn’t see, how do you not see, just see like, you know, they’re able to, right. They’re blind to it. How do you, and you know, you might have people listening and say, Oh, my husband’s like that or wife or, or my dentist or my staff, all, they don’t even see, they don’t even like, how do you, and then, so I want to answer that. And then the other

14:37
Second part of the question is in implementing change, do you need to like everyone to be there or do you need certain leaders to be able to facilitate a space for it? okay. So question one was, yeah, like, what do you do with those people? And then two is, you know, is there somebody has to facilitate it. And then, you know, this is an aside when you say, Hey, you have to your ego aside. I don’t have an ego.

15:07
You know, what they’re saying. You cannot identify that. Well, these are, I love this sort of conversation, of course. And you’re right, Abby gives me the nudge. She gives me the elbow, you know, tells me all the time, hey, when you’re going in there, seek to understand before you’re seeking to be understood, you know, and ask questions. Don’t just try to be the most interesting person around that people don’t like that. And that’s about reading the room and relationship management. That’s EQ.

15:36
And so for me, that takes your 10,000 hours. That takes the focusing on it repeatedly and having conversations about it repeatedly. So luckily I’m talking about it all day long with clients all the time. I love talking about it. So organically it’s going to help me. But when your focus and love is, just want to work on teeth and your focus and training isn’t, how do I effectively communicate with people? You actually do yourself a disservice because it diminishes the opportunity you have to work on teeth.

16:02
because you have to earn the right to do the dentistry. So in case acceptance, however we want to frame it, this plays a huge role in it. So for me, it’s mental toughness because the draw is going to be to go back to that default of high I over the top I, that’s going to be the pull. And I have to exercise a lot. I got to go to the gym a lot and I got to have mental toughness and repeat, repeat, repeat, right? Mastery.

16:30
go through the process over and get better every single time, better every single time. So every time I talk about it, every time I work on it, I’m getting better. But if you’re just forget about it, this is who I am, it’s going to create a ceiling, the law of the lid. It’s gonna create a ceiling on your effectiveness in relationship management. And then second question, I would say you have, as a leader, you have to instill a culture of flexibility in your practice. And you do that by example, first, as the leader doctor, you do it second by being the integrator.

16:59
You know, the COO, you do that by next level leadership and so on. And everybody’s following that, that sort of example that you’re setting of flexibility. Cause if you’re going to be stuck and stubborn, they’re going to be stuck and stubborn too. It takes everybody to make it work. is very top down in that, in the sense that, I like what you said about mental toughness. I almost like my title that, uh, the name of the show because mental toughness, I, as I think about it, I think

17:28
One of the hardest things to do is see yourself, take, take feedback, take responsibility. Uh, that is the ultimate mental toughness. That’s the cause you can, you see prima donnas and athletes and great, great producers, they’re prima donnas, but yet they work hard on other other stuff. But the hardest thing is the mental space is, is, is being able to face that. And.

17:57
When I say top down, as I think you really were clear on that, that the visionary, the owner or whatever, uh everyone looks to them. And if they’re unhinged, it’s now certainly like you can have people in the executive team that can hold a space and support it. But at the end of the day, they’re looking for the leader to be able to demonstrate. the onus is on them. So it’s like,

18:26
You know, we’ve heard so many times, Dennis are like, my team’s no good or this is no good. Well, what is it when you’re pointing your finger? There’s three pointing back or back or let’s you have more fingers, but there’s some figures falling back to you. So my point is, that, is that it’s, it’s you saying I have to create the space for, for my team to, to, to improve. So part of it is.

18:53
So let’s get right to it because I’m, that’s where I’m, I’m always at implementation. How do I, how I fix this? So, so number one, and we’re picking on the owners here, the dentists, I get it. Is that it’s saying, okay, I, I, I see the value of having effective communication and leadership in my team. What have I done for myself? Right. So, so what’s about action steps? Like, how do I do it? So what have I done for myself and leadership? Well, make sure.

19:22
that you are being coached. We have dental coaches, we have leadership coaching, we have all types of coaching here at All-Star or someone else, but coaching is critical. Also, we have a leadership retreat only for dentists and business owners. That’s the, I’ll put a link in the show notes for that in January. And that’s something that’s so important that the leaders are investing in themselves first and having the humility and mental toughness and mental fortitude to

19:51
to set that space. Then after that’s done and they’re being coached and they’re working on it, they have a plan, then it’s right, Hugh has no whatever, cast a first stone, right? You have to start first, right? So then it goes, now I have to power my team. So I know doctors don’t mind spending on themselves, I get it. Some do, some don’t. But then the next level is now have empower my team. And that’s where… uh

20:19
And like I say, just for full disclosure, we do these events and you’re the emcee, you’re the lead speaker, and we don’t do them because they’re like super profitable. I’ll come to this. We have you, you, you, uh, you got me Eric where I said, I don’t want to do events. go, but our clients need it. I’m like, ah, Eric, don’t play that card. But it’s true. Is that, is that now that the dentist has been transformed is working on the owner. Now, when you bring your team into a space where.

20:48
They’re learning whether it’s case acceptance that we teach a one day program. We give a two day all star live or all other of the, the, you know, all star people are the all star tribe or philosophy, whether you’re a member or not, um, following a podcast, come together, and then we’re working on leadership and communication and so on. So it’s gotta be this ongoing process. Uh, so for me, as I’m listening to you, I’m always thinking action steps. I’m thinking, okay.

21:16
Uh, cause, cause again, for those who don’t know, I’m my dad’s a dentist, your dad’s a dentist. And, know, we’re dealing with that. They weren’t designed to be leaders. And we’ve seen that process and obviously work with thousands of dentists and practices. But the, but the point is, is like, what do I do about it? What are the steps? Yeah. Me as the leader and visionary and then team. So, uh, and it’s ongoing. Like I said earlier, I think I’m in it so much that it.

21:43
seems to resonate in the 10,000 hour, all that works. have more opportunity as we were talking about in our mastermind group, more opportunity in that world to improve. And it’s been hard for me to shift. One action step that I’d say, if you’re to walk away from this podcast, from this episode, away, understand the difference between what we call center set or bounded set. Okay. So I have a vision of who I want to be. I have a goal of a human being that I want to be how I want to live.

22:12
You could define that as a 10, you know, we talk about that, but like integrity or, know, whatever it is, put that on there. That’s what I’m going to focus on who I’m going to be. And I think what some people do is they make the mistake of being bounded set, bounded to looking, just getting distracted from who I want to be and looking over here and saying, well, how is this person? Oh, I’m doing better than them. I’m good. That’s you’re not, you’re not trying to compare yourself to other people. You’re trying to compare yourself to your ideal. Who are you trying to be? So if you want to walk away from this,

22:40
Get really descriptive on who you are in your best version of you. Write down characteristics of who that person is. How do they communicate? How do they treat other people? How do they engage? What do people think about them? And then what are the behaviors that are required to do that? And then start looking at your day every day and go, how did I do? And be honest with yourself because everybody knows the book Napoleon Hill wrote, right? Think and Grow Rich. He wrote a book that not many people know about called Outwitting the Devil. I think the title

23:10
really made it not that sellable. But it actually is, the concept’s really cool. You know, how do I, and it doubles a broad term, but it just means failure, uh loss, lack of success. How do I outwit those things? How do I outwit failure? And the number one characteristic was what they call it drifting. Your billyage drift away and just get distracted and go, I’m not paying attention to what Eric and Alex are saying right now. I’m driving and.

23:38
And you lose effectiveness without focus. So how do I maintain my drive back to mental toughness? I go back into mental toughness mode and go, okay, every day I’m going to have the mental exercise of saying, how did I compare to my best version of me? How do I check that box and go, okay, end of day, I look back at my clients and actually verbally externally process with Abby and I go, here’s what I did with each client. Here were my wins, here were my losses and how I interacted with them.

24:07
Not like just ROI, but relationship. What differences and connections are we making with people? What did I enjoy about my day? What made me feel fulfilled when I was performing at that level when I was being, and then she does the same thing, hard and the wins, both. And that will allow you to stop getting into drift mode too much. You want to stay in drive mode. Your mental toughness is driving, driving towards what? My ideal version of me.

24:34
And so this becomes really big when you think about that. It’s this, foundation into all of those things. I hope that’s making sense. I’m trying to explain it. It’s very profound. like, Ooh, that’s going to be good. Highlight of the highlights right there. Really good stuff. The, I’ll kind of wrap it up with, with this is that I look around. So I have a personal trainer. I’m gonna have to have have her on, on the show. And I work with different coaches, psychological coaches, all this stuff. And I realize like life is.

25:04
is an ongoing process of you have to continue to inject that not uh focus, not drift. So if you want to maintain weight, if you want to maintain muscle mass, you have to keep doing it. Unfortunately with the gym today, I’m thinking she worked me hard and I’m like, I’ve got to keep doing this. You stop, lose it. Every time you stop, you lose it. You stop training. Uh, you know, it’s like, Oh, I learned everything to know about leadership. No, you don’t. And you, you know, whatever you focus on your

25:33
whatever’s important, you’ve got to continue to stay the course. And fortunately, and one shortcut to that is just to surround yourself with people that can encourage you mentors, coaches, what have you that, uh, and, also model of what others are doing and everyone that’s done it successful, they do it all the time. And so Eric, thank you so much oh for the wonderful podcasts on, I think I’m a change to mental toughness. I like that. That’s a really good.

26:03
Good topic. so thank you for joining us. We’ll do it again. Remember to follow us to everybody on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, get the episodes as they are released, share with your friends, hit the subscribe button. All that stuff helps our helps us get more videos out to everybody else and so on. And until next time go out there and be an all time star.

26:28
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at AllStarDentalAcademy.com.