Grow Your Clinic

Peter Flynn: Practitioner Pathways to Clinical Mentor, Mentoring Underperforming Practitioners & Boosting Billable Utilisation | GYC Podcast E287

• Peter Flynn • Season 5 • Episode 287

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Transform your clinic's mentorship dynamics with insights from Peter Flynn, who navigates the complex world of mentorship transitions in clinical settings. Discover how to maintain the delicate balance between friend, colleague, and leader, fostering an environment where communication and feedback lead to growth and mutual respect. Uncover practical strategies for easing hierarchical tensions by aligning feedback methods with your team’s preferences. This episode promises to equip you with the tools for cultivating a positive mentoring culture that boosts team morale and performance.

We delve into the essential skills for effective mentorship, exploring why a stellar practitioner doesn't automatically equate to a great mentor. Supported by the Mental Mastery Program, Peter highlights the pitfalls of unsupported transitions and the critical need for continuous mentor development. Learn to ask insightful questions that reveal deeper issues and create structured mentoring frameworks to ensure accountability and growth. Performance metrics take centre stage as we connect them to client outcomes, enhancing the understanding of professional value and success.

Mentoring goes beyond individual growth; it has a profound impact on team retention and clinic attractiveness. By fostering a culture of qualitative feedback, clinics can better align their promises with actual support and create a sustainable growth path. Listen as Peter shares strategies that enhance team competency and minimise recruitment needs, creating a lasting culture that appeals to potential hires. Through thoughtful reflection and strategic questioning, you'll gain valuable insights to position your clinic for long-term success. Join us to explore these transformative approaches and find additional resources on our website and YouTube channel.

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Announcement:

This is the Grow your Clinic podcast from Clinic Mastery. We help progressive health professionals to lead inspired teams, transform client experiences and build clinics for good. Now it's time to grow your clinic.

Ben Lynch:

Peter Flynn. Amongst many things, you run Mentor Mastery for academy members who have leaders in their clinics that have taken on a portfolio of mentoring other practitioners, so you get to help support them in their growth and development. You also get to see what some of the key challenges that they have and also that clinic owners have when they bring someone into that role or they graduate into that role. What are some of those key challenges that you find? First, maybe on the clinic owner side, when they've got a team member that is becoming quote unquote a mentor for other therapists in the team quote a mentor for other therapists in the team. What are some of the key obstacles for that graduation, that transition of a team member? Maybe more so from the clinic owner's side?

Peter Flynn:

From the clinic owner's side. Maybe I'll talk about my own journey in this one as well. I think, as the clinic owner, especially as you're growing and developing, there's going to be a few key challenges that I see pop up anyway and that I went through, and I think the first one for me was being able to communicate really effectively and being out of balance, being a friend and being a peer and a colleague and being a leader and a mentor and having to have some of those tough conversations at times in order to help people to get better, to improve. And I also find that that's the challenge when someone and this is what the mentors say that we work with is that transition from being a colleague to having to have those conversations, to being in that. I guess there is a bit of a dynamic there, a dynamic change, and so being able to navigate that effectively and efficiently and doing it from a place of care and love.

Ben Lynch:

So I'd say that's one of the big ones yeah, just with that, pete, sorry to interrupt, but with that while you're on there, what are some of the key things that you've found useful for making that or helping that mentor navigate some potential awkward scenarios perceived real. What are some things and we'll come back to some other key challenges and things to consider when when making an evolution like this in your clinic but how do you navigate that or how have you coached those people to navigate it?

Peter Flynn:

I'd be interested in your perspective too.

Peter Flynn:

What we've gone through with the, with the mentors and mental mastery, is first identifying the outcome, so, with the person you're working with, identifying the outcomes that you'd like to be achieving and then pre-framing that. Hey, you know, I'm gonna put my hand up here and say that I'm still learning. I don't have all the answers, and we're going to be going on a learning journey together and being a pre-frame things like. Throughout this journey, we're probably going to have to have some tricky conversations at time, and when I give you feedback that might feel like critical feedback, just know that it's coming from a place of love and care, because I want to see you achieve, you know, insert goal xyz, and I'm not going to have all the answers, and at times you may have feedback for me and I would appreciate if you gave me that feedback candidly. So being able to have those pre-framing conversations around hey, we've got to have some tough conversations, but this is how we genuinely improve as humans and as healthcare professionals, and that's okay and that they should go both ways.

Ben Lynch:

I love that distinction of it going both ways, because I think part of that friction or perceived challenge is, you know, maybe a battle of the egos or feeling like you need to be right or feeling like you're wrong and so actually just calling it out. I really love that. And the other element that you mentioned there was reframing that there are going to be times where we need to give some more constructive feedback or critical feedback, I think, one that is just awesome to be able to anchor back to, especially in good times, and also asking them I learned this from you a while back asking people how they prefer to receive feedback when that time comes, like, what are some of the things that I can do if I need to share some feedback with you about areas of opportunity or things that maybe I can see you're falling behind with or struggling with, how can I best deliver that for you? And I learned that from you, yeah, many years back. And I think it's a really subtle and very important way to help a mentor make that transition from being colleagues or peers to this, you know, somewhat perceived perhaps, hierarchy or authority that they may feel they have now in this new role. So I really like that distinction.

Ben Lynch:

And just to interrupt the podcast for one moment, did you know that one of the common challenges for a growing clinic is the inefficiency from scattered systems? You've got duplicates everywhere. No one knows where to find any of the information they need for policies, procedures or training and it creates a bottleneck, always coming to you as the owner or leader of a clinic to have to know where everything is and how to do it. Well, that's why we created a tool called Allie. It is your one place, your source of truth for all policies, procedures, training and performance, for all policies, procedures, training and performance. It plugs into your patient management system and is the storehouse for all of the important compliance docs that you need to have to run a good business and have your best practices documented, shared with your team and, importantly, acknowledged by your team.

Ben Lynch:

Yes, you can even track. Have they read it for any auditing or compliance purposes? You can head over to aliclinicscom and you can test it out for an entire month for free, no credit card down. There's like literally no risk. Give it a crack and I'm sure you'll love it and reach out if you need any help in systemizing your business and streamlining those things so they're no longer scattered. Right, let's head back to the episode now. Is there anything else that you found particularly useful there in helping make that transition? So it's like pre-framed that there's going to be tough conversations. Make that feedback go both ways I really love that and also nuancing the feedback to suit their style. Is there anything else that you found particularly useful in helping make that?

Peter Flynn:

transition. I'd say so. I think the other thing that probably really helps with this is understanding that you don't need to have all the answers. And as a mentor and as a leader, I think and this was where I really fell down is I felt like when I moved into that leadership role and I was mentoring people, that if I didn't have the answers, it somehow showed that I wasn't a good leader, I wasn't fit to lead, I wasn't fit to be a mentor, and that I felt like maybe people would lose respect for me if I couldn't answer their question on the spot, which, and what does that lead to? That led to me feeling stressed and anxious about some of these mentoring sessions, made it very hard to mentor people who were more experienced than me in certain areas, if not impossible, and this huge feeling of imposter syndrome. And I can tell you what that's not going to feel good when you sort of bottle all that up and decide that, hey, I have to be perfect all the time.

Peter Flynn:

And so one of the things we go through with the mentors is understanding that, hey, your role is not to be the guru, right? You're not here to be the know-it-all and just have the answer for everything. In fact, if you did, people probably wouldn't like working with you and you wouldn't teach people to learn. You wouldn't teach people to think for themselves, right? So if we flip it and go, what is it? What is a good mentor? What makes up a good mentor? It's someone who empowers someone to learn and grow. And sure, you can give people the answers sometimes when they do need them. But a lot of the time our answers and our advice comes from our past experiences and when we pull that forward into the future and apply it to someone else, it might not be that effective. And so, keeping that in mind, that our advice is most useful to ourselves.

Peter Flynn:

And I'm sure you've felt this before, ben, when you've talked to a friend about a problem you have and they straight away go into advice or solution mode. Us men do that really well, right, and you just sit there for five minutes listening to this, this solution going. You don't actually understand the context behind all of this. Right now you nod politely, they leave and you're like that was a waste of time. And we do the same thing in mentoring.

Peter Flynn:

So it's understanding that the person in front of us we can help them to understand, to work through and to get that answer themselves. And it's okay if you put your hand up and you say, hey, I don't actually know, but how about? Over the next week you go research this, I'm going to talk to this person, this source, etc. And we're going to come back together and we're going to work through this together. I think that's a really positive, uh, mentoring relationship and it also takes the stress away from because it's not your role to know everything. It's your role to support them to learn, and I think that's the distinction You've talked about the advice monster.

Ben Lynch:

Before taming your advice monster, that's what you're referring to. There is that when you want to just jump into solutions, because you also feel that obligation, expectation, responsibility of you or the mentor, You're meant to kind of be the person that helps the practitioner that you're mentoring make progress, and if you don't have the answers, who's got the answers? And so what I love is you're really pointing to a skill set of being able to have good questions in your arsenal in your conversations. Talk us through some of the questions, because I really loved hearing different questions from you over time some constraint-based thinking questions, some contrarian-style questions. How do you go about supporting mentors to develop that capability and their competency in asking good questions, especially when they don't have the answers?

Peter Flynn:

good question. I think before I even get to that I pre-frame and I did this with clinic owners, with mentors as well is I pre-frame when I go into some advice with people around these sorts of things to give them the framework to be successful is that everything is really simple in theory and it's much more challenging and dynamic in practice. And so one thing that I think does a disservice to a lot of people in that mentor position or even clinic owners when we work with them, is if we confidently say you should do this or if you do this, you'll get this result. Given all of the different factors at play there, I think it's very hard to actually have a, you know, do X, achieve Y type thing, and so I think giving them that nuance, that hey, this, this advice or what we're talking through now in theory is fantastic, but once you drop that in the real world, all of these other factors, this multifactorial issue is going to come into play here. So I can give you the perfect question to ask someone, but they may interpret it differently. They may have had a really bad morning with their partner this morning, maybe they got a health diagnosis that you don't know about the day, like there's all these other things that are going to contribute to this. So take it all with a grain of salt and remember that it's not perfect.

Peter Flynn:

But coming back to your question there around, the type of questions we would get mentors to ask Really, to start with the the questions I've worked with them through is well, how can we really understand the problem? Because if we understand the problem, we can help them to understand and to find the solution. And I think in understanding the problem, it's going deeper and not being afraid to go a little bit deeper and ask. If we think to the coaching habit you know and what else and what else, and if you think that there's a deeper issue, I would be, you know, the first person to say hey, I feel like we're just scratching the surface here and there's a bit of a deeper issue going on, and I could be wrong, but I feel like there's something underneath this, there's an underlying issue here, and if we can find what that is and address that, I feel like we're actually going to help to solve all of these other issues that we're talking through. Is it okay if we delve a little bit deeper now?

Ben Lynch:

Hey, just interrupt the podcast for one moment. Did you know that beyond this podcast, we have a consulting service where we work directly with you as a clinic owner to help grow your clinic? Now if you're wondering how does it work and are these the right people for me, you can send an email to hello at clinicmasterycom. That's hello at clinicmasterycom and we'll arrange a time to have a conversation. Now, on average, people have three conversations with us, spaced over a couple of days or a couple of weeks, to figure out whether we're the right folks to help you in your next stage of business. There's no pressure whatsoever. We want you to feel fully committed to either working with us or not at all. That's totally cool, but that is our specialty that we've built our brand on over a decade now you can read our reviews, testimonials and case studies. We've done a ripping job at helping heaps of people from a variety of backgrounds grow their clinic sustainably. But probably you want to know whether we're the right sort of fit, a values alignment for you. Best way to do that is to have a phone call with us a Zoom call and see whether we can help you out. Send us an email, hello at clinicmasterycom. Let's arrange a time, see where we can launch you into the next stage of your growth. All right back to the episode.

Ben Lynch:

I love that distinction of maybe it's not necessarily these are the questions to us, but you should be asking questions to go deeper rather than just one jump into solutions, feel like you've understood it straight away and you've got to tame that advice monster. But the fact that you are asking questions and going deeper, I've found is a really comfortable or comforting way when I don't know On the surface, when something's presented and someone's looking to you for advice or a solution, actually to start asking questions. What I've always found interesting is, in a clinical sense, broadly, most therapists, most practitioners have this great skill set developed. When a patient comes in, they're asking a lot of questions to reveal a history, to figure out what might be going on before they start advising on a treatment plan. That same skill set, I think, really is quite applicable when we're mentoring practitioners the ability to ask good questions and do a thorough history, to get to the cause, as you're saying, not just this superficial level.

Ben Lynch:

And often I find when practitioners become mentors of other practitioners that you called it there, the imposter syndrome as an example, they feel all of a sudden it's this completely different thing that I'm doing, when actual fact you've got a lot of those skills already developed and refined. You're just wearing perhaps a different hat in a different context. So I really love that ability to ask good questions, as you said you mentioned from the coaching habit and what else is a really great one to ensure you're not just dealing with a superficial level of conversation. So, to just zoom back out for a moment, we went down a nice little rabbit hole there.

Ben Lynch:

The sort of opening question Pete were discussing was when a clinic owner gets one of their team members to become a mentor of the other practitioners in the team. What are some of the common challenges or mistakes that they make? What are some other areas that you find are things to be aware of, whether someone's looking to do this in the future or they've already done it now and perhaps they're dealing with some of these challenges at the moment. What are some of those dynamics that you see play out when a clinic owner installs a mentor to support?

Peter Flynn:

practitioners. I think the next one is understanding that just because you're a great practitioner doesn't mean you're going to be a great mentor, and that we need to provide the learning and the development for that person because, realistically, there is some crossover in the skill sets but it is still a different skill set and they still need to feel supported in doing that. It's still jumping into something that they haven't necessarily done before to that kind of extent or formalized in that way and I would say no one, no one loves me. I mean, I I'm probably a bit different, but most people don't love being thrown in the deep end and going just figure it out, you'll be fine. Giving them a framework and a structure to work within, but then also giving them the support that they need and whether that's the clinic owner giving them that support, whether it's an external company, something like the mental mastery Program is, we find pretty fantastic Little plug there, pretty fantastic to help to support mentors, to have a community where mentors can ask questions and they can say hey, I've had this challenge or I'm working with this person and I'm really struggling to get through.

Peter Flynn:

We had an amazing question the other day where someone posted in and said, when I'm addressing some key areas of things that aren't being done effectively, my mentee, the person I'm working with, is kind of laughing it off. And I'm really unable to get into that, because I can't figure out why they're just kind of laughing it off and saying, oh, it doesn't matter, etc. Etc. What should I do next? And so we had a really good discussion with the whole community actually around. Well, how can, like, what is the deeper issue here? What are some of the questions we could be asking? What is the? You know, what is the real problem and how can we help and how do we need to show up as a mentor for this person?

Peter Flynn:

And so things like that, I think, are fantastic, because as a mentor, I'd say, you know, it's a choppy sea out there, it's not an easy place, and you're going to find challenges. And I mean, I've been mentoring for gosh like seven, eight years now, and you never have a week where you go damn, that was just simple and easy. And you never have a week where you go damn, that was just simple and easy and there were no challenges at all, because people are unique beings, I guess we could say, and the challenges that come with that are. They're personal, they're professional. It's a whole mix of everything, and when you work with people, you've got to be on your toes. What have you found with the clinic owners you've been working with?

Ben Lynch:

I found and you referenced it. I think they're being thrown into the deep end. What I've noticed a lot of clinic owners make the mistake of doing is going. I'm going to provide this great opportunity pathway of a good practitioner to become a mentor of other practitioners on our team.

Ben Lynch:

And then it's kind of like okay, it's over to you now. And then there's no rhythm of connection, there's no structure in the mentoring of the mentor to develop some of those skills or to just have an accountability loop because you're now investing in that role. You've taken X amount of time offline where they're now not doing billable services as a practitioner. They're mentoring those practitioners and so you are making an investment there. How are you knowing that that's actually yielding and what are you doing to improve the capabilities of that mentor in that function? So I often see that there's just this lack of accountability. It's very ad hoc. There's no structure. Literally. There's no, say, bookings in the diary. We're going to meet once a month and talk about how you're going in a mentor capacity, look at the PD development plan for you as a mentor, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that is a key element that I'd encourage all clinic owners to do is to have a set time where they talk about the mentor in that specific role.

Peter Flynn:

Delegation, not abdication, hey.

Ben Lynch:

Yeah, yeah, so true, and I realize people are busy and they kind of think this is a good little milestone in your clinic owner journey, where now perhaps that's a function or role that you were doing and it's a little potential celebration of like, oh, now I don't have to do that, but if you advocate it, as you said, that person's not going to flourish like you want them to. So I'd just encourage all clinic owners to be able to set that rhythm up and see your mentors just saw Pete when it comes to some of the key PD elements for mentors in developing their skills. What are some of the things that you found useful? You mentioned there the Coaching Habit, a really great book that talks about being more coach-like helps you ask better questions. Have you found any other books, videos, resources, courses that have helped mentors get better in their role?

Peter Flynn:

resources, courses that have helped mentors get better in their role. There's quite a few, actually we we do have a little resource called the mentors academy, which I'm sure we can link somewhere in the show notes.

Ben Lynch:

Yeah, because a lot of people were asking us about books, head talks, youtube videos, and so we just compiled them all into a spreadsheet in different functions, from confidence to conversations um asking good questions, et cetera. So, yeah, we can link that up. I was thinking more non-SIEM resources, you found useful.

Peter Flynn:

Yeah, like there's a few things from different areas that I have found useful, that I've sort of compiled like for me anyway, that I really did enjoy. The Coaching Habit and the Advice Monster were two of them. I really did enjoy it. The Coaching Habit and the Advice Monster were two of them. How to have Impossible Conversations is a fantastic book around having really tricky conversations, but from a really positive manner. I thought that was really good.

Peter Flynn:

There's a book called Fooled by Randomness, which I think is important to understand the role that randomness plays in what we do and being able to acknowledge that as a mentor and understand that if something someone you're working with does really well, that's fantastic. It's not necessarily directly correlated, but if someone also does poorly, it's not also directly correlated. So it's helping you to understand that you're just tipping the odds in in the favor. Either way, I'd say those are some great resources. And then there's a great ted talk by one of the founders of atlassian. I can't remember who it is, which one of the two it is, but he talks about imposter syndrome and I think that's also a really fantastic thing to watch, to see someone who's worth you know many billions of dollars talk about.

Peter Flynn:

Hey, I still feel like I'm an imposter, like I don't deserve or I'm not good enough because I? I think that all of us think at some point in the future we're going to feel 100 worthy of the role we're doing or what we've achieved or whatnot, whereas I feel and maybe this is part of the anchoring bias is we don't always, we rarely seem to feel that, and you know, we're going to have our ups and we're going to have our downs. And, working as a mentor, there will be times where you feel a bit like an imposter. It may be because you're mentoring someone with more experience than you, or in an area that's slightly different to your own skill set or your own niche, or whatever it may be, or it may just be just I know what happened a bad day to that point.

Ben Lynch:

One of the things that I've I've seen periodically has been when a mentor who still works as a practitioner for, you know, the majority of their week that their performance starts to stagnate or decline in different areas, for instance, some of their key measures we'll come to talking about key measures in a moment but some of their key measures are on the decline and they're trying to support practitioners to improve their performance and contribution to the team and the clients they serve.

Ben Lynch:

I've certainly seen a number of clinic owners observe this and kind of go how do I deal with this situation? And also mentors bring it up going. I'm not doing so well myself as a practitioner right now and the dynamic feels a little bit weird, awkward, potentially to the degree that the others know about their performance, but it just jogged for me when you talk about imposter syndrome, scenarios like that where the mentor themselves is going through a tough patch, whether clinically or personally. In those instances, what have you found useful for mentors to help navigate out of that patch? Perhaps, whether it's a couple of days, a couple of weeks hopefully not a couple of months where they're feeling like they are experiencing imposter syndrome or not doing so well, what are some things you've advised them to get back into being their best versions of themselves?

Peter Flynn:

Good question, I think. Firstly, to understand that it's okay that you can't be at your best all the time. Now we want to strive for that, but it's unrealistic to always be performing at your best, otherwise that would no longer be your best. It would be your average then, right. So I would look at it from the perspective of you're going to have challenges that come up right Like. You may have a serious relationship breakdown, you may have someone close to you pass away. There's a whole range of things that could happen, and these things are going to impact you, whether you admit it or not. Right, all of us. They will impact us.

Peter Flynn:

I think the first step is to acknowledge it, to acknowledge that it is likely going to have an impact, and to talk about it with the clinic owner. Right, let's say, you've like I can use a recent one my granddad passed away a few months ago. You know, being able to acknowledge and talk with the clinic owner to say, hey, this week I am, you know, just struggling a little bit to really show up as my best self and ask for support. Ask for the support that you need, whether it is some time off, whether it is maybe a slight decrease in caseload or decrease in workload over a short period of time. What is it that you need or you think you need? And then if you are seeing a you know let's call it a sustained decrease in performance for more than a week, let's actually sit down with the clinic owner and again ask for help, ask them to mentor you, to look at your numbers, look at your own numbers and just think about well, if I bring this back to basics because it's always going to come back to basics, it's never the fancy thing, that's never the fancy thing that we need. It's typically just bringing it back to doing the basics really well, because if you've been a high performing therapist, there's no reason why you can't get back there in a very, very short period of time.

Peter Flynn:

And just look at what is it we think that we need to work on, because each number tells a story. Let's say, your cancellations have gone from 10% to 15%. Okay, well, let's actually just go and look at each of those. How did we show up for those people? How well did we plan? How well did we show up for those people? How well did we plan? How well did we show them the plan? How well did we build rapport with them. Okay, how do we make them feel? Do we make them feel safe, like they're in the right place? They really analyze what you think you could do better and then create a plan.

Ben Lynch:

I love how just pragmatic it is to drill down, come back to basics, come back to the fundamentals and, as you pointed out earlier, it's that analysis Seek first to understand. The great Stephen Covey principle from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Seek first to understand. And that's a version of asking good questions or doing a deeper analysis or getting to the cause of okay, well, what happened here? I think that's a really great skill set that I've noticed in really good mentors is that they're willing to just peel back the layers, to go deeper, to really understand the situation, because there's an element of humility in that they don't know the answer just yet and might not know the answer. So I really love that.

Ben Lynch:

When we talk about numbers, this is often a awkward point, prickly point, when mentoring practitioners Talking about numbers, mentoring practitioners talking about numbers, performance metrics I'm sure you see a lot of it in Mentor Mastery, where mentors are saying how do I talk about numbers and get the team to engage in those performance metrics? What are some of the key considerations in having discussions about numbers?

Peter Flynn:

I think, when we're, because we do need numbers. Numbers are important, numbers tell a story, and so we need to be able to understand the numbers and the data in order to understand. What are we doing, what's the impact of the changes that we make and how are we doing moving forwards? How are these changes being implemented effectively or not effectively, and what can we continue to work on? So I think, firstly, the challenges that people face are healthcare professionals tend to not like numbers. They feel like KPIs sometimes shouldn't be applied to them, that they're there to help people. They're not there to just achieve you know, x amount of people seen per week, or billable hours or whatnot, and so they can push back and they can also feel like it's just financially motivated. Oh, you've set the goal that I need to do 25 billable hours per week, or I need to see 55 clients per week, if we're looking at MSK example there and so they can push back a little bit against that and go well, hey, whoa, whoa, I'm, I'm not gonna just make money.

Announcement:

I'm here to help people.

Peter Flynn:

Um, in the same line of thought, most people are also asking most therapists are also asking for pay rises, and what we probably need to help them to understand is that what you get paid is a reflection of the value you bring to yourself, to your clients, into and to the company. We need to help them to understand the link between that, but also the link between the specific KPIs that we track and how that impacts client care and client outcomes. And when they can really clearly understand that link, I think that's when the numbers make sense to them and we can have some really good discussions about that. And, similar to what I said before, every number is going to tell it. So how I explain it is every the numbers make sense to them and we can have some really good discussions about that. And, similar to what I said before, every number is going to tell it. So how I explain is every number here tells a story, and I'm not focused on the number. I'm focused on the story behind it, because it's the story of client care and client outcomes.

Peter Flynn:

And so if we were to look at your cancellations we just talked about that one and we see cancellations being too high, I'm not going to sit here and be like Ben cancellations are too high, mate, get them down, and next week we have the same conversation. It's useless, you're going to feel shit, I'm going to feel shit, it's going to be a really bad conversation, but what we'll likely do is go. Hey, ben, what I've noticed is that cancellations have been trending up compared to your average or the clinic average over the past four weeks, and I think this is a really good opportunity for us to look at how we can refine our client care in these areas, because when we see you know, this isn't just one week, it's a bit of a trend. Right, when we can see a trend in increasing cancellations, it could mean a whole range of things. It could mean that we're missing the mark a little bit with our communication, our management plan, that people are not understanding why they're coming back, or they're not understanding the importance of that next session. Maybe we're just not connecting with the people, or we're not getting the right people in your diary, and this is important for us to be able to identify as well.

Peter Flynn:

So is it okay if we spend, you know, five, 10 minutes now just like looking through that list of whoever cancelled, etc. And let's dive deep into this, let's actually talk about why you think this person might have cancelled and let's rate yourself for that session. If 10 was the best session you ever delivered and one was, you know, pretty poor, let's actually rate these and try and be really honest so that we can actually improve moving forwards. We're not here to say you did bad or you did good. We're here to look at what happened and how can we be better. And so there's an example of how I would mentor someone through that with the aim to get great client outcomes, and I would always look back to well, what was this person's initial goal and did we hit that? Because if we didn't hit that goal, then I think we've missed a golden opportunity to help someone.

Ben Lynch:

Great distinction on engaging practitioners in the importance and relevance of the numbers that make up a client's journey ultimately, and helping them understand that connection and link.

Ben Lynch:

I think that's a really great framing, that each number tells a story and it's up to us to explain and understand that story In terms of delivering good mentoring sessions. When these discussions are typically happening not the hallway conversation or the Slack message the actual session itself, that's on a regular basis. Hopefully people have booked them in what do you believe are some key ingredients to that session, maybe even the structure or the nature of those sessions, so that they're more impactful than not? Because what I often find is clinic owners or mentors will say we have a mentoring session but we just spoke about one client. You know, the practitioner just brought up one client and we spent 30 or 45 minutes on one client or just on some clinical stuff. We never got to talking about some of these numbers as an example. So what do you see in best clinics, in the best mentoring structures? What are some of the ingredients of their mentoring sessions?

Peter Flynn:

Firstly, there is a structure. I'd say the people who struggle, they don't have a structure. They walk into the room and they kind of just go what are we talking about today? And if you've read the Coaching Habit, that's kind of what they actually pitch. You is to start with what's on your mind today. So this is where I would deviate and I feel like, for really effective mentoring, we need a good structure and the ingredients for me and this is my own personal bias, to take this as you may, but the ingredients for me are we need a focus sheet beforehand. So we need beforehand that someone has identified. You know, for us it's you know what's your win or what's your gratitude, how you're feeling. You know update me on your actions from whatever we said to do last time and are there any key outcomes you would want from today's session?

Ben Lynch:

And so a focus sheet just to clarify there for non-CM members is we use a Google form, so it's like a free survey form with self-reflection questions. Sorry to interrupt there, but just to clarify a focus sheet. We call it a focus sheet, so you've got a focus for the session. So there are a couple of the questions you like to ask and just on that, how regularly do you change those questions or recommend people change the nature of those questions?

Peter Flynn:

for me never, to be honest. Uh, just just from the perspective of again it comes back to we do the basics well and that's what we're focused on. We don't necessarily need any fancy questions. Um, sometimes you get other questions in there about their dashboard or their numbers, but it's completely up to you as to what's in there. It's what's relevant to that person and the mentoring that you want to be doing with them, and then, coming into that session, you should then have an idea of what's important for this person, what's the outcome that they want today. We can understand that Now you're going to have an outcome you want as well. All right, so you're going to have looked at the numbers and you get the outcome that you want, and typically, I would say selfishly we prioritize that, and so how I pitch that going into that mentoring session is thank you for filling out this focus sheet. You might spend a few minutes to chit chat at the beginning. I can see that you'd like to talk through this or go through this. That's totally fine, okay, is it okay if we go through X, y, z that we want to make sure that we go through today now, and then I'll make sure that we've got 10, 15 minutes for that at the end. Yep, perfect.

Peter Flynn:

And then the other thing that I would always include in that mentoring session is a link back to their goals that they set. So typically we would set quarterly goals. So we're going to be going through, let's say, the cancellations in that example, and then we're going to be going through, let's say, the cancellations in that example, and then we're going to be going through the key thing that they want to go through, which is normally something very clinical. That's what therapists love to talk through. And then at the end I would have a bit of a touch base on how are we moving towards.

Peter Flynn:

You know, you said your goal for this quarter is to do this or to achieve this. Can you give me a quick update on this one and is there anything you need from me in order to support you in achieving this? And so we would start with general chit chat, win gratitude, what did you do on the weekend, et cetera, et cetera. Then go into the thing that's important to me as the clinic owner or the mentor, to get the outcomes that we need. Then we go to their key outcome that they'd like to achieve, and then I would touch base on the goals at the end. Now, that's not necessarily the best way to do it, it's just the way that I do it. But having a structure or a framework like that that is relatively prescriptive, that you can give, that has some room to move within it, but it gives a strong foundation. It gives mentors a foundation that they can use to build on and it shows the person, the mentee, the clinical therapist, that hey, we take this seriously and we're a professional unit here.

Ben Lynch:

I love that question at the end as well. Is there anything you need from me in order for you to achieve that goal or make progress on that? That goal or make progress on that? I love it because I definitely hear a lot of mentors talk about the pressure or the burden to solving problems or feeling like they need to drive things, or even the reverse. I feel like there's always this key reliance on them and they're the go-to for everyone by actually putting it back to the practitioner or team member to say you know what are your solutions? Slash, how can I help? I think is a good way to wrap the session as well.

Ben Lynch:

I found it useful periodically to also have what call it a level 10 rating. This came from Rocket Fuel, the book Gina Wickman, I think, is the author, and within that book they talk about rating the meeting. It's reasonably subjective and perhaps you can add some degree of clarity over what each rating might be from zero to 10, 10 being the best, zero being the worst of the scale and we get the person, as part of that session, to give a rating. How would you rate this session out of 10? And what's some commentary context as to why you gave that rating, especially if you're looking to level up sessions and go how can I make this more impactful for you?

Ben Lynch:

You might feel like you've delivered a really good session, but on the other end, the practitioner perhaps doesn't feel like it was as valuable as you thought it was. So, in that vein of humility, of one% better every day, as it says on your shirt, I think I love always looking for opportunities to improve and I think it also shows to the practitioner I'm actively looking to make these sessions better and I'm sure you want that as well. So if we can make this a collaboration, we can really make some great gains. And it might be about the preparation. We need to be a bit more prepared for the session, or sessions should be shorter, or we should have more time for this area. So I like, yeah, periodically. I don't think you need to necessarily do it for every session all the time, but for those ones that maybe are a little bit newer or trickier, I think that that's also a good way to wrap.

Peter Flynn:

I asked you a version of that. I'll be honest with you I don't love that question because I find that people tell me what they think I want to hear not what they actually think, as I asked them, what did you find most valuable today, or what was most valuable for you today?

Peter Flynn:

Because that helps, I mean A they get to have a bit of reflection and they, at the end of the session, they leave the session thinking about the value that they received, which is always a positive right. We want them leaving on a positive note, but it also helps me to understand what does this person feel is valuable? And the reason I said I don't love the other question is because I always got somewhere between a seven, eight or a nine. It was never a ten, it was never below a seven, and I just wonder are people really being honest with me when?

Ben Lynch:

it's a, it's a great point and I think, as you mentioned earlier, everything that we do, we kind of need to test and measure and it's not right all the time for all people. I know there are some people that are much more, as we'd say, like high D, like straight to the point, and that will tell you it's probably better for someone like that who's going to be like that was a five, that wasn't particularly good.

Peter Flynn:

It could be a lot better than most people who, yes, will, will be kind of um, you're much kinder in in their rating yeah, I just, I just think from the health professional, uh very empathetic, uh personalities, um, compared to like, let's say, uh other industries, I think we'd like and this is my personal opinion I think if you're looking at like finance or business, you're probably going to get much better responses, and in health professionals, I tend to just feel like I'm just getting bluff and so I just changed that up a little bit, but anyway, personal bias yeah, no, I, I, I agree.

Ben Lynch:

I think, like you're saying, it's for the right type of person and also, probably what's most valuable when we've done that has been the explanation for the rating rather than the rating itself.

Ben Lynch:

That just is something to anchor them and then they have to sort of back it up with why which is kind of another way of saying what was valuable or not valuable if they're willing to give you a harder score, if they're willing to give you a harder score. Pete, you covered some awesome ground here, from mentoring session structure through to some of the common challenges or obstacles in progressing a practitioner to being a mentor. Do you have any sort of final summaries for those clinics that are looking to grow? We know that supporting your team is a very key part of growing sustainably, and mentoring structures are such a vital activity to make that happen, whether you're doing it as a clinic owner or you've got mentors taking care of practitioners. Are there any other really critical things that you've come across in your day-to-day support of these types of clinics that you think are really important to know and understand?

Peter Flynn:

I think, if we look at the landscape in 2024, when we're recording this one right now, what is going to make clinics successful, moving forwards, is their ability to retain their key team members and to hire the right people onto their team. I think that is, you know, the really successful clinics are going to do that really well over the next few years, and the clinics that struggle more over the next few years, they're going to be the clinics that lose therapists and they're not able to hire the right people. And so, when we look at it from that perspective, one of the problems I sometimes see in the industry is a mismatch between what is promised when someone is joining the team from a mentoring perspective and support, and what is actually delivered. And so I think, being really mindful that it's not just about what we say we're going to do, but it's also about what we do and how we do it, and getting consistent feedback from our team on how well are we actually living up to those expectations, and so I think that that's a key thing to remember and, when you're thinking about your business plan, really focusing on how do we with the current team we have, you know, focusing on how do we with the current team we have.

Peter Flynn:

You know, if we like, if we had to make sure at the end of this year everyone is still here, what do we need to do to make that happen? And if we were going to create a list of, you know, wait list of people wanting to work with us, what would we be doing different? Or what would we be doing more of or less of? And so I think those kind of questions to think about strategically for me, from a mentoring perspective, I think, would be absolutely critical. What about yourself, mate?

Ben Lynch:

Absolutely. I totally agree. I think recruitment is a challenge. Retention is a challenge as you grow your clinic and so of the people that we have today. I totally agree, how can we improve the competency and capacity of those people? And I think mentoring structures is so valuable and can actually help in those other two areas of recruitment and retention. Either they help you really attract people because you've built a name for being really supportive and backing it up.

Ben Lynch:

I agree I see a lot of people say they do it, but they don't really do it in their recruitment. And also I think sometimes people are looking to recruit because they're like, oh, we've got all this demand for our service and we're at capacity. But if you really went through it and really analyzed, could you help your therapists see and serve an extra patient a day or do an extra billable hour a day or a week? And do you need to recruit right now? Like, are you truly at quote capacity or um trending in that direction? I think, uh, that can definitely help. Uh, some of the timings I see people add team members without actually supporting their current team to be able to see and serve more people, and so I think that can really help you grow sustainably by building the competency and capacity of your current team. So I'm great.

Peter Flynn:

I like it.

Peter Flynn:

I think we see stress when people have large teams that are underutilized, and that creates financial stress and that creates decisions being made from places of scarcity and you know, none of us are our best when we're making a decision from a place of scarcity.

Peter Flynn:

So creating that abundance helps us to be better leaders, to make better decisions, moving forwards and even just considering, if you like, let's say you're a new grad and you look at these two different teams, you're going to potentially go work in one of them everyone there has five plus years experience and the other one, everyone's you know, a new grad or in their second year. You're probably thinking well, this team has a great culture because people stay there longer and there's more experienced people for me to work with and learn from, and so just by retaining your team longer, you're going to make it easier to hire. And thinking about how can you make it easy to hire? You could even let people know on your website how long people have been there. You can, if that's something that you have as an advantage. What is the average tenure or the median, or however you want to do this at your clinic. Things like that can really help. So, all in all, you're always going to be winning by having good team members stay longer.

Ben Lynch:

Pete, to put a wrap on it, what I loved from what you said just a moment ago, which was a version of what would need to be true for us to retain all of our team members, or what would need to be true if dot, dot, dot. I think that's something that you do really well, which is ask good questions. I think that's why you're one of the best mentors going around and why you lead the mentor mastery is because you ask such good questions, and I think that enables you know some deeper thinking and, hopefully, some better actions and strategies off the back of it. I think people trying to jump too quickly to solutions it's kind of where we started this conversation. But asking different questions, better questions, like what you just did there, I think that's a great way to move forward. So, for those that are listening or watching, perhaps to document some of these questions and do some thoughtful reflection, engage some of your team members, perhaps, and perhaps it gives you a new lens on some opportunities that are right underneath your nose in terms of growing sustainably.

Ben Lynch:

Pete, thank you so much for sharing so generously. Thank you, my friend. We'll see you on another episode of the Grow your Clinic podcast very soon. You can catch all the show notes at clinicmasterycom and please come and subscribe over on YouTube. We're doing a lot more content and especially a lot of screen shares so you can see some of the things we're talking about, which will help in you growing your clinic sustainably. All right, we'll see you on another episode very soon.

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