Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:00
Communication really comes down to optionality. Human beings value convenience. It’s just what’s changed in the last 20, 30 years. And I’ll use dating as an example because I think it’s the easiest one. Whereas 30 years ago, you didn’t really have a choice. If you wanted to meet somebody, unless you did an arranged marriage like we probably did in our communities, 30, 40, 50 years ago, you pretty much have to go to a bar. You have to go meet someone. Whereas now when the optionality becomes that or dating apps, people will always opt for the easiest option.
00:35
This is Dr. Meenal and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I wanna know it all. Communication is key in any industry and healthcare is no different. As healthcare providers, we are not always the best communicators. Effective communication between patients, doctors and caregivers is essential.
01:04
for better health outcomes and building trusting relationships. Our guest, Brenden Kumarasamy, is the founder of MasterTalk. He coaches ambitious executives and entrepreneurs to become the top 1% communicators in their industry. He also has a popular YouTube channel called MasterTalk. Welcome, Brenden. Thank you so much for being on today. Of course, Meenal. Thanks for having me. So why can we not communicate anymore?
01:34
I think that’s for a few reasons. Number one, I really believe that communications is a problem for every generation. A lot of people seem to think that, and believe, that communication is now a problem because of social media and how now younger kids are not looking at each other anymore, they’re looking at their phones. And I think there’s some truth to that, absolutely. But the other piece that’s really important to consider is even back then, people weren’t talking to each other that much either. You know, at the end of the day,
02:05
Communication really comes down to optionality. Human beings value convenience. It’s just what’s changed in the last 20, 30 years. And I’ll use dating as an example because I think it’s the easiest one. Whereas 30 years ago, you didn’t really have a choice. If you wanted to meet somebody, unless you did an arranged marriage like we probably did in our communities, right? 30, 40, 50 years ago, you pretty much have to go to a bar. You have to go meet someone. Whereas now when the optionality becomes that or dating apps, people will always opt for the easiest.
02:34
option. Same thing with phones. Phone calls are a lot tougher, but 40 years ago, you only have the option of doing a phone call, whereas now you can opt for calling people or texting people. So there’s definitely a tendency that people are practicing less, but I do feel communications are a prevailing problem across every generation or else everybody would be in a happy marriage. And that is not the case, unfortunately. So how is this going to affect us? Like, what do you see as our future, our kids future?
03:03
Yeah, I think it’s going to affect us in a lot of ways. Number one, I feel in general, what you don’t practice, you don’t improve. Right? So if you don’t get better at something, you know, and you know this really well, if you don’t get better at that thing, you won’t be able to improve on it. So if our children are practicing less on average, it’s going to be, they’re just doing less reps. They’re going to be able to communicate less frequently with people. And that’s why I have strategies that we can definitely talk about on the show. If that’s of interest to you.
03:32
of what I recommend parents and educators do with their kids to get started with practicing communication, public speaking as an art. But really what’s going to happen is I think communication is the only differentiator for everything in our life, especially now with AI, pretty much going to be replacing a lot of the main things. Even in the medical space, this is a healthcare podcast, right? There’s a lot of different things in medical that are now, there’s now robots doing surgeries now, so things are getting crazy. But really the only two big things that will never…
04:01
be displaced, one of those things is obviously the humanity of the human being, that person who understands the human experience that an AI can’t really because they’re not living in that experience. And then the second one is of course communication, how we talk, how we communicate, how we talk to people. So especially in this day and age, I really think it’s important for us to focus on that for sure. So let’s get into what you said. What can we teach our children? How can we teach them to communicate? They are the future tomorrow healthcare providers, right?
04:31
Yeah, absolutely, you know, for me, the perspective that I’ve always taken, which is really the perspective that I’ve taken for communication in general, that’s really where I felt I’ve brought to this space, is just to be able to make it simple. You know, if you take, I’m sure you’ve seen those TikToks, right, where you take a microphone, you go outside and you ask people on the street and that becomes like a clip, hey, what tips do you have for people to get fit? Even the people who are unhealthy will give you the right advice.
05:00
Oh, you know, probably go to a gym, right? Probably eat healthier, like less chocolates, more blueberries, and hey, maybe getting a coach, going to a spinning class might be good, so there’s more consistency in community. Whereas if you do the same experiment, you know, and you go out there with the same microphone, you start asking people, hey, how do you become a better communicator? No one really knows the answer to that question. They go like, uh, I don’t know, dude, like speak more, talk more.
05:27
And that generality creates obviously inconsistency in results. So really what the trending line is, and I’m gonna jump into it right away, is what are some easy things that we can teach people, some extra that I invented or gotten inspiration from other people. So let’s go through them. So the first one that we can do with our kids is called the buyer’s presentation. So the buyer’s presentation, Minal, is just about stepping back and saying, our kids ask us for things all the time.
05:53
mom could have the chocolate bar dad could have destroyed the toy store uh… that can i do this so set us a good no you say yes and she said of course you can have this gavin or john or supri but you have to make a five minute presentation as to why you want it and you have to present compelling case eighty percent of the time the kid gives up because all i don’t want to say i don’t do
06:20
But the second thing, which is 20% of the time, they’ll actually do the presentation. So it forces them to advocate for themselves. That’s just one example of many exercises we share. So, okay, let’s flip a little bit to the healthcare providers, because we suck at communication. Like I, you know, as much as I wanna love to blame the patients and the entitled new generation, I also see the flip side where we’re not good at it.
06:48
Um, and most of us are known to have like bad, you know, chair side, bedside manners. Is that just arrogance or is that communication? Yeah, I definitely don’t think it’s arrogance. You know, I, I definitely think it’s just communication, you know, and let me start with the, from a place of empathy. Obviously healthcare providers have the hardest situation, probably out of any industry in the context of communication for a couple of reasons, number one, and you know, this better than I do, I’m just communicating it so people know.
07:18
that I’m coming from their perspective. The first thing is every communication situation is high stakes, right? Like if you’re a liver expert, all of your patients are dying from liver troubles or challenges that they’re facing with their liver. If you’re in dialysis and you’re like a kidney specialist, it’s not like everyone in the emergency room has great kidneys, right? So every conversation you’re having is a terrible one.
07:45
Every conversation you’re having is a bad one. Obviously there’s good news too that comes out of it when you’re able to save the patient, but doctors and healthcare professionals, whether they’re nurses, whether they’re physicians, whether they’re MDs, they’re always in stressful situations. There’s not many situations on fortunate healthcare that are fun to practice communication. And when something is not fun, like the buyer’s presentation where you have a kid give a five minute presentation, when there’s no positive environment to work on something,
08:16
It’s doctors and healthcare professionals are not really excited to work on those skills. That’s number one. Number two is they’re obviously stressed out, right? Night shifts, overnight shifts, they’re working all the time. They’re always busy and they always have to keep delivering the same news over and over and over again and often that news is negative. It’s not positive. So it’s not really, it’s reinforcing that as well. So the burnout doesn’t help either.
08:40
And then number three, which is more a comment on residency programs in general, when a doctor goes through residency, yes, they’re being taught communication, but they’re not really taught communication from the vantage point of… They are to a certain extent, which is like, hey, let’s make people’s lives better, absolutely. But it’s really about residency, which is rightfully so. Residency programs are mostly focused on…
09:03
making sure that the communication changes are accurate and professional. So it’s a lot more important because there’s so much medical terms and difficulties in that communication style for doctors. That’s more important for the person in residency to communicate the right thing versus the inspiring thing. Like you cannot misdiagnose patients. If you say the wrong thing, it’s going to screw us up and create liability for the hospital too or the insurance provider who’s funding that operation.
09:29
So because of the amount of risk, that’s what creates the challenge. So I don’t blame them. What’s the non-empathetic side? From the non-empathetic side, why, what are, okay, what can we do to communicate better? Totally, totally. I love that. So the non-empathetic side is about saying work on communication, like a system. So what does that mean? I’ll give you a couple of exercises to work on. So.
09:58
There’s three in particular. I call it RQV. So the first one is called the random word exercise. So the random word exercise is about saying, take any word that you want, like phone, like potato, like lip balm, like tissue box, something completely random that has nothing to do with your expertise, and communicate a presentation out of thin air on the spot around that word. And this serves two main purposes. Number one is if you can make sense out of nonsense,
10:27
You can make sense out of anything. If you know how to talk about headphones and potatoes and a bunch of nonsense, when you go back to your specialization, which is the one specialization you’re focused on as an MD, you’re going to be- it’s going to be really easy. Because yes, the terms are difficult, yes there’s medical lingo and terminology that are challenging to learn, but it’s the same conversation every day, all the time, with the same patients. It’s not like a di- I mean maybe if you’re like a general nurse,
10:56
But most of the time, if you’re a dialysis specialist, you’re just working on dialysis patients for the rest of your career. That you’re not gonna switch from dialysis to neurology. It doesn’t make any sense, right? So the conversation is the same. So if you can talk about something random like phones or screens, when you go back to your expertise, you’ll be much better. That’s one example. Another example is video messages, which is V of RQV, where you just send video messages to your staff and the video messages are just inspiring.
11:25
came in i know you stayed up last night to to work on this page i just want to say really appreciate all the hard work and everything that you’re doing it makes people’s days especially for these health care professionals were burned out is really high helps us inspire our teams and helps you practice on video to now that videos becoming a lot more prevalent across all industries so the c of all like i’m i’m one of my clients you of uh… fq hc and like she has to give a lot of key notes she has to present a lot and she started her as an emergency nurse will tough luck when you’re at an executive level now you have to
11:54
present videos and stuff. And the third one is question drills. So question drills just means, this is probably the most useful for healthcare professionals, Minal, where you make a list of all of the questions your patients are asking you, and then you role play them, especially with new, fresh doctors. So that way, if a doctor isn’t so sure how to answer this question, they can ask a more senior professional. Hey, how would you approach this question and quickly learn the ropes? Do you find, Brendan, that women
12:23
communicate differently than men? Like is there a discrepancy? In this day and age I have to be very careful what I say when I’m comparing. Just be honest. But the truth is absolutely right. Of course there’s a lot of key differences between the two. I’ll give a few that I’ve noticed in my career but they’re obviously generalizations. So the first one that I’ve noticed Minal is that men are often a lot more direct than women in their communication style and a lot of this has to do with biology.
12:53
Right, so I’ll give you an example. Let’s say we think about history, right? So men versus women and Tony Robbins does a really good job But he’s like a big motivational speaker where he asks a crowd of like say 10,000 people Men raise your hand if you’ve ever felt if you feel unsafe a lot walking at night Not many guys like raise their hand they go like what do you mean? And then they he has the same question to women like how many of you feel unsafe and then all of their hands just go up all the time, right
13:20
So because women are constantly threatened, right, by different, it could be anything, or it could be nothing, but it’s just that constant threat is always upon them, they’re trained biologically to be indirect communicators. Easy, I was like using dating, because it’s just easy for people to understand. So let’s say you’re a pretty girl, or any girl, you’re walking on the street, guy comes up to you, wants your number, but you’re married or something. So you don’t wanna go no, because if you go no, men are physically stronger than men are, so they…
13:49
women are so they might get scared of like being hit so they say like they’ll either give them the number or they’ll say something like Oh, you know, um, I gotta get somewhere or something like this. So so it’s not their fault I’m most of my clients are women by the way, which is very interesting, which is a topic for another conversation So yes, I get it. Even if i’m a dude I get it, right? Like women are trained biologically to be indirect communicators, but it doesn’t serve them well professionally That is the key
14:17
So men will always ask for the promotion. Men will always ask what the expectation is from their boss. Men will always ask directly. What is the key? Whereas women, unless they’re trained to do so typically will do not do it or do it relatively less than their counterparts. That’s what I would say is the main difference. The other two are more generalities. The second one is more around vocal tonality where women have to be a lot more careful about how they use their vocal tones. I call this double jeopardy.
14:45
Whereas if men vary their vocal tones like this, they’re seen as assertive. Whereas if women do the same thing, they’re seen as a bitch, right? They’re seen as somebody that doesn’t respect them, because they just raise their vocal tones a little too high. So the margin of error with women and their vocal tones is a lot smaller than it is with men. So whenever I’m training my women, it’s always about doing this to doing this.
15:13
Instead of doing this, this is more when I’m coaching men, whereas women, it’s more, this is the direction we should be going towards. This is what I feel we should be doing. Whereas men, it’s more, this is what we should be doing. So it’s the same thing, but you just have to be a little bit less assertive or else you’ll be seen as like what I just said. That’s the second one. And then I would say the third difference. So we talked about indirect communication. We talked about how we’re changing our vocal tones.
15:41
The third one is probably in the context of careers, thinking about sponsorship versus mentorship. So what I’ve seen a lot of women in healthcare do is they get mentored a lot, but they don’t get sponsored enough. So what that means is, like let’s say they’re being coached by a male with two, three levels above them, they’ll usually give them like confidence lessons. Whereas when they’re coaching men counterparts, they’re really coaching them how to succeed them. Whereas…
16:07
So really what I tell women to do is to really advocate for what they want a lot more directly and really seek for those sponsors who can really bet on them in their career so that way they can move up in the world. Wow. I feel like my vocal tone might be judged here, so you want to tell me at the end how my vocal tone went, Brendan. But also I feel like there’s a cultural difference in communication as well. Do you see that more?
16:34
broadly, like can you make those blanket statements about certain cultures or either better effective communicators in such a way versus others? Ah, yeah, I can, absolutely. But with the caveat that they are blanket statements, obviously. Yes, of course. And by the way, your vocal tones are great, just to let you know. You have to say that, I guess, today. Yeah, yeah. There you go. So speaking into that, yes, there have been some…
17:01
big differences I’ve seen culturally over the years. I’ll give you an easy one to understand like Asian culture versus Americanized culture. So Americans, Canadians, it’s the same thing. Even people who live in the UK, it’s very similar, right? Where we’re taught to be very direct communicators. And this applies a lot in relationships where, hey, if there’s a problem in a relationship, I want to tell you best. So that way we can fix it. So it’s a lot more direct.
17:29
Whereas an Asian culture, and it really applies across the board, though I would say it’s more specific to Japan, Korea, those types of countries, but it does apply to India as well in most Asian cultures. Is since we pay a lot of attention to how our communication affects other people, our communication is often a lot more indirect, which is why Asian people tend to be a lot more passive aggressive in their communication.
17:59
like the problem that they’re facing in relationship, they’ll just shut themselves off. They’ll make snarky comments about the garbage when the garbage isn’t really why they’re mad at you. So they’ll be a lot more indirect. So what is the advice, Minow? The advice is to communicate in the culture that you’re a part of. That is the difference. Like I went to Japan three months ago, four months ago, just as a trip. I love Japanese culture. I know probably 100, 150 words. I’m somewhat fluent in the language too.
18:28
So their culture is very different than American culture. You cannot tell people indirectly that you think they’re making a mistake. You cannot tell people directly that something’s wrong. So you have to either not say anything about it or be super nice about it or just shove about the point, which is fine because if you’re a healthcare professional in Japan, that is your job. It would just follow the contextual context of the culture in that because that is what, because at the end of the day, what is our job as healthcare professionals? To serve the well-being and safety of the patients within that country.
18:58
So if that is the context, then that is the context we need to communicate from. Whereas in the context of Americanized culture, yeah, being more direct definitely helps. If you’re indirect in that culture, it’s seen as rude. It’s like, oh, why, you’re not telling me what’s wrong? Whereas in Asian culture, if you’re telling people directly, it seems as offensive too, because just like, well, shouldn’t you understand what I’m feeling just without talking to me directly?
19:24
So those are some of the key differences I’ve seen. And obviously there’s some more differences more ethnically that we haven’t really covered. Like Indian people tend to roll Vs as Ws. So instead of saying like world, they’ll say world. Instead of saying water, they’ll say water, right? So they’ll roll Vs. Latina and Latinos speak too quickly. So there’s definitely nuances. German people are too serious in general, but yeah, you get the idea.
19:48
You know what, you talked about the speaking too quickly because that’s something that I do for sure, Brandon. Like everybody says that. So I’ve actually had to work on that through my years of practicing is like slow it down, talk slowly to the patients. They’re not getting what I’m saying because I’m talking too fast. Like how do you know what pace you communicate at? Yeah, that’s a really good question. You know, the way I see it, you know, especially in the context of this podcast, where for-
20:17
80, 90 percent, unless you tell me most people who are listening to this podcast are actually managing the hospital, not treating patients, but it’s probably mostly treating patients in the context of this show. So I would say 80, 90 percent of your communication, your day-to-day, having coached a few MDs myself, it’s really patient communication. That’s really what it comes down to, 70 to 80 percent of the time. The other 10 to 20 percent is either you’re managing staff meetings. Right?
20:46
which doesn’t happen that much because we’re always so busy in healthcare. Or if you’re an executive and you’re managing much bigger teams and you have an executive role, like your chief medical officer or something. So what really the advice is to simply work on your pacing in the context of patient communication. That’s where you’ll get most of your ROI. And I love that you mentioned that proactively, you know, hey, Brendan, I’ve really started working on my communication because I noticed
21:14
that my patients weren’t understanding me. So really what it comes down to practically for everyone listening is about really picking our top three favorite patients that we already have a good rapport with and just saying, hey, like I’m gonna be sharing some things with you over the course of our relationship together. And if you don’t understand something, I want you to tell me. And I’d be more than happy to.
21:39
Communicated better and whatever you learn from those three patients who give you feedback go like I don’t only understand this I really want you to take notes on that That’s one thing that we can do the second thing that we can do which I think is way more effective in health care is Peer-to-peer coaching so if I’m a dialysis specialist It’s in the culture of health care professionals to always give back like obviously if you’re an MD You have to give back to the residency program of your hospital. You’re training the next generation of dialysis patients
22:06
not patients, excuse me, practitioners, we’re a healthcare profession. So in that context, like really, like you’re commenting on the right things on how to treat the patient better, how to look at the diagnosis better, but what I would add as a point of feedback is also add the angle of communication. Take that extra time with people in residency that you’re mentoring right now, because as you’re mentoring them, you’re learning too. Take the time to also listen to some of their patient communication, which you’re already doing.
22:35
but more in the context of, is the patient actually understanding what this person is saying? And I feel that is often missed from healthcare professionals when they’re training the future generations of doctors. They’re not really coming from the perspective of, does this patient actually understand what’s going on? We’re mostly focused on, is the new residency doctor diagnosing the patient correctly and saying the right things, which is correct and very important. But once that point is mastered, I would encourage us to focus on the last.
23:03
80% because at the end of the day if we diagnose correctly, but the patient understand what the hell we’re talking about Then we’re not really getting anywhere. Yeah, and compliance is a big issue in healthcare right now and half of that is, you know patient Not understanding so, you know, I know on your YouTube channel and you know all over your social media You talk a lot about hand gestures and body language, I want to say just the way you move your body and and hand gestures, so
23:28
I mean, I’m someone who gestures all the time, maybe because I’m Asian, I don’t know what it is or I’m out there, but like how important are gestures? Like do people understand communication better with gestures? Yeah, absolutely, you know. So two parts of that. One, really quick about audience, speaking to the audience, right, and being more customizable to the audience. You’ll notice I’m doing this right now with the podcast, where as soon as you told me there was all healthcare professionals.
23:55
Now I’m telling you stuff that’s not on my social media accounts at all. Right? I’m very, I’m specializing the podcast. So you can tell I’ve been on other healthcare shows, right? But the first time that I was on a healthcare show, I didn’t know. Those were the main challenges. So what did I do? Which is something we can all learn from, which is, I kind of just said spoken generalities. Then one of those people on the healthcare podcast became a client of mine. But then the second that happened, I started interviewing them ferociously.
24:24
I started going like, is this making sense to you? Like walk me through your day to day. And I will literally have like lunches with them, dinners with them. So I can understand the world of healthcare. So that way, when I started coaching, like, like big FQHC people, I didn’t even know what FQHC stood for. I was like federally qualified healthcare center. Like, what is this? So then I had to learn that business. And then I was like, oh, okay, I got it. And then I was able to do it. So really the point of why I told you that story, you know, is the effort I put into understand this audience.
24:52
That is really the lesson that I want to go. How much time are you actually spending with your patients to make sure you actually understand them and that they understand you? That is not a framework. That is just a lifestyle of life. Like just take the extra time. And if you just do that and ask the right questions, like if you’re in my shoes, how would you communicate my diagnosis differently? Those are questions we don’t really ask patients. We kind of just assume that, oh, you know, we’re the doctor so we know the right answer, versus just going, you know, if you’re in my shoes, if you were me, how would you explain this back to me?
25:22
We don’t ask that either. Like explain the diagnosis back to me, just to make sure you got it. Right, those types of questions we can ask more and then we get more insights, that’s one. And then two on the gestures and body language space. Luckily for healthcare professionals, most of them don’t really have to give big speeches or pieces like to big crowds, unless they’re doing like all hand staff calls, but that’s typically executives doing that. So what I would say is the body language, luckily for this audience, isn’t as important.
25:51
It’s a lot more about focusing on what not to do versus what to do. Okay. So for example, and you know this, like a lot of the stuff, all of you already know, like one of them is obviously when you’re delivering bad news to a patient, you don’t want to be all flamboyant with your vocal, your body languages, right? You have your hands on the desk, you, you’d somber down your vocal tones and you tell them the bad news, right? You’re not going like, Hey, I have some news for you. Like, no, you’re not shocking the patient’s, uh, nervous system, right?
26:19
So that’s one piece is really to tone down the vocal, the gestures, but also the other side that I feel a lot of doctors and healthcare professionals don’t really think about too much is when the news is good, like you can gesture a little bit more too. Like if the news is positive, like use that as an opportunity to really show a little bit more emotion, well, being professional, but-
26:42
Be a little bit more authentic. I think there’s room of putting a little bit more humanity back into healthcare. And whenever healthcare professionals are delivering positive news, I think is a great way to practice because there’s no risk in those types of interactions. Right. I wanted to ask you something on that note, Brendan. When you go into a healthcare office, and I’m sure you’ve been into one, where you see these signs, right, that I feel are detractors, right? The signs will say, no cell phone use, no this, no that, be silent. What are your thoughts on that?
27:12
Like I know in my offices, we don’t have any detractors because I feel for me, it kind of makes the patient upset or sad or nervous right coming in. But 90% of the offices I go into, there’s these detractors. Do you feel like that already shuts down the communication or that trust relationship between the doctor and the patient? Yeah, I think that’s a great observation. I agree. You know, I think it really comes down to two words, right? Patient experience. And patient experience doesn’t really start
27:42
when you meet the doctor, it starts as soon as you walk into the hospital, you start smelling the air, you sit on the chair, you go see the receptionist. And I really feel all of us in healthcare can do a better job at really taking inventory of what are those different touch points that the patient is having from the moment that they walk in to the moment they frankly walk out ideally in better shape than we found them in that experience. And definitely the whole no cell phones thing, the piece I’m not a big fan of personally.
28:11
What I’m a big fan of, which is what typically I’m speaking really from my experience with clients, obviously I’m not a healthcare professional myself. And what I really like about what they tell me is they say, you know, my, my, my job is to always walk into every clinic and pretend as if I’m a patient. Because I learn a lot by mystery shopping. That’s what a couple of my clients did. Like they would like visit a couple of clinics and they would walk in and just pretend to be a patient and just walk up to the receptionist and start speaking to them.
28:41
and just write things down that they’re noticing. And it’s also, which is a little difficult in healthcare, we both know since management is not as innovative as we want it to be, right? But obviously in the context or the work environments where the management team is a lot more open, then I think those communication chains are really useful where you can bring those things that only healthcare practitioners really see on the ground, bring it up to the CMO, bring it up to…
29:07
the operations lead and just say like, hey, these are a couple of things and the science is obviously one of them. But I think it’s more about just opening that communication channel because there’s 20 things that we could talk about in this podcast that we’re probably not even noticing in these clinics that other people are for sure. Brendan, are there like different, like, I don’t know, like four different communication styles and, you know, people take like personality tests to do these?
29:31
And then they can better themselves by knowing what communication style they fit into. Like, is there such a thing like a personality quiz? I’m definitely there is right. Like there’s 16 personalities, there’s Myers-Briggs, things like that. My personal opinion though, I’m not a big fan of, uh, I like them. Like I like the assessment, but I don’t like how it boxes us in into like one style of comp. So the way that, that I recommend for those of you who want to do this.
30:00
is it’s really about saying the personality quizzes, assessments, it’s more about starting a conversation about what is right or wrong about the assessment. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say me and you are managing a clinic, you know, and we have a staff of 50 nurses, physicians, and I don’t know, general practitioner doctors, like GPs. And we say, okay, we have a one day, I don’t know how we made the time for this, but there’s like a one day town hall, we’re all just like hanging out together, there’s no patients to serve. We kind of just let them.
30:29
Let them all struggle for one day. And we all meet together for a day. Okay. So now we do a bunch of personality assessments and you get your result, I get my result. But the interesting thing is not the result, it is the conversation that ensues from the results. So let’s say I go to John and I go, hey John, what did the personality test say about you and what do you feel is true or not true about that assessment? And then John goes, well.
30:54
You know, Brendan, this assessment told me that I’m someone who communicates very directly. That’s not really true, like I feel like I’m a lot more indirect. Oh, tell me more, John. Oh, you know, I found like when I was talking to Lucy last week, said this and I did this. That’s where the goal is. Then you go like, oh, okay, Lucy, come over here. And then Lucy comes here and then goes like, okay, how can we improve the communication challenge between Lucy and John? And then Lucy goes, oh, you know, I like to be communicated in this way. Oh, okay, cool.
31:21
So that’s how we improve the communication challenge. There’s probably like a style where it’s like A fits with B, C fits with D. It’s more like when you do these personality assessments, you can just have richer conversations with people and those richer conversations and better questions lead to really good insights, which is really the conversations I have with everyone, my family, like with my business partners, where it’s just like, yeah, like when I’m talking to my team, I always tell them, there’s some meetings, most meetings I won’t be in.
31:49
And I’ll send you voice notes, don’t send me voice notes. I’m telling you to listen to voice notes, but I’ll send you voice notes and you listen to them. So things like that, right? Just being direct about those things. So, okay, I know we kind of touched on this at the beginning, but I want to ask you it again. And be honest with me, Brendan, like do you feel cell phones or like digital stuff is the biggest culprit here? I mean, yes, you said we were not great communicators anyways, we just realized it more now.
32:17
But you know, like I walk in places, doctors are on their cell phone. I’m not gonna just blame doctors, everybody, but I mean, in that context, you know, we’re sitting on our cell phones between every patient, our heads are always down. So do you feel that that is what’s gonna kind of ruin the next generation of healthcare providers? I think that’s part of the problem, but if I’m being honest with you, I don’t think that’s the main problem. Okay. Right? I really believe the main problem. Yeah, the main problem is practice.
32:45
It’s just practicing communication. You know, like at the end of the day, like let’s say we take one of my exercises, right? The question drill, where I gave a cool exercise about make a list of questions that patients are asking you. Peer to peer coach your fellow healthcare practitioners on how you would answer a question better. So if we’re dialysis practitioners, I’d be like, okay, this is a question I got from a dialysis patient. Meena, how would you answer this question? This is how I approach it, how would you approach that? The problem is we don’t drill that.
33:14
The cell whether we have the cell phone around or not doesn’t fix that problem like doctors 40 years ago Still we’re not drilling that enough like is it all of a sudden that we don’t have cell phone that oh yeah doctors We’re practicing this all the time of course not right That’s really the key the second thing that I feel a lot of people miss is the There’s a lot of key benefits to technology too that I think a lot of people miss this conversation is the perfect Example of that where me and you never would have met in this lifetime never
33:43
Right, if it wasn’t for this Zoom call and the rise of podcasting. And also there’s other avenues that allows to now practice communication in ways that wouldn’t have been possible 30, 40 years ago. So really, and I’ll give you an example, like sending video messages to staff is super easy to do now. Whereas like, let’s say in a day-to-day life as a doctor, it’s really hard to recognize patients.
34:07
Not patients other practitioners who are helping you deal with patients because you’re moving from one patient to another one patient It’s just like you don’t even have time to breathe and eat let alone go to a nurse and say hey I really appreciate the work that you’re doing But when you have that off shift where you’re just home you could quickly take out your cell phone and send 20 video messages So what’s my punchline my punchline is? Cellphones technology it is a tool Unfortunately, we’re all using that tool inappropriately and not correctly
34:37
But if we do use the tool correctly, and like we have as two examples here, and we use it more effectively, I think we could be the best communicators of our generation, because we have access to more information. Like this type of podcast, where I’m like a communication coach, you said you never had a comms professional on the show, right? Especially in healthcare, it’s so rare. Right, it’s like now it’s like this information exists because of technology. So now it’s like, you can leverage this information and be the best generation of doctors. So even if a lot of people tend to paint this,
35:05
this image of dismay and disaster around technology. I think there’s a lot more hope that I think a lot of people are missing and frankly, just people aren’t leveraging. Right, I love that. You know, you’re a communications coach. So like, have you had that communications breakthrough or like that moment where you discovered like that either you’re not a great communicator or that, hey, like this is something I wanna do. Like has there been a breakthrough moment where you felt like, you know, you wanted to change things
35:34
Oh yeah, I mean every day probably, but I mean I’ll give you the big highlights. Yeah, so there’s been three big challenges in my life that made me realize that I was not a good communicator or that made me feel defeated around communication. That’s why I’m super passionate about teaching it. The first one is I grew up in a city called Montreal in Canada, for those who don’t know, Montreal is a city where you need to know how to speak French and I still live there to this day. But French was a language I didn’t know, but I had to learn. I’m fluent.
36:02
in three languages today but I didn’t know French at the time so my parents sent me to French school so I learned it. So every day I had to give a presentation and talk to people in a language I didn’t even know. So I was stressed out about speaking my whole life because I would stand up there as a second grade student with my sheet of paper with pretty much Egyptian like random words, it’s all French, I don’t understand anything and I’m giving a presentation. Not very good.
36:30
Number two is I have a physical disability in my left arm. So you’ll notice that it’s crooked. So when I was born, I had an accident that happened at birth where whenever they do a baby delivery, sometimes they use a vacuum to pull the baby out. And one in every thousand operations, there’s an error that happens in that vacuum. I was one of those thousand. I got really lucky though. Typically when that happens, either the child or the mother dies. We both lived, my mom’s upstairs, she’s perfectly fine.
36:59
but my left arm dislocated because of that, permanently. So because of that, I was really nervous about speaking. I’m not anymore, but at the time I was, because I’m like, I still have a crooked arm. So whenever I’m speaking, people are always looking at my arm, so you can imagine as a kid how much social anxiety that gave. And then the third big challenge I had, which is more hilarious, is like, I literally have a bachelor’s degree in accounting, you know. I’m literally the opposite of what you would expect a comms professional to be. And I…
37:27
Overcame all of that and that’s why I’m a big believer that heck if I could do it So shit the age I did it to you know people always complain about the young generation I’m 28 years old and I coach like the CEO of like big hospitals like what’s your excuse like if I can do this I started coaching people when I was 19 So I’ve been doing this for a long time But like if I can do this I think people who are in general who have a lot more experience who have been through Grueling years of medical school and residency. I think you guys can figure out to do a couple of random word exercises here and there
37:57
Yeah, that’s so inspiring. Um, okay. So has anyone ever sent you a text or have you sent somebody a text where you feel like that is the worst text or email and like totally bombed the communication? Like just because it was sent by text or email, it was communicated completely wrong.
38:19
I mean too many to count. I’m just I’m trying to be specific here for the podcast There’s there’s definitely been a lot of times where that’s happened I mean, I’ll just give generalities for now and I’ll think of specifics I mean obviously you never want to have conversations about your family and relationships over text that never ends Well never ends well where you’re arguing over text big red flag Don’t do that get on a phone call because a lot of things get Misconstrued over text or a lot of things like for example
38:47
if I communicate something directly like, I want a raise, I need a raise, it almost feels from the other person’s perspective, crap, it feels like this person’s gonna leave the company if they don’t get a raise, if it’s through text. But if you meet the person, they go like, yeah, you know, I wanted a raise, but you know, I wanna have a conversation about it, like what are some experiences, so you notice it’s a lot more nuanced when you actually meet and talk to the person. I mean, that’s happened countless times in my career where like I’m arguing over texts and like,
39:15
They feel like, oh, they felt misheard and misunderstood. But then when I got on a call with them, I was just like, oh, like this is not the idea. So yeah, I mean, that’s happened a lot. And emails too, when I, not anymore, because I’m the CEO of my own company. So it’s not really an issue anymore. But like at the time when I was working at IBM and I was doing my day to day work. Oh my God, the email, the crap emails I would send to clients. It was not good to totally unprofessional, inappropriate. And, and I’m sure a lot of people in, in, in healthcare can relate where if you make a mistake, it costs you a ton.
39:45
because of compliance, but yeah, we’ve all been there. Oh my gosh, yeah, no, I write emails very fast to my team. So sometimes they will call me and they’re like, were you in a bad mood? Like, no, I was just writing it really fast. So that’s like an example of what you were saying. Like sometimes it comes across as totally rude, but you weren’t, you were just in a rush and you just got to the point. So. Yeah. And a lot of that, so this, like now it’s like, what do you do about that, right?
40:13
Couple of nuances, I mean the suggestion is probably not gonna happen because I’m pretty sure almost 100% of bad medical news is communicated in person. I don’t, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think bad medical news is communicated over email. No, never. Right, never, right? That’s what I thought too. So there’s no room for improvement there, just keep doing it in person and get better at it. But in terms of the emails that you’re referring to, really what that comes down to has nothing to do with the emails you’re sending in that context I would argue.
40:41
It’s more about you telling the team to say like, hey, when I’m, when I’m emailing you this, this is what I mean. So that way the next time they get the same email, the same tone, they just interpret it differently. Cause at the same time, we have to balance both words, right? You’re, you’re a busy doctor too. So I can’t just add pleases and thank yous every single time. But if you communicate those things in person and the context in person, then when the emails get sent, it’s like, oh, like I just understand the context that Dr. Dr. Munal is coming from. Right. So it’s all good. Of course.
41:10
This has been so great, Brenden. Tell us where we can find you. Like there’s so many healthcare providers that do not know where to go to improve on communication. Where can we find your, you know, I think you have courses and classes that they can attend. Tell us how. Absolutely, this has been a treat. Thanks for having me. Yeah, the easiest way to keep in touch is Instagram. So just go to my handle, @MasterYourTalk your spelled Y-O-U-R.
41:37
And you can just send me a DM and let me know that you listen to this podcast and I’ll send you a voice note. Perfect. Thank you so much, Brenden. It was a pleasure having you. The pleasure was mine. Thank you, listeners and viewers, for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes,
41:54
make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube. To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!