Don’t ask me how it happened but on the most recent flight I was on – my 12th I think in 4 weeks, I lost count – a flying headphone hit the top of my mouth. I think I let out an almighty swear word but no one appeared to hear it in the darkness of the cabin.
Headphones, like everything else in the front end of the bus, are super size and one hitting you at speed can do serious damage.
As it turned out, I had to spend two sessions in the dentist chair this week and found myself thinking about listening skills.
Just a month ago, I had sat through a workshop on how to listen better. I reckon listening is the most important requirement to be a good person in general and a great skill in any job – yet most of us talk more than we listen.
There are those who are always talking about me, me, me – the “monologueistas”. Then there are those who interrupt and complete your sentences – “chattus interruptus”. Some have already pre-judged you and hear you without listening. Others look everywhere but at you. Some have short attention spans that their fingers have moved on to something else before you have even spoken for 30 seconds.
Right after the workshop, someone shared an article on the same subject on their social media feed and this one listed 10 tips “ to help you develop effective listening skills”.
They are face the speaker and maintain eye contact; be attentive but relaxed; keep and open mind; listen to the words and try to picture what the speaker is saying; don’t interrupt and don’t impose your “solution”; wait for the speaker to pause to ask clarifying question; ask questions only to ensure understanding; try to feel what the speaker is saying; give the speaker regular feedback; and pay attention to what isn’t said – to non-verbal cues.
My tip #11 is, hone your listening skills in a dentist chair.
So there I was with mouth open, eyes closed, injured tooth clamped and some tube going into my mouth and my dentist, Dr Tay, is speaking.
“You all right?”
Nod.
“You might feel a little pressure here. Tell me if you feel it.”
Vigorous nod.
“So what I am doing is ….” and he goes on to describe the procedure and I am listening intently to every word. One, because I want to, I really care about what he’s doing to my incisor; two, I have no choice – I am a captive audience; and three, it beats thinking and listening to all the various sounds that accompany a dental procedure. And by the way, all this without pain-killers.
As he works, he continues, “You know, they say that dentists are the people with the biggest psychological problems and I always wondered if that was true and now I know it’s true. Because I talk to myself a lot. You can’t answer back. Even the fiercest lawyers cannot answer back.”
He laughs. I laugh back. The nurse works the suction harder because she sees I am gurgling more than I should be.
Someone enters the room and says she’s just come off the phone with a customer enquiring about the price of gum surgery and when told the price, had said, “Why are you $10 higher than the other clinic?” She is clearly flustered by the call.
Dr Tay, who I can tell is a good boss, tries to soothe her. “People are like that. They call from clinic to clinic to compare prices. What you should do is tell them you can’t do a diagnosis over the phone, ask them to come in and then we can quote them the exact price.”
I like that my dentist is a multi-tasker. He can talk, listen, counsel staff and do his work on me at the same time and as I listened to their conversation, I found myself thinking that dentists face similar problems as travel agents. Customers are better informed, they have more choices, they shop around and they are extremely price-conscious.
This led me to wonder where the pain points were in dentistry that start-ups could solve. Is there a meta-search for dental prices? If people can search for the best air fares, can they search for the best dental prices? A “TeethScanner” perhaps? Is there a “TeethAdvisor” where people can leave reviews? Is there a central reservations system that would save dentists having to have staff to manually pencil in appointments?
Personally, what I would like to see is virtual dental surgery – where you don’t have to be there while they’re fixing your teeth. But imagine then the crash course on listening skills and the conversations I’d be missing out on.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
