Ep #19: Building Trust-Based Relationships with Bud Ham

Welcome to Practicing with the Masters for dentists with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. Allison believes that there are four pillars for a successful, fulfilling dental practice: clear leadership, sound business principles, well-developed communication skills, and clinical excellence. Allison enjoys helping dentists and teams excel in all of these areas. Each episode she brings you an inspiring conversation with another leading expert. If you desire to learn and grow and in the process take your practice to the next level, then this is the show for you. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Allison Watts.

Allison:       Welcome to Practicing with the Masters podcast. I’m your host, Allison Watts, and I’m dedicated to bringing you masters in the field of dentistry, leadership, and practice management to help you have a more fulfilling and successful practice and life.

I’ll go ahead and introduce you because I think some people on the line probably don’t know you. Although obviously, a few people do know you too. Some people know you far better than I do.

Mr. Ham has served as a consultant, a confidant, and a counselor for more than 35 years to executives and professional people. He’s lectured in Great Britain, Mexico, throughout Canada, and in 49 states. He was a member of a teaching delegation of health professionals sponsored by the China-U.S. Exchange. He visited six hospitals in the People’s Republic of China.

He refers to himself not as one with answers but one who can help his client friends identify their alternatives in their professional and personal lives. These factors uniquely qualify him to make meaningful contributions to organizational effectiveness. He’s a devoted family man, a hunter, an avid fly fisherman, a gardener, a horseman, an author, and a poet.

He’s a platform speaker. He’s a consultant to private businesses and public institutions. He has the book that we were just speaking of which is You Are in the Right Place. You said you’re in the process of writing another book?

Bud:           Well, this will be the third one. There’s a second one also.

Allison:       Oh, the third book? Okay.

Bud:           The second one is Changing Places: To Another Right Place. The one that I’m just now completing is What Works and Of Course What Doesn’t Work.

Allison:       Okay, great. I’ll look forward to seeing those as well.

Bud:           Well, I am really impressed with my credentials. [Laughs]

Allison:       Well, there was more. Are you ready for me to stop? Have you heard enough about yourself?

[Laughter]

Well, I know that you were visiting faculty and worked at Pankey some. I know your friends with some of my Pankey friends so I’m looking forward to learning from you tonight. I’m thrilled that you said yes when I invited you to be here. When we spoke the other night, you said you wanted to kind of start off talking about trust building.

Bud:           Yeah, I do. Again, just before we do that, I would like to say to all of you that I feel so blessed to have been involved in dentistry at a time when many of your giants were fully functional at that time. L.D. Pankey is an example. And Alvin Telastri and John Rogers, the list goes on and on in terms of the people that I have been blessed to know and really consider to be my friends. But we are going to get on with it.

Let’s talk about the fact now that one of the things that I think I have as an area of expertise is to help people understand the importance of trust-based relationships and maybe even how to build trust-based relationships. So that’s going to sort of be the focus tonight. But what I want to start with is to talk about another great person in our society who passed away just a few years ago, Dr. Stephen Covey.

Dr. Stephen Covey’s greatest contributions, one of them, was The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. I think the following essay is without a doubt equally true and useful. That book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People as you may know, was on the bestseller list in this country for decades.

He wrote this essay here just shortly before he died, The One Thing That Changes Everything. So please bear with me as I read this, it doesn’t take long. But I will tell you, it’s loaded with good stuff.

[Reading from The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen Covey]

There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world. One thing which if removed will destroy the most power government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love.

On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time.

That one thing is trust.

Trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every work project, every business venture, and every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcome of every future moment of our lives, both personally and professionally.

Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible asset that you can create—much faster than you probably think possible.

When corporate scandals, terrorist threats, office politics, and broken relationships have created low trust on almost every front, I contend that the possibility to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is not only vital to our personal and interpersonal well-being, it is the key leadership competency of the new global economy.

I am also convinced that in every situation, nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. And contrary to popular belief, trust is something you can do something about. In fact, you can get good at it.

Now I wrote a supplement to that, let me read it, please, just takes a couple of minutes.

Every relationship at some level is a partnership. The failure rate of partnerships is undeniably high. It is my contention and observation that if high trust exists in the partnership, it cannot fail. Please consider that high trust can result in the dissolution of a partnership that may be in the best interest of all concerned and therefore, it is not a failure.

If there is an adequate open and honest courtship proceeding the formation of a partnership, be it married, business, or friendship, the partners will be clear on the expectations of each other. However, without exception, these expectations will change over time.

If the partners can openly and honestly discuss their differences, including changed expectations, it will be because of the trust in their relationship. One of the great benefits of high trust is that it enables the participants to make decisions quickly that are in the best interests of all concerned.

There is in my opinion one prerequisite for high trust to develop. That requirement is shared core values. These values include but are not limited to the following: morality, integrity, reverence for life, tolerance, honestly, and nurturing. Most people share these values. It is better to assume that your associates share these values with you unless they give you reason to think otherwise.

With that said sort of an entrée, let me tell you, I think that I have experience that says that this is one of the most factual things that we can do. We can build trust. We can work at it. Without question, for a group of people in a dental office, a dental team, to be truly functional requires that this high trust be developed. That of course is as far as I’m concerned, paramount to whatever we choose to accomplish in this lifetime.

Now having said all of that as an entrée, let me give you something else I want you to think about. Maybe some of you have copies of this. I want to talk about what I believe or sort of a foundational philosophy that will contribute to our success in life and our personal happiness and feelings of accomplishment and all the things that go along with a life well lived.

I’m going to talk just a little bit about what I call the three great truths. In song and prose and poetry, seekers have asked a question throughout history. What is truth? I wish I could say what truth is for you. Of course, I cannot. It is sometimes difficult and often impossible for me to say what truth is for me.

Yet, I do believe that if one earnestly seeks truth, works at it long enough, and is open to guidance, our personal lists of truths expands. This process also clarifies another truth, my truth may not be your truth. But I share my truth with you. Not to suggest that they should become yours, only that they may serve you also. Our truths serve us best when life is difficult.

The first great truth, you will become what you think. If you think fearful thoughts, you will become frightened. If your thoughts dwell on illness, you will become sick. Psychosomatic illness has been scientifically proven for years. If you think peaceful thoughts, you will become a serene person. If you think loving thoughts, you become a warm and caring person. If you think hateful thoughts, you become a mean-spirited person. It is imperative for us to accept with repeated effort we can control our thoughts.

Every one of us from time to time has ugly, mean-spirited thoughts. But it’s very important that we know that, hey, wait a minute, that won’t serve me well. I can choose again. If we choose not to entertain a mean-spirted thought, we can replace it with a thought that will serve us well. So the message here is, and this is what we’re really talking about, is what’s called the Law of Attraction. Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer and other philosophers have written beautifully about this. That we become what we think about. The thought is father of the deed. We’ve heard that for years.

What we need to understand is, when we have those bad thoughts, we can choose again. We can replace them with a thought that will serve us well. So the message is don’t put your thought energy into something you don’t want because that will be what you are attracting.

Now, the second great truth. Whatever you want in life, give it away. If you want respect, give respect. If you want cooperation, give cooperation. If you want people to listen to you, listen to them. Here’s one, nobody argues with this one. If you want more love, give more love away. The most powerful person in the world cannot command love. The most wealthy person in the world cannot buy it. The only way to get it is to give it away.

If you want more money, and this is where some people say, “Hey, Bud, I’m drawing the line here.” Well, I’ll tell you this, take all you can spare and with a generous heart, give that money to somebody who needs it more than you do. Deepak Chopra does a wonderful job of telling us about the channel and that the way we open the receiving channel is by giving. We open the receiving channel when we give something away.

Here’s another thought. If you have something you can’t give away, you don’t own it. It owns you. Giving anything away opens the channel for the inflow of the same. Jesus taught karma with his pronouncement as you sow, so shall you reap and cast your bread on the water it will be returned multiplied. In order for the Law of Cause and Effect, if we cast low on the water, we can expect it to be return multiplied. But you know what? The same thing is true if you do a mean-spirited thing. That’s what you get back multiplied. Those are the first two great truths.

The third one is, and this to me is exciting. If we choose to practice these first two great truths, we are in charge of our own destiny. Whether we want to believe it or not, we are in fact in charge of our destiny. What happens to us is a result of the way we behave and the way we believe. If we accept the fact and the practice of the first two great truths, we can ignore the fact of faith and luck and accept that where I am today is a result of past thoughts and actions. We can’t change our past. It does not exist. But if we do not release the past and dictate it to our future to take love-based control, we are forced to relive it.

So that’s some of the basic philosophy that I try to establish with people when I work with them as a consultant. For many many years as a consultant as I was lecturing around the country, I would finish a lecture and some dentist would come up to me and he’d say, “Bud, I want you to be my consultant.” And I would say, “Sure, let’s pick a date.” Well, I can’t tell you but a number of times we would pick a date and my initial visit would be for two days. I would fly to wherever they were and the first day I would observe and interview all the people. The next day would be devoted to a team-building, trust-building kind of an activity.

But there were a number of times that by noon of the first day I knew I shouldn’t even be there. I should not have accepted that invitation because I was dealing with people that did not share my core values, which is a critical factor. I can give you a couple of examples. I was working with a three-doctor practice in Sioux Falls one time. I accepted the invitation to be their consultant so I went and I spent a day interviewing their people.

At the end of that day, I knew I’m in a place where I really do not share core values with the doctors of this practice. Anyway, that evening, the dentists and I were going to go out to dinner. Well before we went to dinner, we had a meeting in the office. One of them said, “Bud, give us an overview of what you found out today.” Here’s what I told him, I said, “Well, listen, gentlemen, unless you significantly improve the compensation plan that you have, I cannot help you.”

They said, “Well what else did you find?” I said, “Well let me tell you once again, if you are unwilling to take a look at your compensation schedule and raise the wages of the people that work for you, I can’t help you.” They said, “Well, we’re not willing to do that.” I thought, “Tell you what, I’ll bill you for one day.” I picked up my briefcase and left. Well, long story short, soon after that, I said, “Hey wait a minute.” If someone said, “Bud, we want you to be our consultant.” I would say, “Let’s explore that. Let’s see if we share core values. If we share core values, then we’ve got a way to go.”

I’ll talk about core values for just a bit. I was lecturing to a large audience of CPAs in Dallas a few years ago. I talked to them and one of the things that I said during my one-hour lecture was that “If you and your clientele, your clients in the CPA office, if you share core values, you are really going to have a leg up in terms of being successful and being happy.” Nobody asked me, “Bud, what are your core values? What are you talking about?” I didn’t receive that question.

But when I sat down after lecturing, I thought, what would I have said if one of these CPAs had said, “Bud, what are your core values?” Well, I gave myself an answer. I said, “Well, listen, I could relate a chain list of core values anytime.” I didn’t find that very satisfying. So for the next several months I seriously thought about what are the core values? What are the core values that a dentist and his team must share if they’re really going to achieve a high level of productivity and harmony in that practice? Finally, I boiled it down to six. These are the six core values that I think are critical.

The first one is morality. You know, I think morality in our society is very very important. But I give a rather broad definition of morality, not a narrow one. I think that anyone who does never intentionally do anything to hurt another person is a moral person. So I say, “If you intentionally do something to hurt somebody else, you are not a moral person.” There’s a lot of leeway there.

The next one that I came up with was integrity. I think that integrity is a wonderful, wonderful term and capacity to have. I’ve heard many definitions of integrity. I’ve never heard a bad one but I like to simplify things. I was listening to Angeles Arrien speak a few years ago and she’s a very spiritual teacher from California. She said, “I believe the best definition of integrity is, say what you’re going to do, do what you said you would.” I like that. I think that that’s wonderful.

Say what you’re going to do and do what you said you would. We always have to retain the prerogative of changing our mind because circumstances can change sometimes. But if after making the commitment you change your mind, there’s a requirement. You have to go back to the person to whom you made the commitment and say, “I’m not going to do what I said I was going to do.”

The next one is reverence for life. In our society in the last few years, we’ve had many shooting circumstances, starting with Columbine massacre here in Denver. I don’t know much about the shooters but I know one thing about them. They do not share reverence for life. In my investigation of this, reverence for life is something that we have to teach our children. It isn’t born in us. So reverence for life is very very important, especially for one who is attracted to the health professions, who wants to make a difference in the quality of lives of other people.

The next one and please share this one, is tolerance. The opposite of tolerance, of course, is intolerance. Intolerance leads to judgement. Judgement leads to prejudice. You know, if we didn’t have prejudice, we would not have wars. It all starts with how tolerant we are. How comfortable are we with people who are different from us in terms of their beliefs? In terms of their way of life? Or whatever else. So tolerance is very important in our lives.

It is critically important in a dental team. Here’s the reason why. From time to time, every member of the dental team, doctor included, are going to make a mistake. If you have a level of high tolerance with that group, the questions are, “Hey, what happened? How do we fix it? How do we prevent it in the future?” And the last question, “What did we learn from this?” So if we have a high level of tolerance and ask these questions, then the mistake is a blessing and a gift because it raises the bar in terms of your ability to perform. If we have low tolerance, of course, the question is “Who did it?” So we can punish them.

The next one I think is critically important in terms of having an effective dental team is honesty. You know, unfortunately, I think we live in a society where dishonesty, lying, is commonplace and even condoned. It is never more obvious than our political system. But you know each one of us in some time in our lives have heard the little ditty, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” That’s a truism. Anytime we do less than the truth, say less than the truth, we dig a hole and we’ve got to get out of it later. So, yeah, sometimes the truth is very harsh and sometimes it hurts. But you know what? Truth when tempered with compassion never wounds anyone.

The next one that I’ve thought about a lot is nurturing. Nurturing is something that I think is born within us. It is like empathy. I worked with a group of psychologists out of Lincoln a number of years ago. They developed a wonderful group or system for hiring people. It was called Selectionary Search Incorporated. These psychologists, one of the things they identified was that you cannot teach empathy. So when you’re hiring somebody, and I would suggest that you use this question, when you’re hiring somebody in your practice, you say, “Hey wait a minute, I want to hire people who already have empathy because it can’t be taught.” It’s something that’s born in us.

So here’s the question that they would ask, “Let’s say you see a five-year-old and he’s hammering and he hits his thumb and he cries and cries. What would you do?” That’s the question. The correct answer is, “I would comfort the child.” But I can’t tell you how many people I’ve interviewed over the years that say, “Well, first thing I would do is take away the hammer so he won’t get his finger again.” Well, that’s not what we’re after. So those are some of the core values that I think are critical and crucial if we’re going to have a really high level of trust in our organization.

You know, when we talk about trust building, we need to share a mission, values, and philosophy. Well I’ve talked about values, the core values. Let’s talk about mission for just a little bit. There are two things that drive people. There’s an essay on this, on being driven. Many people are driven by agenda. When we have an agenda, when we’re dealing with someone, it’s, what’s in it for me? Now if there’s something left over for you, that’s fine, but the primary purpose is, what’s in it for me? That’s an agenda. That’s an agenda-driven purpose.

The other side of that, or the opposite of that is a mission-driven purpose. A mission-driven person, when they are face to face with somebody else, they say, “How can I serve you? How can I help you?” Oh, and understanding that if we buy into this philosophy, cast your bread on the waters, you’re going to get it back multiplied. How can I serve you? And if I do something good for you, I’m going to get mine.

Zig Ziglar, one of the most famous sales trainers of all time, made the statement repeatedly. In fact, every lecture he’s ever given he said these words, “The way for you to get what you want is to help other people get what they want.” So I would encourage you when you’re sitting face to face with a patient and we’re talking about what you can do for them, if in your heart you’re saying, how can I serve this person? The energy level between you and that person is vastly different than if you’re sitting with the same person in the same setting and your agenda is, what’s in it for me? We sure do need another major case for our income this month. That’s different.

I’ll tell you another little story to wrap this up a little bit about being mission-driven. I was lecturing to an audience of real estate salespeople in Bangor, Maine a few years ago. This was the top ERA real estate agent in that area and in New England. I talked about mission selling. How important it was for the sales person to be concerned about how can I help this person. How can I serve this person? How can I be of use to this person?

A couple of the old timers in the front row of this lecture room shook their heads and said, “Wouldn’t work in real estate. Real estate is too cutthroat.” I was about to change the subject when in the back of the room, this hand went up. I acknowledged the person who raised her hand. This grandmotherly-type lady stood up. She was probably 5’4” or 5’5”, probably 65 years old, very professional, very well dressed. She said, “You know, Bud, that’s how I sell.” She said, “I came upon this quite by accident. One month I had the very good fortune to meet my sales objective for the month in the first few days. I decided that for the rest of that month I was only going to concentrate on how can I help this person? Sales went down like that. I have never deviated.” And she sat down.

Well, I’ve got to tell you something. There was some really long faces in that front row of these people who said, “It won’t work in real estate.” That lady had been the top salesperson in this agency for three years. She had outsold everybody else by millions. So I’m saying this to you, when you sit making a case presentation, what is your motivation? What is your motivation? Are you mission-driven? How can I serve this person? Or do you have an agenda? How can I add to our bottom line this month?

Whatever is going on in your head creates an energy between you and that other person. All of us have been in a situation where someone was trying to sell us something and we become defensive and we guard against it. So we need to understand that if we are going to be successful, we need to say, how can I serve you? Understanding that when you help somebody else get what they want, you’re going to get what you want. It’s a matter of developing an attitude that says wait a minute, I don’t have to be pushing for money. All I have to—is how can I serve? How can I help other people? That to me is absolutely one of the most important things that we can do.

Now, I’ve been rattling on here for a while. Does anybody have any thoughts or questions?

Allison:       In the meantime, Bud, that mindset of how can I serve you—is that something that, and I don’t know, this kind of sounds like a dumb question. I think I already know the answer but I believe that some people are probably kind of born that way or brought up that way and then there are other people who aren’t but it can be learned. It’s something that it’s kind of like you decide that you’re going to be that way. If you’re not naturally that way you can practice it and learn. Do you have any suggestions on how to get better at that if you’ve been putting yourself first?

Bud:           Yes, I do. You know what I believe? I believe that, I’m going to use this word, I think these are irrefutable, natural laws. Therefore, they are spiritual principles. Okay. Having said that, let me suggest to you that it’s very appropriate for you to experiment with these things. See if it works. Go into that case presentation for a month maybe, every one that you do, make a high-level commitment that I am going into this case presentation or this discussion with this patient with the attitude, how can I serve this person?

Test it out. Use it for a while and see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, nothing is lost. But I think it’s very appropriate for us to test these principles which I think are irrefutable natural laws. I think this idea of the three great truths, whatever you want, give it away. Check it out. Test it. See if it works for you.

Allison:       Okay. I like that. It’s very helpful.

Bud:           Yeah, I think it’s very appropriate to test and say, how did I come out? I worked with a practice down in Texas. I’ll not use a name, I don’t want to embarrass anybody but I worked with them for several years. The manager of the practice came to me and said—he was the dentist’s husband—he said, “Bud, I want what you have.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Every time I talk to you, you’re up, you are positive. You seem happy.” He said, “How do you achieve that?” I said, “Well, I’ll tell you something, you got to buy into a couple of principles and then test them out and see if they work for you.”

The idea is that there are only two basic human emotions: love and fear. If you deal from a fear-base all the time, you live with more fear based. If you make love-based decisions or deal from a love-base, you’ll live with more love. He said, “Explain that to me.” I said, “Many times during the day, we have to make decisions. Many of these decisions are not emotional at all. There’s no emotionality in them. It’s these right or wrong and right or left. But from time to time, there’s an opportunity for you to make a fear-based decision or a love-based decision.

If you make more fear-based decisions, you live with more fear in your life. On the other hand, if you make more love-based decisions, you live with more love in your life. Now, which do you want?” So I said, “This is something you can check out.” So here’s the very simple process. For a month, whenever you wake up in the morning, you write down on a slip of paper the date and three things that you would like to have happen this day that would make this a more ideal day. Then you throw it in the drawer.

Then you make a commitment that to the best of my ability, I am only going to make love-based decisions today. Not fear-based decisions. Okay? Try it. You won’t bat a thousand but give it a real honest effort and then at the end of three or four weeks, you go back and look at your list of things that you said if this happened today, I would have a more ideal day. How did you do? Did it work for you? My experience in working with this with a lot of people over the years is yeah, it works. Yes, it works. So I think it’s very appropriate that we test things out.

Allison:       Yeah, I like that. When you say test it out, there’s not a pressure to be perfect.

Bud:           No, no there’s not.

Allison:       You know?

Bud:           None of us are. You know what?

Allison:       There’s no pressure.

Bud:           Life is a journey and we have an opportunity to learn and to develop and to become. We need to get out of our comfort zone once in a while to do that.

I’d like to shift gears just a little bit because we don’t have forever.

Allison:       No, we have like 25 more minutes.

Bud:           I would like to talk about what I call the principles of team membership and give you just a little bit of background on how this evolved. Many years ago, I was working with a practice in New Orleans which happened to be an orthodontic practice. We had a long-term agreement that I would visit the practice about once a quarter and I did that for a couple of years.

After about the second or third visit, the orthodontist said to me as he was taking me back to the airport one day, he said, “Bud, after you come, we are really at a high in terms of our interpersonal relationships but then it sort of trails off. One of the things I think we need is a reminder from you. Something we could post on the bulletin board to be a reminder to us of what the principles are that we need to attend to to really have a high level of harmony and teamwork in our practice.”

So as I was flying home that night I decided to identify the principles that I thought would be important that may be useful when I’m not there. So after a lot of thought over a period of maybe two or three months I came up with eight principles of team membership. I’d like to review these with you just a little bit and see if they fit for you.

The first principle of team membership that has never changed from my initial effort is, always be willing to do more than your share. What happens is that when everyone on the team buys into that, everyone works less hard and you get more work done. It’s an incredible thing what happens when everybody buys into the concept always be willing to do more than your share.

The next one is very very different but very very important. It is never say an uncomplimentary thing about another key member with bad intent, especially behind their back. You know, one of the things that just kills trust in an organization is what we call backstabbing or backbiting. I could give you a couple examples of this. I was working with a team in Springville, Illinois some years ago. The dentist called me, he said, “Bud, please come visit us. We would really like to get involved with you and your philosophy.”

So I went back and spent the two days. First day, I interviewed all of the team and got acquainted. These interviews are an opportunity for me to counsel a little bit about team building and those kinds of things, and honesty, and all these other philosophy things. Then the next day we had a team building meeting and it went quite well. I thought we would have an ongoing relationship but for whatever reasons, I was never invited back.

A couple of years later, the dentist called me again. He said, “Bud, we really would like to have you come work with us again. This time, we’re going to stick with the program for a while.” I said, “Fine, that’d be great.”

So I went back and I visited them again. One of the questions that I ask when I do a practice analysis when I interview all the team members is, what are the strengths of the practice? People tell me what the good things are about the practice. One of the things when I asked that question to the members of this team the second time I was there, I said, “What are the strengths of this practice?” Almost every member of the team said, “One of the nicest things about working here is that no one ever says anything bad about anyone else.” I said, “Wow, that’s fantastic. That’s not common.” And it wasn’t the way it was when I was in the practice a couple of years earlier.

So I decided I was going to find out why. What is the difference? Why is it now that everybody in the practice says nobody backbites? I found out why after some investigation. It was because of Lois. Lois was the hygienist that they had hired shortly after I’d been there the first time. When she took the job, she told the doctor and the members of the staff that one thing she would not tolerate is anybody backstabbing another person in this practice with gossip or bad comments. They all agreed that that’s wonderful, come on board.

She said, “You know Bud, I’d been here about two weeks when one day Marilyn came up to me and she said, ‘Do you know what that damn Betty Lou did yesterday that made me so mad I could spit nails?’” She said, “No I don’t.” She said, “I grabbed Marilyn by the arm, took her out in the hallway, went and got Betty Lou out of an operatory and I said, ‘Now, you tell her what she did yesterday that made you so damn mad that you could spit nails. Tell her right now.’”

Well that was the end of the backstabbing in that practice.

Allison:       That’s great.

Bud:           People just didn’t do it anymore. Now that’s heavy. I wouldn’t put that on anyone. That’s an unusual person that can do that. But in a practice, one of the things I teach is that if someone comes to you and makes an uncomplimentary statement about another person, say, “Don’t tell me. Tell her that too.” It ends this practice that is so destructive. What happens when people backbite or backstab or gossip about one another, it’s inappropriate behavior and it destroys trust.

Another one is accept personal responsibility for practice success. To share in the rewards of the practice, one must also share the responsibility that produced them. In practice after practice over the years, the person responsible for the profitability of the practice is the dentist. I think, hey wait a minute, if you’re going to take part in this practice, you’re going to be a team member, you have to accept personal responsibility for the success of this practice.

Another one of the principles that I identified was discuss your differences with team members. You know, we have differences. When we have differences, they are opportunities to learn from one another. Resolve differences, strengthen relationships. One of the things that I try to teach a team when I work with them on an individual basis is how to communicate negative information in a positive way. The way you do that, in short, is instead of making criticisms make suggestions.

Another one of these very important things is never be late or absent for trivial reasons. To do so is unfair to your teammates who must carry your load. You know, that’s not a common thing in dentistry but when I get to a practice where someone doesn’t pay attention to that, it is a major factor in disharmony.

Another one is to accept reality. All members of the team do not have the same duties, experience, and ability, and are not paid the same. Accept that reality. What happens if we buy into these eight principles of team membership, it’s just a wonderful thing that happens in terms of the lack of disharmony. Disharmony goes away.

What I try to help teams understand in dentistry is that as a team, you can have it any way you want it. If you want to have peace and harmony in your team, it’s available to you. It’s available to you by being consistent in terms of living according to the core values that we talked about earlier and understanding that we have a choice. Any time we have a mean-spirited thought we can choose again. We don’t have to entertain it.

So where do we go, what else?

Allison:       Well, I was taking notes. I wrote down—I only got six of the eight of your principles.

Bud:           Oh, okay, let me give you a couple more. I’ve got them. There right here. Hang on.

Allison:       Okay, I would like to have them.

Bud:           Okay, one of them is be involved, concerned and active in your own personal growth. You know, personal growth and team development can’t be separated. Anytime we have a person on this team who is concerned about their personal growth and doing things for the right reason, they’re making a substantial contribution to the harmony of that team.

Another one is participate in team activities even when it is inconvenient to do so. One of the things we need to understand about trust building is that when we share core values, and let’s make the assumption always, that we share core values, and if we share core values, then the fact is that the more I know about this other person and the more that they know about me, the greater it’s likelihood they’re going to develop a caring relationship.

Positive sentiment is absolutely critical to team functioning. The more I know about you and the more you know about me, if we share core values, the greater the likelihood that we’re going to love one another. I use that word. The shrinks call it positive sentiment but what it is, if you love the people that you work with. You know them and they know you. You’ll have a high degree of tolerance for them when they make a mistake. Or when you make a mistake, they’ll have the same tolerance for you.

So those are the eight principles.

Allison:       Thank you. So when you and I spoke the other day, we talked about trust building.

Bud:           Yep.

Allison:       Are those eight principles your tools for building trust or is that a different…?

Bud:           Yes, they are. Let me give you just a little bit of additional stuff. If we’re going to really have a group of people who function at a high level of ability as a team and trust is a critical element, there are three things that we need to share. We need to share mission, philosophy, and core values.

I’ve talked about core values and I’ve talked about mission. If your mission driven, if everybody on the team is mission driven, how can we serve these people? How can we serve these people who walk through our front door every day we’re open? How can we contribute to the quality of their lives? I’ve got to tell you, that pays off.

The next thing that we haven’t talked about is shared philosophy. Shared philosophy is this, as far as I’m concerned. One of the things that I believe in terms of philosophy is the Law of Balance. The Law of Balance states this, if you deliver excellence and charge for excellence, that’s in balance. If you deliver excellence and charge mediocrity, it’s not in balance and it won’t work. Long term, it won’t work. It will not be successful. If you deliver mediocrity and charge for excellence, that doesn’t work either. So that’s philosophy.

My philosophy is, and this was greatly influenced by many meetings that I had with L.D. Pankey. What a fantastic human being he was. He said, “You know Bud, the real truth is deliver the best you can and charge a fair fee for it.” Yeah. So if we share a philosophy, we’re going to deliver excellence and we’re going to charge for it.

I worked in the past few years, I’ve been acquainted with and involved peripherally with corporate dentistry. Some of these big dental companies, they have full page ads in the newspapers and things like that. One of them is Comfort Dental and all these kind of things. Where they advertise full page ads, ‘low prices, high quality.” Nah. It doesn’t happen that way. But I tell you what, the idea that if you’re going to have a really successful practice, if you deliver excellence, let me tell you, friend, charge for it. That’s only fair.

If this was some of the last words that Dr. Harold Wirth spoke when he was lecturing to a group of people at LSU down in Louisiana when he said that, “There will always be enough people who are willing to pay for excellence to support a dentist who delivers it.” So I think that hey wait a minute, if you want bargain basement dentistry, that’s one thing. I don’t have a problem that some people may want that. Some people may want mediocrity and pay for mediocrity but I chose not to work with those people.

Allison:       We’ve talked about that a couple of weeks ago in our study club with Bill Gregg.

Bud:           Yeah.

Allison:       Linda Miles has a question. She’s raised her hand.

Bud:           Oh really?

Allison:       Yeah, I’m going unmute her.

Linda:         I’m unmuted, I think.

Allison:       There you are.

Linda:         Hey, Bud Ham. I am so delighted to be on this call this evening. I have not heard your name for twenty years and when I pulled it up online this morning thinking I would be on the call, the first thing that popped up was Bud Ham’s obituary and it scared me.

Bud:           [Laughs]

Linda:         I thought, “Oh my goodness,” but thank goodness it was a different Bud Ham.

Bud:           I’ll have to tell you a story about that. But you know what, Linda…

Linda:         You are absolutely—I have taken four pages of notes just listening and you are better than you were twenty years ago when I heard you with Avrum King.

Bud:           Oh, let me give you my email number, for all of you. I would absolutely hope that all of you take this down. My email address is Bud.BudHam@gmail.com. I would love to send you Bud stuff. We don’t have time for me to send you all of the essays that I’ve written.

But Linda, I want to tell you something. The highest compliment that I ever accepted or received was when you were lecturing in Seattle twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago. I was lecturing at the same meeting, on a different day. I was sitting in your audience.

Linda:         Oh my goodness, I didn’t know that.

Bud:           You recognized me. Here’s what I remember you said, I got to tell you, it brings tears to my eyes today. “One of the most loved consultants in dentistry is with us today, Bud Ham, would you please stand?” Oh my God. Lady, you can never imagine…

Linda:         That was the first time I spoke at Seattle, King County.

Bud:           [Laughs] That was fantastic.

Linda:         Wow.

Bud:           It was emotional and one of the highest accolades I ever received.

Linda:         Well, thank you and you are fantastic. You need to be out and about more.

Bud:           Well, you know, I lectured at the Greater New York Dental Meeting last fall and I loved it. I talked about becoming the—my message was to the staff people, how do you become an evolved self-professional? See I don’t think you have to have letters after your name to be a professional. I think it is an attitude and you have that attitude every day.

I lectured also with pretty much the same message at the AAO meeting in May last year in Philadelphia. It was very well received and I’m so honored once in a while to be invited back to lecture. I still have four or five clients on a regular basis. I see clients in Wisconsin and in Texas and here in Denver and Illinois and South Dakota.

So anyway, I’m still active. But here’s the story, about a year and a half ago, I was lecturing with Susan Hollar, who is one of the Pankey scholars. She and her husband and I were lecturing in the Coral Gables area in Vero Beach, Florida. The next week she was going to present at the Pankey Institute. So on Sunday we drove down to the Pankey Institute and I met two or three people at the Pankey Institute that I hadn’t seen in many many years and said, “Bud, we thought you were dead.”

[Laughter]

Linda:         Oh, that was, you just need to be out more. Doesn’t he, Allison?

Allison:       Definitely. We’re going to help.

Bud:           Well I’m going to tell you this. I’m only 80 and I’ve decided when I’m going to retire.

Linda:         94.

Bud:           I decided that I’m going to retire when I get old.

Linda:         Well, I’m never going to get old and you’re not either so we’ll be in this together until we’re 110. Today is my last day of being in the sixties.

Allison:       Happy birthday, tomorrow, right?

Linda:         Tomorrow.

Allison:       Happy birthday.

Linda:         Thank you.

Allison:       Yeah.

Bud:           Well, I would be really happy to leave my email address with people. Let me give you my cell phone.

Linda:         Okay.

Bud:           (303) 885-4661.

Linda:         4661…

Bud:           I talk to people about every day. I’m a volunteer at an organization called Rocky Mountain Miracle Center. I serve as a life coach there to people and have calls every day. So I want to tell you how much I appreciate being invited for this webinar or whatever it is we call it these days.

Allison:       Absolutely. I want to tell you how much we appreciate having you on here. And like Linda said, I knew I wanted to learn more about you so I assumed that my colleagues would want to learn from you as well. Maybe we can do it again sometime and if not, I would definitely would love to…

Bud:           I’m very grateful. I’ve got to tell you, you invite me back again, I’ll be thrilled.

Allison:       Aw. Thank you so much.

Bud:           You’re most welcome.

Allison:       Well, I’ll invite you guys. Linda, do you have anything else you want to say?

Linda:         No, I’m just so thrilled that I was back in time from running a lot of errands and getting ready to leave Saturday so it was absolutely incredible. He is better than he ever was before.

Bud:           I just wish I could hug you. [Laughs]

Allison:       Group hug on the phone.

Bud:           There’s the hug.

Linda:         There’s the hug. Thank you for your email. I will keep in touch, Bud.

Bud:           Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Linda:         I’m really glad it was Bud H-A-M, with two Ms that had had passed away.

Bud:           Just one M. B-U-D.B-U-D-H-A-M@gmail.com.

Linda:         Got it.

Allison:       All right. Oh, if anybody else has a particular question, we have a few more minutes. Then I’ll just open the lines so we can say goodbye.

Bud:           Sure, I’ll be right here.

Allison:       Anonymous—that must be Dr. Bill Gregg.

Bill:             Wow.

Allison:       You’re unmuted.

Bill:             I would just like to say, Allison, I hope you understand how much of Bud’s teaching came through in what I shared with you all. I had the very good fortune twenty-some odd years ago to meet this young man who changed my life and I will tell you if you test Bud’s principles and you keep living by them, they will change your life. So I wanted two things. Number one, Bud, thank you very much. I hope you also realize how much you are passing on through others.

Bud:           Well, you know what? I’m an agent. I am a channel. I know this will sound strange to a lot of people but it isn’t me. It’s spirit working through me that helps other people. I am so grateful for the opportunity. I do not discount my role in that but I am a very blessed man and I thank God every day for the opportunities I have.

I’ve been in dentistry now for forty years and I’ve got to tell you, people, what a gift it has been in my life to—the finest people in the world are attracted to be dentists. Making a difference in the quality of the lives of other people every day you practice. That’s mission. With that, I’ll say goodnight to you and thank you, thank you, thank you, for this opportunity.

Thanks for listening to Practicing with the Masters for dentists, with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. For more about how Allison Watts and Transformational Practices can help you create a successful and fulfilling practice and life, visit transformationalpractices.com.