Dental News - If I could see through your eyes, I wonder what I would see?

Jerko Bozikovic

Tue. 15. November 2022

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Ever wondered why some things are very clear, very natural, even very normal for you, yet someone else thinks exactly the opposite, or you see or hear something and of course expect that everyone else sees or hears the same thing? Well, many of us live in an illusion, the illusion that how we perceive the world is reality. In fact, it is never the reality, but it is definitely your reality. Let us consider together how this can be, how this affects our communication and our collaboration with our teams and patients, and how we are influenced on a personal level.

We all have a model of the world (MOW). An individual’s beliefs, values, desires, expectations, experiences, culture, education, age, family background, relational status, sexual and gender identity, work experience, etc. help create and define his or her MOW, acting as filters through which he or she perceives, lives and acts. Filters are like sunglasses: if it is sunny outside and you put on browncoloured sunglasses, the world appears brownish; however, if you put on blue, yellow or pink ones, the world will look blueish, yellowish or pinkish. The world is not brown, blue, yellow or pink, but your perception of the world is. Our filters colour our perception of reality.

We perceive reality through our five senses, our brain interprets what we perceive through our filters, including our values, experiences and how we feel at that moment (mentally, physically, emotionally), and we behave accordingly. Sometimes we do not understand where our behaviour comes from or where the other person’s behaviour comes from. Now you understand that it is related to your and/or his or her MOW.

Impact on communication

We may think that how we communicate is very clear; however, we may notice sometimes that the other person did not understand what we said the way we intended it. I am sure that many of us remember the telephone game we played as children: in a circle of children, the first would whisper something in the ear of the second child, who would whisper it to the next one and so on until the sentence arrived at the last child. Very seldom was the final sentence the same as the initial one. This shows the many levels of interpretation but also of loss, during that transmission.

An informative check to do in your clinic would be to give clear instructions to a patient about a treatment plan and care of his or her teeth, then ask your assistant at the front desk to ask that patient what you said regarding the treatment plan and dental care, and then compare what you said with what the patient said. Do not be surprised that in too many cases it might be that what you said was not heard the same way as you meant it, let alone remembered to be able to repeat it to your assistant. That is because all our filters influence what we hear, see and experience around us, linked to our MOW.

Therefore, being a good communicator is crucial, and here are some tips:

Repeat your messages.
Do not speak too quickly. It is not what you say that matters but what the other person hears, understands and remembers.
Keep your message short and simple. The more you say, the more that can be lost; the more complicated, the easier for the other person to zone out and stop listening.
Ask people to write down the instructions you give them—make sure pen and paper are always available for patients and your team encouraging them by saying that writing down the exact instructions, what the treatment will involve, etc. will help them recall this better at home.
We communicate through words but also through our body language and our tone of voice, and that too affects what the other person will hear, understand and remember. Make sure that all three ways of communicating (the way you use your body and voice and the words you use) are aligned in giving the same message—avoid looking at your screen while conveying an important message, because the other person will perceive it as less important, since there was no eye contact.

Impact on collaboration with your team and colleagues

Of course, your team members and colleagues also have their MOW, and so trying to understand how someone is perceiving the world around him or her will help you to make sure things are done the way you want them to be done. A great way of understanding how people perceive the world is through various personality models, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, DISC and Insights Discovery.

These models give some insight into how you and others see the world. I have used several of these models with entire teams in team building, but also when there was conflict and frustration in teams, for example. These models can help us understand why somebody gives more attention to relationships, while others are more scientific and factual. Some love and need structure and security, while others just long for change and creativity.

Seeing and experiencing that we all have our own MOW helps collaboration tremendously. I even know of several companies who categorise their clients or patients based on these different personality models and know exactly how they need to communicate with them to motivate them and to really connect with them. It is not about putting people into boxes; it is about understanding why someone acts or reacts in certain ways and what we can do in our collaboration and communication to create a more desirable outcome.

Of course, this also helps with personal and family relationships. You can avoid falling into the trap of thinking that how you see the world is how everyone sees the world. Rather you can try to understand why someone has a certain reaction or certain understanding of what you have said, in order to see how you could make yourself clearer by consciously applying the NAAA technique: Never Assume, Always Ask.

Impact on yourself

Put two people across each other at a table and draw the number six on a piece of paper. For one, it will look like the number six, but the person opposite will see a nine. Who is right? Both are; both just have a different perspective on reality. As mentioned before, reality how you perceive it is always your reality, but never the reality.

We can take this much further in respect to our daily lives. How often are relationships affected because both people have a different way of looking at things? Insisting on being right can be a reason why friends and families do not communicate with each other. This is the reason for ugly divorces and the division in society we have seen in the past two years over vaccination. Even wars are a clash of different MOWs. Who is right and who is wrong? Honestly, nobody really is. So, a good thing you can try to do for yourself is to look at the world outside your box, outside your MOW, outside your ways of looking at, thinking about and perceiving things in and around you.

Maybe you think that you are not that influenceable, but do you respond differently when a patient is friendly or unfriendly to you? Might your behaviour be affected by what you see? Might it be that because you have a belief (conscious or unconscious) that, if someone is friendly to you, you should be friendly back, but if someone is unfriendly, that person should not see the friendliest you? Of course, we do not know why someone is unfriendly, and what does unfriendly mean anyway? Is it an interpretation through your filters of a certain situation or behaviour happening outside of you? Consider whether receiving things from providers (material, trips, money, opportunities, invitations, etc.) might influence your MOW and thus your reaction, your preferences, your neutrality? Or do you believe that you are not affected by this? Just some food for thought…

A good tip I can give you is to from now onwards consider that what you are experiencing or perceiving is your reality, and to ask what it might be like for the other person. Thinking this way will help you to learn more about the other person’s MOW and to share yours. This way we’ll get closer to each other, collaborate better and understand each other better.

Editorial note:

This article was published in aligners—international magazine of aligner orthodontics vol. 1, issue 2/2022. Please follow the link to view the list of references.

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