EPISODE 415: Hiring Assessment Tool for Associates

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Dr. Kevin Christie: [00:00:00] Hey docs, welcome to a solo episode of Modern Chiropractic Mastery. I'm your host Dr. Kevin Christie and today we're going to talk about an assessment tool when hiring an associate. We'll talk about some ancillary things as well. On what to consider with this. And I think if you're a practice owner, um, with an associate, without an associate, this is going to be appropriate for you.

Uh, if you're a look, a doc looking for a job, um, or you are a student at some point, this is going to be good. Whether you're on the doctor hiring side of things, or you're on the doctor looking to be hired side of things. And, uh, you'll get a lot out of this episode. And at least I hope you do. And, um, You know, it's a challenge.

I think historically in our profession, the compatibility of owner doctor and associate doctor has been challenging for many reasons. I've, I've, you know, dove into that on previous podcasts. I'm not going to harp too [00:01:00] much on it, but I do think oftentimes there's just a mismatch of expectations. And then sometimes there's a mismatch of, uh, frankly, uh, skill sets that a, uh, an owner.

is looking for in an associate and in what that particular associate has that they hired. And sometimes there's no right or wrong, right? People are different. Skill sets are different. A certain skill set of a, of a, of a chiropractor working for another doctor could be great in one setting and not great in another setting.

And there's nothing wrong with that per se, but we want to try to have some compatibility there in this assessment that I'll dive into. And a little bit on this episode, we'll, we'll help with that, but there's definitely a challenge. And I, you know, we've talked about it on a previous podcast. Uh, and it was also on an interview there and there's, uh, you know, kind of like three buckets of, let's say a good associate chiropractors.

Uh, there's a bucket of bad, which is just, if you've got someone that is not good [00:02:00] clinically, not up to snuff with that, or their values are, are no good. not a good person. You know, there's, there's nothing good about that, but there's that bucket of just, you know, bad chiropractors. And so we're not going to dive into that, but the three that are in the bucket of good, but just different, uh, would be, you know, you'd have your clinician, a doctor that just wants to be a doctor or just wants to.

Come to work and treat patients and do notes. And that's, that's what they're looking for. And, and as a career as a chiropractor, um, and then the other is what we would consider a builder. And that's, uh, someone said it, um, as kind of like an intrapreneur, uh, which is. They're kind of entrepreneurial, but within the framework of someone else's business or systems around that, uh, but they're a builder and I've heard Brett Winchester say, uh, you know, you give that person one new patient and turn it into 10, uh, you know, you got a bad situation when you give them 10 new patients and they turn them into one.

Uh, and so that's that builder, [00:03:00] which I think is a really good sweet spot. And then frankly, what we did when we helped build this assessment with a company vision spark, which I'm going to dive into a little bit more. Uh, we focus on that category. And then the third category is really your, your kind of hunter, your entrepreneurial chiropractor, the one that's more than likely, uh, unless they have some kind of ownership into your practice and partnership or growth or buyout potential, um, they're, they're going to start their own thing.

Uh, they're real comfortable with that. Um, they're able to just build, um. Relationships and take risks at a high level. And I think Steven Franson on our show last year said that, um, maybe seven or 8 percent of the population in the U S population are entrepreneurs, but he thinks it's higher amongst chiropractors because it kind of self selects and it might be in the teens, but it's not a lot.

Uh, and then it doesn't mean that you can't be a. Uh, [00:04:00] a non entrepreneur and build a practice, but it's, uh, maybe not as natural and you need a lot more help to, to get it done. Right. And so those are, you know, kind of three types of, of chiropractors. And I think sometimes what happens is the owner is looking for a builder, but hires a clinician or is looking for a clinician and hires a entrepreneur and it just doesn't work out and it's just a compatibility issue.

And so we want to get clear on that. And I think the, I would say many of you. If you're trying to hire a chiropractor are looking for the builder, and I think many of you that are listening that maybe are associates or students or looking for a job, probably fall into that builder category is probably the broadest.

And so we decided to kind of focus on that. And so, as we talk about today. That's what it is. And I'll, and I'll give you the background of this, uh, tips assessment that we're going to talk about today and the, it's a, it's called talent impact profile. So that's the [00:05:00] tip TIP talent impact profile. And I'll break that down in a minute, but what we.

Uh, we had vision spark, who's a company that runs this assessment and it's a, it's a longstanding assessment and they, we had them come speak to our mastermind group in April of 2024 when we were in Nashville and they did this assessment for all of our practice managers, office managers, and they had had our team take this assessment.

It's like 60 minutes long, did a whole thing on it. Uh, complimentary to have our, our, um, each of the mastermind members, office manager, or, or kind of key person, non clinical, uh, take this assessment and then, uh, taught us it and then how, how to look for it, how to use it for, for office managers. And then ultimately I asked them, I was like, you know, is there anything, I knew there wasn't, but I was like, is there any, how do we do this for associate chiropractors?

And, you know, and it's like, well, we have a way. Where it takes some effort, [00:06:00] um, and some financial resources to actually build a tips assessment that is specific for hiring an associate chiropractor. And so what we did was, uh, we, each year we allocate some of the revenue from the mastermind into projects to try to help the profession.

And so we decided to allocate some of the money to do this and build out a talent impact profile for associate chiropractors. And we. Decided to do it on that builder, uh, category, that intrapreneur per se. And, uh, what we, one of the big things to do that was we needed 10 associate chiropractors to take the general tips assessment and do that.

And, and what we did was we. First took volunteers from within our mastermind who could answer the question, you know, if you had, if they had an associate and they'd been there for, you know, at [00:07:00] least a year, uh, we had a couple exceptions for that, but they could answer the question, knowing what, you know, now, would you hire that associate again?

And if they could answer that, cause a lot of you can't answer that with that. Yes. Right. A lot of you are listening to this, that have an associate and, uh, you're saying, yeah, if I knew what I do now, great person and all that, but it just hasn't been great. So we wanted people that could answer that question.

Yeah, absolutely. If I could hire this guy or gal again, I would. And that would, we, we then opened it up to some people outside of our mastermind and we got 10 associate chiropractors to ultimately take this assessment. It's 60 minutes long. And then it was a whole process from there, which was great. And, and I was Uh, a big part of helping facilitate it, uh, but they, they would do the, each of the associates would do the 60 minute assessment.

Then they would get on a phone call with the folks from VisionSpark, then ultimately get, I'd get all the results, we'd see [00:08:00] it, um, then what we did was, um, review. All of it, uh, I kind of, they interviewed me as well, and like what are the things that you're looking for, for this type of associate chiropractor, and it was like a list of certain parameters they had, and I kind of helped guide that, then we, then we had the 10 people assess, take the assessment, then we noticed a few things were Kind of outliers that we, we changed some of the parameters a little bit to suit that.

And then we ultimately came out with a, a tips assessment, but, uh, just want to go over a little bit of what the talent impact profile is. It's, it combines mental aptitude measurements with personality traits and also validity scoring all in one tool, which is nice. And they can actually measure if someone is not.

Um, if their assessment isn't valid and we had a couple of that and they dive into why that may be and tweak some things and so that's, I like how that was as well. Um, [00:09:00] so it kind of, they can actually see if someone is. Maybe gaming it or answering how they think they would, someone would like, but we also coach them on really taking this assessment, um, appropriately.

And so that is, is, is what the tip assessment is, you know, so you're going to really look at three key things on a person. Um, maybe there's more, but, um, this is, uh, some information from VisionSpark and you can check them out at visionsparksearch. com, visionsparksearch. com, I'll put that in the show notes as well.

Um, but you're looking at three things. You're looking at the cognitive. when you're assessing someone and that's going to be your learning speed, attention to detail, memory retention, and communication skills. Obviously, those are some things you would like in a doctor. You're going to have the affectives, A F F E C T I V E, affective.

That's going to be the values, behaviors, and personality. And so the tip assessment measures those two things, the [00:10:00] cognitive and the effective. What it doesn't measure is the cognitive, and that's going to be instinct and drive. That's what the Colby assessment is. K O L B E. Anybody that ever goes through our coaching program, one of the things we do is we have them take the Colby because we want to know how what their instinct and drive is.

And it's also really good when you're hiring. And so Uh, that would be a nice little package of having someone take the talent impact profile, but also the Kolbe and so then you would get the person's cognitive, affective, and then cognitive when you're assessing them. And I think it really, uh, plays well, uh, for that.

And some of the things that you're, uh, when someone takes the assessment on say the mental aptitudes, it's measuring learning style. It's measuring business terms. Um, it's measuring marketplace awareness, vocabulary, numerical accuracy, mechanical motivation. Um, that's on the mental aptitudes and it's got, [00:11:00] you know, like for instance,

so on one hand of the spectrum for learning style is going to be hands on. The, on the other end of the spectrum is going to be conceptual, right? And so we've kind of, that was one thing that when we did the assessment, he's like, you know what, a lot of our chiropractors are probably going to lean towards the hands on learning, uh, as you can imagine if you're a chiropractor.

And so that's something that's unique to the profession that maybe isn't in other ones, right? Now on the personality dimensions, we measure, there's measures of energy. And that's, uh, on one end of the spectrum is action oriented versus on the other end of the spectrum is calm. Uh, we got process orientation, organization, communication, sense of urgency, assertiveness, competitiveness, audience sensitivity, questioning, tendency, and motivation.

And so those are the things that they're measuring under the personality dimensions. And so you're. Uh, looking at, and then it, uh, gives you this really awesome report once someone does take it. And when someone takes the, [00:12:00] uh, tip assessment, you're going to get this really detailed report that breaks it down, which is nice.

Um, there's going to be a 60 minute one on one call, uh, with VisionSparks team to, to do that. Um, and so that's nice as well. So you really work through that. I wouldn't, you know, obviously I, you know, this is for an associate. When you're hiring an associate, you're going to. You're going to take some time doing that.

You're going to allocate some resources doing it. It's only about 400 to offer this assessment. So it's not that bad. Um, you're going to not, you're not going to run someone through this tips assessment before you would actually interview them to make sure. Cause you know, in your, in your regular interview process and having their CV and certain things like that, you're going to weed some people out just naturally like that.

So this would be after you've. You've had a fair amount of your interview process going to then take this tips assessment. And that's where, um, [00:13:00] you know, I think it's, it's really important to have a, a really good process. And one of the things, kind of a sidebar topic is, you know, when you're looking to build a great team and you're looking to build great culture, it's really a four phase approach to getting there.

And it's something that we kind of workshopped in, and I think our West mastermind this last time in Park City was that when you're hiring, and let's say you're trying to hire a doctor, you're trying to hire an associate, the, the big part of that early aspect is talent acquisition, you know, what end of the pool are you fishing from?

Right? Um, do you have good talent acquisition? If you're not affiliating yourself with entities that are producing great talent, whether it's MPI or ART or FTCA or particular schools, particular aspects of schools, particular schools of thought, [00:14:00] um, you're not going to get to good talent. And so you got to have a talent acquisition plan.

If you're looking to hire an associate in a year from now, start now with finding talent, start getting involved with those, uh, the schools that are by you with the, with MPIs of the world and things of that nature, like you got to get good talent and especially if you're not in a. Let's just call it sought after area and there's nothing, you know, your area is probably awesome.

But there, you know, if you're in, um, you know, Nashville, Tennessee, yeah, people are wanting to go there all the time, but that's not, not everywhere as Nashville. So if you're in an area, you got to do some stuff to have a talent acquisition plan. That's part one. And then part two is you have to have a really good hiring process and that's going to be multifactorial and I'm not going to dive into it all today.

But this is where the tips assessment would fall into that. You know, some of the things you might have in the hiring processes, you know, obviously, you know, collecting their CV, having a phone interview, flying them down, having them shadow [00:15:00] you, having them adjust you, having them take a tips assessment, having them take doing a background check, having them do, um.

You know, a Colby index and, and going through that process, that would be the hiring process. And that's where this tips assessment would be. And then once you do have the hiring done, you know, part of the hiring process also is an offer letter is working through agreements and salary negotiations. Like it's, it's a lot to hire a doctor.

It's, uh, it's not a two week thing and get your hiring process down. And this should be part of it, this tips assessment. And then next is onboarding. Once they do start, like what's your onboarding process like to get them integrated and click into the clinic and start, um, being productive as soon as possible.

And then frankly. The thing that goes, it's just not done enough is, is continued training. What's the continued training like to look like that? Some of you get the talent, right? And you get the hiring, right? And you hired a great person and they come on and they weren't onboarded appropriately. And they're not, [00:16:00] you know, you're not, you're wondering why they're not doing well and you don't have continued training.

And then you say like, Oh, you know, he didn't really pan out. Like I was hoping he would. Well, is that his fault? Maybe, but maybe it's not. Maybe you don't have an onboarding continued training and that's a problem. And that's why maybe your culture of your team is not good because you're killing it on talent and hiring, but you're not on onboarding and training.

Or maybe you're, you know, your talent acquisition is, is bad. And so you're, you're not getting good talent and you, you're settling in your hiring and then you try to onboard and train them. And it doesn't go well. So it can go, it can go wrong on one of these four things. Some people get it all for, uh, but it could go, you want to get all four, right.

And if you got one, you know, weak link there, it can, it can spoil the whole thing and then ultimately spoil the whole team and the whole culture. And so make sure that you've got that right. And on the continued training standpoint. Um, I read a book, kind of talked about it a lot, uh, especially in our coaching groups and [00:17:00] stuff, but the salt shaker theory of leadership, I think is really great is from Danny Meyer and his book set setting the table, but what you got to look at, um, I'm just going to kind of read this really quick from this, uh, aspect of it.

And, um, basically Danny Meyer had a coach and they were talking about, uh, Danny was talking with his coach about how frustrating it was to continually try to. Put out fires with his team and his team is doing things that maybe they shouldn't be. And so, um, this is a little excerpt from, uh, from the book quote Pat pointed to the set.

Pat is the coach pointed to the set of table next to us. First, he said, I want you to take everything off of that table except for the salt shaker. Uh, go ahead, get rid of the plates, the silverware, the napkins, even the pepper mill. I just want you to leave the salt shaker by itself in the middle. I did, as he said, and he asked, where is the salt shaker now?

Uh, right where you told me in the center of the table. Quote, are you sure that's where [00:18:00] you want it? I looked closely, the shaker was actually about a quarter of an inch off center. Go ahead, put it where you really want it, he said. I moved it very slowly to look, to be smack dab in the center. As soon as I removed my hand, Pat pushed the salt shaker three inches off center.

Now put it back where you want it, he said. I returned it to the dead center. This time he moved it, the shaker another six inches off center. Again asking, now where do you want it? I slid it back, then he explained at this point, listen Lova, That's how he says it. He calls him lover. Uh, your staff and your guests are always moving your salt shaker off center.

That's their job. It's the job of life. It's the law of entropy until you understand that you're going to get pissed off every time someone moves the salt shaker off center. It is not your job to get upset. You're you just need to understand that's what they do. Your job is to just move the shaker shaker.

back each time and let them know exactly what you stand for. Let them know what excellence looks like to you. And if you're ever willing to let them decide where the [00:19:00] center is, then I want you to give them the keys to the store. Just, just give away a fucking restaurant, he says. And so that's kind of a, one of the things he talked about.

As far as the salt shaker theory of leadership became a cornerstone of Myers managerial style, which is a style he now describes as, and this is what I really love about the book and this idea, is a leadership style which he calls constant gentle pressure. Constant gentle pressure is about setting high standards, holding team members accountable, and correcting them.

Repeatedly, enthusiastically, and with kindness when they start to drift from those standards, it's also about accepting the infinite nature of this work. If you lead a team, this nudging and reminding literally never ends. Okay, and I'm gonna leave it at that, like it literally never ends, and so you need to have a training program for your team as well, and you need to have [00:20:00] meetings, and you need someone to be leading that, and maybe you get to the point where your associate doctor is, is fully on board, and they're leading a lot of the, You have direct reports and so you're not necessarily having, this isn't about micromanaging.

This is about keeping things excellent and into the center. And a lot of you don't do that. And I found this to be a compelling idea of constant general pressure to make sure that your team is performing at a high level. And so that's what you need to have a, an A team and have culture and make sure that yeah, okay.

Yeah. I got the hiring, right. Got talent, but Everything looked good. We on boarded well, but then all of a sudden the wheels fall off after a couple of years. Why is that? Because maybe you are not applying constant gentle pressure to your team. And that is something that, um, you know, I failed that for many years still probably to this day.

I'm still working on it. And it's funny because when we coach clients, it's something that we I would feel [00:21:00] like we do and I think that's what I think that's why it works is that we apply constant general pressure to our clients to keep on being excellent and remarkable in their clinics and we don't have if you're the leader and you're the owner of your practice and you don't have someone that is applying that constant general pressure to you you get off kilter you lose your center and you lose kind of your you know your you're off your vision a bit and no one's holding you accountable and that's a problem and that's why I think it's it's good to Um, honestly, if you're, if you're looking to hire an associate, we do a lot of helping our clients with that as well.

Uh, there's a lot of facts, facts, factors to it. Even the financials of it, we help them with that to get ready for it. So if that's something that you, uh, feel like you may need, just obviously go to our website. modernchiropracticmarketing. com and you can fill out a form there. You can go to VisionSpark as well and, and the tip assessment is there.

Um, reach out to them, let them know you're looking to hire a [00:22:00] chiropractor. Maybe let them know that you heard them from this episode and they'll know exactly what to do to help you out with that. Um, but take it serious, take hiring an associate serious. It's, it's, uh, it's a big, big, um, step in many chiropractors careers.

And you want to do it thoughtfully and with a plan. And so again, just to reiterate, four phases, talent acquisition, hiring process, onboarding, and continued training, or that constant gentle pressure. And I think a big part of the hiring process is to have a great assessment. So that way you pair that up with a Kolbe

and again, you've got, uh, the cognitive, effective, and cognitive covered when you're hiring that doctor. So I hope that was helpful. Again, that's the Talent Impact Profile by VisionSpark. Uh, you can go to visionsparksearch. com and, uh, it was fun working with them. It was, it was detailed, took about six months.

We put a lot of effort into it and financial resources. Uh, I don't have any [00:23:00] tied to it financially, but I wanted this to be out there for you chiropractors to hire great associates and make your practices even better, have a great week in practice. And we'll talk soon.