Fixer or Grower

Fixer or Grower

“YOU don’t have to spent time developing your people.
Treat them like Donkey’s;
They will act like Donkey’s!”

It seems as though the majority of dentists Level I and II are fixers.

In other words they are looking for people to FIX. The more people they can find to fix the better. From Peter Senge and systems thinking:

“When you are in a system you experience subsets of the system.
You literally become the system.”

It makes sense to me that people who are FIXING others want to be FIXED THEMSELVES.

Are we fixers because we are Men, who love to fix things and people?
Are we fixers because that’s all we know how to do?
Are we fixers because we don’t want to take the time to GROW/DEVELOP people?
Are we fixers because we don’t really care about people.


Level I dentists do remedial fixing.
Level II dentists are looking for bigger things to fix.

There are three prime reasons to select a COACHING/GROWING model versus a FIXING MODEL.

1. You want to increase quality
2. You want people to learn.
3. You want people to increase performance.

There may be many more reasons, but these are the 3 primary reasons.

To increase Performance two things are necessary:

You must increase AWARENESS. Good coaches always point out the GAP between the current level of Performance and the desired level of Performance.

To increase Performance an individual must take RESPONSIBILITY for their own actions, their own behavior, their own improvement.

One the main difficulties (obstacles to be overcome) is that we use a Level III or coaching model, and our prospects and clients use a FIXING model.

Isn’t it true that most people who come to seminars and even when they become clients want to be FIXED YESTERDAY and want results TOMORROW.

If you are a GROWER versus a FIXER your entire NEW PATIENT PROCESS is different, totally different because it has a different intention.

WOW is this important? WOW!!

Please remember these thoughts.

You don’t have to have a relationship (be in a coaching model) to fix people and treat disease.

But you do have to have a relationship to help people become healthy (coach people to a higher level of health)

The Medical Model is a FIXING MODEL.

I’m not sure if we can call it TRANSFORMATION but it certainly is life changing when you move from a FIXING MODEL into COACHING MODEL.

Since the majority are into TRANSACTIONS and FIXING people, the majority are NOT INTO RELATIONSHIPS, not into COACHING and not into IMPROVING PERFORMANCE, QUALITY, AND this is why most, but not all consulting is transactional.

Give me a fish and I eat for today. Teach me a fish and I eat for a lifetime.

I hope this makes sense. If course there is more, a lot more, but this should help us understand why initially we have such great disconnect with so many dentists who we are trying to serve.

They have created and are trapped by their FIXING MODEL.

I like to grow people. I like to help people reach their God-given potential
I like my patients to become as healthy as they can become.

Yes, I do fix them, but the joy is in seeing people, learn, grow, develop, become more than they were before. This will always be a COACHING MODEL of LEARNING, never simply a transaction model. This is why I’ve said since the beginning we will NEVER SIMPLY TRAIN without COACHING, and you can’t really COACH someone who doesn’t want to LEARN.

You can try to FIX someone, and of course if they don’t ask to be FIXED, then MANIPULATE THEM. This IS the world we live in. I don’t like it, do you?

The Keys to Professional Success and Happiness

The Keys to Professional Success and Happiness

The Principles---Practices---Performance---Profits of Successful Professional practices.

A CODE for a better, more fulfilling, rewarding, and profitable practice and life.

“Your aspirations are your possibilities”

A study of business school graduates (could have been professionals) tracked the careers of 1,500 people from 1960-1980. From the beginning, the graduates were grouped into two categories.

Category A consisted of people who said they wanted to make money first so that they could do what they really wanted to do later---after they had taken care of their financial concerns. Those in Category B pursued their true interests first, sure that money eventually would follow.

What percentage fell into each category? Of the 1,500 graduates in the survey, the money-now category A’s comprised 83%, or 1,245 people. Category B risk takers made up 17%, or 255 graduates.

After 20 years there were 101 millionaires in one group. One came form Group A, and 100 from group B.

The study’s author Srully Blotnick, concluded that ‘the overwhelming majority of people who have become Wealthy have become so thanks to work they found profoundly absorbing…Their ‘luck’ arose from the accidental dedication to something they loved doing.


“No heart has ever suffered when
it goes in search of its dreams.”

Where are you in relationship to following your dreams?

Dr. Michael Schuster