The paradox of power

Something is paradoxical when it produces the opposite result from what you are expecting or intending.

Years ago when I was looking for ways to be more successful I flew to the USA to see a dentist who I believed at the time was a leader in the profession.

I wanted to know how he presented treatment to patients and so I attended his one-day seminar on the topic. The tactics he advocated seemed to me to be high-pressure, sort of like selling used cars.

But, I justified to myself, he is famous so he must know what he is doing. Therefore, I brought his techniques back to my practice and tried them.

The results were catastrophic.

The more I applied his high-pressure techniques the lower was my success rate and the more often I was losing patients out of the practice. It felt terrible.

I gave up entirely on this dentist’s methods in less than a month.

Pondering this horrible result led me to discover something very useful, that I call “The paradox of power”. It goes like this:

“The harder you push, the more likely you are to meet resistance.”

And, I find the converse is also true:

“The less you push, the less likely you are to meet resistance.”

Beyond any doubt, I believe that presenting treatment options to patients in a gentle, low-stress manner leads to far greater success than attempting to pressure them.

The moment you try to pressure or steer the patient in a certain direction all sorts of resistance appears.

Pressuring patients is so very counter-productive.