Is There a Skip in Your Record or Just in the Song in Your Head?

Okay, that’s a question that a lot of new Certified Legal Nurse Consultants might not know how to answer. In the world of streaming media, we no longer have to deal with skips in the middle of a song like we did when we listened to CDs or LPs.

Most of us have our own soundtrack running in our heads and sometimes that soundtrack has a loop in it, causing us to hear the same information, right or wrong, over and over. Sometimes, that soundtrack has a skip in it and that skip causes us not to hear what the other person is saying over and over again. There’s a high potential for looping and skipping that can happen to legal nurse consultants too, and when it does, there’s a need to stop it.

As a CLNC® consultant you’ve been trained to carefully listen to attorney-prospects when you’re in an interview, to relax and not to get so caught up in the soundtrack of your nervousness that the attorney becomes invisible to you.

If an attorney says “You’re hired,” you don’t respond “Thank you, but I have to finish explaining all 30 CLNC services I provide as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant” and then loop back into your script. You’ve got the job – stop, skip the script and start discussing the first case.

Likewise, have you ever fully and completely answered a question for a patient, friend, family member or other party, but they didn’t listen to the answer and loop back to ask you the same question again? Or they make the same statement they just made and, no matter what response you make, they skip processing your response to loop and repeat the statement? They become so caught up with the looping in their heads that their soundtrack skips your answer.

In some situations, repetition can be entirely appropriate. I love listening to my twin brother Vince’s “True Hollywood stories” from our childhood in Louisiana. Each time he embellishes a little bit more and I always laugh as if I’m hearing the story for the first time.

But, there’s a big difference between repetition for its own sake and repetition due to lack of focus. I was mentoring a CLNC consultant over the telephone on some issues regarding her legal nurse consulting business. She kept trying to go back and rehash the issues we’d just discussed. I realized that if she was that unfocused with me, she would certainly be that way with any attorney-client or -prospect. I called her on it and challenged her to focus for our next telephone call by outlining her questions and checking them off after being answered and avoid the rehash. To her credit she did pretty well.

Recently at a live event I spent some time answering a woman’s questions. I went through all her concerns and questions and I thought she was satisfied with my suggestions. To my surprise, the next day she asked me the same questions again. I politely told her that no matter how many times she asked me, my answers wouldn’t change. I later found out that after talking to me, she also approached Tom with the same questions. He politely told her to follow my advice. The internal loop of her soundtrack and story were causing skips in her listening and in her processing of the information she was receiving.

In your career as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you’ll run into plenty of situations where repetition is necessary in education or the case review process. But in other situations, before you start repeating yourself, ask yourself why and if it’s really necessary. It may not be. I repeat, ask yourself why you’re about to repeat and see if it’s really necessary. It may not be.

You will have many opportunities to loop and skip. I challenge you to be more like streaming media in your CLNC business for the next three days and let me know the results.

Success Is Yours,

P.S. Click here to comment and tell me about your own experiences with looping and skipping (but only tell me once).