“Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better,” said former senator and pro basketball player Bill Bradley. By helping your team members reach their potential, you can lead your practice to greater success. The following action steps can help you become a better leader and unlock your team’s hidden potential:
- Create a vision: Vision is not about where you are, but where you are going. Developing a practice vision cannot be delegated to anyone else, nor is it a team decision. The dentist, as the practice owner and leader, must define the vision for the practice. A vision statement typically consists of three or four sentences that describe what the practice will look like 3-5 years in the future.
- Communicate the vision: Once the vision statement has been created, it must be shared routinely with the dental team. Levin Group recommends reading the vision statement at the beginning of monthly staff meetings to keep a focus on what the team is trying to achieve in the long term.
- Implement data-driven systems: As a practice grows, so must its systems. Unfortunately, most systems evolve by default. The systems fit only the present needs, and then are occasionally tweaked during a crisis. Using ideal business models can help practices customize systems that meet their individual needs.
Systems must be documented before they can be successfully integrated into the practice and adopted by the team. Documenting systems forces the team members to focus on the most efficient ways to operate. The team will quickly realize which steps are necessary and which should be eliminated. These changes can make an incredible difference in employee morale and practice stress levels. Documenting expert systems is the fastest way to train current and new team members.
- Lead by example: Successful leaders understand that you must lead by example because your team is watching you and emulating your behavior. Leaders who “talk the talk and walk the walk” will inspire team members to do their best. Leaders who say one thing and do another often lose the respect of their teams. Remember, your team is looking to you for guidance and the best strategy is to lead by example.
- Coach the team: There’s always room for improvement. This is why coaching is critical. Dentists have many opportunities to coach staff, including informal feedback during the workday, formal performance reviews, other one-to-one meetings with team members, staff meetings, and morning meetings.
For the practice to grow and team members to develop, feedback is needed from the doctor. Effective and responsible leadership focuses on positive, specific, and practical feedback that helps team members grow and excel at their duties.
- Delegate responsibility: To achieve optimal efficiency and productivity, you must delegate responsibilities to team members. Team members need to be given appropriate decision-making authority. Even though giving the team daily decision-making powers may result in some mistakes, these will be directly proportional to your level of leadership. Good leaders create a vision and mission for the organization, give people a reason to come to work, and then move out of their way.
- Develop clear job descriptions: Job descriptions provide direction to team members. People like to know what is expected of them, so they can benchmark their performance against expectations. When team members constantly feel they are pulled in numerous directions, they end up feeling stressed and unhappy. Due to undocumented systems, many staff members do not completely understand their jobs or level of accountability. For example, if the practice expects to collect 98% of production, then that objective should be written in the financial coordinator’s job description, and the coordinator should be given training and appropriate scripts to accomplish the task.
- Enhance the team’s verbal skills: Every patient interaction involves communication. Enhancing the team’s verbal skills boosts staff members’ confidence, improves customer service, and will lead to increased case acceptance. Every routine conversation in the practice should follow a written script. Levin Group recommends implementing scripts that:
- Emphasize benefit statements to focus on patient success
- Use positive and enthusiastic power words, such as “wonderful” and “great”
- Promote practice services
- Treat your team well: Recognition, respect, flexibility and constant appreciation of your team are the hallmarks of an excellent leader. Building a high-performance team is critical to achieving greater success. The longer you can retain a quality team, the less time and money that you will have to spend searching for new employees.
- Implement a bonus system: Establishing a bonus system based on achieving practice goals can be a win-win for the practice and its team. When implemented properly, bonus systems can lead to higher productivity. As production and profitability increase, so do staff bonuses. A bonus system can motivate team members and keep them focused on exceeding patient expectations, improving customer service, and increasing case acceptance.
Conclusion
Taking the practice to the next level requires strong leadership and a quality team. No matter how talented and skilled you are as a dentist, you cannot attain practice success alone. These 10 action steps can help you build a better team and achieve greater success.