Episode 56: Developing a Rock-Solid Dental Team

“If you have high turnover, that usually means people have stopped growing in your practice.” -Dr. Victoria Peterson

Your team is one of the foundational pillars to building your Investment Grade Practice™. In the last episode, we had an exceptional conversation with Dr. Adrienne Reynolds about how to hire and retain a fantastic dental team.

One of the things I love about Adrienne is what she shares about her philosophy of business management: “As I manage or build organizations, all my decisions are based on will the action or direction I take help others learn and apply their learning.”

I think that’s a fantastic viewpoint to have as a leader.

In today’s society, safety, certainty, security, and stability are what employees are demanding. But at the same time they want variety, and surprise, and something new. So how do you build stable processes and clear roles, and give the team the freedom to explore their roles and grow?

In this classic follow-up to my original conversation with Dr. Adrienne Reynolds, I build on my conversation with her and dig deeper into how you can foster the development of a rock-solid dental team:

• Are the actions you’re taking allowing your people to grow?
• Are you doing anything to undermine your team?
• What are the unwritten rules you need to know about?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:00
Hi, Dr. Regan, Robertson, CCO of Productive Dentist Academy here and have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else. That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive, your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats now.

Victoria Peterson 0:46
Once your team understands if you’re, if you’ve got high turnover, that usually is an indication that people have stopped growing in your practice.

Narrator 0:58
Welcome to Investment Grade Practices podcast where we believe private practice dentists deserve to get the lifestyle today while building an asset for tomorrow. Join your host Victoria Peterson who designed the practice of your dreams and secure your financial independence. Let’s get started.

Victoria Peterson 1:20
What an incredible pleasure to spend time with my good friend, Dr. Adrian Reynolds. She has both a Masters and a PhD in Organizational Management and has lived around the world, spending 18 years in the Middle East. I, she is an incredible woman and her outlook on managing people and building organizations is unique and in her bio, it says “All of my professional decisions are based on this question, will the action or direction I take help others learn and to apply their learning?” I think that is just a fantastic viewpoint as a leader and I learned so much on my podcast with her. So let’s walk through a little bit of this, is the action that you’re taking as a leader, is the way that you’re delegating to your team, is it helping them to learn and grow and is it helping them to apply the learning? What does that mean? Well, I think that you have to have time baked in for the learning to absorb. Many times we’ll show people how to do something once and expect them to be an expert tomorrow, get disappointed the next week and take it back. When that happens in your team, when others see you delegating or requesting and then pulling things back from team members, you automatically create a hesitation amongst your team. Well, if she wasn’t good enough, I’m sure I’m not good enough, either. This is particularly true doctors are women. If women feel like they can’t fulfill everything on the checklist, oftentimes they don’t even start. So when you’re looking at growing the people make sure that there is a learning plan, that’s my invitation is that, they can already do 80% of the job well, and there’s 20% growth. Adrian talked about this, that once your team understands if you’re if you’ve got high turnover, that usually is an indication that people have stopped growing in your practice, so if they can’t grow and learn and contribute more, oftentimes, they will find it somewhere else and I know you’re you’re gonna think they leave you for the money and maybe they do and it really is a sense of significance and growth and contribution. Let’s explore a couple of points that she brought in from her worldview, knowing that she had lived in the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia. I can tell you that she has a perspective that’s a lot broader than mine and she brought in a lot of perspective about cultural restrictions and I remember her saying that these weren’t laws necessarily or even religious, it was social cultural tenants that were accepted in the area. So let’s look at that in our business, are there cultural restrictions in place? These are usually the unwritten rules and I don’t know how you as an owner might go about in your company to find the grapevine, but there is always a grape vine, and there are always unwritten rules. Oftentimes, it’s really neat when you have a new employee come in, do orientation, you can model written rules, and about two to three weeks into their employment, they’re still excited about being there. Pull them aside and say, “I know the written rules in the practice, what are some of the unwritten rules that you’ve learned? Have you been here?” Or ask your team, “What are the unwritten rules? What are the things that need to be updated about our culture to make our work environment feel safe?” And in this time that we’re living in today, safety, certainty, security, are fundamental, teams are demanding this. At the same time they want variety, and uncertainty and surprise, and something new and that really is what change management is all about, is how do I build stable processes and systems where everybody has clear roles? They know the part that they’re playing and they now have the freedom to express that role in new ways, taking it in places that you may never have thought of. So once you understand what cultural restrictions might be there, let’s give an example of that. Don’t talk to Mary before 10 o’clock, and she’s had her cup of coffee. Seems innocent enough, but when you tolerate poor performance or bad behavior, attitudes, with one, it will trickle throughout the company, the higher they are in their perceived level of power, the more impact that’s going to have on the culture. So look for those cultural clues. It’ll point you to policies that may be creating tension or anxiety amongst your team. There’s a lot of variety and what that could be, but at least twice a year, review the policies in your practice. Sit down and talk to your team about their agreements, about their code of conduct, how they’re treating each other, how they want to be treated in the practice. These are all foundational because as your team treats each other, it’s a direct reflection on how they will treat the team. What an amazing time to think about the four P’s of business and the true rewards of being an owner. Adrian really highlighted the P of people know, how are we growing and developing our people. Growing your people, investing in your team, is one of the best ways to grow the assets of your company. practices are simply a collection of people doing the best they can towards a common goal. When you get the people in place and the processes are in place, they can start living on purpose, expressing their passions. This is the correct order to gain predictable profits over time. Thank you Dr. Adrian for being with us today and showing us how people really are the fuel for the business and as wise investors in our practices, investing in your people, it’s one of the smartest investments you can make.

Narrator 8:05
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Investment Grade Practices podcast. If you find value in this episode, help us spread the word by passing it along to a dental friend, subscribe and give us a like on iTunes or Spotify. Learn more about building your Investment Grade Practice at productivedentist.com Today