Episode 233: Requested Replay: Know Your Team

“Know your team. Know who they are. Know about them, about their families, where they grew up. Take notes, and smile.”

I recently spoke with a doctor who was struggling with his team: he had run through two teams and is on this third in 2 years. You might be wondering the same thing he was: How do I fix my team?

The answer is simple, but not always easy: become a better leader. I had to deal with this in my career, too. Early on, I ran through team members because I had the mentality “it’s my way, or the highway”. I’m almost embarrassed to tell you how horrible I was.

Here’s the key: It wasn’t about my team. It was about me; it was about my behavior. The better I got as a leader, the better my team got. Good leadership – and a happy, productive team – comes from the heart, not the head.

In the most recent episode of my podcast – The Productive Dentist Podcast – I talk about some pointers and things that you can do as a leader that can help you develop a better team:

• What is fair to expect your team to know
• The surprising thing to focus on for 6 months
• What you need to know about your team

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Announcer: The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network.

[00:00:02] Dr. Bruce Baird: And he said, “So how do I, how do I do it? How do I become a better leader?” And I said, “Bingo, that is the secret to this. It’s becoming a better leader and inspecting what you expect, but doing it in a way that comes from the heart, not from the head.” Hello everyone, this is Dr. Bruce B. Baird, and you’re listening to the Productive Dentist Podcast. In this podcast, I will give you everything that I’ve learned over the last 40 years in dentistry, working with thousands of dentists. I’ll tell you, it’s not that my way is the only way, it’s just one that has worked extremely well for me and I’d love to share that with you so you too can enjoy the choices in lifestyle, the productivity allows, more time for things you love, increased pay, better team relationships, and lowered stress. Let’s get into it with this week’s episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast.

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about, uh, One of the questions that I get so often, and I was just doing a program this last weekend and I got the question from several of the attendees and I wanted to kind of get back and, and talk about team training and, and talk about how important your team is to being productive and, and I figure it’s, it’s time we probably covered this a couple of times, but my thought process as we go, uh, becomes clearer and clearer about how important training your team is. Um, how do you do that? I mean, I, one of the questions I had, the doctor is going through his third, uh, his third team in a matter of a year and, you know, he was saying, you know, he couldn’t find the right people could, you know, I was having difficulties there and, and I felt his pain, you know, I’ve talked about this before, you know, I think everybody in Granbury used to work for me at one point in time or another, because I was not, it was more about me than it was about them and I explained that to him and, and he said, “Well, you know, this person did that and that person did this and one person said, uh, you know, said something in front of the entire team that, uh, you know, “I didn’t like the way you talk to me in front of the patient or whatever it is and I,” and I said, “Well, you know, you may have responded the exact same way if, if you were a, if you were a, uh, a team member and the boss, you know, did that, you might have or you might have gone individually and talked to the doctor, but he’s gone through all these team members. And he said, “So how do I, how do I do it? How do I become a better leader?” And I said, “Bingo, that is the secret to this. It’s becoming a better leader and inspecting what you expect, but doing it in a way that comes from the heart, not from the head,” and when I say that I used to be. I was the guy who would just get very upset and I would roll my eyes and I would sigh a lot and so I was very confrontational, but when I realized what had happened, you know, this is 10 or 15 years into practice. What I realized was, is that it was about me. It was about me and my, really my behavior and the way that I expected people to do things and what I’ll say is the better I got, the better my team got, but let’s look at some pointers and some things that you can do as a doctor to end up with a much better team and it’s probably the same people during the program this week and I told, I told the doctors, I said, “I guarantee you probably 80 percent of the people that I hired back in the early days were probably could have been fantastic employees. They could have been fantastic employees, meaning, uh, it wasn’t so much them. It was more me,” and so when I stepped back and look at it, I was like, “Okay, so what are the things that you can do to help your team?”

First of all, the thing that I, more than anything that started realizing is, you know, I’m, you know, I’m the boss, but I’m not the boss of their life. I’m not the boss. You know, I want them. I hired a treatment coordinator to be a treatment coordinator and they had experience. So I expect them to be a treatment coordinator and to know everything the way I expect it to be done and that’s not fair. It’s just not fair to your team to expect them to know by osmosis, what you really would like to have done and so that’s where team training comes. Critical. We call that a training opportunity. And so this doctor had, he’s had several things. First of all, he’s only been in practice for about two years, two and a half years of which COVID was a big part of it. Then we had a giant freeze in Texas, his office flooded. So he’s been through the ringer and he’s got a lot of stress and I understand all of that. So what I told him is over the next six months, and he’s got a great new patient flow, he’s in a position where he can, he could easily be doing 2 million a year in his practice early on and I said, “Don’t worry about that right now for the next six months. Remember he’s gone through three teams for the next six months. Concentrate on training your team exactly the way you want things done and doing it with a smile on your face and doing it with a realization that you’re taking the effort now and it’s going to save you massive amounts of time later, you’ll be productive, but what you’re going to find is for next year, you’re going to be 10 times more productive than you would have been because you’re going to be hiring a new team next year. If you don’t change the way you’re doing things and so what I do is I step back and I say, “Okay, first of all, know your team, know, know who they are. When I say that, not just know who they are, but know about them, their family, their, you know, where they grew up, where, you know, about their kids, their kids names. Take notes. Not while you’re talking to them, but as soon as you finish talking to that employee, you know. Get yourself a basis.” I tell you to do that with new patients, you know, find out about them, find points in common linking and, and matching and mirroring and all that. Do that with your team and most of all, smile and just listen and, and get to know your team member, because the truth is when you have a phenomenal team, and I’ve talked about this, when I left Granbury Dental Center, as far as being a producer, you know, I thought no one will ever produce like I did and my three assistants were 30 years, 20 years and 10 years, and they were trained by me. They weren’t, they didn’t have experience before they came to work for me. One was Walmart, you know, one was worked in a vet and another worked, uh, as a masseuse and so, uh, a massage therapist and so, when I say that. What I started realizing is these folks have a lot, they have families, they have kids and how they do is going to affect and how you do is going to affect everything, but when, when I left as a producer, Dr. Bowsky took over my three assistants, it grew him a thousand an hour almost immediately.

Why? Because they were trained, they were trained and they knew what they were doing. So it’s going to be well worth your time. It’s going to be well worth your time to teach them exactly the way you would want to have it done and so that’s, you know, that’s this six-month period that I’m telling him, I said, “I really want you to, to spend time with them, ask questions, show them temporization, show them how you temporize a crown, show them what you expect and how you do it now, once you’ve done these things, when you do, you know, cause the big problem is, well, what happens when.” Something happens, you know, what happens when the temporary doesn’t look good, what happens when that’s not working? Well, well, what do you do there? Do you roll your eyes and sign and do that? No, what you’re going to want to do then is you’re going to want to say, “Hey, Mary, let’s, let’s take a look at this,” and you don’t do it in front of the patient, but I will talk to it and I’d say like, “Summer, you know, you see how that edge around the margin.” Okay and I go into the lab and I say, “See how the edge on the margin is kind of sharp and it’s, and it’s jagged and it’s a little bit rough. I really want to make sure that those are really smooth because I’ve had a lot of crowns done and I don’t know if you have, but they can just drive your tongue crazy. So, but it looks great.” Other than that, let’s find that positive and then give them the critique, give them the training that they need and do it consistently. Now, what will end up happening? I tell the story about, um, the Sarah, we started doing same-day smiles with Sarah and we were literally, I figured out her production per hour, just in one hour was 850 an hour. Now, when I say that we marketed for same-day smiles, people want same-day smiles. I started out having Eddie Corrales come in and Eddie’s phenomenal. Uh, down in San Diego, Cat Smiles and, uh, so he would work with me. We do 40, 50 units in a couple of days and so people would get their smile. We prep the teeth and they get their smile early in the afternoon after they were completed. Well, my team member said, “I could do that,” and I said, “All right, let’s do it.” I sent her for some training and then she would show me the proposal, you know, on say upper, upper A primes and I would look at the proposal and, you know, the team member that hasn’t been to four years of dental school, doesn’t understand anatomy the same way you and I do, so, you know, they just don’t, don’t see that and so I would say, “See here, the cuspid is got a short arm and a long arm and it’s, and it, and it has this shape and it had, you know, so I thought. I was looking at this proposal and by the way, the software is continuing to get better and better with that, but, um, and I would show him and so initially I would be looking at eight crowns and it might take me, gosh, it might take me 30 minutes to help her show her.

So I built that into my schedule. And then, um, after six months, it was taking me about 20 minutes and after a year, it was taking me about 15 minutes, two years in, I would actually literally take a look at it and I go, “That’s beautiful. That looks great. Look at the context. See how your contacts are shaped beautifully. See how, see, see the contours. Let’s see.” I trained her on the anatomy of teeth. It was worth it to me because then I could go in prep 18, walk out of the room. She takes over scanning, designing, milling. I would always check them, meaning I would inspect what I expect and if she ever had a question, she felt very comfortable coming to me and asking me questions. Summer, oftentimes, you know, I would have her doing something, you know, packing cord or, you know, which we do do a lot of, but, uh, but I would have, and she would come, she goes, “I don’t feel comfortable with this. I’m having a difficult time with that.” It wasn’t like I can do everything myself, but they felt comfortable coming to me. Now, my first 15 years in practice, I promise you, they didn’t feel comfortable coming to me. They didn’t even want to talk to me. So going back and talking to this doctor, I said, here’s the thing. I want you to train your team for the next six months and plan on being less productive than you had been and I know, you know, the pressure’s on, you know, you’re finally coming out of COVID coming out of the freeze and taxes, but I want you to concentrate on your team because this is going to be a long term play. You’re not just in this for the next year. You’re in this for the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. It’s a young dance and I said, so. When you have a trained person in your team, little things don’t matter. When I, when I say that they don’t leave, they don’t quit. They don’t do those things. What they do is they, they believe in you because you believe in them and you know, it’s just so important to, you know, I almost feel, I almost feel embarrassed to even tell you, you know, how bad it was for the first 15 years of practice, this is learnable behavior. I mean, I was horrible but I know that you can do it. And what you’re going to find is at the end of that time, you’re going to find you have the most dedicated loyalty and you’re not just producing for you and you’re not making money for you. But your team is also highly paid, highly compensated. You’re taking care of their family in many cases, you know, you’re taking care of not just them, but their family and that influence. And you’re going to ask questions. How’s Bob doing? Or how’s Bobby doing? Or how’s little Mary doing? And you want to become involved in these people’s lives because you’re going to spend more time than they were them. Then in many cases, you are with your own spouse or your own significant other.

So anyway, I hope this hits home for you because I can promise you when it finally hit home for me, I actually became a productive dentist and when it didn’t, I, I was productive, but it was the most stressful, uh, gut-wrenching, heart muscle and stomach lining problem that, that, uh, I, I had ever experienced in my life. And so I hope it makes sense. Um, I look forward to next week. Um, and, uh, good luck on training your team. It is something that’s doable and anybody can do it. So look forward to next week. Thanks guys. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the productive dentist podcast. If you found this episode helpful, make sure you subscribe, pass it along to a friend. Give us a like on iTunes and Spotify, or drop me an email at podcast@productivedentist.com. Don’t forget to check out other podcasts from the Productive Dentist Academy at productivedentistpodcast.com. Join me again next week for another episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast.