Fix Your Team Issues by Fixing Yourself (E.246)

“You’re not really fixing team problems—you’re fixing yourself.” ~Dr. Bruce Baird

Dentists often complain about bad teams. But the hard truth? It’s usually a leadership gap.
In this straightforward and practical episode, Dr. Bruce Baird shares decades of wisdom on how to stop blaming the team—and start building a thriving practice by improving leadership.

You’ll learn:

• Why team frustration often stems from your leadership blind spots
• How to create structured onboarding and clear job expectations that eliminate chaos
• Why a “good” team member out of alignment is worse than having a vacancy
• How to have tough but necessary conversations to protect your culture
• Why Clinical Calibration is the missing link in fixing team productivity for good

Bruce also shares how standard operating procedures (SOPs), clinical calibration, and training every role the right way can transform both your bottom line and your daily happiness.

This is more than a pep talk—it’s a blueprint for real, lasting change.

Key Reflection Questions for Listeners:

• Am I frustrated with my team—or frustrated with unclear leadership on my part?
• Have I defined and documented my clinical philosophy and office culture clearly enough?
• What toxic team habits am I allowing by avoiding hard conversations?

Listen now and start leading the team—and life—you actually want.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Bruce Baird: The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network. Many of us don’t get to do near as much of that as we’d like to because we’re lousy leaders. And, uh, there’s ways you can get better. And I promise you, because I worked really hard to become a better leader. And when that happens, all of a sudden you find that, hey, your, your team is doing the work.

[00:00:22] Dr. Bruce Baird: You’re actually following them around. 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’s the only way, it’s just one that has worked extremely well for me, and, and I’d love to share that with you.

[00:00:45] Dr. Bruce Baird: So you too can enjoy the choices and 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.[00:01:00]

[00:01:03] Dr. Bruce Baird: Father. My name’s Dr. Bruce Bearer with the Productive Dentist Podcast, and I’ve been getting lots and lots of questions recently. And, uh. One of the questions really kind of, I broke down several of the questions into what I would call team issues, uh, because I, it’s always amazing to me, and I, I’m, I’ve been there, you know, where I’m complaining about my team, you know, if I could just get the right team.

[00:01:26] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, and usually what I, where, what I found out eventually was if I could just get the right leader, and that was me. But, uh, that’s a whole nother podcast. So, we’ll, we’ll talk about that later. But what about. And I’ve had people come up to me during the seminar that we’re doing and ask me, um, you know, can you help?

[00:01:48] Dr. Bruce Baird: Can you talk to my doctor? And, uh, you know, the fallout that happens when your team cares more about the practice than you do. Um, that is a [00:02:00] pretty much a recipe for disaster. I will tell you, people want to be successful. They want to come to work, they want to be productive, they want to do a great job.

[00:02:11] Dr. Bruce Baird: They wanna enjoy their job. And you know, for the first 15 years in practice, you guys have heard me talk about the smiley face, brownie face. And I go, what is that? It was up in the break room. They said, well, smiley faces when you walk in and you’re happy, frowny faces when you walk in and you’re not happy.

[00:02:30] Dr. Bruce Baird: And I’m like, really? So, you know, I cared about the practice, but just the stress of debt, the stress of having loans for the practice, the building, the equipment and everything else, and really not having the knowledge to be a great leader at that point. Stressed me out, and so it seemed as though I didn’t care, but I really cared.

[00:02:55] Dr. Bruce Baird: But I just didn’t know how to, I didn’t know how to express it. I didn’t [00:03:00] know how to express that in the right way. We work with offices all the time where once the doctor understands, I. The problem is then, um, all of a sudden you can begin to make little small steps. It’s not gonna happen overnight, but small steps over a period of two years or three years.

[00:03:18] Dr. Bruce Baird: And all of a sudden, because what happens when you’re, when, when the team thinks you’re not caring about the practice is then they don’t care and you’re really fighting losing battle. So, um, we help you kind of. Wrap your head around running a business because most of us did not have a really great business class when we were in dental school.

[00:03:41] Dr. Bruce Baird: There’s a lot more to dentistry than doing root canals and crowns and fillings. Um, and I say that in all honesty because many of us don’t get to do near as much of that as we’d like to because we’re lousy leaders and, uh, there’s ways you can get better. And I promise you, because I worked really hard to become a [00:04:00] better leader.

[00:04:01] Dr. Bruce Baird: When that happens, all of a sudden you find that, hey, your team is doing the work. You’re actually following them around. They understand what’s going on. Um, the other thing is an importance of a strong onboarding and structured training program for each role in the practice. We worked with dentists for the last 20 years, setting up their SOPs, their standard operating procedures.

[00:04:29] Dr. Bruce Baird: I found that the most important thing that I could do with my team was to actually train them the way I wanted it done, as opposed to early on I hired a dental assistant. Uh, I expect them to know how to be a dental assistant. I. And they do, but they don’t know the things I do. They don’t know the things I like.

[00:04:51] Dr. Bruce Baird: They don’t know what my philosophy of care is. And that’s one of the things that is extremely important, is determining your philosophy of care. Well, [00:05:00] how do you do? You know, on lays? In Lays, how do you do fillings? How and training that chair side exactly how that should be done. That goes to the front office, a structured training program for how do we answer the front?

[00:05:13] Dr. Bruce Baird: How do we schedule people? What are the questions that we ask from the front desk? And this is all can be put together, um, in an up-to-date employee handbook, uh, along with clear job descriptions. It’s critical that we do that. Um, nobody taught me that. Um, so I had to learn it as, as we went. But in other businesses, they have standard operating procedures, if you know, and we need to have the same, because without clear descriptions of what you expect, guess what?

[00:05:50] Dr. Bruce Baird: You’ll be disappointed, but the team will think they did it the right way. And so when you’re disappointed, guess what? Frow face comes out, team leadership [00:06:00] goes down, and it’s all about training. Um, I’ve told this at the seminars. For years, I wouldn’t be the dentist I am today. Without my team, I wouldn’t be the dentist I am today without my lab.

[00:06:13] Dr. Bruce Baird: My phenomenal lab that I’ve worked with re laboratory up in Kansas City and other labs too, but I, I wouldn’t be the dentist I am today without. I. Communication without describing the way I want it done. Um, many of us, guess what we do? Oh, I’ll just do it myself. I’ll make the temporaries, I’ll make, I’ll pack the cord.

[00:06:35] Dr. Bruce Baird: I’ll, I’ll do everything. Why? Because I know how to do it Well, why not train your team how to do it? Guess what? Your chairside, they, they like doing a lot of stuff, uh, even more than suck and spit. Can you imagine that? You know, they, they want to schedule their patients. They want to follow up with their patients.

[00:06:56] Dr. Bruce Baird: They want, uh, to take great [00:07:00] care of people. And when you have a team like that, all of a sudden, guess what? Productivity goes up. Uh, and, and that changes. Everything. Um, one of the other questions is, and you know, and I get this all the time, you know, I’ve got a team member, they’re not doing this, they’re not doing that, but they’re really good.

[00:07:21] Dr. Bruce Baird: They know everybody in town. Um, you know, what do I do? The cost of hanging on to one team member that’s not in alignment with your core values or your clinical philosophy, guess what? It destroys your business. It destroys your business. I’ve seen office managers where a dentist came in, bought the practice, the office manager remain, and they’re the biggest.

[00:07:48] Dr. Bruce Baird: That particular individual was the biggest setback for that young dentist or medium age dentist or old dentist. They had their own way of doing [00:08:00] things, their own philosophy. Don’t tell me how to change. I know how to do this. I know how to do that. The team is afraid of them and you’re afraid to fire ’em.

[00:08:09] Dr. Bruce Baird: ’cause they know all the patients. Trust me, you’re okay. Invite them to go to their happy place, but first give them the opportunity and. Pull the leadership skills that you need to pull to say, Mary Lou, you and I need to have a conversation because this is the way it’s gonna be. We’re gonna, this is the way I want this stuff done.

[00:08:33] Dr. Bruce Baird: I know you have a lot of experience and, and I, I’m gonna need your help. I’m gonna need your help. But now that it’s my business, I really, and it’s my debt that I’m paying off and it’s my, my practice now, I want you and I to be on the same page. I want you and I to be on the same page. Does that make sense, Mary Lou?

[00:08:53] Dr. Bruce Baird: And if they’re gonna say yes or no, I don’t see ’em saying no, but I see ’em [00:09:00] saying yes with that pause. Yeah. Okay. Whatever. If they say yes, now what you’ve done is you’ve opened the communication. You say, this is the way I like it, and what you do is you then expect it to be done this way. How is that? Well, a lot of, when you’re first doing a startup or when you’re first in practice, maybe you don’t know all the ways.

[00:09:22] Dr. Bruce Baird: Well, that’s what Productive Dentist Academy does when we help docs get their handbooks, their employee handbooks, get all of this stuff done, and that makes all the difference in the world. So if they’re not in alignment with you and they’re not, and, and you give them two, three months of training and talking to ’em and asking.

[00:09:42] Dr. Bruce Baird: Asking for their help, and if they still do it their own way. That’s what I say, inviting someone to their happy place because they’re obviously not gonna be happy in your business and it’s time to allow them to go to their happy place. I had a hygienist who suffered with, [00:10:00]um, with bipolar, um, depression, and one day she would be in the greatest mood and the next day she would not be.

[00:10:07] Dr. Bruce Baird: And I, I kind of was in the same boat. I would come in in a great mood and out so. I finally in January, one year, and she’d been with me and we were friends. I mean, I really liked her, but the team just couldn’t deal with her because she would be great one day and lousy the next. It cost us in productivity.

[00:10:27] Dr. Bruce Baird: And one day I asked her, uh, it was a January, first part of January, and I said, you know, I think it’s time for, for, for you to find a different place to find a place to be happy. She said, are you firing me? I said, well, no. I’m just inviting you to go to your happy place. Find a place that’s happy. And by golly, she left.

[00:10:48] Dr. Bruce Baird: She was mad and tried to slam the door on me and I was like, no. I had the office manager in there with me and three years later she came back and she had found your happy place and [00:11:00] she said, thank you. ’cause I would’ve never left. And that is. Not only great for your business, it’s not only great to do that, but it gets rid of a virus that’s gonna spread from team member to team member to team member.

[00:11:16] Dr. Bruce Baird: And if you see, if you see somebody that is a real detriment in a practice, and when I go through and look at practices, they always have built themselves up as indispensable. Truth is no one’s indispensable. Hear that clear, no one is indispensable. Um, and so it’s, it’s really critical that we, uh, that we are on the same page.

[00:11:45] Dr. Bruce Baird: We have the same core values, the same clinical philosophies, and it’s gonna be up to our leadership skills. To, you know, take it to the next level and to, to invite people to their happy place if they need to go to train the new [00:12:00] team members the way you want it done, if you don’t know the way to do it, if you don’t know how to do that, then that’s where we’ll help you.

[00:12:06] Dr. Bruce Baird: Uh, that’s where, um, a new program that we’re doing now called Clinical Calibration Institute. It’s, you know, it it, we train your front office, we train your chair side. We train your hygienists, we train your associates. We train you on ways. To come in alignment ways to, so that everybody knows our practice is clinical philosophy.

[00:12:30] Dr. Bruce Baird: And when you do that, productivity goes up. The cost for clinical calibration is like somewhere between 695 bucks and 9 95 a month. Oh, that’s a lot, Bruce. Yeah, but that’s for the whole office. That’s not per person. That’s for the entire office. It’s less than the cost of a crown. And what I will say is you will see an increase in your productivity.

[00:12:50] Dr. Bruce Baird: You’re gonna see an increase in your. Your satisfaction, you’re gonna see a decrease in your stress. And a combination of those things allows you to live the [00:13:00] life that you’ve always wanted to lead. And, um, I’m, I’m super excited about the new program. You can go to productive dentist.com and look at Clinical Calibration Institute.

[00:13:11] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, and you can send me a, a messageBruce@productivedentist.com. These are the things that, uh, these are the things that make the difference. Uh, it, it. You know, we’re only on this planet for a short time. Let’s enjoy what we’ve chosen to do for our life’s work. Let’s enjoy it. Let’s enjoy the people that we work with.

[00:13:32] Dr. Bruce Baird: Let’s enjoy our patients. Let’s enjoy doing top-notch dentistry. Let’s enjoy doing comprehensive exams. Let’s enjoy taking great care of people. Remember, those are my, I only have two goals. Take great care of people. Number two. Reach my goals. And that’s it. Alright, that’s, that’s the end of this, this episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast.

[00:13:55] Dr. Bruce Baird: You can send me messages, uh, atBruce@productivedentist.com. [00:14:00] Uh, I hope you enjoyed this one and I look forward to our next time together. I. 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.

[00:14:15] Dr. Bruce Baird: 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 of productive dentist podcast.com. Join me again next week for another episode of The Productive Dentist Podcast.