Archive for Tips from The Dental Coach
How to Hold Effective Morning Huddles In Your Dental Office
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You know the importance of these regular meetings—you know that it will increase profitability in your dental office, too. So how can you hold them effectively and efficiently without adding more stress?
- Develop progress reporting. A team member will provide a report to the team stating accomplishments, obstacles overcome, results and requests for support for their respective projects.
- Create a specific agenda for your Morning Huddles and stick to a start and end time.
- Raise your standards. Expect every team member to be prepared to actively participate.
- Hold team meetings during regularly scheduled production time. Pre-block them on the schedule on a set day and time. Treat these as a patient appointment and do not re-schedule or miss them.
How to Deliver Feedback to Your Dental Team
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Read on for my four special tips on how to deliver feedback to your dental team so that positive, immediate behavioral change happens!
- Give frequent and informal feedback. A once-a-year performance review just won’t cut it. Team members need to hear feedback weekly, perhaps even daily. Good feedback motivates and problems get fixed sooner rather than later. Fix problems as they happen.
- Ask team members for self-feedback. Give team members an opportunity to comment on their own behavior or productivity. This works well as people are usually tougher on themselves than you are on them. They will also work harder to improve areas they target. Give your opinion after they have had an opportunity to express themselves.
- Write, crumble, write. As THE DENTAL COACH©, I work with many dentists who are frustrated at their teams. This coaching tip has been particularly popular with the dentist who is angry at a behavior and wants to critique NOW. Take the time to write out your critique….let your anger flow through your pen. Then crumple up your paper now that the anger is gone and rewrite your critique more calmly. Better results are guaranteed when emotions are removed.
- Critique the behavior, not the person. Rather than direct comments at the individual who becomes defensive and argumentative, direct it at what they did. Example: “I am unhappy with your behavior in the presence of our last patient. I sensed she was irritated when you raised your voice to her.” The ego remains intact and the team member will be able to “hear” your observations.
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
Walk The Talk – It Starts With You, The Doctor
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Do you consider yourself an ethical leader? You instantly might want to say “Yes!” However, think harder. Have you established a set of standards that coincide with your mission and vision statements? Do you know how much ethics and standards impact your dental practice?
By definition, ethics is a blend of professional and personal behaviors and qualities. Values and ethics are your framework for decision-making. How much thought about integrity and responsibility really goes into the decisions that you make?
We have a responsibility to uphold standards of the dental profession, but to our staff, we have a larger responsibility. It is to “walk the talk”, to model the qualities we want in our practice.
Start by sharing your Core Values. These are the guiding principles around which all your practice decisions will be made. It defines who you are, what you are and what you value in your business life. This is your compass. It unites you, the CEO, and your team members into a purpose. Do you need assistance in developing your Core Values? See an earlier post here.
When you articulate your Core Values, it enables you to make objective assessments and provide appropriate responses to every situation that will arise in your practice. Your Core Values and commitment to them as the practice leader provide a context for values-based decision making.
The operative words here are: “your commitment to your core values.”
Next Step: Set S.M.A.R.T Goals For Performance Growth
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In my previous post, I spoke about goals—how to define them, measure them and reach them. Because this is a popular subject, I want to give you additional guidelines to use in your dental practice:
- Make sure your team goals matter. The “R” in Smart can also stand for Relevant. All performance goals – for you and your team – need to support the overall goals of the dental practice to increase your profitability.
- Get the team involved. Teach everyone the S.M.A.R.T model and encourage them to apply it. This habit improves accountability within the office.
- Pull out your business plan and review your own goals. For each goal, ask: “Is this SMART?” If not, “punch it up” and make the goal more real and dynamic for you.
- Use the S.M.A.R.T. model to evaluate to-do items that come out of your next staff meeting. Tweak the goals until they meet all five criteria.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” ~ Lawrence J. Peter
Did You Read It Yet?
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A few days ago, I suggested that my blog subscribers read Service America. It is a useful, helpful guide for introducing a true relationship-based service model into your dental practice. The concept is more than 20 years old, but, guess what? It still works!
This book isn’t about fluff. It’s about real management principles that can be swiftly applied in your dental office to make you stand out from the competition. It is about using customer service to stand out – not the priciest equipment or the lowest prices for cash-pay patients.
The book encourages you to use a customer-centric approach to have a successful dental practice. Treat your patients like gold, and your dental practice will be majorly successful. Some of you might say – Hey, Dr. Ron, this is common sense! To that I say – Then why aren’t more dentists doing this?
Service America: Doing Business In the New Economy – A Must Read Book
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Back when I owned my clinical dental practice in the 1980s, I made this book required reading for my entire staff. Sure, at first they groaned and complained, but in the end – it made all the difference.
This book is about a major business shift from heavy industry to a service-based economy. A service-based economy puts a large focus on customer-oriented competition. The initial example was not about a dental office – rather, an airline – but it can be applied to any healthcare practice. The author noted that all planes fly in the same sky and therefore the only way to be competitive and have an advantage is to make the customer’s experiences absolutely terrific.
How can you do mimic this in your dental office?
- Courteous treatment
- On-time appointments
- A comfortable reception and treatment area
I believe that this is one of the only ways we can differentiate ourselves from the dentist down the block – service. How do you feel? How important is service when it comes to the competition?
(You may purchase this book on Amazon.com for $9.99)
Hold Annual Retreats
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As we approach the end of the year, this is an opportune time for you to strategically set aside a full day of planning for you and your team.
I hear many dentists tell me that this kind of planning is just a horrific waste of time.
What a huge mistake they are making in their thinking.
With an annual day of planning, there are opportunities to plan for the next year. Invite each team member to be a part of the agenda and to be responsible for one element of the retreat’s success. Hold your retreat off-site and keep it informal. A clearly written annual plan, developed with everyone’s input, will cause your practice numbers to take off! (You can check out my Annual Goal Review as a special PDF for free.)
I’d love to hear from you about how you do your annual planning. What are some of the keys to your success in laying out your 2012?
Create “Connection”
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People want more than a bi-weekly pay check. Believe it or not, they want more than health benefits, too.
They want to feel like they are “in the loop” on what’s happening in your dental practice, the business that they work for.
Share your vision and goals for the practice with the team. (Check out some more Open Book Management suggestions here). Make it part of your daily conversations. Let your staff know that they are more than an auxiliary expense.
Let them know that you value them.
When people feel connected, they are more confident and make better choices within the practice.
Ask People What It Is That They need
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The answer is always in the question.
When we take the time to ask team members what they need to do better, they recognize you care about them. Their performance will naturally improve.
Rule number one of providing a good service: It’s all about them, not about you.
Ask your patients what they need, then listen, then as long as it is not illegal, immoral, or fattening– do it!
When we ask, we get.
Stimulate Creativity
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- If your employees are making mistakes freely and fearlessly.
- If people are coming to work excited and having fun.
- If they’re concentrating on things, rather than preparing reports and going to meetings…
… then you have an opportunity to grow your business.
Even if you feel that your dental practice is at the end of its rope, remember that discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping-stones to success.
Use simple techniques to get people involved and thinking, i.e. role-play with team members as patients, or play music during brain storming sessions. Few of us simply sit down and begin to “create” without a stimulus.
When we make learning and problem solving fun, the results are much more rewarding and profitable. What problems do you experience in your dental practice now? Is it staff, or bringing in more referrals? How can you solve those problems in fun, creative ways?
I recently read somewhere that men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers. What can you dream about for your practice?
