Dental Talent – Leadership Problems Faced in Dental Practices – How to Fix Them
A good dental practice is built on the back of a good team. With a solid team of hardworking individuals who pull their own weight, you have the ingredients for a successful business. That being said, there will be a need for growth, not just on a team level, but on an individual level as well.
To that end, we have identified some common problems in dental teams, and what you, as a leader and mentor, can do to improve the situation. After all, without leadership and teamwork, not even the best dental talent in the world can give fruitful results.
Addressing the lack of direction
As the practice’s CEO, your team will always look to you for guidance. Although the success of the practice is still a team effort, you will be the one determining the direction that the business takes. For this reason, if you are noticing that the dental talent on your team has become overly reliant on you for direction, there might be a problem in the long run.
One of the best ways to handle this is to give them more detailed job descriptions. Team members (especially new ones) might find it difficult to understand what they are allowed and supposed to do. How much ideation are they allowed? How flexible can they get with their role? These are just some of the many questions that might be running through their head.
As such, it is important to be clear about what they are supposed and are expected to do. To take it a step further, you should also make clear markers for excellence. That way, your team will know where to go, what to do, and how to achieve these goals with minimal guidance from you.
Fixing conflict in the workplace
Human interaction is often complicated and messy, which is why you can expect conflicts to arise somewhere down the line. Whether or not this conflict relates to work, it falls on you and your team to address and move past it for the longevity of the practice. As much as it is tempting to ignore personal conflicts, these are likely to get in the way of your goals if they do not get fixed.
You must also employ conflict resolution techniques in the process of disentangling this dispute. Try to discover the root cause of it and bring the members of your team together by allowing them to empathise with each other. At the end of the day, it is also important to hold staff members accountable for their actions as adults and stakeholders in a business together.
Whether or not the conflict actually gets solved after that is only one matter. So long as your team is able to rise above their differences and remember that there are more important things than conflict, you can push them to success no matter their feelings towards each other.
Conclusion
Being the leader of a business is not easy, especially in a dental practice. Humans are complicated and fickle beings who are always figuring out how to adjust to their surroundings. The truth of the matter is that if you want your team to grow, you also need to grow as CEO. With time, you will find yourselves moving like a well-oiled machine, where each component moves in sync!
Putting in place an effective coaching, learning and development plan can be the difference in seeing improved performance by your team and less conflict. By making use of the latest eLearning solution www.dentalwealthbuilder.com from Dr’s Bhavna & Rahul Doshi you can access coaching and training to become a leader for the benefit of your practice!