In this Dental Leadership Baseball game, the pitchers are your patients and your employees are up to bat. You are the owner and head coach and have assistant coaches on the field and behind the scenes helping you and your team win the league series. Running to first base is when your employees started transforming into team members through the implementation of several leadership tools and best-practices, and patient-oriented operating systems discussed in earlier blogs. Now, second base is looming ahead. The current question is: what leadership skills and tools are needed for your team to arrive safely on second base?

Look, the game is starting! The pitcher is winding up. It’s a classic fastball speeding toward one of your players. Who is the pitcher? It’s Mr. I’m Important, who is one of your patients that is constantly on an impossibly tight schedule. STRIKE 1… STRIKE 2… STRIKE 3… YOU’RE OUT!! What? How could your player be out? You carefully vetted your team players before hiring, you explained to them the ultimate goal of your game, outlined the rules of your game, and supplied your expectations. Where did you do wrong?

Want to maximize your retirement savings? Need funds for new equipment, technology, or an office renovation? Want to get those debt burdens off your back? Having a hard time making ends meet?

Having organized and participated in Annual Dental Practice Retreats for over 25 years, I have seen first-hand the many benefits of team retreats. But that is just my perspective, what’s really important is: what does the hard-core evidence say?

There is a serious conundrum in every dentist’s work life: 99% of your training was clinical dentistry when in reality you spend more than 50% of your time focused on interacting with employees and patients. How do you hear those affirmations from your employees?

First coined by the philosopher Aristotle, the phrase “a whole is greater than a sum of its parts” still has a lot of relevance in this day in age. This is the basis behind the idea of teamwork. If the full dental team isn’t working in synergy your practice isn’t going to be as effective, efficient or run as smoothly as it could, or should, be.

Many practice owners feel like they need to be SUPERDENTIST by day, and the business-minded Clark Kent by night to make sure both of their roles as a dentist and business owner are taken care of. This doesn’t have to be the case. A dental practice that is “organizationally-organized” can alleviate the stress on the practice owner and let them focus on being a dentist.

“The garbage can or the to-read tub?” This was a regular question I asked my dentist-husband about his proliferating dental journals, articles, and newsletters. Of course, he always had the best intention of reading them all, so 9 out of 10 went to the “TO-READ” PILE. Many times our bedroom was lined layers high with multicolored plastic tubs full of the “to-read” pile. Not to mention the piles at his practice.