Thanks to your practice’s commitment to consistently utilizing Patient-Oriented, Best Practice Operating Systems, your team made it safely to first base. Then, after installing regular team meetings, report-driven Morning Huddles, and a powerful Annual Retreat - and improving communication throughout - you made a solid base hit to second. What leadership tools need to be used now in order to reach third base and, ultimately, home?

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?

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?

Dental team accountability is a topic I frequently address with dentists. In a business like dentistry where the boss must spend 95% of his or her working time in the mouth of another person in order to be successful, accountability becomes even more elusive.

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.