Your Practice Will Never Give You Freedom Until Your Leaders Can Do This

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If you walked into your leadership meeting and you asked your team, what problems are we having right now?
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And nobody had anything to say, would you feel good about that?
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I mean, most of us probably would, right?
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No complaints, no fires, no team issues, nothing is going wrong.
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Sounds like a pretty healthy practice, am I right?
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But I truly think that if that happened, that should make you a little nervous.
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Because great practices, they don't become great because they stop having problems.
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They become great because they're really good at seeing problems, talking about them as a team, learning from them, and getting better because of them.
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And that brings up something that is really important to how we built our legendary VIP practice growth program.
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Now I'm going to play you a clip from a session that we recently had with our coaching group so that you can hear the kind of things that we're teaching.
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But I mean, if your goal is to eventually have a practice that doesn't depend on you for everything, you can't be the only person in the practice getting developed.
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And a lot of coaching programs, they focus entirely on the doctor and rely on the doctor to pass everything out to the team.
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Now, obviously, the owner, the practice owner, they need to grow as a leader.
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But eventually your office manager needs to grow too.
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Your team leads need to grow.
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The people who are supposed to help you run this thing have to learn how to solve the problems, have difficult conversations, lead meetings, create accountability, and make decisions without everything getting kicked back to you.
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Otherwise, you may become a better leader, of course, but you're still the bottleneck at the practice.
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So that's why inside of our growth program, we include monthly live training specifically for the leaders in the practice so that we can help develop your office manager and your leaders and help them deal with the issues that you're having at your practices.
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So the clip that I'm going to share with you today comes from one of our recent office manager mastery sessions.
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And I want you to listen to the way that we talk about problems because this is one of those mindset shifts that changes how a leader sees their role inside the practice.
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The goal isn't to build a practice without problems.
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And that's the main idea.
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Now let's listen.
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Here's what I mean.
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So let's say this.
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Here's the largest lesson from today is that part of our culture is that problem is problems are good.
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We've got to be projecting that.
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We've got to be saying that to the team.
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We've got to be living that.
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And, you know, because they allow us to improve.
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And think about this.
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Sometimes we have that crazy patient, you know, that really crazy patient that makes a big deal.
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And that's a problem, right?
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I mean, we hate that.
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We we don't like dealing with that person.
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Even so that they are just way out there and they're way different from more of our other patients.
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We've got to see that upset patient as there is some lesson to be learned in there.
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Because the fact of the matter is, is your normal patients, you know, not that crazy one, your normal patients, the nice ones, they probably are having the same issue, some of them, but they're not gonna speak up about it.
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It's that crazy one that has no problem bringing it up.
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So I hate it when I hear about teams like they deal with one thing with a crazy patient and they're just like, well, she's she or he or she is crazy, don't worry about them.
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That's just a one-off.
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That's that's on them.
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Well, no, there is a lesson to be learned there.
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So they allow us to improve.
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So we want more problems.
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Let's bring on the problems, right?
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If you've got a list of problems, we're gonna teach about the problem list.
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You're gonna write down what are all the problems and opportunities at your practice.
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Now, we would think we would want to start working through this list and eventually get to the point where we have an empty list.
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So we'd rather have an empty list or a full list, because a full list is a practice with a lot of problems.
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We would think an empty list is one that's doing really well, right?
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But what does that really mean?
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It could mean three one of three things.
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One, it could mean your practice is just absolutely perfect.
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And congratulations, you've done it.
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You've nailed it, the perfect practice without any problems.
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Or it could mean one of these two things nobody's paying attention, nobody really cares, or nobody feels safe enough to put anything on the list.
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So I'll give you a hint, it's definitely not number one.
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You do not have a perfect, perfect practice.
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And I have my coaching clients say this to me all the time.
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I will always relay stories at my practice, and I'll be like, hey, you know, this just happened over at our practice about two, three weeks ago.
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And I hear it all the time.
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I can't believe that you have these problems at your practice still with all your systems.
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And I always say, dude, those don't go away.
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But you it's what you do with them that makes the big difference.
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So we can't hide the problems.
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That's gotta be part of our culture, not hiding it.
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So we got to take away this idea, let's stop having problems.
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Our goal is to build a space where the practice, uh it's a goal to build a practice where the problems are safe to reveal, and we just can't ignore them.
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It doesn't make sense for us to ignore them.
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We know that there's something to be done every time there's a problem.
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So, where does it start?
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Well, with the leadership.
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It starts with you, it starts with the way that you talk in the meetings, the things that you're willing to talk about.
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It starts with recognizing examples.
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And what I mean by that is when somebody has a problem, being like brave enough to talk about it, brave enough to bring it up in the meeting and then like celebrating that person.
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Hey, I'm so glad you brought that up.
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I'm sure that was uncomfortable for you to bring up.
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I'm sure that would that that required a little bit of courage for you to share that.
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Things like that.
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Talking about it, making sure that we're talking about it.
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And sometimes that conversation will steer into who was right or wrong.
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And I always want to say, we are not there to referee.
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It doesn't matter who's right or wrong, it matters that people felt certain ways.
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So let's take a problem where two people are hurt.
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One is offended, the other one is offended.
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They're both offended, and we're talking through whose fault was it?
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Was it your fault?
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Was it my fault?
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Was it this?
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And say, whoa, no refereeing.
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We are not refereeing.
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We are there just to say there was a problem.
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Some people felt this way, some people felt this way.
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What are we gonna do to move forward?
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We're not calling, we're not judging, we're moving forward.
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So we can't hide the problems, we gotta make it safe.
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That's how we do that safety.
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So we talked about psychological safety before.
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It's one of the most important things you can do at your practice is have a psychologically safe practice.
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And that means it's okay to have problems.
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Like we just we don't make people feel bad when they screw things up.
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And uh we need to merge that with accountability.
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So, how do we make sure that people don't screw things up?
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They do things a certain way, but then we also don't make them feel bad about it.
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Can we even do those same things together?
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So there's always this common misconception that having psychological safety meets that means that nobody gets corrected.
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No, not at all.
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It doesn't mean nobody gets corrected.
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It doesn't mean that repeated mistakes don't matter.
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I mean, yeah, you get a pass, you know, you can let's learn from your mistake, let's talk about it, but you keep making that mistake, that's it doesn't mean that every mistake is okay.
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You know, they're not.
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I mean, there's certain things that are just like, whoa, that is beyond okay.
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But it just means it's got to be safe for the team to feel safe, that they can say something like I screwed something up, I don't understand this.
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Um, I this isn't really working for us.
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I think we could do this better.
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Our patient was really upset about something that the doctor said, but something that you said, doctor.
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Being okay that we can say those things without feeling like we're gonna get called out or made fun of or feel stupid or humiliated or blamed for something, or we're gonna blame somebody else, or we're getting somebody else in trouble.
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So we need to have that psychological safety and accountability.
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And a lot of people feel like those don't work together because how can we make it safe to say these things, but then also correct people and make sure they don't make that mistake again and make them feel okay making the mistake.
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Sometimes they just don't seem congruent, but we can truly have both.
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I always reference the movie A Quiet Place, where they have to say, stay quiet because these aliens can't see them, but they can hear them.
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And if they make any noise, the aliens find them and they kill them.
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So the only way to stay safe is to stay quiet.
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This is what happens in our practices.
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If it's not safe, people stay quiet.
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And the reason we don't like quiet is because when people don't share problems, when they don't share things that they're don't share ideas, they don't feel safe to, there's no way to know it.
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It's invisible.
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So people need to be able to speak up with their ideas, questions, concerns, and mistakes.
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And if they don't feel safe, they become quiet.
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But we can build a practice through our actions that feels very quiet and feels very unsafe.
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It is the most unproductive practice, it is the worst thing you can do at your practice.
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So we have to have that in mind that when we're correcting somebody, when we're holding someone accountable, it's not to shame them, it is to learn from it.
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And if the person being corrected can understand that and say, like, hey, you know, I shouldn't be defensive.
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Yeah, I screwed something up, but I'm gonna learn from it.
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It's for the greater good of the practice.
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It can go forward with relationships staying good and people feeling good.
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But the only way to do that is to talk about it.
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We gotta weave those together.
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We got to say these things like, hey, this is the type of practice we are.
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We celebrate problems.
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Problems are great because they help us improve.
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We're always improving.
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Feedback is great because it helps us improve, we're always improving.
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Feedback is a gift.
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These are the type of things, and you can never say them too much.
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So, this is one of the reasons that I think developing your office manager and your other leaders is so important.
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As the owner, I mean you understand, you can understand this concept perfectly.
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You can understand how you want problems to be handled, you can understand the culture that you want, you can understand the accountability, leadership, systems, all of that stuff.
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But if every time something goes wrong, your team still needs you to step in, interpret what happened, decide what to do, and talk to the people involved and make sure it gets fixed, you really haven't created any sort of freedom as a practice owner at all.
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You've just gotten better at being the person everybody depends on.
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Now your practice, it will start to change in a dramatic way when the people around you become better leaders too.
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When your office manager starts seeing problems differently and attacking them differently, when you have other leaders on your team that start to take more ownership, they will get better at communicating with the team, they'll get better at solving the issues and following through and leading people without needing you as the doctor involved in every conversation.
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And that is such a big part of what we're trying to build inside our VIP growth program.
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We start with you as the owner, but we also help develop the people who are supposed to help you run your practice.
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Now, the piece you just heard today that came directly from one of our live office manager mastery sessions.
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We also provide role-specific development for other members of your team as well, all of your hygienists, all of your assistants, all of your admin team, because ultimately your freedom is limited by the capability of the people that are around you.
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And if everything at your practice still requires the doctor, the doctor can never truly step away.
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The goal isn't just to make you a better practice owner.
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I know that's an important thing, and I know it helps a lot, but it is truly to build a better leadership team around you because that was my experience.
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I dreaded the practice, I would get the Sunday scaries every Sunday night, dread to see what was on the other side of the door today, what kind of fires am I walking into?
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And all that changed the moment that I created my leadership team and I developed my leaders.
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Okay.
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I had to develop the leaders around me and install the practice operating system that we run with today.
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But that changed everything.
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That changed the way I felt about my practice.
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It changed the way that I showed up as a husband, as a father, as a person in the world.
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It changed everything about my life.
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So that is the kind of practice that you're trying to build.
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I promise you, our legendary VIP practice growth program is for you.
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It is exactly for you, and it is what is going to help your practice go to the next level and completely transform your life.
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So if you want more information on that and you want to see what DPH can do for you, please set up a free strategy call with me, dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy.
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Happy to talk with you.
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It's a no pressure call.
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We'll just talk about what's going on in your practice.
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I'll give you some advice and I'll let you know if I think DPH can help you.
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And if so, what that's going to look like.
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Thank you so much for spending some time with us today.
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Really appreciate you taking us on your drive in or maybe home from work.
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Go in the practice, have a hell of a day, have a hell of a week, bring that enthusiasm and bring the leadership that your team needs and deserves.
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We will talk to you next time.