Perfecting Your Team – (Part 3) by Dana Ackley PhD

Build your relationships first….then your dentistry. ~ Bob Barkley

Month: March 2013

Perfecting Your Team – (Part 3) by Dana Ackley PhD

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Dana_ackley Welcome to the third and final installment of Perfecting Your Team. This series of articles provides you with a model of five behaviors that make the difference between a great team and one that, well, is not so great. We know that you know that you need a team. It is just not so easy to make it work. Hopefully, the model and action steps in this series will help you build the team that you need.

In the first installment, we dealt with the foundation for a good team, trust. [ Click for Part 1 ]  The second installment looked at constructive conflict and commitment. [ Click for Part 2 ] The final two vital behaviors are discussed below.

Accountability: On high performing teams, accountability works a little differently than you might guess. Team members are not accountable just to the leader. Rather, all team members become accountable to every other team member with regard to how well they work towards team goals.

To be clear, the doctor is still in charge. Nevertheless, in high performance teams, other team members are willing to speak up for commitments, goals and the mission all have agreed to. You will know that your team has achieved great accountability when you witness team members respectfully confronting other team members for behaviors that run counter to commitments and agreements.

For example, suppose that everyone on the team agrees to "advance health through promoting proper dentistry at every reasonable opportunity." The Administrative Leader notices that the Hygienist failed to mention the value of an occlusal equilibration to a patient (to whom the procedure had previously been recommended by the dentist). The Administrative Leader kindly reminds the Hygienist about the practice’s mission to promote proper dentistry, and points out that it appeared that an opportunity may have been lost with this particular patient.

The Hygienist (on a great team) does not interpret this information as a personal attack, and as a result does not resent the comment. Rather, she will say to herself "She has a point; I did get distracted and will need to make certain that I mention the equilibration next time. I will make a note to remind myself."

Action Steps: To build accountability in your practice:

  • Encourage team members to challenge behavior that runs counter to commitments. Comments are about the behavior, not the person.
    • Good: "It appeared that you forgot to remind Mrs. Jones about the value of an equilibration."
    • Bad: "You always forget to tell patients about important things! Don’t you care about what they really need?"
  • Encourage team members to accept that they are being confronted for appropriate reasons, not as a personal attack. Model such acceptance when someone challenges you as well. In fact, when your team members become willing to confront you, you will know that you have taken a giant step forward. (One dentist I know was challenged by his receptionist for not allowing her time in the daily schedule to make reactivation calls he had specifically requested. His response? He immediately saw the issue in a new light, and had her specifically block off uninterrupted time on a Friday so that she could succeed at this critical task).

Attention to Team Results: Members of high performance teams focus on team results more than on their personal outcomes. Personal results matter but they are always viewed in the context of team results.

    For example, you may choose to measure the number of new patients seen per month. Assume that you have identified the kinds of patients who best fit your practice model and want to use that profile to better manage your practice. Were your administrative assistant oriented toward achieving recognition only for herself, she might schedule as many patients as possible without regard to their fit. This would statistically make her look good but cause a large percentage of patients to "wash out" over time.

    On the other hand, an administrative assistant focused on optimal team results would help callers make good choices, particularly regarding whether or not the practice was right for them. Doing so would set the stage for the rest of the team to succeed over time, as they would primarily be working with patients who wanted to be there and who appreciated how the practice operates.

    Action Steps: To practice attention to results:

    • In concert with the team, identify team performance goals to help you measure progress towards the vision. Remember and use a saying known by every successful business: "What is valued gets measured. What gets measured gets done." Your vision, mission, and key strategies will tell you what you value and therefore, what should be measured. Examples might include:
      • Treatment plan case acceptance rate
      • Number of appropriate new patients per month entering the practice
      • Gross production
      • Overhead percentage
      • No shows / last minute cancellations
      • The health level of patients who have been a part of the practice for a significant period (are you succeeding at your mission?)
    • Have team members collect important practice "vital signs" and share them frequently.
    • Avoid the temptation to become judgmental about disappointing results. Leaders who make it unsafe for team members to provide bad news get lied to. Respond to disappointing news from an "assessment" perspective.
      • Judgmental: "Our number of no-shows is unacceptable. You are doing a terrible job!"
      • Assessment: "Our number of no-shows for this month was 130% of our goal. What ideas do you have regarding how we can lower this number in the future?"

    Each of the action steps in this series of articles can help you create the team you need. But, building a great team isn’t easy. To take the next steps in team development consider three resources. First, you may like to read the book that this model outlined is based on – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. It makes its points in story form and is an easy but informative read.

    Second, we have constructed a brief survey that you and your team can complete to give you an estimate of development on each of the five key behaviors. Such knowledge may be useful in taking steps to enhance your team’s functioning. Simply have everyone on your team, including yourself, complete the questionnaire. We will send you a brief report with a profile of the overall team’s responses.  [ Click for Team Survey ]

    Finally, it may be useful to hire a coach for yourself and the team. The coach can help you further assess the current functioning of your team and create action plans for overcoming barriers to building the kind of team of which you dream.

    Your coach also can act as a guide to the execution of your plan. Here’s why: The devil can be in the details. It is a little like restoring a tooth. Conceptually, it is simple: remove that which is failing and replace it with something that restores form, function, and appearance. Effective execution, however, requires training, skill, and professional judgment, which is what your coach can bring to team development.

    A great team is within your reach. It begins with hiring great people. But even great people have to be molded into a team. This five level pyramid model can serve as an excellent road map.

    Dana C. Ackley, Ph.D. is a psychologist who provides coaching and consultation to dentists and their teams. He is a guest lecturer at the Pankey Institute for Advanced Dental Education and writes frequently for Dentistry Today. He can be reached at dana.ackley@eqleader.net or 540-774-1927 or 2840 Electric Road, Suite 208, Roanoke, Virginia 24018.

How About Your Team?

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These three articles by Dana C. Ackley, Ph.D. have described the skills needed by high performance teams. Do you wonder how your team stacks up? Finding out might help you to build a stronger team.

We have a brief questionnaire you and your team members can complete to give you a picture of your team's current strengths and weaknesses. Once each member of your team responds, we will send you a brief report.

To receive your no fee team survey: Print this page and give to each of your team members. Have each member of your team, including you, [ Click here for EQ Team Survey Tool ] or copy this url into your internet brower: http://mark4blog.typepad.com/codiscovery/confidential-team-survery.html

Enter your main office phone number, which will be your team's unique identifier. This identifier ensures that everyone's responses are put into the right team. Assure your team members that their answers to the questions will be private. The report that comes back to you provides the average response of all team members, not responses by individuals. (Otherwise, you may not get honest perceptions.)

Special instructions for the dentist who owns the practice: When you fill out the survey, please enter the total number of people on your team and your email address. We need to know the number of people on your team so that we will know how complete your responses are. We need your email address so that we can send you the team report.

Your Team Report: High team performance is a journey. Your report can be a springboard to discussion with your team. It is an opportunity to discuss what is going well and what areas need some attention.

In addition, we are collecting data from doctors across North America who visit our Co-Discovery blog. You will be able to compare your team's scores with teams from across the continent.

Disclaimer: This is an informal survey and only directionally valid. Use your results for discussion and exploration, not the final word.

My Story (and I’m Stick’in to It)

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By Paul A. Henny, DDS

By Perhaps your experience in dentistry has been similar to mine. After several years of practice, things simply were not working out as planned. I had entered dentistry under the assumption that I would be received as a respected professional. Based on this, I thought that most people would value my services. I also assumed that the public viewed dentistry as being associated with health, but my assumptions were soon proven wrong on many occasions.

This led to a lot of soul-searching, even wondering if I should continue in the practice of dentistry (a very dark moment for the son of a dentist). But after much reading, and reflection, I began to better understand who I was, where I was, and what I wanted for myself. I came to realize that my ‘problem’ with dentistry had a lot more to do with me than with the profession of dentistry itself.

I did not feel that what I wanted was particularly radical or unreasonable. I envisioned practicing in a fashion that was congruent with my dental school training, a practice centered on promoting and advancing dental health. At the time, the idea seemed simple and straight forward, but after listening to Peter Dawson for a couple of days in 1994, I realized that I did not yet possess the skills or understanding to do so. Stunned by the clarity of this “reality check,” I thought, “This is going to take a while,” and I was right.

So I put my shoulder down, and began to study at the Dawson Center, Pankey Institute and with Frank Spear. I involved my staff, and together we began to implement significant changes. The most essential of these was the integration of a proper complete examination process. I learned how to carefully check the health of my patients’ teeth, periodontium, TMJ’s, muscle system, and their inter-relatedness by assessing the functional occlusion. To enhance this process, I mounted study models on semi-adjustable articulators, started taking photographs, designated time to review the diagnostic information, developed diagnostic wax-ups, and crafted treatment recommendations. I felt certain that my efforts would lead to a practice full of people who valued what I had to offer, but it really didn’t happen that way.

Many patients showed no interest in learning about how to improve their dental health. Some didn’t even want to see what their mouth looked like. Others sat quietly as I carefully explained my findings and the logic behind my elegant solution to their complex problems. A few accepted my philosophy and plan, but many more left, never to be seen again.

I began to wonder if I was practicing in the wrong place. Were people in my town particularly disinterested in optimal dental health, or was there something wrong with the way I was doing things? Having committed myself to a significant amount of debt to set up the office, the former was something I could not easily change (this later turned out to be a blessing), but the later was something that kept eating away at me. How could it be that some dentists had practices brimming with patients, while I struggled to find individuals who were even remotely interested in the best that dentistry had to offer? It felt depressed.

It was not until I became a student of the late Bob Barkley that my “new” practice finally started to take form. This happened rather serendipitously after reading an article about Bob written by Avrom King. Soon I became a voracious reader of all things Barkley and King, as well as the lifelong works of L. D. Pankey, Harold Worth, Lynn Carlisle, Carl Rogers, and Scott Peck. Through their wisdom and insight, I gained a better sense of world of dentistry – as my patients’ saw it. I soon realized that most people had a significant “emotional heritage” connected to their memories of not-so-optimal dental experiences. Finally taking the time to listen, I learned that they had stories to tell; stories full of skepticism, pain, distrust, and fear. And even though these same people had great needs and great desires for better dental health, most had no concept of how to pursue it.

Closing the gap between the initial preconceptions of my patients and what was truly possible became my passion. Barkley said, “Build your relationships first – then your dentistry.” This simple but infinitely valuable piece of wisdom became the central focus of my practice. And like Barkley and Pankey before me, I became a student of how to build successful working relationships with patients. Naturally and concurrently, I abandoned trying to convince virtual strangers of what was wrong with them and what they needed to do about it and I committed myself to exploring solutions to their non-urgent needs after our relationship had matured a bit more.

These changes had both an immediate and profound impact on my practice. Patients began to drop their façades, and began to share with me how they felt, what they feared, and what they really wanted. For the first time, I found that I was communicating effectively on a consistent basis. I listened intently and helped my patients to understand that “what was” did not have to dictate, “what will be.” Moreover, through open, honest, relationships we learned more about each other, the possibilities, and their choices. The outcome of this “people-centered” process was better dentistry, dramatically increased productivity, a fulfilled care team, happier / healthier patients, and of course one very satisfied dentist.

Today, I practice comprehensive esthetic restorative dentistry four days a week in a low volume, high quality setting. Virtually without exception, every patient who enters my practice today knows who we are, what we do, is eager to learn more about it, and over time – enthusiastically proceeds toward what they want for themselves. And that is something I have found is good for everyone.

Paul A. Henny, DDS practices esthetic & restorative dentistry in Roanoke, Virginia. He is CEO of Mark 4 Associates, a dental practice development consultancy for comprehensive restorative dentists. He is Publisher and Managing Editor of Co-discovery.org, a non-profit e-forum for health-centered restorative dentists and is a visiting consulting faculty member of the Pankey Institute. Contact Paul by email at paul@Mark4Associates.com or by calling 540 314-6657.

 

Paul A. Henny,DDS

Is Your “Brand” Moving You … In The Right Direction? (Part 3 of 3)

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Paul A. Henny DDS

 

Would you like your practice to be quickly recognized and perceived as high in trust and quality as well?  The same branding process used to elevate The Ritz-Carlton and Mercedes Benz can be used to elevate a dental practice in the eyes of the public– albeit on a much smaller scale.  Here are four more concepts to consider to Brand and Position your dental practice.

 

First in typically wins most.  The most ideal marketing situation is one where you are the first to professionally promote a product or service within your community. Being first creates a much clearer connection between the mindset of the consumer and their understanding of what you can do for them.  Your goal is to cause your target group to think about you first when they think about fine dentistry. Being first in a market to properly promote fine dental services goes a long way toward achieving this goal.  An analogy that explains this well is what I call the “fishbowl analogy”. Consider the mindset of your target group to be a fishbowl full of clear water.  Then think of your practice promotion efforts as individual drops of blue food coloring strategically added to that water.  If you are the first to properly promote a fine esthetic restorative practice in your community, you can rather quickly change the color of the water to your shade of blue.

 

If not first, then shoot to become one of the top three.  If it is too late to be the first practice to effectively promote to your target group, your practice brand can still become successful if your strategies cause your brand to be one of the first three practices that people think of.  There’s an old cliché among brand managers in Fortune 500 corporations that addresses this point, “If your brand isn’t one of the top three that first come to mind … then it’s not that you were rejected … it’s just that you were never even considered in the first place.”

 

Too many excellent dentists today become victims of their own self doubt regarding the possibilities for their practices.  This is often due to a lukewarm reception from patients to their initial recommendation for comprehensive care.  Because of this, many dentists start to believe that “folks in my town just aren’t interested in this level of care,” when in fact, the real problem is that dentists are trying to promote optimal care to people who are simply not ready for it.  Their practice brand has not differentiated itself enough in the mind of the general public to attract people to their practice who ARE ready and interested in these types of services.

 

Two measures of your Brand effectiveness.  Brand researchers tell us that the effectiveness of the branding process can be evaluated by measuring what are known as esteem and knowledge.  Esteem refers to how well a brand image is regarded within a particular market. (Are you considered by the lay public to be one of the best dentists in town?).  Knowledge refers to how accurately consumers understand what the business does (Does the general public understand that your capabilities are well beyond those of a run-of-the-mill family practitioner?). A high-esteem, low-knowledge profile may be a sign of a brand on the rise, or an inability of a personally well-regarded dentist to differentiate his/her practice from the pack.  (“I liked them a lot, but they do not accept my new insurance … so I left”).  A high-knowledge, low-esteem profile, on the other hand, is an indication that the public is familiar with the practice brand but holds it in low regard – In other words, a practice brand that is in desperate need of a full “makeover”.

 

Persistence counts.  Branding campaigns often take several months to begin to bear fruit … and several years to become optimally effective.  They are the ongoing process of developing a preferred public image for your practice. Once people start responding favorably to your branding efforts, it is important to note what people are really responding to.  What messages are you putting out that really seem to resonate with your target group? From there, adjust your message accordingly and repeat the things which are working well while replacing less effective efforts with fresh new ideas.

 

It is my hope that this series of articles has increased your understanding how a practice is perceived by others. I also hope that it has helped you to see that you have the ability to positively influence how others perceive your practice through strategic branding initiatives.

 

A well-branded and properly positioned restorative practice has people regularly calling who are open to a comprehensive exam process and who are interested in comprehensive care.  It also has people within it who are becoming more and more interested in comprehensive approaches.  The beginning of the new year is a very appropriate time to reflect on where your practice is – and where you would like it to be in the future.  Perhaps developing a more clarified public practice brand will help you take better charge of your professional future.

 

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