Team

Communication is so much harder to get right in most Dental Practices than it should be. It is often in the Dentist’s nature to want to get his head down and work, and this behavior left unchecked spreads. A team of intelligent articulate professionals with their head down working looks a lot like a group of individuals doing their own damn thing.

You must look to embrace as many communication opportunities as possible. There are many options:

• Bi-monthly staff meetings, with the whole team present and with everyone expected to contribute
• Morning huddles, 5 to 10 minutes before the first patient arrives. Simple and focused.
• Everyone paying attention
• Treatment coordinators being present when the Doctor finalizes and presents treatment plans
• Patients being walked up to the front and ‘handed over’
• Routing slips
• Checklists

This is not about what we expect from ourselves. We have to know what our team expect from us and deliver. We need to let out teammates what we expect from them to allow us to meet their expectations. These things need to be communicated constantly. “Yeah, yeah I got it” is another way of saying “leave me alone, I’ll do it my way” which it is not acceptable in a team environment.

Job descriptions are all well and good, but are only ever referred to on the day you start working or during disciplinary meetings. You need a very clear understanding is what is required of you, and of those things what are the 3 main areas that affect the team as a whole. It’s an interesting experiment to sit as a group and one by one have everyone, including the Doctor, state the 3 things that they do that most impact the office. Then have the group discuss what the 3 things that they believe are most impactful are for each member. Try it.

Make sure that everyone in the practice knows what is expected of them. Once you know what the expectations are agree on a way of tracking performance in this area. Most importantly make sure that everyone knows what success looks like. Performance Management…

To be clear, the primary incentive must be the personal satisfaction that comes from knowing that we have had a good day and contributed something worthwhile.

The importance of understanding what is expected of you and then monitoring it to gauge your level of success should not be underestimated. This is what informs a deeper level of satisfaction.

Incentives in the form of financial bonuses are a tricky subject when considered too deeply. They really should be part of your practice for one reason alone. It’s not easy to communicate appreciation of a team’s efforts and a simple cash bonus resonates greatly.

A good bonus rewards a job well done, basic goals have been hit and nobody died. Having another tier that acknowledges exceptional performance is a plus. For this reason, it is important to set your goals and targets at the start of each year considering the previous year’s performance.

• What is your monthly goal?
  This should be achievable and reflect a strong month for the practice
• What is your monthly Target?
  This should require an exceptional team performance

Teams hate it when the base is changed, but if you don’t do that you will be rewarding mediocre performance. Unfortunately, human behavior being what it is, if you reward substandard performance the desire to perform at a satisfactory level drops significantly.

Be flexible, be fair and be consistent with how you incentivize. But keep it simple

• Hit goal = $100 thank you!!
• Hit target = $200 congratulations!!
• Crush target = $200 and a really nice lunch in the office

Be wary of ‘personal’ incentives. They can create a me, me, me culture.

How you award any bonuses is also important, begrudging the bonus complete defeats the purpose of the exercise.