Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
Lean Management: Strategies to Help Your Dental Office Run Smoothly with Karyn Ross
What’s the secret to less stress, more productivity, and happier patients? A new management approach could be the key to transforming your dental practice from chaotic to efficient. In this episode, award-winning author and consultant Karyn Ross introduces the Toyota Way Lean process and explains how to implement its principles to address system breakdowns, proactively prevent problems, and empower your team.
We discuss why you need a dedicated office manager in your practice, how to effectively train employees, and more strategies to improve workflow and drive growth in your business. Tune in to learn more!
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Applying the Lean Process in your dental practice
- The crucial role of office managers
- How to train office managers in your practice
- Common management mistakes in a dental practice
- How to have difficult conversation with your employes
- Using Lean principles to improve patient care
Sign up for Karyn’s 8-Week Dental Practice Manager Training:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dental-practice-manager-training-tickets-1047118047267
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I help dentists create thriving practices that make more money, require less of their time, and empower their teams to run the office seamlessly—so they can focus on what matters most.
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Imagine how much smoother your practice could run if you and your team weren't constantly putting out fires and could focus on delivering the best patient care. Here's the good news it is entirely possible to get there, and it all starts with you. So what's the key to streamlining your day-to-day operations and reducing stress? Find out how to improve the workflow in your practice, empower your team and reclaim your time. In today's conversation with Karen Ross, you are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair. I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, welcome back to Dental Practice Heroes. I'm your host, dr Paul Edgison, and I've got a great guest today. I'm so excited to speak to her. We got an award winning author, author of seven books, internationally acclaimed consultant, coach, practitioner and founder of the nonprofit the Love and Kindness Project Foundation Someone who's going to help us figure out what the heck should we do with our office managers and how can we get this practice running better. Please welcome to the podcast Karen Ross. Welcome, karen, how are you today?
Speaker 2:I am doing absolutely fabulous. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's absolutely an honor and a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much. You know, and me and Karen, before we hit record, we were getting to know each other a little bit and I think a good intro for you, karen, would be talk about what the lean process is and if anyone's ever heard of this this is a Toyota thing, but Karen is very knowledgeable in this process and she's actually in part of a book writing on it, and she's worked in many organizations, not just dentistry. So talk about what you do and talk about the lean process and how we can apply that to dentistry.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And someone hasn't heard of this. Lean or Toyota way is the effective, efficient way that Toyota has created to make cars. And you're thinking to yourself, oh my goodness, what does doing dentistry with making cars? Well, just like we have a manufacturing line where we want things to flow effectively and efficiently.
Speaker 2:And I always say effective first, because we want things to be right, and goodness knows, when you have a patient sitting in the chair, you want to do their work right so that they don't come back to you right and they don't have a further problem. And we want it to be efficient because, guess what? When a patient arrives in the waiting room, they don't want to wait there for more than a couple of minutes, they want to go right back. You want to efficiently do all of the work so your schedule stays on time. And lean is a really simple process with easily teachable practices that help us just do things right the first time, do them quickly and really work to standards so that all patients are going to get a consistent, fabulous experience.
Speaker 2:I have lots of dental clients, but I also work with manufacturing clients, I work with higher education, I work with all different kinds of healthcare, because every single business. It doesn't matter what business you're in. There's a really simple business equation you're in. There's a really simple business equation no customers, no business. So what we want is happy, satisfied customers who want to come back and want to refer their friends, and that's really what Lean does for you.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So talk about how you started working in dental, because originally you didn't start there, but I think you said you've been working with dental people for eight years now, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely so. One day I got a phone call and, if any of you have heard of Dr Michelle Jorgensen at Total Care Dental in Utah and she had read the first book that I was the co-author on Toyota Way to Service Excellence and Jeff Liger is really the grandfather of lean process improvement and she had read the book and she's a super creative and super innovative person and she decided that she wanted to do exactly what was done in the book Lean in her dental office. And actually dental practices are great places to apply lean principles and practices because you have so many patients who are coming to the waiting room, being seated and then having their procedure and then going out the door. So there's a lot of opportunities for us to make improvements, try out the new thing that we're improving and create a standard or make even more changes.
Speaker 1:Now, when you're talking about lean processes, are you talking about the actual systems, or is this more of a system of like management? Can you expound on that a little further?
Speaker 2:And actually it's both. It's both a management system and it's a system of creating standard ways of working for everyone in the practice. So, as a management system, first of all we would want doctor owners to set the targets, and a target is what should be happening right for the patient and for the practice. So for the patient, maybe we set a target Nobody sits in the waiting room for more than five minutes. For the practice, we say, okay, here's the production numbers that each department should bring in, each doctor should bring in. Here's the production numbers that each department should bring in, each doctor should bring in. Here's the patient satisfaction scores that we expect, all of those different kinds of things. And then we actually work with everybody in doing each job to create a set of what I would call standards, and a standard is exactly how to do the work that is going to let you hit the target. We train everybody on the standards, we make sure that everybody knows simple, easy, problem-solving processes and instead of being reactive, now actually we're working to proactively, give people those experiences and make sure that, okay, if someone's waiting in the waiting room for more than five minutes, why did that happen?
Speaker 2:What broke down in the system. So often we just blame people oh that person's lazy, they're not doing their job. But actually most people who come to work want to do a super good job but they're prevented by difficult things in the system. Oh well, we're late taking care of this patient because actually assistant had to leave the room three times looking for supplies. Oh why are we looking for supplies? Actually, because they weren't ordered on time. So most problems are actually system problems. So we want to have a good management system so that we're managing all those things, and we actually also want to have good patient care standards and training processes and we want to have really good office managers who manage all of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and it's something I very strongly believed in is our patient experience. At my office we have something that we've titled it our movement sequence, and this is the steps that the patient will go through. This is what we do at each steps and there's nice little touch points in there, like we want to we're not scripting, but we want to say certain things, we want to acknowledge certain things, we want to prime the patient and express our brand in certain ways. And I have people come to my office and they go oh my gosh, that was unbelievable. And they don't realize how much role playing and training and intentionality there is on that. And I think it's great and we see this so much I see it in my coaching clients is that we want our team to do well, and I love that.
Speaker 1:You said everybody wants to do well, because I believe that as well, but not everybody knows what well is. And I think where we fail as leaders of the practice is we don't often express that to our teams. Now you mentioned managers and express that to our teams. Now you mentioned managers. There's so much room in dental offices to have an office manager that really steps in and manages. And you got listeners. You know, I've said it, not just an office manager by title, somebody who's actually managing people. Talk about what kind of changes an office could expect when they have a team player like that, a leader in the practice that is willing to focus on making sure that you're hitting all the goals and checking these things.
Speaker 2:When you have an office manager who's really managing, actually what you can expect is that, instead of hundreds of fires happening all of the time right, oh, we don't have this supply you can expect all of those things to go away, because a really good office manager is going to be proactive, not reactive, and make sure that actually their job is to make sure all of the systems like you're just talking about your system that those things are running smoothly, that we're hiring the right people to begin with, that we're onboarding and training in the correct way, we're teaching them the standards.
Speaker 2:We're following up and going to see to make sure that they're following the standards. And so what you're going to see is you're going to see people who are super happy because actually they're going to know what is expected of them, because you're entirely right, people want to do their best, but how can they do their best if they don't know what that is? You're going to see unbelievably happy patients because they're going to come in and they're going to have the effective, efficient experience that they are expecting. You're going to see all of your financial targets met and guess what? As the dentist, you're going to be able to actually focus on doing your job sitting in your chair and not dealing with office gossip, with HR problems, with all of those kinds of things, because actually that's the manager's job to handle.
Speaker 1:These problems, I feel like, are much larger when we're reacting to them versus being proactively getting in front of them. Now, a lot of dentists they have an office manager and this office manager works at the front desk and this office manager is putting in insurance checks and they're answering the phone and they're presenting treatment and I always tell my coaching clients it is so valuable. I have a four-person leadership team and now I have a larger practice but a smaller practice even to have that one person that is managing. But they say, well, we're kind of staffed okay at the front desk and I always tell them get your office manager out of the front desk. What would they do? So what would you say to that dentist that says I want a manager but they're so busy doing all these other things that are the front desk tasks that nobody else can do. So what would you say to that?
Speaker 2:First of all, I would say front desk tasks are front desk tasks and they're unbelievably important because oftentimes they're either the first thing that's touching the patient right Either a phone call or, you know, scheduling a patient or the insurance back end. Let the front desk person actually focus on doing that job, because they're going to be much more effective and efficient manager. The manager is actually going to do all of the things that you, as the dentist, don't want to do in your day. They're going to make sure that you are hiring the correct person. They're going to have the interviews. They're going to manage the working interviews. They're going to watch the person to make sure oh, is this person going to be a great fit with our practice? Are they trainable? Are they coachable?
Speaker 2:Then they're actually going to be in charge of making sure that there is proactive training so that they sign off that the new team member knows your standards right and they can do the standards Not just that they understand them, but they can functionally do them to your standard. They're going to deal with any kind of HR problem People not getting along. They're going to make sure all your supplies are ordered, all your systems are working, and that is a full-time job for someone. That is absolutely a full-time job for someone and they're going to make sure your front desk person is actually doing the job the front desk is supposed to do. It's an unbelievable critical position in a dental practice.
Speaker 1:It's funny, like I have with my leadership team and I teach other offices how to do this. It's funny, like I have with my leadership team and I teach other offices how to do this. When it goes wrong, they're saying, well, my leads, they just can't find time to do it. They're not doing their stuff and I'm like, well, when, when are they supposed to do it? Well, we just in between patients. No, like I love that you say it's a full time job. So some dentists listening just said, wow, that sounds really good. I wish my office manager could do that. But how do I make that transition into giving somebody a true office manager role and making it a full-time position?
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I'm going to say is that so often when we promote people, we actually just look at somebody who's really good at the job that they're doing. Oh, they're a really good front desk person, really good assistant, and we promote them and we say, ok, you're going to be the office manager now. But in order to learn management skills right how to manage systems, how to improve systems, how to create standards, how to deal with people so, when you have those inevitable conflicts between people, how to go from being reactive which most of us in most of our lives are reactive to going to proactive right, instead of fighting fires, we want an office manager to prevent fires. They need training. So I've actually created a dental office manager training program, because this is just something that we don't train people for.
Speaker 2:We promote people. Maybe we give them some mentorship from someone else who's done the job. Maybe you know for a little while that we like but anyone again and you said the best. If we want someone to do their best, we have to tell them what the best is, and then we have to actually train them how to do it. And I found that there was absolutely a gap and people were not having any kind of training to be office managers, and so they became very stressed, they were very unhappy. But actually that's not the way we should treat people either. If we want people to do a great job, we should give them the training, we should give them the support, and then we will absolutely reap the benefits of the wonderful job that they can do for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so true and I think so often in the dental industry. We see this on Facebook posts. We'll see, hey, I really need somebody to manage my office. I see this on Facebook posts. We'll see, hey, I really need somebody to manage my office. I found somebody. They've got 15 years of office management experience but they want so much money. What should I do? I don't want to spend it, but I know my office needs a manager and in my experience I have found that many of these so-called office managers they're just front desk employees. Still They've never been trained on it.
Speaker 1:And if anyone was trained, it's done in an office. And I say typically, when you've got a good office manager and somebody maybe the doctor gives the proper training, they're not letting that person leave because they consider them so essential. Which I have experienced in my office in the past four years is that I am no longer needed, and any dentist listening could be like oh, now I can focus on the dentistry. For me, I focus on the podcast and in my real estate and other stuff, but it's like I'm not needed anymore. So what would you say? Should we be finding people with this training or it has to be provided by us. What would you think?
Speaker 2:I would say honestly I would look for someone in your practice who really models your values, your practice, values your practice, work ethic and really understands your practice, mission and vision. And then I would look at that person and I would say they're doing great work in the job that they're at. This is a person I never want to leave here. And then I would ask them if they're interested in learning office management and we can teach them what we need, because they already understand your practice. They understand what it is that's important and valuable to you. Now let's just give them the skills to do that management. And as your practice expands, guess what? Maybe eventually they'll become your director of operation, as you have.
Speaker 2:You know many different buildings and many different types of departments. So we then also create a career path for people and we can face it. You know younger employees, like kids, who are my kids age, like late 20s, early 30s. They actually aren't looking to stay somewhere for the long term, they're just going to go. You know whoever is going to pay them more money or different things that interest them. Let's actually make career paths for people. Maybe someone doesn't want to be a front desk person their whole life right and we can make a difference for them without asking them to go somewhere else. If they are a great fit with your practice, let's give them some training. In Lean we say respect for people. We have respect for people. Understand that people can do more than they ever thought they could do and be more than they ever thought they could be. And let's train them up and let's let them stay where they're happy and make an even bigger difference. That's what I would say.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's so great, because when I'm putting leads into offices we often hear this person. I really think they'd be great at it, but they don't want to take on all the extra work and I'm like it's not extra work and this is a blessing. People love this sort of work. They love the autonomy and love the creativity they can bring to work and I love that you brought up that likely a doctor listening has somebody on their team right now that can do this.
Speaker 1:I'd like to hear how you answer this question, because I hear this from a lot of people. I have this one person on my team and I think they're great. They're such a loyal, hard worker and stuff, but I just don't know if they're disciplined enough or hard enough to manage people. And then I have this other person that you know doesn't put up with any BS but they kind of rub people the wrong way. But I know they would be able to have difficult conversations and my thought has always been it's about respect, and respect is earned. You can't earn it by intimidation and sometimes that first person just needs to learn how to have those conversations. It's so dependent on people skills. What would you say to that?
Speaker 2:So I'm going to say that actually one of the modules for my dental practice manager training is to teach people the standard of I call it a kind conversation, but it's a difficult conversation. We can teach people how to have that kind of conversation and so often actually, the problems that cause people to butt heads and to act in ways that we think are people problems are actually system and process problems. So let's say somebody you know goes to the manager or whoever it is and complains okay, my room was supposed to be turned and set up but it wasn't. And this person never does what they're supposed to do and they just don't set things up the right way. The truth is you have the right office manager.
Speaker 2:They're first of all going to go see, they're going to look at what broke down in the system. Do we have a standard? Did we train this person correctly? Do they need some coaching? And we'll fix the problem that way right and prevent the problem from happening again. So I would always choose the person who goes with your values, who's the kind of person and we can absolutely train them how to have this kind of conversation. I'm going to tell you can absolutely train them how to have this kind of conversation. I'm going to tell you, most people who've learned to have this conversation have learned it from someone else, from someone else modeling it for them and teaching it to them, and we can do the same for almost any person.
Speaker 1:Would you mind expanding? Is the kind? Is that an acronym, or is that?
Speaker 2:Not an acronym. I actually have, as you were saying. I actually have a registered public charity called the Love and Kindness Project Foundation and we teach people very simply how to think, speak and act kindly. And there's a very big misunderstanding between what is nice and what is kind, and so kindness has to do with helping someone else have a positive outcome or impact. So oftentimes at work, when we see someone isn't doing something quite to standard or they're maybe not working as hard as we think they should, a lot of times we decide, okay, we're not going to say anything to that person, okay, it'll be uncomfortable for us, it'll be uncomfortable for them. But we get more and more irritated, whether we're dentist or manager. Right, and eventually maybe we let the person go. To my mind, that's very unkind. We might have been trying to be nice but actually was unkind because we didn't help the person learn and grow.
Speaker 2:In dental practice that's using lean management. Every process has a target. Target means what should be happening. Everything has a standard.
Speaker 2:When the manager sees somebody who's not working to standard, it's up to them to communicate to that person, not by saying to the person you're a terrible person, you're lazy, you're awful.
Speaker 2:Actually by saying here's the target, this is what should be happening, here's the actual, this is what's happening. Let's figure out why and then working with the person and having a kind, what I call a kind conversation. And so often people who are involved in this kind of kind conversation and are told the truth and are shown the truth, actually they because they want to do their best. Now they can say, oh, maybe I didn't really understand this, I thought I understood. Or oh, I have a problem doing this kind of work, and we can give them then some coaching, which is different than training, and we can help them move up to that level. So I call it kind because actually, if somebody is not hitting the target, it's unkind not to tell them, it's unkind not to give them the opportunity to improve. People want to do their best right. So that's why I call it a kind conversation. And when you think about it that way, that you're doing something that's going to help the person and the practice, actually it's not difficult at all. It's kind.
Speaker 1:I love how you bring up that. It's talking about the target. You know, I think so often we go into these conversations and in what I call it. You know, playing over the net is where I that's how I've learned to have these conversations is don't tell the other person about what their intentions, what their motives are. You know, we're seeking to understand, we're getting curious, but talking about the target, talking about the behavior. But then so often we go into here and it's like, hey, I noticed your x-rays aren't very good. Is it because you don't know how to do it or because maybe you don't care? And it's like no, it's not, we shouldn't be playing over the net, doing that stuff, because that is unkind. But then you mentioned at the same time, we typically delay those conversations because we don't want to have them, and it reminds me of this like crucial conversations where they had like these kids and they were showing them, they were taste testing cookies. Have you ever seen this before? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2:Yes, and I will say every single person in the world. That should be required reading for every person.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'll tell the listeners in case they don't know. So they're taste testing cookies and they got these kids and they say, hey, or they're brownies. Hey, these are the brownies from the store and these are the brownies from my grandma's recipe she just passed away. I think we're going to take it big to market. Tell me which brownie is best Now, the grandma's recipe brownies. Instead of sugar they use salt and these kids are like ready to vomit as they're chewing them. And then they ask every kid which one's better and they point at the dead grandma's brownies. And this person's grandma wasn't really passed away. It was like just a setup, but funny because that was kind, that was kind to them. But in reality it's ineffective and it doesn't result in the best results. It was just playing for somebody's feelings.
Speaker 2:Right and in that I would say to me that's nice, it's not kind. Kind is actually telling someone the truth. And you are right, we delay those conversations because it's going to be uncomfortable for us. But actually, in a leadership role and leadership and management, we don't have the choice to delay things because we're uncomfortable. Our job is to make sure that the business is successful and that the people who come to work for us are set up for success too.
Speaker 2:So if someone continuously makes a mistake and does something incorrectly and we allow them to do it, actually it's very disrespectful to the person and it's very unkind to the person because we're uncomfortable. We're the people who are in the situation. We have to tell the truth Again. We don't have to say it in a demeaning or deprecating way at all, and that's why we always want to use the target. Here's what the standard of what x-rays look like we can show the person. Here's the standard of what the right x-ray is supposed to look like.
Speaker 2:Here's the last three that you've taken. Let's figure out why. You can go and see the person taking the x-ray. You can have your standard work, because we always want to have everything documented of what the proper steps are. You can watch the person do it. Oh look, they're making a mistake on step three. This is what's happened. Now we can correct that right there in the moment. Right, and now what do I have? I have x-rays that are taken properly. I have a person who's actually learned things and feels supported. This is what a good manager does right, and we've prevented a problem from occurring again. It's kind, it's not difficult, it's kind.
Speaker 1:What would you say when we're a leader or a dental practice owner is having one of these conversations with a team member and it starts getting very defensive and it starts going sour? How do we get that back on track? Or what kind of tips would you have for someone that's scared to have these conversations, because that's typically how they go?
Speaker 2:Okay. So I'm going to say also that it's really important to remember that you have practice values and if you as the dentist and leader, you need to have those memorized, and I would suggest also that you have them placed around the office, everywhere so everyone can easily see them. If someone starts acting in a way and most of the situations that we would, I would say, call difficult situations or complex situations that might go this way, tend to happen because someone is acting in a way that's really gone against your practice's values and probably your personal values too, right? So then it becomes very emotional. So if I'm in a situation and having this kind of conversation and someone just starts to act against those values maybe they're shouting, maybe they're shouting, maybe they're blaming, you know someone else. I actually and if you like sports, I use the timeout signal and I just say timeout.
Speaker 2:I point out some values. I say this is not the way we're allowed to treat each other at any time, right? So I'm going to table this discussion now. We'll set it up again when everybody is calmer and then we can come back to it because we want to stop a behavior that doesn't go with our practice's values immediately, because the more we allow that behavior, the stronger neural pathway it makes in someone's mind. And you know, the more times we do something in the stronger neural pathway. Even if we change it, that neural pathway never goes away.
Speaker 2:So then I would start to have the conversation again. But if the person continues to act in that way, again we have to understand if something is a skill or a will problem, but I really call it a won't problem. If someone absolutely refuses to go by your practice's values and act in that way and if one of them is we all take feedback, right, none of us is perfect Then actually we have to think okay, well, what's the HR process? Because there's room for that as well. Right, 95% of people want to do their best and are going to do their best. Five percent of people were going to say this is not the right fit for our practice, and you're going to find that out in those conversations as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's great going into those conversations knowing that that is a possibility, but it is the minority, I mean it is the outlier, yeah, but most of us don't have the conversation at all, so we don't even get that far. Yeah, but most of us don't have the conversation at all, so we don't even get that far Exactly. So how would you say, you know, just, this is going to go a little, change directions a little bit. But we talked about the standards, the core values of the organization. When we're talking about those processes, and I mean, how do we coach our team on something like customer service skills? How can we make our practice more about patient experience and how do we train for that? How do we express that to the team?
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's a really interesting question. As human beings, we're pretty self-centered, right. So thinking about how can we really best care for someone else? Because our patients are other people and we tend to spend time with our colleagues, right, we tend to see us as sort of us, the dental practice people as us, but actually what we want people to do is focus on the patient, on the patient. So, again, what we have to do is we have to create, based on our mission, vision and values, standard practices for caring for customers. And, again, and I will tell you, everyone doesn't have to say the same script, but just like what you have with you know, creating those moments. Right, here's what happens in the first 30 seconds the patient walks in. We stand up, we greet people with eye contact, we have a smile right, we have to teach people how to do that. And, just like you train any other skill, we have to train people how to seat a patient in a chair right, we have to train people how to actually you know do dental procedures and assist. We can train people how to actually you know do dental procedures and assist. We can train people for customer service exactly the same way.
Speaker 2:It all goes back to having a target and understanding and creating what does the patient experience we want our patients to have to look like. We have to set that. That is the practice, the leadership, their job to set. Then we create written standards. We can create some videos. We train people to those standards. We practice with them. We watch them do it right. Maybe somebody is not a naturally smiley person Like I'm, a person who I'm like smiling all the time but maybe someone's not a naturally smiley person. But we can give them a little mirror. We can help them smile more right. We can help people learn to modulate their voice. Those are all absolutely teachable and practicable skills. So exactly the same way. But the important thing is, if people don't have a target to work towards, if that isn't actually set by leadership, they'll just do things willy, nilly the best they can. They won't be able to do things in the best way that you want them to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it reminds me of a sitter that me and my wife had and she was in high school and she wanted a job. I was man, she is so nice, let's stick her at the front desk. So I want to say it was like her first or second day. I'm listening to her checking a patient and she doesn't look up right away, but then she does look up when someone's at the desk and she goes hey, sup, sup. And she goes, oh, mrs Jones. She goes okay, cool, gotcha, have a seat. And I'm just like whoa, no, no, no, no, no. You know it's like okay, but then she did great after that. You know, this is the first time I realized I might have to teach somebody how to greet a person. And not everybody has been modeled that and not everybody knows that, but we think it's just common knowledge for us that you know have worked in customer service. I think Right.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but that's what that started just reminding me of. And especially, as you know, our team members come from different generations and different places. We're going to have to give them those standards, but it's not their job to make up the standards.
Speaker 2:Otherwise we're going to get. Whatever we get right, it's our job to train people, and also one of the things that I often find and it goes with this is that we tell people what behavior we don't want them to have, but we don't give them the behavior we'd like them to replace it with. But if they already knew a different behavior to have, they would do that behavior.
Speaker 2:So we should tell them okay, we don't want you to do this when you're in huddle and you don't like what someone else says. We don't want you to cross your arms and roll your eyes. Here's what we'd like you to do. We'd like you to stand with your hand by your sides and we'd like you to smile and if afterwards you have something you can say or raise your hand. But we rarely tell people what behavior to replace an inappropriate behavior with, but we should.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true. We're so quick to say what we don't like, but not let them know what we do like.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And now, once you've told someone what you do like, guess what chances are they're going to do that, because now they know what you want.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. Talk about where can listeners find your course for dental managers, and is it only for office managers?
Speaker 2:Or is it for any leaders in the practice? Any leaders in the practice can come, and actually we have had a number of dentist owners and their office managers come together, so there is a much lower price if you want to send more than one team member, and you can find us on Eventbrite. And is the KC eight-week dental practice manager training course and the next one starts January 27th and goes to March 17th and we'll run some more after that. But anybody who is in a practice if you want to send your leads, this will be great for your leads too who really wants to go from reactive firefighting not really managing right but to really proactive managing. This is the course for them.
Speaker 1:Is this in person or is this virtual?
Speaker 2:It is virtual, so it's online. We record all of the sessions. Monday night there's a one hour theory session and on Thursday there's an optional 30 minutes. You can come on and ask any questions about your homework. So this is a learn by doing course. So we have theory and then homework, so you can actually apply that theory immediately, and then you can come back on Thursday ask questions about oh, this did not work, as I thought it was going to work right or other questions about issues you're having in your practice. And it's an eight-week curriculum that takes you from how to set a target, how to make sure that those targets are set in accordance with your office mission, vision and values. It goes through hiring and onboarding the correct people, right Through creating standards, training, coaching, having kind conversations, using your HR practice properly and really how to be a manager of systems, and so your people will be successful. It's super fun. I actually love doing it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's great. Well, thank you so much for your time today. You know I love what you're talking about. I love what you teach, because I think so often dental practice owners were like pulling weeds but the roots are still in there and this is attacking like the roots, the foundational things that make organizations run so well. So I will have a link listeners in the show notes to Karen's course if you do want to sign up for it. But, karen, thank you so much for coming on and spending some time with me and the listeners today. I know there's a lot of people that got a lot out of that and I just really appreciate you coming.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and I really appreciate you having me. Thanks so much for such a great conversation.
