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
Keys to Success with Leads
So, you're ready to hire leads in your dental practice. But do you know what it takes to set them up for success? This episode explores the keys to building a strong leadership team: clarity, trust, and accountability. You’ll learn how to define leadership roles with clear expectations, transition employees from team members to leaders, and integrate external hires into your practice without a hitch. Listen now for insights that will help you strengthen your leadership team and grow your practice!
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Challenges of defining leadership roles
- Setting up your first lead for success
- How to provide clarity and build an effective leadership team
- Promoting from within vs. hiring outside leads
- What true leadership looks like
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Are you setting clear expectations for your team? Without defined roles, even your best employees will be left feeling lost or unmotivated. In this episode, we explore how to define leadership roles, strategies to promote from within without any office drama, and why you should consider hiring candidates with no dental experience. Today, we're talking about how you can lead your practice with clarity and build a team that's committed to staying and growing with you. 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.
Speaker 1: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. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to Dental Practice Heroes. I am joined today by my DPH coaches, Dr Stephen Markowitz and Dr Henry Ernst, and we're picking apart topics, and today, you know we started thinking about what are the roles of our leadership team, and Steve was mentioning how he was looking for a COO for his organization, and I'm just going to pass it to you. Steve Tell about like what you were thinking as you were going through looking for the COO and thinking about roles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have gone to a point where I feel like we needed more operational expertise. So I was sitting down with my wife my financial lead, an advisor to our group and I just asked them I threw it out there what does a COO do? We bring this person in? What is it that they're doing? What are they responsible for? And I was asking that question intentionally, but what I got was there was five of us on the call and we all had five different answers of what a COO does, and my point of asking was there's no way for this person to be successful if there are five different options of what they're supposed to be working on.
Speaker 2:So it's my job as the owner, as the COO, to direct this person to what success is. And then we started talking about well, how does that work in a single practice with our leads? Leads could be working on 20 different things, and they may be working their butt off and we're looking at it at the end of the week or the on 20 different things. And they may be working their butt off and we're looking at it at the end of the week or the end of the month and they're like what is that person even doing, and it's not because they're not working hard, it's because we're not directing them in a way that we want them to be successful. So I thought it would be a great idea just to dissect, okay, what is it that these leadership roles do? Because if we're just putting it in this bucket of go help everyone, they're going to feel really overwhelmed and take the weight of everything and they're not going to know clearly enough what help is and they're going to feel crappy about it.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of people they throw it. They say, hey, you're the lead, this is what you do. Like, for instance, like the front desk leader, the office manager. There's almost this expectation that you will make sure the schedule is full, you will make sure we are at our production goal, you will do this, this and this and I see this happen with my coaching clients is they're upset that the schedule is not full, that they are not meeting the production goals. But then they talk to them and they're like well, I'm working on all these other things that you're doing. So it's almost like if you don't give them something to prioritize or you're setting up for somebody to be upset and because the expectations are not being met.
Speaker 2:Paul, can I add one thing to that? It's as you get higher in a dental practice or a dental group the responsibility becomes vaguer, like if you say go make the schedule full, go improve production. That could mean so many different things. To put that level of responsibility on someone who yesterday was an assistant and today they're the lead assistant is not fair to them. They need very clear direction on maybe the outcome is increased production, but we need more direction. I know we all have leads and different levels of leadership within our offices and with our groups. I think I'd love to hear what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, henry, like what would you say? If somebody doesn't have leads, they're going to get their first leadership person. What does that role look like and how do you bring clarity around that role?
Speaker 3:Well, I think the important part when you first start a model like EOS or just having leaders you know per se, is you need an accountability chart. Everybody needs to know what their role is and whenever there's a role, it can't just be a vague role Like, let's say, hypothetically, we've got somebody that's going to be a front desk lead and we've got certain parameters that we want, right, it shouldn't be make sure the collections are good. No, that's not a yes or no. It has to be measurable. So it should be okay.
Speaker 3:I have to make sure our collections are 98% or higher. That's something you can measure. You can say yes or no. Make sure that our missed call rate is 90%, our call answer rate is 90%. That's something you can measure. This way, that person knows this is what I need to focus on, and if we know, like and trust these people to make good decisions, they'll figure out how to get to it. And the same thing you said, steve, as you get higher up, it's really vague. Right, make sure the practice runs smoothly.
Speaker 3:No, give them some bullet points that are measurable. And I think that's really important as you grow, because even down the bottom of the list, when you have an entry level dental assistant. If they have an issue they have to be able to look up that chart to see who do I go up to. So I'm not always going to the dentist. You know I have coaching clients that probably the most problematic ones is where everybody goes to the dentist for everything. That business will never scale right. We have to have roles and accountability. So my two word answer to that is accountability chart.
Speaker 2:Henry, where'd you start? Who was your first leadership role? What does that look like in your office?
Speaker 3:So I jumped into the deep end of the pool. I think Paul and I have had these conversations before, but I probably should have had a leadership model, maybe a couple of years before I really did, at the point where we were probably maybe 20 person staff way overdue. So I knew it was time. I just didn't know how to do it. I was nervous how to do it, so I hired a coach that just specialized in implementing EOS. So we did it all at once. We literally jumped in the deep end of the pool. We had integrator, we had hygiene, we had front desk, we had dental assistant, we had one for marketing. So we had lots of different roles all at once. Paul and I discussed in the past and it's a hard thing to say, I think, when you're about nine, isn't that what our number was? We're about nine team members. That's probably a good point to start. Get those building bricks there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think like if we're talking about where to start and this is where I start with most of my clients is deciding who's going to the skills that each position must know and then putting them in charge of checking in with every member of their department and making sure that they are responsible to get that training list complete, that that person is comfortable with every one of those. So then now we've got a full team of calibrated team members with the same skills and then eventually you move on to having the HR tasks, like the dealing with the interpersonal conflict, hiring and firing. That's probably one of my favorite things that my team does. How do we provide clarity around those roles so that nobody's not meeting expectations? What are your thoughts on all this, steve?
Speaker 2:The first thing I do and I've started in my office as they were when they were smaller was the office manager and I just started writing down the tasks and had it be very task focused. And when you added a lead assistant or a lead hygienist, it was very task focused. So the office manager was putting in hours for payroll or handling call outs for the business team or dealing with problem claims or insurance things. The lead hygienist, the tasks were doing all their calculations of care utilization or reappointment rate or Google reviews and hourly production, putting those numbers together, and the same thing for the assistants. The lead assistant was doing the ordering and checking in on sterilization and making sure we were doing spore testing and all that stuff that needs to be done. We started heavily with the tasks and then, as people continued to go to them and say, like this is the person that is responsible for all of these tasks and they were succeeding in that, with it came the people stuff.
Speaker 2:I didn't initially implement these one-on-ones. I was still taking a lot of that people stuff, but the transition happened when there was trust in that lead to do the things that they said they were going to do and they already had the data to help support some of those difficult conversations and then ultimately it led to have them having one-on-ones them have their team confide in them and be a resource. And then there was true leadership. I think giving someone a title of a lead is just positional power and there is not a lot of respect or influence in positional power. So that has to be earned, and for me that was earned with task completion and trust earned. And then the leadership followed and it would probably took, I would say, three to six months, depending on where that person was in their leadership journey, to really for them to feel empowered to make some real decisions and really support their team.
Speaker 3:With this leadership process right. The beauty of it is it's not set in stone, it's not a boilerplate right. You can tweak it to what works for your office. I'll give you a couple of examples. When we first implemented this leadership structure, we went through personality questionnaires because some people will look at being a leader as a position of power, like you said, steve, and that's not what we want.
Speaker 3:When we first had this in place, we had a dental assistant that just everybody assumed she was going to be the team lead for DAs because she's like a 20-year experience and all this stuff. Well, her personality profile didn't shape out for that. She didn't have good follow through. She was going to look at it as a position of power. We had somebody that was on the staff for three months, an entry-level dental assistant that had all the leadership skills that we put into that position. So that's one thing. That's not outside the box.
Speaker 3:The second thing I was going to say is that, as an integrator, I outside the box. The second thing I was going to say is that, as an integrator I ran into this with a client recently is we always are putting out ads on Indeed? You may not have an integrator in your office. Just because you have a practice manager does not mean that's an integrator. They're two different things sometimes. So I had a client who just could not get an integrator to lead his leadership team at all.
Speaker 3:So what we did was we put out an ad on Indeed and it was not dental, didn't say one word of dental. It was just looking for somebody that was a good manager and good, and he ended up hiring somebody from Nordstrom's and train them up and they were the perfect person. It ended up being so seamless because they were looking for those traits. When we put an ad out in dentistry, we get the same crop of people Sometimes it's a crap group of people. It's the same people looking for the same jobs. Right, thinking outside the box, and that's what this EOS model allows you to do. Like you said, steve, you can like tweak the roles to what you want, but you can also tweak them the people for those roles.
Speaker 1:I'm curious when we bring on somebody who's you mentioned not the longest tenured person, but if you bring on somebody that's fairly new to the team, or if you bring somebody that's completely new to the team, how do you present that to your team so that it doesn't create like a who is this person? In my practice, that's now above me.
Speaker 3:That's a great question and it's all about the why this person's coming in today. You know, let's all introduce her. She's got experience in management, she's got experience in this. Talk about the why it's. The reason is the strengths. Now she's going to be learning a little bit about dentistry and we're going to help, but it's all for the greater good of our team. I mean so with you, steve. Like you're talking about bringing in a COO, obviously that's going to be somebody outside. Like, how is your feeling about that with the rest of the team?
Speaker 2:For any leadership position. If they come in and immediately start to change, they're not the right person. They don't have enough information. So when we're interviewing for leadership positions, I want to know what does change implementation look like to you? And if they are coming in and saying I have all these ideas and this is what, we're going to do.
Speaker 2:I'm like that ain't gonna work here. Yeah, they need to observe, they need to build relationships with the team and then, when the opportunity presents, they can share their ideas and create, buy in for change. Yeah, that new person especially if they're coming into your home like a smaller practice and the new person's coming in, they're the lead. They need to integrate themselves as part of the family. You are in someone else's home. When you walk into someone else's home, you don't start changing where the furniture is or they're going to kick you out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what? I'll say what worked really well for this office where the person from came in just totally management experience, but no dentistry. She went up to every single employee and asked them four questions what's working in this office, what's not working in this office, what do we need to do more of in this office and what do we need to do less of? So, like you said, integrated themselves, got all this input and then went with the flow. Didn't cause waves, but went with the flow to make things better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's almost a great script for one-on-ones for anyone talking to your team. Yeah, now I think most leaders dental leaders at their point are probably well, I'm just going to assume that they're uncomfortable bringing somebody outside the organization and most people are going to try to promote within. Talk about promoting within. How do you present that to the team in a way that it doesn't create this hierarchy where people are upset that, like that, she's not going to be my boss and how is she my boss now? Because this was something I went through personally, yeah, and it was a struggle and I'm not so confident that I handled it the best.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of. I don't know if it's a good experience, but I have a lot of experience with that, as it was my philosophy to always build from within and promote from within. And the hardest thing is going from a peer to a boss and it fractures relationships and it causes a lot of animosity. So what we try and do is, if I've identified this person as someone who can take on more and wants more, and in our one-on-ones there we start talking about growth, I start giving them things that may be a little bit above where they are right now, I'm saying all right, you're the hygiene lead, you mind going into that other office and just sharing some of the things that you've done really well and learning what's happening in that other office. Just drive over there. I'll buy lunch and see what happens. And then that goes well, do it again, do it again.
Speaker 2:And next thing we know they've already are working as a regional hygiene manager. And then we have a lunch and then we say Steph's the new regional hygiene manager. And they're like Steph, was she already? Why are we celebrating? She already is that regional hygiene manager. So do work in the position that you want. Ask for more if that's something that's important to you and, as the leader, give people who want growth growth opportunities, or I promise they'll go find it somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Yes, I like that idea. It's almost like give someone the responsibilities first before you publicly declare their title to everyone, so then everyone's like, yeah, of course. That's the logical explanation, that's a logical solution.
Speaker 2:It goes back to positional leadership versus relationship leadership or influential leadership. I could give someone the title, but if they don't have any relationship or any ability to influence, they're just a boss. No one wants that. So we need to be able to put this person that you think is capable in the best chance of succeeding, and that comes with responsibility, the ability to influence and the ability to build those relationships, and then they can go from there, Promoting from within.
Speaker 3:I've done that a lot and it's been my main philosophy and I look at it as it's almost like a marketing thing. I look at all my team and say, hey, there's never a ceiling here. No matter what position you're in, there's always something you can ascend to and we will help you ascend. One of my favorite quotes that I like I know I always quote the man he's a great leader is Nick Saban says if you want to make everybody happy, don't be a leader. Sell ice cream. You'll always make people happy, right? So when you're talking about what you're talking about, like bringing somebody into that new role, and you're going to like it's a different thing, right, You're not going to be everybody's friend anymore, I kind of like guide them along the way.
Speaker 3:So I went through the process of having to change office managers after about seven, six years, seven years because she went to go have a family and stuff like that. So when the new one came on, we coached her and she was promoted from within. She started as an entry level dental assistant and as these things kind of got to the point where we had to fire somebody, right, she did it. They always do it. But I made sure, like you're going to do it, I coached her. This is what you should do. You have to handle it, but I will be here for support Now. It's been a couple years now. Now she's a superstar. That's the best.
Speaker 1:Who wants to make somebody cry?
Speaker 2:Most, I don't, Paul. To bring it back to what started this conversation of like everyone had a different idea of what a leadership position does, I kind of want to close that loop because I think what's the biggest takeaway is they're all right. Every single person in that group that we were talking is right of what that leader could possibly do. So my recommendation would be if you want your leadership team to be successful, you need to be clear. You need to take time. Just write out what it is that you think that person should be doing. Talk to other people, get a coach, talk to Paul, talk to Henry. But the more time you spend on just writing it out, becoming clear on what it is, the expectations you have for that role, it will be right for you. So what might work in my practice or Henry's practice, or your practice, Paul, might not be what's best for the listener's practice, but they need to know exactly what it is that their expectations are for that leadership position. Closing thoughts Henry.
Speaker 3:No, I think you nailed it. It's specific for practice. I love it. As a leader of the practice, you can look at anybody and say, hey, that person started at the bottom. They worked all the way to the top here. Because we always talk about retention nowadays in dentistry, what better way to retain your staff is if everybody knows that I've always got somewhere I can ascend to, and it's great for the office because it gets to the point where you're doing stuff that you don't need to do, which is what we need. To stay away from dentists out there. You shouldn't be doing everything out there. You'll never ascend and you'll be stressed.
Speaker 2:Henry, does your office manager, who started as an entry-level dental assistant? Does she just play Drake all day? Started from the bottom.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Okay, that's good. I'm not in charge of the music too, so as long as it's appropriate, yeah.
