The Owners Guide to Creating a Team Full of Victims

If you’ve ever reached the end of a packed clinic day wondering why every single problem somehow finds its way back to you, you’re not alone and you’re not broken. I’m Dr. Paul Etchison, and I’m talking about a leadership pattern that quietly traps dental practice owners: the rescuer trap. It looks like support. It feels like servant leadership. But it often turns you into the rate-limiting step and trains your team to wait for you instead of thinking.

We dig into why dentists fall into this habit (because we’re capable, we care, and we want things done right), and why it keeps a dental practice from scaling. When the doctor fixes everything, the team learns dependence, accountability gets fuzzy, and conflict resolution gets outsourced upward. I share a real practice story that exposed how unclear expectations can persist until the owner steps in, plus the mindset shift that helps your leads take problems into their own hands.

From there, we get practical: how to create psychological safety with “grace over guilt,” why discomfort is required for leadership development, and how to switch from rescuer to coach. You’ll hear specific coaching prompts to use when someone brings you an issue, how to give fewer answers without being “unhelpful,” and what it takes to build a team that can operate without needing you constantly.

If you want a practice that runs better with less doctor stress, subscribe, share this with an owner friend, and leave a five-star review. And if you’re ready for help, check out dentalpracticeheroes.com/transform or book a free strategy call at dentalpracticeheroes.com/strategy.

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Transcript

When Everything Comes Back To You

Paul Etchison 0:02

Have you ever had one of those days where it feels like everybody needs something from you? Like the entire team has lost control of how to do anything without you, and everybody has a question or something for you to save. The front desk has a something going on with a patient. Your office manager needs a decision from you. A hygienist has a patient in their chair that's refusing x-rays. An assistant has a scheduling problem, and someone's upset, someone needs some sort of approval or some guidance or some magical coaching that you can provide. Somebody needs you. And by the end of the day, you are thinking, why does everything in this office eventually come back to me? Now remember, you started this practice because you wanted to make more money and you wanted the freedom that practice ownership provided. But somehow you have become the problem. You become the rate limiting step, you're working incredibly hard to support everyone on your team and your patients. And at some level, you are failing. Even though you are to some extent helpful, you are as responsive as ever and you're jumping in, you're saving the day. But ask yourself this what if the very thing that you're doing that's helping your team is actually the thing that's preventing them from growing? What if your constant rescuing is creating dependency? And what if that dependency is the reason that you still feel trapped inside of your practice? And that's what we'll be talking about today. Because you see, most dentists they don't struggle because the motives behind their help are bad or or maligned or they have bad intentions. They struggle because they're helping in the wrong way. They become the practice fixer. They become the solver, the rescuer. And while that might feel like leadership to you, that might feel like that is the servant thing that you are supposed to do that everybody keeps talking about, it will often create that practice that will stop developing ownership in their employees. And it's because you are always that person that's going to carry the weight, and nobody else on your team will ever learn how if that continues. So today I want to talk about one of the biggest leadership traps that practice owners fall into, and that is the rescuer trap. Because everything, if it still comes back to you, if your team constantly still needs your input or if you're exhausted from carrying that practice, there's a good chance it you've unintentionally trained people to depend on you. And once you see it, this is where the magic can happen. That's when you can start building a team that will solve the problems instead of just well, instead of just carrying them to your office and dumping them on you. Because I know you love that, right? You want to do that more. You love it so much. Come on, team. What I need, like a hole in the head, is more problems to solve. Bring them to me. I am here to save you. You know what I mean. It sucks. But lucky you, that's why you're here listening to this episode. Now you are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast, where we teach dentists how to step back from the chair, empower their team, and build a practice that runs without them. I'm your host, Dr. Paul Edgeson. I'm a real dentist, I'm a dental business coach, I'm an author of two books on dental practice management, and I guess I'm someone that's slightly obsessed with helping owners build practices that really give them their lives back because that's what I want for you. Everybody struggles with this to some extent, and it's a hard struggle because I know the intentions that are behind it, I get it, I resonate with it. Let's pull it apart and discuss. So, like I said, I think the major problem with this whole rescuer mentality is that for us as leaders, for you as the practice leader of your practice, the rescuer, this like identity that you can take on, it feels like a great leader. And you don't really recognize that you're like the

Meet The Rescuer Trap

Paul Etchison 3:55

rescuer, and you don't really recognize that there's something bad about it because deep down, at some level, you you're being supportive, right? You're supporting your team, they're bringing you things, and you are helping them, you're serving them. So, what would ever be wrong with that, right? It just feels good. I mean, they come and bring you something, you jump in because at some core level, you care, you are capable, you also want things done correctly, so you don't really mind doing it, and you want to take the best care of your team and hence the best care of your patients. So someone needs to fulfill this role of fixing whatever needs to be fixed. And let's face it, most successful dental practice owners they have built successful careers because they're good at solving problems. So naturally, someone who's good at solving problems is going to solve them. But you've still got to acknowledge that solving every problem, it doesn't scale. It can't scale. And if it scales to any extent, it scales very poorly and with a lot of heartache and a lot of stomach lining along the way. So we must recognize that the skills that might have helped you get your practice to where it is today, they can also become the skills that are going to keep you trapped and keep you stuck. And I can't tell you how many times that I've been in this role. I remember having some issues at my front desk that were just more or less related to showing up on time. It was just timeliness, it was accountability at some level, and I was asking around what the heck's going on. I'm talking to my lead, what's going on? Why does this keep happening? Why are people complaining about it to me? And then finally I got tired of hearing it and I put on my rescuer hat and I said, you know what? I said this in my head, I didn't really say it out loud, but I was like, you know what? It's time for me to fix it. Gosh, dad gummit, here I am, I'll save the day. I'm involved now, so it's actually gonna get done. And I remember talking to all the people in my front desk and essentially finding out that um there really wasn't a lot of accountability wrapped up in what on time was, and there was a lot of like loose descriptions, a lot a lot of like vague ambiguity. One thing I always laugh about was well, it's it's okay to be two minutes late unless

Why Problem Solving Stops Scaling

Paul Etchison 6:00

you got stuck by a train because then you can be later. And I'm like, well, how late? They're like, well, just not too late. And I'm just like, dear lord, can somebody just be clear on what late is? Late is late, but nonetheless, we had to debate what late was and we had to decide what it was as a team. But I remember sitting there and talking to one of my employees, and what she said is, I think we all need to sit down and agree kind of what we want from each other and what we expect from each other. And I was like, uh, yeah, hell yeah. Like what the hell? And I had this moment of thinking, and I said this to my front team member. I said, Why am I the person that needs to discover this? I mean, obviously you already knew it. Like, why do I have to have this conversation to get this done? And she said to me, you know what? You probably don't. And that was when I reflected and I said, Well, geez, like I need to be better at communicating this to my leads. I need to be better at communicating to the team as a whole that I want them to solve problems on their own. I want them to take things into their own hands. So that's exactly what I did. At our next team meeting, I explained this story to everybody. It seems kind of self-explanatory, but I guess it's really not. Let's talk about it anyway. I want you guys to be able to solve problems on your own. The fact that it even has to come through me means that your issues are not getting solved as fastly as they could. So stop involving me. Stop asking me questions. I'm here to support, but I want you to take some initiative on your own. And as always, as I've always preached to you, my my lovely team, is that we always offer grace over guilt if anything messes up. If you tried to fix something and it didn't go so well, we are always going to talk about it. We will never make you feel guilty or shame you. We learn from it and we move on. So it just goes to show you is that it's it feels so good. Like here I am, I'm the hero, I'm putting on my hero hat, I'm jumping in there. But what I'm essentially doing is training my team to rely on me. So instead of trying to be the hero, you know, so instead of trying to be this the person that saves the day, try to be the person that empowers others. And that's what I needed in that moment, and that's what I discovered. And there's lessons that get taught. Like I shared this lesson that I learned, but on the other end of the rescuing, the person that's getting rescued, they're getting taught something else. And what do you think that is? It's that they are the victim and they don't have to take accountability for anything, and they can be the person that's victimized, and and all these bad things are happening to them, and they're they're powerless against it because they need to bring it to you, because you are the one who is fixing it. You're teaching them that the doctor is the leader and the doctor decides, the

A Front Desk Accountability Wake Up

Paul Etchison 8:35

doctor is the one that will handle the difficult conversations, the doctor is the person that's going to own the outcome. And I can't tell you how many times that I've tried to fix and rescue, and I have owned the outcome, and it was negative. Like two people were mad at each other, and I tried to talk to each of them individually, and all of a sudden they're both mad at me. I mean, that's me owning the outcome in a way that I, man, did not like that. I did not like whole owning that outcome. But in the same token, doctor carries all the stress. I mean, you're the one responsible for the results, you're carrying the stress, and your team doesn't really need to think very independently. I mean, let's face it, being the victim is a very easy, passive, it's a it's an easy role to fall into. I mean, it's comfortable to some extent. You don't have to be responsible for anything. You can just complain and be a complainer, and it's perfectly acceptable. But we don't like that because we want our team to think independently. We want them to own the results, and we know they are more than capable. I promise you, you do not need to go to four years of undergraduate and four years of dental school to figure out how to have an adult conversation or to figure out how to get curious and ask questions about what's going on in the processes at your job. The fact of the matter is your team already knows what's going on. They are there, they have ideas. It's the fact that you've trained them to not utilize those ideas and to not take initiative. You've trained them to rely on you. We want them to take ownership and the results and be comfortable with getting slightly uncomfortable. And that is a trait that we can champion, we can model it, and we can talk to our team about that to the extent that we celebrate it when we see it. We commend people on taking those interpersonal risks when they step out of their comfort zone to try to solve things. And even if somebody really screws something up bad or they tried to solve something and they did it really poorly, or they had a horrible idea and they executed on it, and you're just sitting there like, dude, what did you think was gonna happen? Are you serious that you thought that was the solution to the problem? Even if they do that, you still need to keep it safe. You need to learn from that, and you don't blame or shame because ultimately you want people to feel comfortable to stick their neck out there and try something because that is the only way your team can grow. That is the only way your team can learn how to lead,

Psychological Safety And Ownership

Paul Etchison 10:50

is they have to get uncomfortable and they have to put themselves out there. And if they have to worry about messing things up and getting chewed out by you and being criticized and being shamed, that's essentially the quiet place that I always talk about. That is the lack of psychological safety. They instead of being trained to be empowered and try things, they've been trained to try to stay out of trouble. So, this is something you should constantly be talking to your team about. This is your culture, this is what you believe. I love to say grace over guilt. That is my cultural mantra. It means we will offer you grace, we will not make you feel guilty. Now, you also need to be talking about that you want them to get uncomfortable. There is so much value, and there is so much just good feelings of fulfillment that come from when you really put yourself out there and do something that was really uncomfortable and really difficult for you, and and you did it successfully. I can tell you personally that like public speaking, I mean, whether you believe me or not, I signed up for speech class in undergraduate three times and I dropped it before the first speech, all three of those times. And eventually I switched my major from econ to advertising, and guess what? I didn't need to take speech anymore for that major, so I never really fulfilled it. But when I started speaking at dental conferences and stuff, there was like my first four or five of those. I remember it just there's so much anxiety building up to it, and there was so much like just practice and overpractice. And I remember being a key west, this might have been maybe three years ago, and I was out in Florida and I was speaking at a conference, and I practiced a lot. And the whole time when I was rehearsing in my hotel room, my wife was there and she's listening to me rehearsing. And and I said, Hey, when I sign up for Nother Way Speaking things, will you remind me how much I hate this? And she's like, You said that last time, and I did remind you, and you did it anyway. But what ended up happening, I put myself out there, I challenged myself, I got uncomfortable, and it was it was that seminar when I was speaking that I realized that that I can speak, that I'm perfectly capable of doing

Discomfort As The Price Of Growth

Paul Etchison 13:00

it, and know that that discomfort is normal. That discomfort was not a sign that I was doing something wrong, or it was not a sign that I shouldn't do this anymore because it's uncomfortable. It was a sign that I was pushing myself into growth mode. So that's what we got to tell our team. Do hard things. We got to model it ourselves, but we need to tell them because we want them to do hard things. You just can't simultaneously at one level protect your team from any sort of discomfort, but at the same level, expect them to become these amazing leaders that solve problems. Those things do not go together. They can't possibly go together. If you want a team that's gonna solve problems and that's gonna step up to any challenge, you have to have them comfortable with going through some discomfort. And you need to explain the same thing to them that I learned when I was speaking at Key West at that at that seminar, thinking that my discomfort, my anxiety about this was a sign that it was something that I wasn't born to do, made to do, good at, or was a valuable use of my time. That was all wrong. I love speaking now, but I like doing it because I learned how to do it. And I like to say I've mastered it. And I don't mean mastered it from some conceited sense. I'm saying I worked on mastery. I've definitely not mastered it yet. I mean, if you could hear this podcast unedited, you might be like, whoa, this guy's got a speech impediment and he can't talk very well at all. But I assure you, I can edit out all those portions and I can make myself sound so freaking eloquent. Lucky you. So next time you want to step in there and you want to be the rescuer, I want you to think about this. I want you to be, instead of being the rescuer, I want you to be the coach. I want you to talk to your team in a way that when they bring you an issue, you can help them think through it. So instead of giving the answer, I want you to like ask them, like, what do you think you would do? What do you think the big challenge is for you? What is and help them talk through the ideas and work through it? And when they ask you for validation, like, well, I think maybe we should do this. What do you think? You got to resist that urge to be like, well, that yeah, that's what I would do, or I think that's a great idea. You got to be like, you know what, I trust you. And if you think this is the right thing to do, I think we should do it. And sometimes you need to explain that you're not trying to be unhelpful, but you're trying to empower them. And if you have enough of those conversations with people on your team, they will eventually learn when that part in their brain says, you know what, I don't know what to do. I'm gonna go ask doctors. They're gonna say, you know what, he's gonna want me to figure this out on my own. I'm just gonna take care of it. And that is the glorious moment that we all want to get all of our team members to. So remember, every practice, every single dental practice, it eventually becomes limited by you as the owner and your willingness to let other people grow. You can only personally grow a practice so far, and at some point you need to empower your team. Otherwise, you can't scale past that. So if you remember nothing else from today, I want you to remember that every rescue, every time you rescue, that teaches dependence. Uh, your team, they don't need more help, they need more ownership, they need more responsibility and more accountability. And leadership development, it requires discomfort. There's no other way around it. You have to get uncomfortable, and your team has to understand this. And when you step in and you want to put on that rescuer hat, take it off, put on your coaching hat, and ask more questions to help that person think through it. Give fewer answers. Ask the questions that help that person arrive at the conclusion on their own. The goal is to build people on your team who

Trade The Hero Hat For Coach

Paul Etchison 16:35

can operate without needing you constantly. And I can tell you from having a practice that operates this well, it is a beautiful place to be. So if you are trying to build this in your practice and you want a practice where your team takes ownership, they solve problems, and they help carry that weight and responsibility of leadership. That is exactly what we teach dentists to do through our coaching program. We got our new VIP growth membership, which is just beyond cool. I'm I'm so excited that we just kicked it off this June. You can check that out at dentalpracticeheroes.com slash transform. And if you're curious and you want more information, set up a free strategy call with me. That's at dentalpracticeheroes.com slash strategy. Happy to have a conversation with you, give you some advice, tell you what I think your next steps are, and explain to you how we could possibly help you get to those next steps. We are here to help you grow your practice. We are here to help you create the practice that you've always wanted. And Dan, we've been doing a good time and I I think we're pretty good at it. I really honestly do. I can say with humility, I don't have all the answers for every single thing, but I can tell you the results that our coaching clients have had, and I could say that we're pretty dang consistent with delivering them. So go set up a strategy call with me. And if you liked this podcast, you listen to it, you get something out of it, please take just a few moments to leave a five-star review. It means the world to us. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great rest of your week. I hope you're excited, kicking off summer, and you're doing so many cool things with your family and friends this summer. And if your practice is not at the place that you want it to be yet, know that there is no natural, innate skills that you have to have to obtain it. You just have to follow the process, follow the recipe, and we are here to help you do that. Thank you so much for listening. You have a great week. Know that I appreciate you, and be the leader for your team that they need, the ones that's going to push them, that's going to teach them how to solve problems, how to be stronger, how to be more resilient, and how to take action. Be that leader for your team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you next time.