The One Conversation That Raises the Standard in Your Dental Practice w/ Katherine Eitel Belt

What's one thing you've been avoiding in your practice? Maybe it's a slipping standard or a team member no longer pulling their weight — and every week you wait, your practice feels it a little more.

In this episode, Katherine Eitel Belt is back to help you finally have these conversations without losing the team you've built. You'll learn how to have what she calls "invitation conversations,” what it takes to get a real commitment, and where coaching ends and micromanaging begins (and why most owners get it backwards).

Topics discussed:

(00:00) The conversation you keep avoiding

(03:29) How a near-firing became an “invitation”

(10:01) The clarity that comes before the conversation

(12:18) Why owners avoid hard conversations

(14:29) When fear-based management backfires

(16:06) Team calibration: running the invitation

(20:43) Holding boundaries and identifying non-negotiables

(23:35) Real-life example of an invitation conversation

(27:33) Coaching vs. micromanaging

Learn more about Katherine Eitel Belt and the LionSpeak Leadership Academy:

https://www.lionspeak.net/

This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com

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Transcript

The Conversation You Keep Avoiding

Paul Etchison 0:02

Have you ever rehearsed a conversation in your head like 10 to 15 times, maybe even more, and then you never actually have the conversation? You know the one, right? That conversation you wanted to have about a team member, about their performance or their attitude, or that big accountability conversation you're about to have this week coming up, but it just keeps getting pushed to next week. See, most practice owners don't struggle because they don't know that something needs to be said. You struggle because you don't know how to say it. And the longer that conversation waits, I mean, the bigger that problem is going to become. So today I'm so excited. I'm joined by Catherine Itel Belt. She's the founder and CEO of Lionspeak and one of the most respected leadership and communication coaches in dentistry. She is so awesome. I love every episode I have ever done with her. Go back and listen to previous episodes that we've interviewed Catherine. She has a wealth of information, somebody I truly, truly respect. I mean, she has spent decades helping practice owners, managers, team leaders just build those stronger cultures, have better conversations, and take care of that difficult stuff that we do as practice owners that we're so scared to do, but we know it needs to happen. We know we need to do it. So in this conversation that we're having today, we're talking about the invitation conversations, courageous conversations, and why accountability in a dental practice, it often fails. How can we hold people to a high standard without creating resentment with our teams? And why great leadership is less about control and more about helping people choose who they really want to become in their hearts. Now you're listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast where we help dentists build stronger teams, create healthier cultures, and lead practices that don't depend on constant owner supervision to succeed. I'm your host, Dr. Paul Edgison. I'm a practicing dentist, author of two books on dental practice management, a dental coach, and the owner of a multi-doctor practice in the south suburbs of Chicago. And one lesson I've learned over the years is that most practice problems aren't really system problems or personnel problems. They're usually communication problems. And I know it's not sexy and some people don't want to work on their communication skills. But damn, dude, the better we get at having those conversations that truly matter, the easier leadership becomes. So this will be an episode that will change the way you manage and speak to your team. And I know if you do what we talk about in this episode, it is going to change your practice. All right, let's dive in. So you've been coaching. If anyone doesn't know, I mean, talk about your just a brief history if someone hasn't heard you on the podcast before, of just like your level of involvement in the dental community and in what you provide.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah, I started as a dental assistant, then moved up, as many of us do to, I don't know if up is the right word, but moved to the administrative part of the practice, and then ultimately managed that practice. And so that's been my, you know, that was a decade of work. And then when I moved across the country, I took a job with a coaching company and didn't much like the company, but fell in love with coaching. And I've been doing it ever since. So a couple of decades, I was a practice management coach, pretty much a generalist. And then about 15 years ago, I narrowed my focus to just communications coaching only. And in the last few years, we've really narrowed that even further to leadership, communications coaching.

Paul Etchison 3:28

You know, I've heard you talk in the past about an invitation conversation

Catherine’s Path Into Coaching

Paul Etchison 3:32

and how we should all be doing those as owners. But I know that this came out of a personal experience of yours with who you were working for at the time. I'd love if you would share that story with the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Oh, yeah. It was probably my first exposure, though I wouldn't have known the term invitation conversation, but looking back, that's what it was. And I would say slash courageous conversation. And it was essentially, I was just, I was 18, 19 years old. I answered an ad. I was working as a dental assistant back then. You could just pull somebody off the street and hand them a, you know, suction and say, go. If you didn't pass out at the first extraction, you were solidly in. And so, you know, I was just a job. I didn't at all really like it or think it would be a career. It was just a placeholder for me. And it was evident, I think, in my performance. And so one day

The Firing That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 4:26

my boss had just had enough and said, Yeah, we, I'm gonna need more. And so he took me aside and said, I'm actually decided today to lay off all my dental assistants. And I just thought it was a fancy way of saying you're fired, which I think it was. So I said, Well, I begged for the job. And finally he said, You know, I can't give you the job. But tomorrow I'm gonna start interviewing for a new position, not a dental assistant, but something I'm gonna call a dental colleague. New job description, whole new game. And I hope you show up for the interview, but I need you to know that whether you do or you don't, you're gonna be just fine, and I'm gonna be just fine. I'm not angry with you at all. If I'm angry with anybody, it's with myself for taking so long to say basically that I've lowered my bar of expectations, of potential, of a lot of things. I've lowered it over time for you. And I decided that that's on me and you're not a mind reader. And so I'm raising my bar back up really high where it is. There's a lot of places you could go that won't have this high of a bar. But I would actually decide it today, I'd rather work alone than work one inch below this bar. And so if you are interested in it, you know, here's what it's gonna be. It's gonna be somebody who is excited about dentistry as I am, who's wants to is pushing me to learn. Want, you know, you're not gonna pick up a drill or a syringe, but I can teach somebody who wants to know how to read x-rays and spot decay or an abscess or a cancerous lesion. I can teach you what I'm looking for, and I can teach you to know the difference between a bad margin and a good margin and be able to interface with some of the other professionals that we need to do. And so that's exactly what happened. I showed up for the interview, got the job, and it was a whole new game. And I remember, you know, you'll relate to this, like back in those days when I went to courses, clinical courses with him, there were very few, if any, auxiliaries in that group. And that's so changed now. Like sometimes 50% of the group is auxiliaries, you know. But back then there really weren't. And I didn't know, I couldn't understand 90% of what they were talking about. I didn't go to dental school. But he was so patient and he would explain to me and help me understand. And so my knowledge just skyrocketed because he didn't put any limits on it at all. And I remember a few years into this, we went to a study club meeting at night, and there was a break, and I had gone to get, you know, a glass of water or a cup of tea or something, and I walked back up behind him. He didn't know I was there. He was talking to another doctor, and I heard the doctor say, How do we find a Catherine? And he said, What a compliment. Yeah. He said, Um, you don't find them, you build them. I built her. That stuck with me. And I use it today in my teaching. Like sometimes we find the needle in the haystack, we get super lucky in an interview, and it's, you know, the perfect person is right there and they're on fire about dentistry and they're anxious to grow and learn. But most of the time we we actually hire a pretty average person at an average spot in their career, if not below average. And it's like an incubator. You know, they're just waiting for the right moment for that to blossom.

Paul Etchison 7:48

I'm curious, you know, walking into this conversation, I mean, you're having this, he's pulling you aside, he's having a serious conversation with you. Was there any part of you going into that that thought your performance wasn't meeting expectations?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Oh, yeah, I knew.

Paul Etchison 8:02

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

I knew I was caught daydreaming, you know. I the incident that really broke the camel's back, he needed an instrument that wasn't on the tray. And I mean, he just kind of pointed to the area in the mouth, and I was daydreaming. I wasn't tracking. And he had just, you know, and finally had to say something, would you please go get, you know? And so, you of course, though, we had a nervous patient. Now the patient's wondering if everything's okay. And he just kind of had it with me just playing a totally different game. And so my performance was was pretty much in the tank. And so I wasn't actually, I said to him, I know I haven't done well lately. Please give me another chance. I really need this job. I promise you I can do better. Give me a second chance. And he said, No, I'm sorry, I can't. This job's over. There's no second chance because this job does not exist. It's a different job.

Paul Etchison 8:51

This method of invitation, I mean, that's what I want to kind of highlight is that he didn't shame you. Right. But he said, This is what I expect. The decision is yours, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Totally. He actually said to me, I think you're bright enough, I think you're personable enough, I think you're all these great qualities. You're absolutely bright enough to meet the bar. What I can't answer is whether you're ready or whether you want to, even. And so you're gonna take this final paycheck home, you're gonna sleep on it, and then we'll see if you show up for the interview. If you don't, we're gonna be friends for life. Like, I just can't wait to see where your career is gonna take you. It may not be here, and that's okay. I'm gonna be just fine. I'll eventually find what I'm looking for, and I'd rather you go and be happy, you know. And so it was a set you free, but don't come back here thinking you're gonna play that game anymore. Yeah. And so I left. I remember thinking, why am I smiling? I'm holding my final paycheck, heading out to my car, you know. So, I mean, I think about someone issuing an invitation like that to this grossly underperforming young woman and sending her out to her car with her final paycheck and having her feel better about herself than before he fired her. But the truth is, those are learnable skills. They're not hard. The invitation conversation is just a concept. And I think it's been, Paul, the missing concept for most leaders in small business anywhere, especially in our profession. And all it really is is A, the owner or owners getting super clear about what are we building? Like what in three to five years, what does the dream look like if it could come to fruition? Are we off of all insurance? Are we doing more of a certain kind of procedures? Do we have a team that feels differently? Do we have days that flow differently? Are we in a different facility? Have we expanded into locations or have we eliminated locations? You know, like what does the dream look like? If you're just coming in every day, putting one foot in front of the other, hoping it all works out, then you know, you land wherever you land. And that is exactly what your people will do. They will come in and they will just do the best they can with what they know. And it may or may not get you anywhere you want to go. So the invitation conversation is the idea, first

What An Invitation Conversation Is

SPEAKER_00 11:14

you get clear. And not just where you're going, but I always like to say, also clear about who we all need to be or become along the way. Because you could get to where you wanted to go and hate the ride, right? And not love the team that helped you get there. So wouldn't it be cool if we not only got where we wanted to go, but we did it along the way with people we really admired and really loved to work with. And so I think that's that's part of it. So you get really clear, and then you get rid of the idea that people have to do anything. Because in this country, they don't. They can work anywhere they want, and we can hire anybody or fire anybody we want. So we have choice. I think we've forgotten that people have choice, even when they think they're a victim of the mean bad boss who expects so much of them. I mean, my goodness, what a thing to expect people to be on time or early, right? Yes, preposterous. Preposterous to do their jobs, to be prepared, come to a team meeting, prepared or interested or engaged. And so I think, you know, a lot of people are so afraid in this labor market, which I get it's a real fear, that if we hold people to high standards, we're gonna lose them and we're gonna be forever trying to replace that position, and it's a worry. But I think most of us have been, maybe since COVID, on a kind of a slippery slope of letting our expectations slide. But it kind of begs the notion that there's only two choices have the conversation and lose the person and the business consequence of that, or don't have the conversation and the business consequence of tolerating that low-level behavior. I think there's a third option we can learn really simply that allows us to hold the standard and if not, create a better relationship, not to damage the relationship. And it starts with this invitation conversation that says, I'm gonna treat you. We're not really saying this, but by our actions, we're saying I want to treat you like the independent, mature adult professional that you are who has choice. You don't have to subject yourself to these high standards. But this is what I'm about. This is what I expect. This is the quality I want to stand for. I'm not a good fit for a lot of potential employees. I'm a really good fit for people who want to align with these standards and find joy in being on a team that's striving for these kinds of things. And if that's you, I want you. If it's not you, I want to support you finding the best place for you. If you raise your hand and step over the threshold on Monday morning, then you're essentially saying, I choose as an employee and as a professional, I choose to align my career right now with where this business is going. And I sign up for the standards. And so then it's not a shock, Paul, when we take them into coaching conversations or we we hold their feet to the fire in a courageous conversation. It's not a shock. It might still be a challenge to have the conversation, but the conversation itself won't be a shock because they've already verbalized, I'm in on your invitation. I'm in.

Paul Etchison 14:26

Yeah. And with their own autonomy. And that's one of the things is this reminds me of, I don't know, maybe two, three years back. We were having a lot of issues at our practice where some checklists weren't getting completed. And the focus of my leadership team started becoming like coming down really hard on the people consistently, somewhat inconsistently, about the checklist. And I felt like we were really trying to drive behavior through consequences and punishment. And what I'd said, I remember saying this during a lead meeting. We were all sitting here, me and my four leads, and I said, guys, I'm just feeling really crappy about the way that we've been driving this practice now. And they're like, What do you mean? I mean, we're doing it the right thing, we're being consistent with our standards. And I said, I feel like we're teaching people to behave a certain way so that they don't have consequences that are negative when I want them to behave a certain way, such as fill out these checklists, because we care about what we do for the patients. We all work together in this environment.

Why Teams Actually Want Standards

Paul Etchison 15:25

And what's interesting is we did this exercise. We said, What's fun and what's not fun? And everyone did it anonymously during a team meeting. They said, What's not fun? And we all sent up the things on the presentation, 35 things that were not fun. And all those not fun things we traced back to somebody not following our protocols. It was like a patient that yelled at me. So, what I think is interesting about everything, this invitation conversation is that we sit there and we say, I can never talk to my team like this. What if they don't go for it? But I think what most people would find is our team wants that. They want to be part of something big that has high standards, that is is amazing and provides an amazing service to our patients. So, if I'm a listener, I'm a dental owner, I'm thinking, I've never had this conversation with my team. Like what advice would you have?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

You know, in all the years we've been helping owners because the vehicle to give this conversation is something we call a team calibration retreat, an annual team calibration retreat. And we encourage all of your listeners and certainly all of our clients to have this conversation a minimum of once a year at an annual off-site retreat. One day off-site, and it's dedicated, at least the morning is dedicated to getting clarity and re-clarifying this invitation and these values and standards and cultural agreements. So the vehicle in that years of facilitating those conversations at these retreats, I could count on one hand the number of people that have said, I'm not in. And that's over thousands of professionals, right? So how we orchestrate it is we say, you don't have to give us an answer today. We've issued the invitation today. You don't have to give us an answer. But in the next week, whoever

The Annual Calibration Retreat Process

SPEAKER_00 17:11

you report to is gonna meet with you for five or 10 minutes, and they're basically gonna make sure you've gotten all your questions answered about this vision, about this future, and about what this means. And then they're gonna ask you, are you in? And they are gonna ask you privately for a commitment or not. And in just so you know, if you're not comfortable with it for whatever reason, it's not you're fired. It's not even two weeks' notice. It's let's now change the conversation to what's next for you? Is it someplace different in the practice? Is it that we help you figure out what your next move is and how can we support you in that? So it's just gonna change the conversation, right? But it only serves you and us to have an honest conversation about whether you decide to align with the growth, with the push, with the work. So that's how we do it. And if they say yes, which is 99.9% of the people that say yes, I'm in, then we say, okay, great, let's set up your first coaching check-in. And so that then kicks off monthly coaching check-in. So most of our clients have an annual review, we call it an annual growth conference. So they're still having scheduling 45 minutes to an hour for an annual growth conference that sets the goals for the year for that employee. But what we often, without some good coach leadership coaching, what we often see is they might meet with them once a year for a growth conference, and then they never meet with them again. And so what we're asking is that you don't go a year before you check in with your employees about whether we're on track or not. So you can see that the invitation conversation is like the kickoff of some future systems, management leadership systems that then make a difference in the support that people get, in the coaching ideas that we kick around about how they can grow into this person we need them to be to help us reach these goals. And so it's a very, I think, more supportive, more respectful way of dealing with your employees rather than, as you intimated, a lot of people are supervising, calling out what's wrong, slapping people on the knuckles, writing them up in their employee record for mistakes, when in fact, that push with fear, that management through fear of those consequences, right? I mean, there's only two ways to motivate. It's it's either towards something they want or away from something they don't. And I just feel like towards something we all want is a much better alternative.

Paul Etchison 19:53

So true. Yeah. It reminds me of a one coaching client I had, and and this person, wonderful person, not the best leader. You know, we worked on leadership skills a lot, but I was teaching him to hold people accountable on his team. And I always start with my clients. I'll start with like, let's profess the vision, let's not just write it on paper, let's talk about what it is, like much like yours, this invitation.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Etchison 20:14

And this evolved into under my nose without me knowing is a bunch of write-ups that would be printed up and stuffed in an envelope and left at the employee's workstation right as the doctor took off on Friday afternoon. So it was a surprise. It wasn't a conversation, it was a surprise. I said, What is the goal of this? Because is this to document something to fire somebody or to change behavior? Because if you're going for changing behavior, I'm not so sure this is the best way to go about it.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Exactly. And there are times where absolutely we have to document and absolutely in our system, even with just the regular coaching conversations, there's a regular pattern of documentation of what we're working

Why Surprise Write-Ups Backfire

SPEAKER_00 20:53

on. So I'm not suggesting we don't write people up or that we don't have some like get it together or else conversations. That's where the courageous conversation comes in. It's when we're really holding our boundaries and we're making it clear that there's a non-negotiable here and that they have to choose. But I just find that you have fewer of those, you have fewer of those moments. And when you do have to have a courageous conversation, which you will, even the best of us, they go better because if you've had the invitation conversations and if you've been consistently coaching them. If you've done that, then when you do have to have these hard conversations, they tend to be fewer and they tend to go better.

Paul Etchison 21:34

Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

So it's the setup. Yeah.

Paul Etchison 21:37

How do you help a client of yours decide what are the non negotiables? I mean, I've worked with a number of people where it's like, well, I don't know. I remember I worked with somebody that we made a big deal and there was a big interpersonal fight because somebody pulled a piece of lint out of another's hair and that person was offended that they were touched without permission. How do we decide what is this, what are the hills? Worth dying on? And what are the things that we say, okay, it's good enough. Let's just be happy for what we got.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Yeah. I think it's an excellent question. I think we can't determine anyone else's non-negotiables. That's not up to us. And but we can determine ours. We're not perfect. We're not, including myself. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to trip up every now and then on almost every rule or expectation. I trip up on expectations my husband has for, you know, like we're just human. So I can't define that for a client.

Choosing Non-Negotiables Without Drama

SPEAKER_00 22:35

And that's not really what I'm after. But I am after them when they are bothered to the degree that they have other people starting to be late. They have this is happening more times than not. And now it's bothering them. Then we've crossed the line. Now we've crossed into this is not okay. This is not someone I trust to be here when I need them and to keep their commitments to me. And what I want to do is help clients recognize when they've hit that limit. And for some, it's one time, someone being late one time. For others, it could be very different. So helping them recognize it for themselves, number one. And number two, to already feel comfortable with the skills of having that conversation, to have the conversation and say, this has crossed the line for me. Again, the leader can articulate the reality of the situation without judgment, without blame, and without fear. Fear of that person quitting and not being able to replace them. I just coached a client yesterday who has a very, very negative, by her definition, a very negative hygienist. Comes in in the morning, negative. Every patient that doesn't floss and brush, negative. And she's just done with it. And so I said to her, All right, and they've had several conversations and it hasn't gone well. She's been here 25 years. Okay. She said, I'm just worried. I live in a small town. There's very limited opportunities to, you know, available in applicants. And I said, What would you do if, God forbid, some she was in an accident tonight and she couldn't come back? She could not come back. I said, is she full-time? Yeah, full time, four days a week. I said, Okay, so what would you do? And she said, Well, there is someone that I've been thinking about approaching. And I'm like, So that's what you would do, right? She said, and one of our other part-time hygienists would probably fill in for a bit for her. And I said, Okay. So I said, So do you see that you're already, if you didn't have a choice, what we've just determined is you wouldn't close up the doors to your business. I'm not saying it would be easy, but you wouldn't shutter your business because of this. So what I want you to do is to remember that you would take action and you would survive, her not coming back. So if you go into the conversation with that confidence, it's not what you're hoping is going to happen, but you are confident that if she chose it, if she chose it, that you would be fine, you would survive. And she's like, You're right. And I said, Because I'm telling you, she can read it in every ounce of your body language, in every piece of your tone, that fear that you will not hold the boundary tightly because you're afraid of the consequence. And so what you have to communicate to her is she thinks it's her party and she's inviting you. She basically said, Well, this is who I am. I don't think I'm that negative. I think I'm realistic. If you see it as negative, that's your problem. That's basically what she said. And I said, So she's inviting you to her party. She says, Here's my non-negotiable. This is my party. You decide if you want to join me. What you want to say is, no, this is our party. Now I want to talk about the party I'm inviting you to. My definition of positivity looks like this, sounds like this, is this. And I totally 100% respect that you may or may not align with that. I'm hoping that you will. And I'll support you and coach you and give you whatever resources I can to bridge that gap and help you understand it and be able to meet it. And it's non-negotiable. I won't spend another day walking into a team meeting where I don't feel good to be there and have a team that's happy to be there. It has a hygienist that will meet our patients where they are and help our patients. We're going to have patients who don't floss and brush, according to your instructions from last time, you know, and I don't want them feeling beat up. I don't want any more Google reviews of them feeling that we have embarrassed them or we have spoken down to them. I want it always to be uplifting and positive and meeting them where they are. And so I'm not saying these are mine, these are her complaints. And but you can see where if she delivers that out of fear, she's going to step shy of holding the line. And so that next conversation went really well. And that hygienist said, Well, I don't want to leave. I guess I'm going to have to learn how to have the kind of attitude that you determine is or interpret as positive. And she said, Great, then let's get started. Hence the next coaching conversation.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

So we actually got her a book, we got her some videos. I said, There's a there's some TEDx talks on this. I mean, there's so many resources we can give for her to help her start to create that skill. But we have to be willing to dance at that line where she chooses.

Paul Etchison 27:32

Final question for you, Catherine, is how do we walk that line between the micromanagement versus having these coaching conversations? Like, where do we realize we're, gosh, I'm really just picking apart too many things? Like, yeah, that's what I sense a lot of owners like finding the difficult in.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yeah, those are really two sides of that coin, right? They're either undermanaged or overmanaged. It's a sweet spot we're after, and that's what you're talking about. So, overmanagement, I find, is primarily tied to not handing the work back to who it belongs to. So it usually comes from people who either have major control issues, which I find a lot of clinicians have, and it comes from a good place because the clinician you want in your mouth is someone who picks apart the fine detail and who sees every little, every little imperfection and goes in there and stays with the prep long enough to

Coaching Versus Micromanaging

SPEAKER_00 28:31

get the prep as perfect as possible, right? Or whatever that is. And so that's the person you want doing your dentistry, that perfectionistic type of mentality. But it's disastrous in management. And so a lot of clinicians struggle with that perfectionism, and it tends to lead to overmanagement and micromanagement. So I find that when I'm training managers, I train, and this is often in the when we're teaching coaching skills. What makes a difference between coaching and supervision is supervision is scanning the environment for things that are wrong, for errors, mistakes, things that we we want to be different. And then jumping into that person and saying that you didn't do that right, you know, you didn't say that right. You didn't, and so jumping in and then it's the slap on the hand, and I'm gonna give you the right answer. That was the wrong answer, I'm gonna give you the right answer. Where coaching is scanning the same environment for there's some untapped potential, there's some areas of growth, there's some areas that where they could mature. And I want to give them the task of growing into that. And so when we teach coaching, I say to them, if you're talking a lot, of course, sometimes you are going to make statements, but if you're only making statements tell, tell, tell, tell, tell, that's not coaching. Coaching is a series of questions. What have you already tried? Do you see this as an area of growth for you? Did you notice something that could have been better there? Did you pick up on a mistake, if you think about it, was super would have been critical to the outcome? What do you think you might do to correct that? What do you think might get in the way of you continuing to do that better? And what would you do about that? What would you need? So if someone says, Well, I'm afraid I'm I I know I need to remember to do that. I keep forgetting, I'm afraid I'm gonna forget, then I'm gonna say, Well, what ideas do you have about how we could help you not forget? And if they say, I don't have any idea, then I'm gonna say, I have a couple. Would you be interested in hearing them? So coaching is helping them realize they've always had the Ruby slippers on. It's helping them realize they could have seen the error themselves, they could have corrected the error themselves, they could have found the resources to get better, but they just no one's ever probably coached them like this. You know, I find it with managers. The I saw a statistic recently, Paul, that said that 42% of managers' time is spent solving issues that other people should be able to solve for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

I believe it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah. And so imagine as an owner, if you could get 42% of your managers' time back to work on the practice, to work on achieving the goals, to work on growing the systems and the profitability, like that would be a huge bonus. And so my long answer to that great question is micromanaging is the result of erroneously thinking from a leadership perspective that our job is to solve their problems. The answer to it is deciding that our job is to grow superstars who think for themselves, who are problem solvers at the core, and who become the high-level professionals that we wish they were, that we don't have to micromanage. And so we've got to teach them to do that by handing the work gently back to them, walking alongside them as they learn, yes, you can do this. Yes, you can see your own mistakes, yes, you can correct these things. You can come to me in your coaching check-ins and you can say, Hey, I think I'm messing up here and I really want to get better at this. When you get that kind of thing, then you know it's working and you don't have to micromanage. So I think it's a it's really a it's just managers and leaders developing that skill of coaching, which is very different.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Yeah.

Paul Etchison 32:29

And I I think that's why the reason, like the Peter Drucker quote, culture eat strategy for practice. You can get away with so much with a positive culture and safe environment for communication. So it's like these doctors that don't want to put the time into learning how to do this, I think they're they're looking in the wrong direction. Yeah. So if someone's listening right now, Catherine, I mean, I love your teachings. You've taught me so much, and so much of my leadership is due to you. I can truly, honestly say that I've got two leaders in my practice that are taking your course right now because I believe so much in what you teach. What do you have for listeners? What I mean, you've got a book coming out, you've got courses. Where can they find more information about you and what you provide?

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Yeah, so we are super excited about the book. It's called Lead Yourself, Lead Your Team, the three conversations that all leaders uh need to master. And I'm really proud of the book. I worked really hard, a writing coach, and I I really I feel like I've birthed a three-year pregnancy, you know, on this thing. So, but yeah, it's uh in pre-sales. And then we'll give you a link to put in your show notes that people can go and pre-order the book. And then we have our Leadership Academy, which we are so excited about. We've been doing it live, teaching it live, which your people are in. And I love teaching those lessons. But some of the feedback we've gotten is

Book, Training, And Where To Start

SPEAKER_00 33:46

that people don't want to wait to get to certain lessons or they don't want to wait until the class starts. And and so what we're doing right now is putting all of that on video so that people can access the content whenever and however fast or slow they want to. And then my time will be spent live really doing the coaching around those skills. So uh it's called the Leadership Academy, and that new version of it will be live here in the next week or so. So you can find information on our website, which is lionspeak.net. And we're really we have a waiting list for it right now. We're just excited about bringing some education to managers and leads, team leads, that really haven't had access to this kind of information and training before.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah, well, I can speak from experience. It does make a difference. It's making a difference in my practice, my team working with you. So thank you, Paul.

Paul Etchison 34:36

Catherine, thank you so much for coming on, spending some time with the listeners. I hope some people's listeners will check out what you offer, what you provide, and see the value that I have seen in my own practice from what you provide. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

So appreciative of you, Paul. Thank you so much.

Paul Etchison 34:53

So, one of the biggest takeaways from this interview, this conversation that we had is that the conversation you're avoiding is almost always the one that your practice needs the most. And you don't need to be harsh. You don't need to be some hard ass boss or anything like that. But like Catherine said, clarity is kind. And the expectations, when they stay unclear, I mean, everybody suffers. I mean, you, the owner, you get frustrated, the team's confused, and the standards start slipping. And who really pays for it? The patients, right? Because that culture, it slowly becomes something that you never intended to create, but it's somehow drifted into. And leadership is not always about getting people to do what you want, but rather like creating that environment. I really think it's creating that environment where people choose to rise to that higher standard for the right reasons. Because at the end of the day, I mean, nobody, we don't want this. Your team doesn't want it. Nobody wants to feel controlled, nobody likes that. Nobody likes to feel micromanaged.

Tactical Takeaways And Next Steps

Paul Etchison 35:52

And most people are not going to want to spend their careers with a boss that's going to do that with to them. And they really, I mean, who wants to do the bare minimum? Nobody wants to do the bare minimum either. People want to perform, they want the clarity, they want to grow in their jobs, and they really do want to feel like they're part of something meaningful. So here's what I want to remember. Here's your tactical takeaways from today's episode. I want you to get clear on the standards that actually matter. I want you to communicate them consistently with your team. Don't be afraid to talk about these things. Stop assuming that your team knows exactly what you're expecting. And when somebody falls short of the expectations, be willing and courageous enough to have that conversation instead of avoiding it like we all do. And we I do it too. I feel you. We all do it. Because every difficult conversation that you avoid today, it will, will, not maybe, it will become a bigger problem tomorrow. But the good news is that leadership and communication, it is a skill. Coaching your team, it is a skill. All those things can be learned, and you can learn them, and you have everything you need to excel at them. If this episode made you realize that there are conversations that you've been putting off with your team, maybe some expectations you've never clearly communicated, or you don't even know what you should be communicating, that is exactly the kind of thing that we help dentists work through with our experience of management and running big practices with big teams. So head over to dentalpracticeherous.com/slash strategy. Schedule a free strategy call with me. I promise you, you will learn something. You will get value out of that call. And if you really enjoy the conversations that I'm having about leadership and communication and all these things that I am putting here on this podcast on Dental Practice Heroes, I would so very much appreciate if you just leave a five star review. It is one of the best ways to support the podcast. It helps more dentists find us, and I really think it helps a lot of patients too, because it changes the way we run our practices. So thank you so much for spending some time with me today. We will talk to you next time.