As leaders and mentors, one of our most important jobs is to create a workplace culture that energizes our staff. When you have a million other things on your plate, prioritizing culture can be challenging, but culture is, after all, the lifeblood of your practice.
As we all know, dentistry involves both physical and mental stress, but by finding a good balance and encouraging your employees to do the same, you can help everybody bring their best selves into work.
Fill your environment with good energy
When you have a great environment, your staff will enjoy coming to work. On the flipside, an unhealthy work environment makes people resentful, which is all the more difficult when everybody already deals with the day-to-day stress of patient care.
Bringing positive energy into your office can be as simple as playing good music. Something upbeat and catchy makes everybody, including patients, feel happier and more comfortable. When people have good attitudes, it’s easier for them to give each other grace, which is another crucial feature of a positive work environment.
When your staff know they can lean on each other, it’s much easier for everyone to learn and grow together. As multipractice owners, we encourage the staff at all our locations to reach out to their peers at other offices and to get together at least once a year. It’s so important for everyone to support each other and build that network of camaraderie. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Prioritize work-life balance
We all have lives outside of work, and making time to disconnect is critical. Everybody has to find a way to recharge their batteries so they can face the challenges of dentistry on a daily basis.
As leaders, we encourage our doctors and staff to strive for work-life balance. For example, we make sure to ask for vacation requests early, so that everybody’s requests can be approved while keeping the office running smoothly and efficiently. After all, we want people to be able to completely disconnect while on vacation.
People need to disconnect from work while they’re at home, too. As practice owners with young families, we’re also performing this juggling act — working to stay present at home while also being 100% on our game at work.
We can encourage our teams to no end, but the easiest way we’ve found to get the best results is to lead by example.
Lead by example
Leaders and mentors must practice what we preach, whether that be clinical skills and procedures or prioritizing work-life balance. Especially as multi-practice owners, we need to be able to instill good habits in our doctors so they can run their own ships.
One way to hold ourselves accountable is to have regular one-on-one touchpoints with our staff. Whether those be once a month or quarterly, touching base allows us to unwind, unpack our experiences and analyze our performance as an office. This helps us maintain strong bonds and the work hard, play hard attitude that keeps us enjoying the work we do.
These touchpoints also allow us to speak up if something isn’t working. We need to be able to give constructive feedback, and we also need to provide a safe space for our staff to give feedback to us. As leaders, we don’t know what’s not working unless we’re told, and we’d much prefer to get ahead of problems instead of learning from things that have already gone wrong. By providing a forum for feedback and meeting it with a receptive attitude, everybody benefits.
Feedback sessions also help instill mental toughness, which isn’t something that comes automatically; it’s a muscle that requires strength training to build resilience. It allows people to take the challenges we face every day head-on and continue working hard even when something doesn’t go as planned. A mentally tough attitude is important for us as individuals, but also for the team at large.
Dentistry is the easy part
Being a leader and mentor to an entire office is a challenge. The actual dentistry is the easy part. It’s managing people that is much harder. To support staff in the best way possible and create an environment that benefits everyone, it’s important to recognize that everybody is different. Some people respond well to firm criticism, others don’t. Knowing how to manage those situations and personalities is a tough skill that takes practice, but it’s necessary to empower your team to provide the best possible patient care.
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Ashley Boling, DDS, attended dental school at the University of Tennessee, graduating in 2010. She works to create supportive, respectful environments in each of her offices, meeting with staff regularly to establish strong relationships. Now, Dr. Boling owns nine offices across southern Tennessee and northern Georgia, where she tries to make every staff and patient experience a positive one.
Taylor Sutton, DMD, is the owner of two Aspen Dental practices in the Philadelphia metro. He has piloted both digital dentures and Motto Clear Aligners for Aspen and was named the #1 Motto Clear Aligner doctor in both 2022 and 2023. In addition to innovative dentistry, he loves fitness, traveling and spending time with his family.