Team Building

Meetings often get a bad reputation as time-wasters. That doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, effective meetings can be a powerful tool for sharing information… anticipating problems… improving morale… and, ultimately, building a powerful team.

Although owning a dental practice automatically makes you a team leader, the skills needed do not come automatically. To be a success in dental practice management you have to acquire leadership qualities and capabilities somehow and learn to use them successfully with your team.

You’ve undoubtedly thought about how your dental career will progress… what you want your practice to be known for… what milestones you’d like to reach. But if you haven’t written down these ideas, in the form of a vision statement with team goals, and shared them, you’re less likely to achieve them.

One of the most important days of the year for your team members should be when you sit down with them for their annual performance review. Planned and conducted properly, this one-to-one meeting between the staff member and either you—or, if you have a large staff, the immediate supervisor—can yield many benefits for everyone

Dentists understand the value of continuing education. What many of them don’t realize is that CE also makes sense for members of their practice team… not only for clinical skills but for interpersonal and business skills, too. Ongoing team building training is vital for any functioning practice.

How do members of your practice team know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing? When you make changes in responsibilities, how are they documented and communicated? What do you use as a guideline for evaluating staff performance?