Does Your Dental Team Have an Ownership Mindset?

We have been spending a lot of time lately at Spear working on dental team alignment education for dentists, with new programs in the works, and a whole suite of online lessons in our Course Library.

This has become a big focus for us because we believe that having the right dental team alignment is one of the most important, and at the same time one of the most over-looked, components of building a successful practice.

Delivering great dentistry has to be a team effort. No matter how good you are as a dentist, in the end, you are only as good as the people around you.

So what makes for a great dental team?

As important as it is to understand the individual roles and how they work together, and to implement the right systems and the right accountability, it still always comes back to a fundamental attitude: an ownership mindset.

This is really the basis of dental team alignment. After all, you can institute systems for tracking, you can audit performance, and you can convene mandatory meetings. But you can't mandate a mindset.

You can, however, create a working environment that encourages that mindset to flourish. You can build an atmosphere of trust where dental team members feel free to grow as individuals as the practice grows. You can choose to involve them in your plans for the future. You can show them how their success contributes to the overall success of the practice.

Once people really understand their purpose in this way, they can't help but take personal pride in their contribution. In the best dental practices, the dental team members don't see themselves as pawns performing specific compartmentalized tasks; they see themselves as partners on a greater mission. They take ownership for the success of the practice, which means they look beyond their own immediate interests and do whatever it takes to achieve the right results.

This attitude is not an end point, it is a starting point. This is the kind of culture you must cultivate before you can expect great advances in the practice. Because once you have buy-in on the greater purpose, you will have a dental team that is always open to embracing all the methods of improvement that are presented to them. The purpose is defined and everyone is agreed on where you are going. Now it's just becomes a matter of implementing the right strategies to get there.


If you find topics like this helpful, check out Imtiaz Manji's practice management courses available to you through our Course Library. Not yet a member of Digital Suite? Click here to learn more.