Your Dental Practice: Make Change a Part of the Routine

In an industry where high staff turnover is not uncommon, it is a point of pride for any dental practice owner to have a team that has been together a long time. Every dentist, after all, wants to have a stable work environment and the support of a loyal team.

The benefits of that kind of loyalty are obvious—easier communication, mutual understanding of expectations, a well-earned faith in one another's dependability and competencies. Not to mention that it is just nice, on a personal level, to have people around you with whom you have many shared experiences over the course of many years.

Loyalty and Your Practice

But there are also special challenges that come with leading a team made up of long-serving loyalists, and one of the biggest of those challenges is keeping things fresh. The danger is that the people who are most loyal to you and to the practice eventually also become loyal to a routine. They, too, take pride in their longevity with the practice, and in the abilities they have honed over the years, and they don't like to see this world they have helped to create rocked by new disturbances.

That's why, paradoxically, it is often the people who are the most devoted to the practice who will demonstrate the greatest resistance to the introduction of new methods, new strategies, or new technologies that could drive growth. Sometimes, it is hard to sell the idea of change to people who have an emotional investment in keeping things the same.

So what's the solution? The only reliable way I have found to prevent the sedative effects of routine from compromising the exciting promise of change is to make change part of the routine. That means creating a workplace where a passion for growth and innovation is respected as much as dependable task completion, an environment where people feel safe to explore new competencies, even if it means stumbling a bit at first. There should be an ongoing development plan for the practice and for every person in it.

You will know that you have reached this ideal state of team morale when the prevailing mindset among your loyal employees is less about "that's the way we have always done it" and more about "this has been great—now where can we go from here?"

Looking for a way to jump-start your team in the New Year? Reserve your spaces now for our new workshop, The Exceptional Dental Practice Team, premiering in January 2015.




Ready to inspire a positive change in your dental team?Take a look at our Staff Training video lessons in the Spear Course Library. Not yet a member of Digital Suite? Click here to learn more.