What is Your Leadership Default Position?

Every dental practice owner is a leader, whether they like it or not. Some dentists are lucky enough to be natural leaders, the kind who usually know just the right thing to do and say to inspire and motivate and to get the most from each person on the team. For the rest—for the dentists without that natural gift who suddenly find themselves leading a team—it is much more challenging, since they have plenty of clinical training but probably not any significant leadership training. So they fall into a style of leadership that feels most comfortable to them.

I call these the default leadership styles. There are three that are the most common, and each comes with its pros and cons:

The Boss is great at giving directions and setting accountability. He or she is very clear about expectations and diligent in seeing that those expectations are met. The drawback to this style becomes evident when strong management becomes micro-management. Teams who work for a “boss” style leader usually learn what it takes to keep the boss happy and usual show little motivation or creativity beyond that. So ironically, a boss-style leader is often unhappy about what they see as a lack of initiative in the team, even though they have created an environment where people just want to do what the boss says.

The Teacher style is adopted by those who get enthusiastic about new ideas, techniques, and technologies and get excited about sharing them with the team. They come home from courses and workshops with binders full of information and big plans for the next big thing. The problem here is that, without the right focus on strategic implementation, so many of those ideas just fizzle out. The team learns to wait it out rather than buy in right away because they know another new idea is coming any day. Meanwhile the doctor is frustrated that the team never seems to respond and implement with the right enthusiasm.

The Friend wants everyone to get along and is very good at creating an environment where team members feel appreciated and respected. The problem here is that a successful dental practice can never be a true democracy—someone has to have the final say—and when you look for consensus on everything you can find that all it takes is one resistant person to derail a worthwhile attempt at change.

The reality is that the best kind of leadership draws on the strengths of each of these styles, while recognizing the limitations. You want to introduce new learning all the time, while at the same time being diligent about accountability when it comes to implementation. You want everyone to have a voice, while also respecting your prerogative as leader to set the agenda for growth and make final decisions. You want an environment where expectations are always clear, but thinking is not rigid and confined.

This is, of course, a complex topic. I suggest you start by evaluating your own leadership style—which default mindset do you tend to favor?—and then really work at expanding your repertoire of leadership approaches. This is a subject I am going to be exploring in much greater detail in a new video lesson in our online course library. If you haven’t signed up yet, I encourage you to join us so you can catch my presentation on this ever-important subject at your convenience.