Dr. Allen Dental MBA: Building a Superstar & a Loyal Dental Team

This is Dr. Alan Naziri, and welcome to another MBA series. Today's video lesson is about building a superstar and a loyal dental team. See, our success as dentists is directly dependent on who we have on our team. The longevity of the team is directly related to how we choose to lead that team.

One of the things that I typically do is when I go to a practice of a client, the first number I look at is the HR attrition rate. Because the HR attrition rate tells me about the culture of that practice, what sort of a culture we have. If you have a high attrition rate, that means somehow the practice is not good at keeping the employees. And if it's a low attrition rate, it doesn't necessarily mean that the team is very productive. So looking at those numbers are absolutely important in determining the culture of the team and the leadership of the team. However, what I'd like to talk to you about in this video lesson is about the team building and how a successful dental practice must build a team. Now, most dentists, including myself, for many years at the beginning of my career, I did not learn about how to build a team. So I thought having a team is basically hiring a bunch of people and putting them in one office and basically calling it a team. Okay, so today's video lesson, I want to go over some of the important rules that I have learned over the years to build teams and how you can apply them in your dental practice. The first thing we need to understand is the word team. Well, the team stands for the acronym. Together everyone achieves more.

Now, there are certain rules in building the team, and these rules are rule number one, have a transparent and accurate reporting system. Now, most practices, regardless of whether they're transparent or non transparent, they do not have a good accurate reporting system. They do not know exactly what has been produced, what has been done in a practice, and they cannot communicate that with the team members. Now, just like any sports team, the team members need to be able to keep track of the scoreboard so that the accurate reporting, those numbers are absolutely important for the teams to know. I know a lot of the clients, they try to keep things a secret. And this is the biggest mistake I see with the leaders because of the fact that their teams are not aware of where they stand in the game. Rule number two is about investing in their training and coaching your team. Now, those ideal practices are the ones that the leader himself or herself very good at investing the time and money in him or herself. And then they start realizing how important that is.

To transfer that knowledge, whether it's through formal coaching programs or trainings and so forth to their employees. Now, you cannot grow a team unless you grow each individual on the team personally. This is why again, I emphasize to my clients, clients regarding starting them when they are really serious about going to the next level is to really investing the time and money so I can grow their team members individually. Because once they're grown individually, guess what? The whole team grows together. Rule number three is you have to pay them above the market rate, otherwise someone else will take him away from you or they will start stealing from you and stealing from you. It doesn't mean they're going to put their hand in the, in the cash register and take money out, which they certainly can. There are a lot of embezzlement going on in offices and so forth, but they can steal your time. You know, basically they can spend, you know, half of their time on social media, on Facebook, on Instagram, different things rather than working. So you really need to pay them above the market rate and keep them accountable for the work that they're producing. Rule number four is you need to align their vision with your vision through a very well defined performance based bonus system. You cannot play at a favorite. And I see this happening with some practices where they give bonuses to some people and they don't give bonuses to others. I was recently talking to a client, I think it was in Singapore, and you know, he mentioned that, you know, his office managers know about, you know, or they're on a bonus system, but other staff are not on a bonus system or something like that. So this is not good. If you have a team, then everyone needs to be involved. You have to align their vision with your vision. So if your vision is company growth, you have to also have align their vision with yours. So you have to share your winnings with them. Otherwise they are not going to put the time and effort in to grow the company. And I see too many examples of this that the companies basically start.

Either hitting a plateau or start regressing. Because the owner's vision is all about himself, not about the team. Now rule number five is you must communicate openly so your team can understand why you come to an office in a sour mood or you're in a good mood and you need to communicate openly all the good matters and bad matters. You can't just tell them all the bad news when there's a meeting and keep all the good news to yourself. You have to celebrate this with your team as well. Again, immature leaders, they Typically keep all the good news to themselves and only share the bad news with the people and so forth. So that is rule number five. Rule number six, you need to also empower them as good leaders. We need to give them empowerment. And that is totally different than the concept of delegation. Delegation is basically delegating or assigning a task to someone, but you follow through with that to make sure they don't mess up. Empowerment, on the other hand, is you give them a project, let them go with that project, you stay behind the scene and if they win, great. And if they fail, it's okay. It's been experience and you move on. Jeff Bezos in Amazon talks about this all the time, how you know, he encourages people to actually fail because that's how you learn and experiment to grow a company. Rule number seven.

Allow them to question your actions. You cannot be a leader and tell people what to do and not be accountable for your actions. Okay? They have to be able to question your motives, your behaviors, your recommendations, your suggestions, your demand, just like you can question them. So true leadership is about again, open communication and also be able to stay accountable to your followers. Rule number eight is you need to get to know your team members on a personal level. So there's a saying, they say touch hard before you ask for their hand. Because if you want to put a team together and if you want chemistry between these team members, you have to understand the strengths, the weaknesses, the emotions, the sadness, the happiness of every team member that they have so you can build this chemistry among the team members on your team. Rule number nine is ask for their opinion. Because many people, they could have a better perspective than you do, especially the people who work the front line. You may be working, you know, in a, let's say it's a group practice, you're in management and so forth. You're not in touch with what's happening in the front line. So you need to ask opinions of people. And that includes even low ranking people that you would not think.

They have an opinion, but many times they're very observant. I'm talking about janitors and maids and drivers or some of the low ranking. You can ask them, what do you think? Why do you think that our office is not doing well? Why do you think we don't have enough patients coming in? Why do you think we get cancellations? Listen to them carefully and see what they say. Finally, rule number 10 is you must get rid of the bad apples on your team. Otherwise any rotten attitude will destroy the morale. Because the teams that function at their maximum, they have a very, very high morale. And that starts with you as the leader of the company. If you come in with a bad, rotten attitude, guess what? That bad, rotten attitude gets transmitted to everyone else on the team as well. This is Dr. Alan Nazeri. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you like the material that has been presented here, please subscribe to my channel, like and share. And if I can assist you and your team in any way to help you develop, scale, or exit from your business successfully, please be sure to get in touch with me either via email or WhatsApp until the next episode. Have a great day. Thank you.