Why I cannot keep associates? | Dental Practice Management

Good morning. One of the most common questions I get asked is, Dr. Allen, how can we keep an associate? We have a hard time in, you know, finding associates, but once we find them, we have a harder time even retaining them. Especially when we go beyond general dentists, general practitioners, especially the specialists, very difficult to keep them and so forth. Do you have any suggestions? So let me make some comments on this via video. So hopefully all of my followers and other people who have never heard me talk can hopefully value this. If this is the first time you're reaching my channel, My name is Dr. Alan. I help dentists and doctors to develop, scale and exit from their businesses successfully. So regarding this question regarding the associateship, what I like to recommend is that, number one, obviously you have to have a shared vision with your team and you have to be able to align their goals with your company.

And many times the doctors that come in, obviously they have financial incentives. So really having financial incentives that align with the company is very important. Number two, some sort of ownership is important. If they're looking at.

Possibly owning their own practices later, which most doctors, they want to do, having some sort of equity participation is very important for them. That way you can certainly be sure that they have their skin in the game and they're not leaving and they will do whatever it takes to be part of the company. And that is a separate subject that I can certainly consult with you.

On an individual basis and how to set that up, how to create equity plans for the doctors and so forth. So it is vested over time rather than, you know, giving them all equity at once. But what I also want to add.

Is that it's about your leadership. And this is something that I learned by, you know, making many mistakes over the years, having the same problems just like everybody else. I would say for the first 10 years of my practice, in the clinical practice, I had the same challenges as what you're facing. So all that comes back down to leadership. And this is why a study of leadership is very important for everyone, but especially dentists, managers, your management team, because you need to understand how to lead people. See, leadership, the simple definition of leadership is taking people, a group of people, on a journey for a common purpose and vision. But that is its very simplistic definition of leadership. Leadership is about influence.

And everything that we do, all the relationships we have, whether it's with, with our employees, team members or vendors or patients or customers, it's all about relationship. So leadership definitely has to do with influence. And every person's level of influence is different with each individual. See, there are five levels of influence. The lowest level is the position level, which people follow you because of your position, because of your title. This is, you know, one of the least influential levels of relationship with people. And it is one that you get the least amount of work out of the people, okay? Because you have no relation. They follow you because of your title, because you're a CEO, because you're the owner, because you're the founder, okay? And the problem with this is that you will have a very difficult time if you're coming from this level to lead people, to lead young people, volunteers, or highly educated people like doctors and a specialist. Because most of these people are very independent and they would just not follow you because of the position. Position gives you a temporary chance to build relationship with them.

But if it's going to take too long to build that relationship, you're going to undermine that. The second level is the permission level. This level is people follow you because you have.

Some relationship with them. Deeper the relationship, the chances are that they will follow you even more.

So in this level, the permission level, you have lot of influence on them because of.

The fact that you're valuing them as individuals, you're adding value to them and you're really getting to know your people on a heart level. And people start following you because of that relationship that you have with them.

Then the third level.

Is the production level. That is the level that, that it's all about results. It's great to be at level two and you know, having, you know, creative, excellent working environment and ambience where you know everyone's value, each other and being there with respect. But that's not enough. As a leader, obviously you need to create results. You, they need to see that you are leading the company forward.

And they're getting results. This is the level where production goes up, profit goes up.

The momentum basically kicks in and people follow you because you have create an ambiance, an environment that results are being shown.

Then you have the fourth level. The fourth level is about people development. This is the level that you now people that have followed you, now you are basically.

Developing other leaders in your company. So it's not just about you. So you have used your position.

Your influence, productivity to result, to create other leaders in your company that can take the baton from you and lead the company forward. This is where we start seeing multiplication of leaders within an organization.

And then finally the top is level position, which is very hard to reach, is not just for anyone. You absolutely must be a great leader.

Is to create is the pinnacle level which you create other levels for people so they can have a higher impact on the level of organization as well. Okay, so this is why a study of leadership is very important. It is not a subject that you can learn overnight. It takes years to learn. It takes time to invest. And you know, I offer various type of programs, whether it's corporate, on site or telecoaching, which I can help you and your team to become better leaders. My name is Dr. Allen. If I can help you in any way, please feel free to reach out to me. If you find value with this video, please hit like share button and subscribe to my channel. Thank you so much. Take care.