29: The Four Stages of Leaders with Holly Mitchell

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to a whole new level. You have this natural talent, this unique ability. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and so excited to be with you again today. If you got to listen to the last episode, I had a guest on for the first time, Holly Mitchell, and she has been so kind to come back on the show. So many of you gave great feedback on that show and the principles and that millennial twist that she brings that I wanted to have her her back on. So, Holly, welcome back.

Thanks for having me back. I'm excited.

So she is the CEO of Central Park West Dentistry, which the part for all of you accountants and business guys that will think she's amazing as they have a revenue of 8.2 million and six chairs, and they're expanding to their second location and working through all of the headaches of that. But what we're here to talk about is frameworks and principles, because as leaders in a dental support organization, we've got a very complex job of getting alignment between multiple organizations and business types, etc. And there's a lot of tactical things that we can do, but it's really those principles that help us get to the next level and be able to make decisions in all of the custom decisions that we need to make. So, Holly, what I'd really like to talk to you about is your framework for leadership. And you have what you call your four levels of leadership, is that right?

Yeah, that's right. And leadership for me has been such a learning journey. When we started our first practice, we were doing about a million a year in two chairs. And we grew that practice to 3.3 million. And it was by the sheer effort of my will which most entrepreneurs, that's what they're doing. They've got their hands in every pot, right?

Totally.

And I realized after that point that I was going to be the bottleneck to hold it back. And so we needed a leadership team. We weren't going to be able to grow without it. And so the first thing I did, having no understanding of leadership, was I got the book Traction by Gina Wickman. I promoted two of our team members to practice leaders and the three of us met every week and we went through that entire book week by week to put in the infrastructure that we needed.

That's such a big move because having done consulting the past around these stages within business, to move from entrepreneur, which is this hub and spoke type system. Like you said, hand in everything, you're the answer person, you're the Google for all of the answers. And there's some adrenaline to that, there's some ego to that. But to move from that into an executive structure, it's so different. I feel for clinicians who move from clinical to entrepreneurial mindset, which, that by itself is huge. And then they have to move to executive as well. I just can't imagine that. But yes, moving from that entrepreneur to executive and building that team around you.

The quality of how you assess whether you're doing well as a leader is no longer on the quality of your output, right? How much you can do, it's how much your team can do. And so you have to really become a master of influence and a master of communication in order to get things done, because it's going to get done without you, which is really scary.

And one of the things that frustrates me a little bit is so many of the leadership books out there and business books kind of portray like, okay, the way you do that is become this alpha male, intense female and you're going to get in there and you're going to set the vision and make them do this right. And you know, it just, it doesn't work that way. Humans do not respond well to maybe in the manufacturing industrial age where you were promising them a 30 year career and they didn't have other options. I don't know if it ever worked. Maybe it did, but man, it sure doesn't work today, does it?

No. There's a psychological principle called reactance and it's, you don't want to do what someone tells you to do. It's hardwired in us. And whether you're presenting a case to your patients or whether you're trying to get your team to facilitate a change, it's not going to happen. With that dominating, I call it scary pantsuit from a female leadership side, scary pantsuit side of things. It really starts with being a listener. And that's what the first level of leadership has been for me is mastering My ability to listen to my team, because when people feel seen and heard and understood, then they want to hear what you have to say. Stephen Covey says, seek first to understand, then to be understood. And I remember when I was a little girl, my mom said that I was a very annoying child because I insisted on being heard. And whenever I would say anything, if I wasn't getting direct eye contact, I would say, I think you missed that. Let me start over. Correct.

That would. Yeah, that would help if. If my kids did that, I would definitely become a better listener over time.

So it was important to me, and so I demanded it.

Was that your level one, then, of leadership as listener?

Yeah, it really is. It's about. And listening, not just with your ears to what's said, but listening to what's not being said, listening with your body, being in rapport with people. When you can master those skills. If somebody walks into my office, I'm pulling the chair back, I'm closing the computer down and looking at them face to face. If you can do that with your patients, if you can do that with your team, you're going to have a profound ability to influence.

Wow, that's powerful. I'm starting to see studies on how you hold or don't hold your cell phone. Right. Did you stick it in your back pocket? And so people perceive that as better listening, or do you have it in your hand, do you have it on the desk, etc. So, yeah, to listen well and for someone to feel like you're listening, we just have so many opportunities for distraction. It really takes a purposeful mindset. Right. To be a listening leader.

It is purposeful and it's powerful. And listening without any judgment to whatever you're hearing and listening without an agenda is sometimes hard because you want to fix. You're immediately trying to solve the problem in your head as soon as the information is coming out of their mouth. And you have to put that part of you on hold for a second and just be there with the person. Because sometimes they don't really want your advice. They don't want your opinion. They just want to know that you care and that you hear them.

Yeah, I think that's a hold back from some of our entrepreneurial leadership, where we were just solving problems and making things happen. And now at executive leadership, it really is about that empathy and how good are we at that? Okay, so that's level one. We can go on on that. Now I want to move to level two.

Level two is becoming a coach, and there's A principle that I learned called the drama triangle. There's a persecutor, there's a victim, and there's a rescuer. And so if anyone is an entrepreneur, they have the experience of rescuing the team, rescuing the organization all the time. And what happens is burnout and eventual resentment. And so the solution to getting out of the drama triangle, to breaking that habit, breaking the cycle, is for the rescuer to become a coach. And a coach is a different role. You are not giving people advice because, honestly, you don't have the answers. Whatever solution you might design is going to be true for you. They have a different set of needs, wants, skill sets that they need to be utilizing different resources than you might have. So a coach, I use the metaphor, a coach is a lantern. The person started with a lighter, and you're a lantern. So you're expanding the perspective for them where we can together talk about maybe a way out of this.

Awesome. And they own the flame, right? They own the energy. You're just helping them navigate that. Man, I love that. And I love the drama triangle, too. Okay, I'm going to have to think about that. All right, so I've gone listener, coach. And then the next one is what? Level three.

The next one is level three. And this is a facilitator of habit change. And I think that you're a particular expert when it comes to this, because I really love the way you frame change management in an organization using that acronym astro. I found it pretty powerful and actually sent that to my team. I sent those recordings to my team to listen to, because you have to understand what motivates people. And we're all motivated by whatever we link pain or pleasure to. So what are the rewards? What are the consequences of the decisions that we make, of the actions that we take? And how do we facilitate change management? And a lot of times we forget the last step in change management, which is persistence.

Yeah, that's a good point. And there's no unrealistic expectations, just unrealistic timeframes. Right.

So I am the queen of unrealistic timeframes. I want everything done yesterday.

Totally.

Totally.

And yet what I love about these principles that you're laying down here is I'm thinking through, I was in a manufacturing plant. It was for an aligner group, and they're talking through their constraints. And you know that machine, we're getting a new one that will double capacity and the benefits of that and so forth. And I looked at those machines and I thought, okay, wait, so what do I have within my organization. You know, she's angry at him and, and she's pregnant and he's leaving to move to here. And they had these very static machines. We have humans. We have humans that we're interacting with all day long. And so understanding these principles helps us to maximize our interactions.

When you think about an organization, it's just like a person, A person has habits, an organization has habits. And sometimes those habits are useful and sometimes we outgrow them. And in order for us to evolve, those habits are no longer serving us, so we have to replace them with new habits.

Awesome. Love that. Ok, so level three is a facilitator for habit change. And then level four, leadership.

Level four leadership. I call be a hypnotist.

Okay.

And what a hypnotist really does is they help to facilitate change from an underlying belief system standpoint. So we have these unconscious beliefs that we carry around with us all day long that are given to us by our experiences, by our parents, by things that we've seen or stories that we've had. And sometimes they are helpful and sometimes they're a hindrance. And so when you understand the beliefs of your organization and what beliefs would be useful in order to move forward, in order to grow, once you can facilitate those belief changes and you can wrap rally people behind the messaging and belief in the culture and in the brand and the why of what we're trying to do, we can accomplish a lot together.

Total alignment, isn't it?

Yes.

And you get that many humans trying to innovate, trying to work together, and you really can move a mountain.

Yeah. And checking your own beliefs too. And usually you can find a belief is not useful when you're in a moment of frustration. So, so let's say you're frustrated today and you ask yourself, well, what's the frustration coming from? Well, I think that my team is ungrateful. Right. Well, Byron, Katie has this really amazing process for facilitating belief change for yourself. So when you are in that moment of frustration and you're telling yourself a story, my team is ungrateful. How is that belief serving you? And you can ask yourself a series of questions like, am I sure that my team is ungrateful? Am I 100% sure that it's true? And who would I be without that belief? What would I do? How would I behave if I didn't believe that? And now what do I want to do next? Having explored that taking space and asking questions can help you get on the right path to make better decisions, I

think all of Us subconsciously, part of our compensation package for being leaders is that we are learning, developing, growing, progressing. And if you're not enjoying that process, if you're not realizing that's something you signed up for, it can be a little bit painful. You're like, man, I thought I got to come in and tell everyone. It's like, why am I having to do all this change?

You don't grow, your organization can't grow. Are limited by your ability to grow yourself totally.

Now, your background is a bachelor in fine arts. Has your tie in to being on stage, and, you know, doing some of those things helped with your leadership, hindered it. Where would you find some parallels?

I think it has, and I didn't even realize it until recently. I just got into doing musical improv. So I started getting back into the theater world again recreationally. And musical improv, if you're not familiar, it's like traditional improv, except you're creating a musical on the spot from scratch.

Oh, man. Oh, talk about one vulnerability. Holy smokes. And two, like, just the improv of it. I thought developing a DSO would be hard. Of course, my skill sets are pretty poor and anything musical. So you're developing a musical in real time.

Yes. And it's the most terrifying fun you could ever have, which is probably true about growing business. But it requires you to be completely present, and you have to be able to listen, adapt, and respond quickly to whatever your partner is giving you and to trust that you've got instincts that are going to see you through a lot of coaching, a lot of leading. Feels very improvisational because we show up one day and we have to respond to whatever is in front of us and whatever resources or people we have around us to create what we need to create.

And yet it's improv. But there's principles you're probably using, right?

Yes.

Practice on the back end, some level of principles and structure. And then you use that structure to improv.

There is always structure. There's the. Yes. And so you always have to agree with whatever you're given. I had this one experience where in an improv scene, I knocked on somebody's door, and I said, oh, can I borrow a sleeping bag? And he said, sure. You're gonna go catch that bear. That was not what I was expecting, but I took that and immediately sang a song called Bear Catcher of Nassau county, which ended up being a big hit.

Wow. That's incredible. That's incredible. All right, so, Holly, what other things do we need to close out on leadership? Any Other thoughts or principles you'd share with our team? And can we find that song on itunes? Or is there another way to capture

was one and only performance? Whoever was there got to experience it. I'd say when it comes to leadership, recognizing that the habits that we have, that need to change, they're all coming from a place of trying to get our needs met. And all those are positive intentions. Every behavior, whether it's useful or not, is trying to get a need met. It has a positive intention, and the needs never go away. We all need the same things. We need safety. We need variety. We need significance. We need to grow. We need to feel like we're making an impact and a contribution in the world. And so if we can get creative and find ways to meet the needs of ourselves, team members and our organization, we can continue to level up.

It's awesome. Thank you. I think that's a great way to end Holly. Thank you for being gracious and being on the show and hopefully listeners. You consume this and peel off one principle that you think that you can apply to take this to the next level. Holly is with us over on our Facebook site, DSO Secrets. Feel free to come over there, join, ask questions. Maybe she'll do a second rendition of a song for us or something. We'll have to come up with a DSO Secret song. I'm already seeing this take shape, so I'm down.

I'm down.

Thank you all for being on. Until next time, keep smiling.

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