Relationships

Relationships with organizations, people and colleagues help build your practice or it can destroy what you have worked so hard to build.  Individuals have their own baggage that they bring to the table. However, in order to keep those problems to a minimum and to have a team of people that can work through problems they have to be balanced in all five realms of emotional intelligence.

Stein and Book in their book in 2000, name five realms of emotional intelligence, intrapersonal, interpersonal, adaptability, stress management and general mood.

Intrapersonal intelligence is your ability to be self-aware. Reflect on how aware you are of your own emotions, relationships and feelings.

Interpersonal intelligence refers to how you see or view your social responsibility and your ability to emphasize with others.

Adaptability is your ability to change and solve problems when they arise. For example, are you able to see a problem from all angles? Can you evaluate outcomes of choices in the moment?

Stress management is the fourth emotional intelligence. As a human being you deal with a variety of different stresses. If you are the owner of a dental office, you have to balance not only office needs, but staffing and patient needs. This is a delicate balance and one that takes a great deal of skill in.

The fifth and final one is overall mood. Stein and Book are referring to whether you are overall optimistic and your general wellbeing.

All of these areas together are required in order to have strong relationship skills. If you are really strong in one area but weak in another you may find that your relationships are out of balance.  Take the time before the New Year to reflect on where you are in each area and determine where you need to improve. The more balanced you are the more strength you will find in your overall business.  

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Happy Holidays

Insanity

As we head into the New Year this is a perfect time to look back and decide to try something new.  Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. It is time for you to try something new.

Change a policy that isn’t working for the office or switch around the morning huddle.  Stop, close your eyes and picture the office you want to have. What is everyone doing? How many patients are there? What does the office look like? What do interactions between patients and staff sound like?

You have to picture it to believe.  You can have the office you want but you may also need to reframe the situation. If something is going on that has happened often it has become a habit. It takes time and practice to break out of bad habits. But now is a good time, to stop, reframe and change whatever isn’t working.

Don’t spend this year doing things that don’t work for your business.

G                          Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality 

                       communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please                                                  visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Solution steps

In the heat of the moment when there is a fire burning at your doorstep it is easy to make a solution that is incongruent with the facts or a decision you would have made not in the heat of the moment. In order to make the best possible decision when facing a tough problem the book, "Leading Every Day," suggests that you complete these four steps:

1. Examine the facts

           Do you have all the information?

           Is there something else going on? 

           Are you missing a piece of information?

2. Consider the possiblities

          Sometimes we jump into a solution before we really consider all of the possible solutions. It is important when facing a problem that you think about all of the possible solutions including ones that may seem crazy or out of the box. It might just be what you in need in order to solve the problem.

3. Evaluate the situation logically

         It is easy in the heat of the moment to lose your head. It is important to stop, calm down and think about the problem. You may need to make a pro-con list or analyze the consequences of the action you are going to take. 

4. Look at the impact of your proposed solution on people, including yourself and your own value set

         Before you make a decision consider the impact it will have on you, your organization and your establishment. Again we can jump right into a solution without thinking about the large impact it will have on everyone around us including ourselves. 

Trust in this process every time to help make situations better when your faced with your next fire.



Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Layers of Leadership

Is it just you on the top?

Or do you have people in the middle layers that can help make decisions?

It is important in order to build strong leaders throughout the organization that you are not always the one in charge. Sharing responsibility of certain areas or letting someone else be in charge can help boost morale as well as empower individuals to step up. 

For example, if your front office is not very good at social media but your hygienist is, then you will want her to be the lead in this particular area. And if your back office is really good at ordering your supplies then they should be the person who is in charge. 

You do not have to always be the one in the lead role. When you allow other members to help make decisions it will help them step up and take responsibility because they are now in charge of something specific and they were able to give input into the process.

Everyone in your office has areas that they excel in, you want to capitalize on these areas in order for your office to be great in all areas.

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

A new start

Your culture defines what you do

Culture is the beliefs and systems that drive your organization. It is what makes up your business and supports patients. Your culture is made up of two different things. The policies you have written down, for example, no drinking coffee in front of patients and the underlined values and beliefs your staff hold dear to them.

What happens when the two collide?

Well it depends. You need to ask yourself does the employee’s culture go against the general culture you are trying to instill in your office? Or do they enhance what you are already trying to create? 

You have a choice? 

If your culture is tense, distracting and unfocused you can change. You can hire new staff if you need to bring people on board that have the same cultural beliefs in patient care, office procedures and the general well-being of the business. 

Or you can bring in a coach that helps your business learn to play like a team! 

Build a strong business day and change tomorrow.

SALT

Genuine Action

All of us have mentors or individuals who have been a part of our life and shape the beliefs we have. When you took over the dental office, many people may have offered you advice on how to handle your business. Stop and think, does the actions you take day to day align with your beliefs? Or are you completing tasks, policies and procedures that are out of line with what you believe?

It is easy to take on someone else's belief system when decisions have to be made or when you need to just accomplish a goal. But they may not be the best or most effective. The action may not even be in line with who you are as a business leader.

Take time to analyze some of the events that happen in your office. Do you handle difficult situations in a way that you support and believe in Or do you handle them in a way that your neighbor suggested? Do you utilize social media sites with one post a day because that is what the dentist around the corner does Or because that is what you want your office to be doing?

Step back and figure out which procedures and policies are in place because that is what you want to happen and change the ones that occur because they work for someone else.

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Changing your perspective

Is the glass have empty or half full? 

Philosophers and other like minded people have been asking this question for hundreds of years to determine what type of a thinker you are. Books like the, "Secret" and "The power of positive thinking," have one common theme. The way you think impacts what you do.

That is why reframing how you think about things is critical to your overall success. 

For example, you have very few patients scheduled in the upcoming weeks. 

You can tell yourself, "they don't have money, it's the holidays." Or you can state, patients are too busy this time of year."

Or you can reframe how you think about it and say, "now is the perfect time to schedule because individuals will have time to take care of their dental needs. Then get on the phone and make calls to the patients you haven't seen in awhile. Send out a holiday deal or a special holiday "Thank-you."

How you approach and think about a situation will determine the action you do or do not take towards achieving the goal.  You can sit in the holiday season and barely make it through or you can see patients coming through your door by the dozen and approach your daily practices to accommodate the number of patients pouring through your doors.  Reframing how you think about a situation will also allow your brain to see a situation in a new way.

In order to help you reframe ask yourself these questions: 

1. What are your views on the situation currently and what assumptions are you making?

2. Are you making correct assumptions?

3. How would other people view the situation?

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.