Episode 165: Building Your Success: Leadership Lessons to Help Your Practice Grow with Jameson Advisors for Suzanne and Brenda
This transcript with our Jameson Files host Carrie Webber has been lightly edited for flow. To enjoy the audio, you can watch on YouTube or listen to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify.
Carrie:
Welcome back to the Jameson Files. I’m your host, Carrie Webber, and it’s always so great to have our Jameson Files community joining in. Wherever you’re viewing the podcast, you may be watching us on YouTube or on Facebook, or you may also be listening to us through iTunes or Google Play. Whatever you do, thank you for being a part of the community. And if you have friends in the dental industry that could benefit from the conversations we have here, please share and help us spread the word and grow our community. I’m really excited today because we’re here at the Jameson offices in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and we have members of the Jameson coaching team here, which is awesome because we’re all over the country, and we always look forward to those times when we can come together, and just like we encourage dental practices to do, work on our skills, work on the business together, improve our efforts, and grow and develop together.
And so that’s what we’ve been doing today. And so in this episode, I have two members of the Jameson coaching team, Brenda Wittenbauer, and Suzanne Wardell, both of which are business advisors for Jameson, and have their own incredible history in dentistry. Something I always love to say is that the members of our coaching team all come from dental backgrounds and have that direct experience and empathy for all of you and the work that you do day after day after day. And so, thank you ladies for joining me for the episode.
Brenda:
Happy to be here.
Suzanne:
Yeah. Excited.
Leadership Lessons for a Successful Practice
Carrie:
So this is for business coaching. We wanted to take this opportunity to talk about on the business team, or in the leadership of the practice, what the pain points are that we are finding over and over and over again right now- the trending pain points, I guess we could say, that we’re seeing in practices and then give you all some insights and hopefully some helpful tips on ways that you can address these areas in your practice if they’re pain points for you as well. So, which one of you would like to take this on. What are you seeing in the trends of the practices that you work with, and what are the opportunities for practices to really put in some effort to improve? What are you seeing and recommending?
Holding Team Members Accountable
Brenda:
Okay. So hot points in my practices that I’ve been working with my teams all year–accountability or lack thereof. And how do we hold team members accountable? How do we not feel powerless in our own practice to hold people accountable for fear they’ll leap. And that’s the theme repeated in practices. It doesn’t matter where you are, the pool for talented team members is so limited right now, or so it seems, and they are settling for mediocre–afraid to hold people accountable– and it’s a difficult situation and not one I want to see my doctors or my office managers in.
Carrie:
Yeah. And when you think about accountability and the lack thereof, how’s that showing up in practices? Where are they finding the struggle when people are not being held accountable or that mediocrity is starting to rule the day? What’s that looking like?
Suzanne:
I see it so much in time management. It’s always, “I don’t have the time. I can’t get that system done. I don’t have the time.” So when I’ve come back six months later and we say, “What have we been working on?” Well, it’s, “We didn’t have the time to do it.” So working on that time management and what’s “mission critical” for me to do today to be able to get that system done? What are some good “to do’s” and what’s not really something that I need to focus on, but what’s “mission critical”?
Carrie:
I love that. Time management is always one of my primary issues, so you’re not alone if that’s your pain point. Accountability or lack of accountability, it may not necessarily be that you don’t want to do it, but you are overwhelmed because we’re not managing our time well, and I really like that–what’s “mission critical”?
Would you recommend that we start every day thinking through that and prioritizing that day? How are you encouraging team members that struggle with time management to take control of that aspect?
Choosing Our “Mission Critical Tasks”
Suzanne:
That’s great. And it’s coming up with tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four things of what we need to do. And tier one are your “mission criticals,” and they’re usually the hardest things that you have to do, so you want to push those down the list because you want to pick maybe those tier three things, which are fun, and we enjoy doing them, but they aren’t necessarily what’s going to make my day go smoothly or have a system run smoothly. So I’ve got to really focus on what I have to do today so that the airplane won’t crash. You know, not, I can stay up in the air and everything will go okay, but what’s going to make the plane crash? And then I’ve got to think about what that “mission critical” task is. And if you have more than two or three on your list, you’re probably not going to get through them all. So try and keep it condensed and focus in on that.
So if you’re working on patient retention, it’s got to be that I’m going to call at least one or two patients today. If I say, “I’ve got this list and I’m going to call all these people,” it’s not going to happen. So decide to call one person in the morning and one person in the afternoon and make that manageable.
Brenda:
I like that.
Carrie:
I like that– attainable.
Suzanne:
Yeah.
Utilizing the Rule of “10 Over 5”
Brenda:
What I tend to see happen is that they have their list of tasks that they have to do, their systems they are accountable for, and their least favorite get pushed away. Collection calls–those never happen, and yet that’s a vital part of the practice to keep the money in. So I really stress that we all have the same 24 hours, right? Nobody is different. So how are we going to use that eight hours that we have in the practice to the best of our ability? And it has to include mapping out your day, your week, so that you touch all of your systems. So you need to have chunked into time blocks, and you need to schedule it.
I am a big proponent of protected time for those critical systems and team members are really nervous to implement that. They feel like they can’t go for an hour and work uninterrupted and leave their teammate to fend for themselves, and yet if we don’t block that time we get behind in our systems.
So what happens is those systems that were operating really well, once we focus on some of those that aren’t, those ones that were operating really well now start to dip down in their performance. So you can’t take your eye off anything. So you really have to manage your time effectively and plan it out. I do the same sort of thing, Suzanne, especially with doctors. Every Sunday night, I want you to do 10 over five. That means pick out your top 10 things for this week. You have five days to get them done. And start with your hardest.
Carrie:
I love that. Start with your hardest. Wait, say that again?
Brenda:
It’s 10 over five. So every Sunday night, you can let it go, you can plan it out. You write down your top 10 things that you have to get done this week. You start with the most difficult on Monday when you’re freshest. Get those done. And obviously, delegate, delegate, delegate wherever you can. But if you chunk it into small achievable tasks, you feel good. You don’t feel like, “Oh, I’m never gonna get through this.”
Not Being Ruled by the “Tyranny of the Urgent”
Carrie:
Yes, just pick two balls. It doesn’t have to be that you’re calling the whole list. Pick two because you’re making progress. When we were meeting earlier today together as a group, we talked about progress over perfection. And progress is progress. We simply need to get in the rhythm of momentum of “we’re making progress on this very important piece of the puzzle.” To your point with collections, for example, and I love it because I say this all the time, that we go to the easy and sometimes irrelevant tasks on your whole list of responsibilities because they are easy and because you did things, you feel like you’ve been productive–actually, you’re being busy, you’re not being productive. And we all want to avoid the hard stuff.
Chuck Blakeman talks about how we often find ourselves getting caught up and focusing on the tyranny of the urgent instead of the priority of the important. And that’s when this time management piece, especially in the business team, happens a lot. We’ve got so many irons in the fire and so much happening throughout the workday that we very easily let this go. And it’s such a pivotal piece of hitting goals. We’re making progress or improving the things that need to improve in a practice. So, such great points.
Keeping Team Members Accountable with Frequent Check-in Points
Brenda:
Let’s talk about the lack of accountability. So I have every intention as a team member to get to my system. Things happen and I don’t. If nobody’s ever checking in with me until it’s too late, until we can’t make payroll because we didn’t have enough money come in… There needs to be connection points scheduled in. I believe in that. I tell all my office managers, you need one-on-one with each team member to see where they’re feeling successful and where they’re struggling, where they feel challenged too much in a way that they’re not feeling like they’re thriving or what resources can I get you? We have to have check-in points, because otherwise that once-a-year performance review is not enough. We need to be able to know where they’re at, where they feel good, and where they need some support.
Suzanne:
And I think at the beginning, you probably need to have more connection time than less. And as you perfect the system, you can have less. One of my teams are meeting every week and it doesn’t have to be long. Five minutes. How many people did we call? What system did we do well in? What didn’t we do? And then as it becomes a habit– because it’s not a habit for them yet–and so once the habit’s developed, we can maybe drop those meetings down to once a month. It doesn’t have to be as much, but in the beginning, I think it’s crucial that they’re touching base frequently.
Carrie:
It’s important to think about long term gain. For anybody in any type of business, when you’re trying to insert something, a new habit or improve something, doing anything differently than what has been the established habit to this point, you have to have those atomic habits, as James Clear talks about. You have to have these cues and rewards and that kind of guidance to remind you until it becomes that habit and until you have built that discipline. And I think that check-in time is important. Implementation of anything new is always a little bit more labor intensive in the beginning, but if you’re thinking long term, if you’re thinking to the vision, you know that this work will reduce. I think that’s such a perfect example of your connection time. It may be more often now until we really start to see that become a habit. And then it becomes easier along the way. I thought that was so great.
Brenda:
A natural outcome of these connections. We think high achievers don’t need a lot of attention. High achievers do. They still need to be able to celebrate their successes. To know that you know that they are doing their part to contribute. They can work independently, but they still need that feedback. And so an important outcome of these connections is that support, that feedback.
Suzanne:
Yes. How do I know if I’m doing well, if nobody’s really told me? Exactly.
Carrie:
Until someone tells me otherwise, I guess I’m doing great. And what if you’re not? We have frustrated leadership, and nobody really set the standards and held us accountable to it to know.
Suzanne:
Yeah. I think I ask that question almost all the time when I have somebody who’s frustrated about a system. I’m like, “Well, do they know that that’s how you feel?” And the answer will be, “Well, no, we haven’t really talked about it. We’ve got a meeting set up in a month.” I’m like, “A month’s too late. Why are you waiting that long? Let’s talk about it now. And address that while it’s a problem.”
Carving Out Time to Work on Your Business
Carrie:
Yeah. So much of what we’re talking about is such big pieces in terms of leadership and execution for office managers, but also for you doctors. I was just thinking about the time management piece– taking us back there– and the “mission critical” pieces. So often, doctors, you may only think of your mission critical pieces as your clinical work. And to Brenda’s point of carving out that sacred time to work on prioritized tasks, that’s for you too, doctors, time to work on your business. And I always love to recommend that you find that time in your workday because a lot of times doctors come to us very hungry for balance. We don’t prioritize the “mission critical” pieces of running a business. And so you find yourself doing that after hours. And so if we don’t start to create a rhythm in our day-to-day to allow you that time to work on your business, not just in it, you’ll have to find a way. And you’re typically sacrificing something else to make room for it.
Knowing the Importance of Delegating
Brenda:
It’s usually family time. And I think doctors, you have to learn to delegate. You really have to learn to know the talents of your team members, know what their strengths are, and then know what you don’t need to do, and pass it on because otherwise you are going to be buried.
And I agree with you a hundred percent Carrie. I try to encourage all of the doctors I work with to schedule one hour of admin time a week during production. You will make it up tenfold. I’m certain of that. Don’t worry about that. Carve out an hour at minimum so that you can get your tasks done and not bring it home to your family.
Carrie:
We are so on the same page, thank goodness.
Brenda:
Yes. Thank goodness.
Suzanne:
I know everybody’s so worried about losing patient time. They think that they can’t afford that time. You can’t not afford to have that time. You’re going to lose more in the long run than you are as if you set that time aside. I think that’s the huge part.
Carrie:
You said a big word delegation. I think our theme is naturally angling towards our office managers and doctors based upon accountability and time management and delegation. What are the recommendations if I’m a team leader and I’m holding a lot of responsibilities to my chest and I need to delegate to become more effective for the practice? What should I do?
Suzanne:
I always use that exercise of looking at what’s on your plate. What are all the things that are on your plate and what can you take off? And what’s on that person’s plate? Are we able to redistribute to somebody else’s plate so it’s more of an even load? So it’s looking at what your job responsibilities are and realistically, can you get that done in the time that you’re there? If you can’t, then obviously your plate isn’t distributed evenly.
Carrie:
I love that.
Brenda:
I do the same thing. When a plate is full and we keep adding to it, it’s falling off and then what’s falling off? Where’s it going? And nobody’s there to pick it up. So we have to put something on somebody else’s plate. Yeah. And when I work with doctors, I really want them to think about, do I really need to do this? Do you really need to pay your bills? Do you really need to call in payroll? Can somebody else on the team do it? Can an outside source do that for you? I want you to think about that hand piece and what’s going to keep you generating revenue, and then we’re going to carve out time for those things that you have to do. But I guarantee you, if you look at the list of things you’re doing, doctors, there are plenty of things that a team member or an outside partner could do for you to reduce what is taking away from the balance that we’re talking about.
Allowing Others Opportunities for Growth
Suzanne:
And I think of it from when I was an office manager, a lot of times I liked to do something because I know that I did it right, or so I thought. I did it right and I’m going to do it because I know it’s going to get done the right way.
But what I didn’t recognize at that time was that I was robbing people of the opportunity to have leadership. And so when I moved onto a different role, people didn’t know what I was doing because I didn’t give people the opportunity to learn, or I didn’t give people the opportunity to thrive. I’m just doing it myself. And I think a lot of times we hear that. Or I don’t want to put somebody else out by asking them to do it, which I think when you find you are in the right team, you’ll have people who say, I’d love to do that. I’d like to take that responsibility. I’d love to be able to do something new and different. So we just have to ask.
Brenda:
And sometimes we delegate, we give it to somebody, but we don’t give them the full ownership.
Carrie:
You don’t really give it. You say you’re giving it
Brenda:
And so you micromanage and then that just turns people off from it, as well. There’s an art to delegation and you have to delegate to strengths. You have to know who can take something on. You have to know how to do it gracefully, but then have check-in points.
Carrie:
Yes, set them up to be successful. Train them, and support them, and mentor them until they’ve got it, and then let it go.
Brenda:
And there’s not only one way to do things.
Suzanne:
Right. As long as we get a good end result, somebody can do something a little bit different than I am, which is crazy for me to think about because I do everything the right way. But somebody might do it a little differently.
Carrie:
Listen, for anybody that struggles with delegation, trust me when I tell you all it takes is delegating it to someone who does it better than you, and then you will be a forever delegator. I love to delegate because I’m like, “Oh, you wanna do it? I bet you’re gonna do it way better than me because I don’t have time to do it well now.” And we’re all going to be limited by our own capacity. If you don’t start taking on that piece as practice leaders, if you don’t focus on the things that only you can do, you’re going to find yourself in the tyranny of the urgent over and over and over again.
When you think about delegation, what are the steps I can take? I love that you said robbing people of opportunities to grow and develop. I think it’s important for all of us to remember, if you’re an office manager or a doctor or a department lead that’s really over capacity right now, but you’re not delegating and giving other people those opportunities, it’s going to suffer. And I think it’s a great opportunity to think of, as a leader. Part of our responsibility when you are put in a leadership position, is to grow and develop other leaders. My mother, Kathy Jameson says, “A great dental team is a group of leaders working cohesively toward a common set of goals.” And if we don’t entrust other team members to lead, and we know that one of the primary pieces that cause engagement in the employee workforce is the opportunity to grow and develop. In dental practices, it’s not exactly a corporate ladder. There are specific roles in a practice. So how can you create those opportunities from within? Delegation is such a big piece of that.
Brenda:
And looking at leadership in general, it’s not a role. Leadership is an activity. We want everybody to be in a leadership activity at some point so that, like you said, they grow and they feel fulfilled at work. It’s more than just tasks. Everybody needs the opportunity to lead on a team. And a really good office manager or doctor is going to figure out a way to give each person an area to lead in, and it doesn’t have to be forever. It can rotate. It can shift.
Suzanne:
I think you have to, like you say, change that mentality of what leadership is. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the person who’s on the top. We always think of a president, or a CEO of a corporation, or like in a dental office, the dentist is a leader. Yes, they are. But everybody has the opportunity to do leadership in everyday tasks. It could be the smallest thing that you do, but it made a difference. And you’re a leader.
Carrie:
I love that. Some really big topics that we just kind of spewed out, like in fast forward motion. They all go together– accountability, delegation, time management, prioritization, “mission critical”. Be careful if you find yourself falling into the urgent, if you could relate with being a fireman and putting out fires all the time. There’s probably some need for focus and prioritization of more of those difficult decisions, tasks, conversations, systems that need to be streamlined.
Knowing when to Maximize Our Team Instead of Hiring
Something that I find in this realm is that practices begin to feel overwhelmed. And then we live in this victim mindset of, “I’m so overwhelmed, we’re so busy, we just need to hire somebody.” And I am always the bearer of bad news to them. And I say, “Whoa, whoa.” Let’s take a step back and see if we are executing our systems right, and the flow of the day, and managing our time well with the team we have yet because sometimes we hire out of overwhelm instead of fixing what’s causing us to feel overwhelmed in terms of glitches in our systems or mismanagement of time. We just throw a body at it, which is one more person that you then have to hold accountable, train, manage, lead. And part of the model of success is to maximize a minimal team.
And I’m not saying to go out and fire everybody, but be very smart about the decisions when it’s time to hire. There are going to be pieces to that capacity that will show themselves that, yes, it is indeed time to hire. We have all of these things in place and we still need this role. If you’re hiring out of a sense of desperation and overwhelm, you may need to do a little due diligence to determine why you’re feeling this way. Do you ever see that?
Brenda:
Oh, yeah. I see that a lot. Or people don’t know what the need is. They don’t really get to what the true need is. They just get another person in and figure out it’s going to work out, and it’s chaos. And then the person underperforms, or they hired the wrong person. And you have to step back. You have to look at, like you said, the needs and what are we looking for? What isn’t getting done? How do we make a job description for this person? And how are we going to make sure they shine? Or is it a system, a style, or structure? Where’s the breakdown?
Carrie:
Wait, say that again.
Suzanne:
Yeah, that was great.
Identifying Breakdown with System, Style or Structure
Brenda:
So whenever there’s breakdown, it’s usually in one of these three places, a system, a style, or a structure. So a system is “lack of” or somebody’s not following it. A style we all know like DiSC styles, or a leadership style is not matching the teams. And the structure is maybe not physically right in the office. And so whenever there’s a breakdown, that’s where I go first. System, style, structure, and then we know where to start problem solving.
Suzanne:
Three S’s.
Carrie:
Anything to help me remember. I love that. Go ahead.
Suzanne:
I loved what we talked about today when it comes to that accountability piece– and I think this is so important– “What is your excuse that you’ve decided on?” The decided excuse. You said that today, and I thought that was huge. I’ve never really thought about it like that. What did I decide is my excuse for why I am not doing something? Is it legitimate? Or is it, you know? Most people see right through your excuses when you’re not doing something, most people aren’t going,”That’s a really good excuse.” Most of the time it’s like, “I don’t think so.”
Carrie:
Yeah. I love that. I think something for all of us to remember is that when you think about leadership, I love that you say that leadership is an action, leadership is an activity. It’s not just leadership of others. More often than not, it’s leadership of self, and we have to be continuously working on both. Our skills in how to help lead others, but also leading ourselves. So to that point, what have I decided is my excuse and I’m just going to tell everybody that this is just the way it is or this is where I’m stuck? But really progress is not something that we have decided on.
Keeping Ourselves on Track with Accountability Partners
Suzanne:
Yeah. I love when we have accountability partners. So at the beginning of the year, we decide what our goals are, what we want to accomplish, and then we have an accountability partner. And we should be checking in every month, go for a cup of coffee and say, “Okay, these were what my goals were. This is what I want to have accomplished. Are we there? Are we not there?” And I can say, “Hey Brenda, you told me you wanted to do this. Where are you? You’re not. What’s your decided excuse for that?” And so it’s different when you have somebody to talk it through. When I’m by myself, I can do a whole lot of pumping myself up as to one thing, but when I have to answer to somebody else, it’s a lot different.
Carrie:
Absolutely.
Brenda:
So it’s “Where are we going to set our intention, right?” That’s an activity that I like to do with all of my teams at the beginning of the year. What’s important to you this year? What do you want to accomplish? What are you going to intentionally put energy into so that you can make a shift. And that’s personal and professional.
So I have this little bracelet, thanks to one of my office managers where we set intentions with, and she got one for each of us. I’m still wearing last year’s because I didn’t fully meet my intentions. I haven’t taken it off yet. However, I think that’s really helpful.
Carrie:
It’s a cue.
Brenda:
It’s a visual. And I’m like, “Okay, I better get up and do a few more steps because I’m not hitting it.” Instead of setting resolutions or what have you, where are we going to set our intention this year? What are we going to focus on? Just make fun ways to change. It’s all about change. Not too many people embrace change. We all tend to resist it or reject it.
Suzanne:
Or we’ll try it for just a little bit of time until it hasn’t been super easy. And rather than push through it, we’re like, “Okay, now I’m going to quit.” So things have got to get hard before they get better. So it’s okay. Feel uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to feel uncomfortable.
Carrie:
Yes.
Brenda:
That’s where your accountability partner comes in handy, because I can talk to you about my discomfort and you can help me see my way through it. Keep encouraging me.
Supporting Each Other to Be Successful
Carrie:
For a dental practice, this is the start of creating a coaching culture where we’re all supporting each other to be successful. And so there’s a lot in this when you’re thinking about accountability, delegation, time management, and creating that kind of culture where we’re setting each other up to continuously develop and be coachable and also not just be committed to leading others but leading yourself. Something I tell teams a lot is that fulfillment in a dental practice is the combination of a personal commitment to excellence and a team commitment to excellence. You can’t find the fulfillment if we don’t have both. So ladies, that was good stuff.
Brenda:
That was great.
Carrie:
I’m amazingly lucky to work with these incredibly talented people going out and working with practices across the country. And so reach out to jmsn.com if you want to learn more about what it looks like to have that type of support in your practice. But in the meantime, what’s “mission critical” for you? And let’s start prioritizing the important things first. Thanks for being with us and we’ll see you next time.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Jameson Files. Visit us online. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify. See you next time.