6 tips for building a dynamic team

It is no secret that the real strength of a dental practice is the team.

It is the entire team that works together to create a satisfactory experience for your patients, including providing exceptional oral healthcare and making them comfortable with their visits.

The team also plays a prime role in building your practice's image. If you also want to build a strong dental staff to make your practice more successful, consider these six tips.

1. Step into the role of a leader -- confidently

Shen Chao.

If you are hesitant about embracing your role as a leader, it will lead to a poorly managed dental team. The team members might be brimming with talent, but their skills need to be channeled by a visionary and powerful leader for the practice to be successful. Hence, never avoid counseling, sharing, educating, or providing feedback. Your team needs your guidance in multiple aspects to perform better.

Also, knowing the difference between being assertive and being officious as a leader is important. Keep in mind that as a leader you need to encourage, inspire, guide, and create ownership among the employees for their respective roles.

2. Transparency is the best workplace policy

Transparency in operations, growth, and communications all help build trust between you and your staff. This foundation of trust promotes better performance and also enables you to enhance talent retention. For instance, you can share the growth of your practice, its profits, and positive and negative performance aspects. This will benefit you on multiple levels by making your employees feel involved and building a more successful practice.

3. Training nurtures talent

The most underrated aspect of a dental practice is employee training. A majority of dentists don't recognize the value of upgrading their team's skillset with contemporary practices. Your practice will be replete with incidents of inefficiencies and setbacks, if your staff is poorly trained.

Investing in team training is like empowering your practice to be more profitable. Besides, employees with updated skills and professional know-how are more confident in their jobs. This helps them provide better patient care, thus garnering increased customer satisfaction. More satisfied customers means more popularity, which will eventually help you earn more patients.

4. Appropriate recognitions go a long way

Rewards work wonders when it comes to motivating your team members to outdo themselves. So always remember to appreciate and recognize good work, whenever and wherever it's due.

Don't go out of the way with recognitions, as this does more harm than good to the professional culture. But make it very clear about exactly what the reward system of your workplace entails.

5. Know the importance of a strong hygiene team

The most profitable practices have a robust hygiene team that delivers exceptional patient care. Dentists must always be on the same page as their dental hygiene team when it comes to having a consistent philosophy of care.

Also, ensure that your hygiene team does full justice to the extent of oral care that they are licensed to provide. Communicate your goals clearly to the hygiene team so that everyone can work together toward achieving them.

6. Positivity at work

If the culture of your dental practice is positive, your patients are sure to pick up on this positivity. A healthy work culture helps build the image of your practice.

You can work toward this by implementing some easy procedures, such as resolving issues within the team. Also, put in place an internal system of practicing simple courtesies. These small steps make a big impact on the success of your dental practice.

Keep in mind these valuable tips and you will be able to build a dynamic dental team, which in turn will help your dental practice flourish.

Shen Chao is the online marketing manager for Dr. Joshua Hong's Smile Clinic in Goodyear, AZ. He can be reached through Dr. Hong's website.

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