Tips & Articles

Tip of the Month

BE PEOPLE SMART!

Make Your Team The Best It Can Be with Improved People Skills.
Create Greater Team Communication, Productivity, Effectiveness and Harmony!

Are you frustrated with the level of cooperation, communication and team work in your dental office? Why is conflict so prevalent on the dental team? The answer could be that your team members are weak in their "people skills"! Maybe they lack an understanding of the four basic behavior traits (dominance, extroversion, patience and conformity) and how differently from themselves their team members can "wired!"

A team member working with someone whose dominant behavior trait is different from theirs may feel like they are from two different planets in the way they communicate and approach their work. Guess what….they are! Doctors can be very frustrated trying to manage people who operate and think so differently from themselves. The key to a high performing, low stress and highly profitable dental practice is to making the "people skills" on your team as strong as your practice management systems (production, collection, etc.)

I use the Professional DynaMetrics Program (PDP) survey to assess each team member's strengths and help the team understand how to work more effectively with each other to reduce conflict. PDP is a worldwide leader in top-of-the-line behavioral assessment solutions for businesses. As a certified PDP professional, I have helped many dental practices improve morale and productivity and solve one of the toughest challenges facing dental teams today: selecting, leading, managing and growing the right people.

It is as simple as having each staff member take a five minute survey. The results can be sent to you and discussed in a telephone coaching call, or in a team meeting in your office. The powerful insights for team members and those who manage them from the PDP surveys can create more productive and effective interactions in the work place. The return on this investment of time and money comes back to dental teams many times over. The cost for a single employee turnover is 1.5 times their annual salary. Many dental teams are loosing tens of thousands of dollars each year in employee turnover, not to mention the stress it can cause!

PDP can help your team:

Increase team moral and job satisfaction by understanding individual motivators and stressors
Decrease conflict and develop better conflict resolution skills
Better understand each others communication and work styles
Increase employee performance and productivity
Improve teamwork
More effectively match employees to tasks
Improve employee retention and reduce turnover costs
Be more effective in selecting the right person when hiring new staff members

You've worked hard to make the "systems" side of your dental practice strong. Now make it a goal to strengthen the "people" side for better teamwork and leadership skills! (To help assess how you might improve your team functioning, download the Team Effectiveness Questionnaire.)