There was a time when the quality of a leader was defined by the size of the font spelling out their name on the front door … a time when leadership was earned in letters only (DDS, MD, JD, MBA), in the prestige of university attended, in recognition of the family name, zip code of origin, or the amount of money a bank was willing to lend an individual. Leadership might have been defined by the size of the office, size and number of its windows, and the floor on which it was housed.
Looking back to my early days of adulthood, I was fooled into believing that this was the kind of leadership I wanted to emulate. I saw it play out—day in, day out around me—and never questioned it. After all, I already had the letters, I already had a bank willing to lend me money. And it wasn’t just me, many other people around me also seemed to have accepted this way of thinking. I believe, to a certain extent, a big part of me was preprogrammed to become that kind of leader. That leader was to be revered and respected.
In my days of academia and early employment, I noticed that the people I looked up to the most were terribly unapproachable. The more I feared those leaders, the more power they had over me. In my eyes and in the eyes of many of my contemporaries, a leader was to be put on a pedestal and could do no wrong. No one hoping to keep their job would dare point out their mistakes or fallacies. A leader, regardless of results, was akin to a low-level divine. Micromanaging was the style; shaming was all the rage. As a leader, it was arrogance that set one apart and arrogance that elevated one above the rest.
And that was the kind of leadership that I brought to Happy Tooth, when I started the company in 2005. With my age, my size (5’1” and 113 lbs.), and my lack of experience, I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously. So, I stood taller (on a soapbox) and got meaner. The shaming went deeper. The arrogance got louder. “You will listen to me!” I shouted. Yet, my employees failed to listen because of my poor approach, because of my poor delivery. My employees failed to listen, because I neglected and refused to acknowledge them. I required their respect without earning it. All along, as I was failing in my leadership, I kept thinking that there was something wrong with them, not me.
Happy Tooth became an office with a revolving door for employees who had come and gone. Keep in mind that for more than a decade we were a practice of four operatories, maybe six or seven employees total; the list of those who could not run out fast enough today is at 100 employees.
I was the obstacle
It’s out of very dark times that we come to a place of enlightenment, and for me it was no different. Facing my own mortality in a battle of cancer, among other things, I finally was lucky enough to look inward. I needed to figure out how I was going to continue to live out the rest of my days, after the war my family and I had endured in making every moment moving forward count. Looking back at how things had been, I realized that my past wasn’t worth going back to. What I had found, in the many days I spent crying on the floor, was that when it came to running my practice, I was the first obstacle that needed to be overcome. Along with that, my leadership style of “mean me” and my soapbox needed to go. I was what stood in the way of my practice’s profitability. I was what stood in the way of my team’s sanity. I was what stood in the way of everyone’s happiness.
Empowered through examples
Around the same time, the COVID pandemic hit. Serendipitously, the Productive Dentist Academy (PDA), among many other consulting companies, had a business foundations course designed to open the minds of practice owners into what our futures could become. During this eight-week course, I met PDA faculty doctors, practice owners themselves, who practiced servant leadership. Drs. Dave Diehl, Chad Johnson, and Wade Kifer embodied everything I ever wanted to be as a practice owner, a skilled clinician, and a leader. They exemplified what it looked like to take care of a team by putting the needs of others first, rewarding their hard work, and lifting them up. I’d also met Drs. Bruce Baird and Victoria Peterson, who showed me that with purpose and passion I could bravely do good, and the rest of the folks at PDA held my hand as I pursued this journey and continued to grow into this new leadership style—the servant leadership.
There are many details in between filled with roses, red shoes, bags and wallets, Oprah moments, and spending time off producing so that we could fly as a team for a night out in Dallas. Happy Tooth went from hiring employees who would work for us (clock-watchers) to hiring incredible individuals to work with us (please note the distinction here) … to hiring innovators and inspired leaders. These aren’t buzzwords, and our social media isn’t just for show. We work together. The term “staff” has been permanently deleted from our vocabulary. No one person is more important than another. I always preface this by saying that I feel like I shouldn’t say this, yet I do: No patient comes ahead of our team.
How did it all materialize?
What helped us turn it all around and simplify this leadership dynamic were the words of my dear friend Chuck Blakeman. He’d written several books, the most recent of which is Re-HUMAN-izing the Workforce (by Giving Everybody Their Brain Back). He states simply that the mission of the practice is the boss. We hung onto those words and ran with them.
It happened with time and intention from all of us. It happened with my team’s forgiveness and their grace, and it happened with an open mind, relationships, generous listening, a genuine desire to care for one another, and with being human first.
Best. Day. Ever.
You’d think that the moment I’d be most proud of would be the day I held my highest production, the day Dr. Chad Johnson, my implant mentor, traveled to Chicago and watched me place my one hundredth implant, or when I performed my thousandth root canal or ten thousandth extraction. No, my proudest moment is the day we all came together as a team to solve a problem.
We were experiencing turbulence. Much of our team had been with us for more than a decade, some close to two. We had just hired two new employees and were up to about 15 employees. The new assistant and associate had been with us less than four months. We all felt out of sync. And this was the part that was neat to see—no one was talking behind each other’s backs or complaining. We just weren’t smooth sailing like we used to, and we missed it.
I gathered the team after work one day and let the new hires off the hook to enjoy the day early. I chose a small room. Some people sat on the couch. Others brought in chairs, and they even offered to bring me a chair, which I declined. I very purposefully positioned myself on the floor. I sat below everyone to create an atmosphere that they were above me. I was looking up at them; I was looking up to them. I presented the situation. “Guys, here’s what’s happening: there seems to be confusion from our patients about treatment plan presentation, leading to low acceptance in the associate’s schedule, and our new assistant is struggling with learning our protocols. How do we solve this?”
The meeting awakened them. Each came with solutions and innovations far superior to the ones I would have come up with myself. But more importantly, they collaborated and connected. Camaraderie deepened. Trust and support became more real. They united. And they felt empowered by it. I think often of that moment and am so proud to see how far each one of my kids has come. We’ve come so far collectively and as a result, our patients have benefited.
- Amanda, almost 19 years in, is our office manager, my rock, my everything. She’s who I’d pick to be on a deserted island with to reinvent the human spirit.
- Sarai, mom of a 4-year-old, will never let any of my BS slip.
- Stephanie, almost 15 years with us, has grown from being a meek and shy young woman into someone who can fiercely fill an empty day.
- Marella, a mom of three kids, some grown and some still in diapers, knows what I need when I need it, and will track down every last component of the implant and endo system.
- Yesica, a single mother of a preteen, remembers each patient and interaction as if it happened only moments ago.
- Denise, the RDH, is the superstar who ran our hygiene department while her teammate was recovering from surgery.
- Denise, the future hygienist or nurse, is far kinder than most humans are capable.
- Diane, the RDH whom I hired 17-plus years into my career was worth waiting for.
- Leslie is forgiving and driven. She’s willing to step up or down for the practice and the patient, regardless of her needs or desires.
- Gerda, a badass mom, is smarter than she’ll ever give herself credit for.
- Isabel, the ever-smiling, calm-as-a-cucumber, chaos-containing practice concierge, greets each patient encounter with an attitude I wouldn’t be able to replicate if I tried many lifetimes from now.
Finding solutions to impossible problems doesn’t and shouldn’t rest only on the shoulders of the practice owner. Problems are better solved with the experience and expertise of the entire team. They are best solved when we connect on a human level for the betterment of our practice, our patients, and one another.
What took place in that small room as we sat shoulder to shoulder is what lies in every single one of your practices—the ability to elevate the practice lies within each of your team members. Our teams live in our hearts. Each team member has unique talents, and the combination of those talents brings with it its own strengths. Each team member is smart enough, strong enough, and independent enough to be a force to be reckoned with. Each one of them is magic, but more so when we’re all together.
I am not talking about production, or numbers, or overhead, or risk factors. I am talking about being human … about making a life together. As practice owners, we might have been taught long ago that we were supposed to be the hero of the story. How outdated is that? We are not the heroes of this story. We must lower ourselves and allow ourselves to be a conduit for the magic to come to life. As the saying goes, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
