How to Deal with Cliques, Low Engagement & Bad Meetings

Episode #359 with Adriana Booth

You may be thinking, “I don't need a coach.” But after today’s episode, you may change your mind! Today, Kirk Behrendt brings in Adriana Booth, one of ACT Dental’s lead coaches, to talk about three common challenges in dental practices: clique-forming, low engagement, and bad meetings. And as she explains, it all comes down to leadership. Without a strong leader, you won't have a strong team. To find out how a coach like Adriana can help you and your practice, listen to Episode 359 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

A strong team requires a strong leader.

Know your core values, priorities, goals, and have ownership.

You need to have consistent and frequent team meetings.

Talk about your core values at each team meeting.

Without team buy-in, you will have low engagement.

Preventing clique-forming in your practice is your responsibility.

Quotes:

“[Dentists] do not want to prepare for [team meetings]. ‘I don't know what to do. What are we going to talk about? How do I get my team to do any of this? I don't have time!’ That's what I hear.” (3:25—3:36)

“I've yet to meet a client who doesn't give me the blank stare or the outright, ‘You are crazy,’ when I say, ‘You need to have a weekly meeting. Two hours every week.’ They're like, ‘Do you know how much I can produce in two hours?’ I do. But I know how much more you can produce if you focus on your practice every week, and you increase your communication, and you actually work on the business.” (4:14—4:40)

“We call [clique-forming] a gang war, and it’s by department. It’s the hygienists against the assistants, the assistants against the admin team. And it’s only because we are not communicating well and working on things together. We’re allowed to separate, and everybody can have their own little gripes and their own little quarrels. But we’ve got to bring it together, and we’ve got to mix them up.” (5:23—5:47)

“It’s our job to look over and see, ‘Oh, wait. Amy and Stephanie are always whisper-whisper.’ Amy and Stephanie no longer sit together. When we do an exercise, they're not in the same room. Let's split the clique up. And eventually, they start finding, ‘Oh, I have a lot more in common with this other person. Oh, we’re on the same page. We can work together and really get this plane up in the air again.’” (5:48—6:13)

“[When you have low engagement], what's really going on is you have no team buy-in. What's your cause? What are your core values? What are they following? Where are your priorities? We have to have some structure and priorities and ownership.” (8:03—8:15)

“[Core values] need to be so ingrained in your brain. And if you're like me and Kirk, our brains, they're in there. But sometimes, they just can't hold all the goodness. So, I need to have it in front of me. I like to have it on a shirt. I want it on my mug. I want to know it, breathe it, live it.” (10:27—10:45)

“The first part is always going to be, ‘What is our focus?’ And our focus can't change every single week. We’re not going to hit results if we are always trying to catch a moving target. So, we need to sit down as a team, go through a fun exercise, get up out of your seat, brainstorm, mind map, and figure out, ‘What's going to be impactful to our practice? How can we measure it?’ We need to be able to see results.” (15:51—16:21)

“We need to have a focus. We have to have priorities, and we need to be able to measure them. And we need a quick way to resolve problems when they arise. And I don't mean problems like, ‘Oh, somebody didn't stock the hygiene drawer.’ I mean, ‘Why aren't we hitting our goal? Why are we four weeks behind?’” (16:22—16:38)

“Some of us are just very helpful, and then it looks