A practice built with character is a practice made up of loyalty, positive culture, and long-term growth. Kiera provides listeners with a list of questions to ask that will set the tone for showing up as the best, truest version. She then gives specific takeaways to meet that ideal culture and stay consistent.

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The Dental A Team (00:01)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I hope you're having an amazing day. I hope you're having fun. I hope you remember that dentistry is honestly the greatest profession we could ever get to be a part of. So I hope you're just so excited. I hope you're loving your life. I hope you're happy. I hope that if you're not, that you're committing to make a change in the next week so that way you can be happy. My husband showed me this reel the other day that said, it was from like, I don't know, a Buddhist monk, I think. And he said that yesterday is dead.

Today is all we have and tomorrow is not born yet. And so don't wait for the happy life. You want the happy day. And I've thought about this so much because I think so many of us wait for happiness. We wait and we think, once I get this or once I do that or when I have the team or when my practice doesn't have this, then I'll be happy. Then I won't be stressed. And it's like, no, it's actually on the day. It's today. It's the decisions I'm making today. It's the pieces that I'm doing today and finding that happy.

And they said when you can have a happy day is when you have the happy life. I think when you can have the less like the more stress free day more consistently, it's when you have the more stress free life consistently. And so with that, just reminding you that it's okay. You don't have to do this alone. And I'm here for you and our team's here for you. And dentistry really is one of the greatest professions you could ever be a part of. So welcome. I hope that if you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm Kiera. I love dentistry. I love helping people. love life.

And I love helping people get the life that they always dreamed of and making that a reality. Today, I wanna talk about ⁓ character. My dad and I were talking and my dad said, in the word character, there's the word act. And I had never picked up that the word character has act. ⁓ And I wanna talk about some leadership pieces today and culture pieces for your practice on building a practice with character and how people act. And...

I think character is something that you hire, yes, of like how people are naturally and who they are naturally, but also I think it's something that you do lead. ⁓ when we look at this, like when you have a practice of character of how people are acting, it does create loyalty, it does create culture, and it does create long-term growth. And so for everybody just going through that, ⁓ looking at that and seeing what is your character possibly? What is the character of your practice possibly?

And what things can we do to evolve your character to make it be a place of things that you want, of the loyalty, the culture, the long-term team. ⁓ And when I look at really awesome practices, the way people act and the character that that practice has is truly something embedded deep into the roots of that practice. going through that, ⁓ Dental A Team's goal is to help offices build to scale, to have the life that they want, ⁓ but to do it in a way that's meaningful.

that it's fulfilling, that it has purpose for you. And so ⁓ this is truly trying to help build a culture for team members to stay, for patients to be raving and for leaders to truly be proud of the practice that they built. So character with this act, like step one, if you want, like we'll just kind of go into this whole process is like how you act when it's hard. ⁓ And I think when I look at teams,

Culture is something that's like not built during easy times, it's revealed during the hard ones. When our production's not hit, when the cash flow's not there, when like all the things are pushing upon you, how do you act? Do you respond with conflict with consistency, clarity and compassion? Do you admit mistakes as a leader? Do you prioritize long-term trust over short-term comfort? Like how is your character in those hard times? And for you as a doctor, and there's the book, Extreme Ownership by Jacque Willings, and I think about this so much of

Like, okay, what is my culture of my company? But what is the culture of me? Because my team ultimately is a reflection of me and how do I act? In high school, I was nominated as most poised and I thought that was such a weird phrase for me to get like most poised. But I actually think about that a lot and like when things are hard, do I lose my temper? Do I yell? Do I shout? How do I act? For me, I almost think like I have the tiger like queen strength. Like what if I was the queen of this

I don't know, like kingdom, my business. Who do I need to show up as? And that character, like really looking to see how do you act. And it's crazy because when you look at a team and you want a team to be a certain way, you got to look at the leaders and how are they showing up? How are they acting? And when my dad talked about this character, it's all about how you act. It's how you act in the hard times, how you act in the good times, how you act when no one's watching. It's how you act when people are watching. And what is your ultimate character in your practice? And so, ⁓

When doctors start to have consistency, clarity, and compassion, when you say like, kind is clear, ⁓ when you're more clear, when you admit mistakes and you have humility, but in addition to that, you also are focusing on making sure that I don't just admit the mistake, but I find the solution to the mistake so it doesn't happen again. ⁓ When we're doing long-term, we have uncomfortable conversations and we're building trust over short-term solutions. Like I'm not just saying things.

And who I was at a leader at the beginning of the NLA team compared to who I am today, she's a much more mature grownup version of herself. ⁓ And it came through a lot of these hard conversations. It came through a lot of these hard awarenesses. It came from asking people, but also asking myself, did I show up as the person that I want to be and the leader that my team needs me to be? And if not, what do I need to do to change that? And so

Thinking about that, that's the culture you're building. And as much as I don't want to be like a rip on leaders, leaders are the mold. Like how you, what you do and don't do is a subconscious theme that runs through your practice. And so I think when people feel like they have no hope and they have no way of changing things and there, there is no solution. The answer is like, there actually is a solution. There actually is a process and a path out. It just sometimes is starting with you.

and not sometimes starting with you, it's always starting with you. And so if you can focus on building that and the culture you're building constantly, that's going to help and that's gonna lead into the next phase and that's gonna be through core values. And core values, I used to think were so laissez-faire. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, core values. But ⁓ really it's hard to hire the character you want. It's hard to continue to create it if you don't even know.

what it looks like in your practice. so core values kind of give this like framework. call them like, to me, they're like a cookie cutter is how I envision it. Like here's the cookie cutter, not like that we're a cookie cutter practice, but it's the shape. So a cookie cutter shapes the dough into what they want it to be. And core value shape the practice into what we want it to be and helps us have this, I would say filter of who we're hiring for. And so it's, what are the three to five core values that define your team and how you work? Now owners,

Go back to when you first started your practice and what were the three core things that really made your practice what you want it to be? For me, it was always do the right thing, fun and ease. Like from day one, those were the pieces. Those are our core. And if you look at it, it's do the right thing for the company and the practice. We like to have a ton of fun when we're doing it. I I love sprinkles. I love to the sparkles. I love to add the glitter. I love to add the fun. I love to surprise and delight. And then it's to do everything with ease. How can I make this easier for a practice? I don't want things to be hard for an office.

But like that's truly the core of when I started a Dental A team. Now we've evolved into who we want people to be on our team. We have other people, pieces of ownership. We have pieces of passion for excellence and results focused. We have pieces of grit. And so there's other core values that have come and there's core and then there's aspirational. ⁓ But I want to make sure that the people we're hiring and filtering through have that character in them already. I don't want to try to develop that in them. I want to expand it once they're a part of our company.

but I don't want to try and convince somebody to have grit. Like grit's a core portion of you. So what that does is once we figure out what our core of our company is, then we have those in our hiring, we have those in our reviews, we have those in our meetings and decision-making. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the core values when I've been looking at team members and I look to see rating this person on our core values, how do they fit? And a lot of times the people that are not elevating our team are the ones who usually are getting lower scores on the core values.

And it becomes very crystal clear for me. And so what we do is we hire. So when you're having this, you hire based on core values. You filter your company right now based on your core values. And again, this is the code of conduct of how we act. This is the character, the culture that I want to have in my practice. And when you start to bring people in like this, when I start to have people who naturally do the right thing, naturally look for ease, naturally have passion for excellence and results focus, naturally have grit, and they've got life experiences to teach me about that.

They fit into our company. And when I started to really like, I'm not talking service level, but dig into this and to have the character and the culture and the company, this is when team alignment flourishes. You get reviews, things feel easy. Like there's this mystical flow of businesses that I always thought was so impossible to get. And I found out that actually it's real. And so when you have it, you start to build this culture.

And so what I say for you is write down your values. do assess ours. get our core values get assessed every single quarter. We define them. We have them there. The team works on them every single Wednesday. We have core value shout out every single Wednesday in the company. We have them on their monthly one-on-ones. We have them in their reviews and we review them every quarter to make sure these truly are the guiding core values of our company. I have changed them multiple times throughout ownership ⁓ because it's about the character and the culture of how we act.

And then this is something that goes up on the wall. So for you guys in your offices, have your core values everywhere. We review them every single quarter. The team knows them, but they're part of the core of who you are and what you guys act and believe in. And the number three is like having a culture of accountability and grace. so that's balancing. Like I found leadership as a balance of high expectations and genuine care. And I actually think Britt on our team does such a great job of this, of like, these are the expectations. These are the standards. This is our culture.

but there's also like a care of you as a human and being fair to you and ⁓ having that. it's like, and Britt is so good at clear expectations and follow through consistently where we don't just say this is how we act and this is what we do. And then that's kind of like tossed in the back corner and how we truly act, that's your true character. So it's one of those things like we don't want our core values and our company to be aspirational. We want it to be accurate. And so,

Use feedback as a tool and not punishment. I used to be really, really bad at this. This is a zone that is like a huge growth for me of giving honest feedback. And I remember I had a team member tell me once like, Kiera, you don't always have to tell me I'm doing a great job. If I'm not doing a great job, I want you to tell me and give me that feedback so I can get better. so it's having a culture of how we act, if we give feedback and we have honest feedback, we don't shy away from those uncomfortable conversations, but we do them with grace and true, genuine care.

And then I think about my husband in their hospital and they have a culture where it's a no fault culture. And what they want is they want people to bring their mistakes to the table with the solutions. That way they can continually fix and improve the culture there and improve the protocols. And working in a hospital, think that's so important because at the end of the day, we don't want patients to die. And so if people do make mistakes, which are going to happen, they're celebrating those. They're celebrating the wins and they're...

just as often as we're correcting and fixing mistakes. But we're doing it in a way where that's our culture. So it's these high expectations with this genuine care. And when I found that leaders actually have these feedback loops, when they give them on their one-on-ones, when they tell them true feedback or there's true ownership within an organization, your morale improves, the passive aggressive nature diminishes, ⁓ people feel less egg shelly. There's a culture of trust. There's a...

There's a culture of ⁓ being around people that you enjoy being around because you're not scared of what are people saying about you. But when this doesn't happen, people walk on eggshells and it's artificial harmony. And I think artificial harmony is one of the best ways to describe it. And so looking at your practice to see, do we have feedback? Do we have artificial harmony? ⁓ And don't lie to yourself. Don't make it worse than it is and don't make it better than it is, but make it realistic up to what it is.

because this is something where if we don't have feedback and we're not having one-on-ones and we're not able to have like open to where I'm giving feedback on a consistent basis rather than just when you're in trouble or when you've done something wrong, I'm doing it when you're doing something right, I'm doing it when we're doing something wrong, all of that's gonna be super important for us. And so looking at that to see where is the true character and culture of my company. And so when I look at this, it's like characters in hard times, core values are part of the core.

and then we have accountability with grace. Like that's the formula. Like who are we, what's our culture, what's our character, what are our core values? And then how do we have accountability with grace and love? And I think when practices really take this on, you're able, and like owners especially, that's gonna trickle down to the rest of your team. It's gonna trickle down to every other person in your practice. So for this, this is how you build a legacy practice. This is how you build.

a culture that can withstand the growth and the bumps and the hard times and the great times. It's the one where you know these people are gonna be with you for a long time. And so this is where it starts with character, not just KPIs. Like both are important, but having a practice of character of how we act and really thinking of how do we really act on the hard times, on the good times, on the bad times, on the rocky times? What are our core values? And then what's our accountability and check-in and feedback? When you get those pieces in play,

It's magic. It's incredible. And it's not overnight. These things don't happen overnight, but they are incredible for you. So I would just say like, this is leadership. This is leadership 101 for you. This is how you build it. And hopefully just giving you another perspective and some ideas of how you can improve the culture and the character of your practice with ease. If we can help in any way, we want to help you build a practice that stands out because of who you are, to where you get people coming to your practice because of the raving reviews in the community.

of the culture of the reputation and so building that for you and you might not be there today, but that's okay. We can get you there as long as you're willing to put in the work you're willing to change and you're willing to evolve. And that's something I'm obsessed with. So let us help you reach out and ⁓ you can reach out at [email protected]. can go to our website, click on a book, a call, let's talk about it. It's okay. It's a no judgment zone. It's just there with true love, with true solutions to help you.

This is what we're obsessed with. This is what we do. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.