How to tap into your strengths as a dental business leader [Take the quiz]

What kind of dental business leader are you? Discover your strengths and your weak spots, and determine the leading style you lean into by taking our free quiz. And most importantly, use our tips to tap into what you’re amazing at and reach new heights. 

Running a dental practice comes with a unique set of challenges. As a dental business owner, you often juggle between providing exceptional patient care and managing the business aspects of your practice.

As a leader, you are already ambitious and have a personality that loves to … well, let’s just say it! You love to be the best. And this mindset is what drove you to become a leader in the first place. 

But how can you be an even better leader?

Self-awareness and willingness to grow are keys to self-improvement. So, in this article, we’re offering a few ideas for tapping into your strengths and strengthening your weaknesses. We’ve even included a free quiz below that will determine if you tend to lead using more emotion or more logic — that is, whether you lead using your heart or using your head. 

Key Takeaways about dental business leadership:

• A great leader keeps a finger on the pulse of their workplace culture
• Effective leadership requires asking yourself the hard-hitting questions
• Don’t overlook the thoughts and feelings of your employees — their two cents is worth more than you might think

Ask yourself: What do I do well as a dental business leader?

Let’s start positive — and don’t worry, we won’t actually get too negative later on! 

Just because your practice is extremely profitable doesn’t always equate to it being under good leadership. A low number of returning patients, the absence of patient referrals, a stressed-out team, and high staff turnover are some signs of management difficulties.

So instead of profit, think more about your process: How do you make decisions, and how do you communicate them to your team (and perhaps your patients)?

Dentist’s Advantage has a quote that we feel captures exactly how you should be thinking about leadership: 

“Leading your team may help ensure you provide your patients with optimal care, have a good reputation within the community, and earn a profit. However, proper leading may not just help your business and patients. It may also help your team to thrive professionally.”

What are you best at when it comes to being a dental business leader? Ask yourself: 

• Do I help cultivate a positive, productive work environment?
• Do I give my employees resources and tools that will improve their workflows?
• Do I offer constructive feedback and criticism with respect?
• Do I communicate regularly and effectively with my employees?

A direct way to figure out your strengths as a dental business leader is to ask your people. These are called “Upward Feedback Surveys,” and there are pre-made questionnaires available to support this activity.

Read more: 10 ways to create a healthy work culture your dental team loves [Free Guide]

When your employees feel like they can be honest about their experience in their workplace, and that their ideas, thoughts, and concerns will be heard and appreciated, it creates a culture of transparency.

And when you hear about what you do well? Lean into that!

And when you hear about what you don’t do well, you get to lean into that, too. Here’s how…

Dig deeper: What could you improve on as a dental business leader?

Like we said — we won’t go negative, but we are going to dig deeper.

It’s hard to nail down what you could do better when leading your team. If you knew better, you’d do better — you don’t know what you don’t know. And if you already have a highly profitable dental business, you may not see a need to bother. 

But again: Financial success doesn’t always mean you’re the best leader you can be — or even that your dental business is doing the best it can. A wise rule of thumb is that there’s always room for improvement.

What do you find difficult about leading a dental business and team? Ask yourself: 

• Do I tend to respond emotionally to mistakes made by team members?
• Do I resist change as much as possible?
• Do I exclude my team from any kind of decision-making?
• Do I see a lot of turnover among my team?

Again, survey your employees is a good way to determine how your leadership style is landing. It’s not fun to hear where we’re falling short, but as the saying goes: You can’t read the label from inside the jar — you need someone else to point out your blind spots.

Being open to constructive feedback will help you be an even greater leader in the long run, and also build goodwill with your team as they see changes based on their input.

Once you know your lesser tendencies as a leader, you can start evolving into a better one. 

Start Here: It’s not them, or you — it’s their processes

An efficient dental team is built on efficient processes, and makes it much easier for you to be a better leader. Yes, you need to make money. But you also need clean, streamlined processes for your staff. Why?

Because optimized processes lead to maximized revenue. And the more efficient your workflows are, the more effective your team will be, and your patients will be more satisfied as a result.

Efficiency improves morale — and with it, productivity — because employees aren’t stressed out, stretched thin, or rushing around and making careless mistakes that create more work for you later. (They’re also not bailing out to go work at a dental business that operates better.)

This is a win-win — clean workflows also lead to higher cashflow.

To start, as a leader, you don’t need to be “in the weeds” of your business every day, but it’s useful to be connected to your team’s administrative work just enough that you can see where their processes can be improved.

Then give your team the resources and tools to create and continuously refine their standard operating procedures (SOPs), which will enhance: 

• The culture of your workplace
• Your team’s productivity
• Your patients’ experience
• Your overall revenue

Investing in optimizing your team’s processes is part of what will make things easy for you as a better dental business leader. Will you give them the resources they need so you can have the results you want?

What’s the key? Keep strengthening your skills as a dental business leader

A good leader knows their strengths and weaknesses, but great leaders work every day to improve upon both. Just like your dental business’ technology and processes, your management style can always get better — there’s always more to learn!

It can be hard to be an effective leader when your team is overwhelmed with administrative work and a bottomless backlog. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to invest in that will help your team AND your business…

Our revenue cycle management services — including DCS Patient Billing, DCS Patient Scheduling, DCS Credentialing, and DCS Insurance Billing — are tools proven to save time, bring in more money, or both. 

Our end-to-end RCM solutions will increase your cash flow while taking a huge administrative load off your team, empowering them to focus on patient care. 

Lead your team confidently with RCM experts on your side: Book a free 30-minute consultation today.