Is Your Dental Practice Infected with This Common Team Issue?

I call it the Compartment Mindset Syndrome, and it can infect even some high-performing practices. It’s when team members, often those who have settled in and become well-established together, become locked into their own private worlds, seeing things from their perspective, rather than that of the practice. They can often be very good at what they do, but they are not much interested in participating in collaborative measures beyond the scope of what they are doing now. In a practice with Compartment Mindset Syndrome, people tend to head to their respective corners and do their thing, with little communication. Each person just wants to do his or her job, without interference or outside input.

It’s a kind of isolated thinking that often stands in the way of making progress with patients. For instance, say you are checking on a patient in hygiene and you can tell that the patient is possibly on the verge of making a commitment to a new level of care and that with some further discussion about their possibilities you feel you could really make some headway in changing their level of engagement. A great team will recognize this opportunity when it occurs and adapt according in the moment to take advantage of it. Those who are stuck in their compartments, however, not only don’t see the opportunity, they actively avoid it. The hygienist is worried about keeping to her schedule, the assistant wants you back in the operatory, and you end up rushing through the process and missing the moment.

Part of the reason this mindset takes hold is because of the traditional hiring and training process, where you look for someone with the right experience or special training—someone who “knows the job.”  The problem is that they acquired that experience in another practice or in a classroom, so while they may have a solid understanding of the job tasks, they still don’t have a sense of what that role means in the context of your practice.

This is a great example of where the right leadership makes all the difference. It’s not enough to give direction on tasks and do follow ups. You have to give the team a vision. They need to feel excited about being part of a greater purpose, they need to understand how what they do contributes to that purpose, and they need to be able to look beyond the boundaries of their compartments and think collaboratively and creatively in the pursuit of that greater vision. That’s what the best teams do.

You accomplish this through team retreats and workshops, through regular brainstorming and planning meetings, through online education opportunities and regular social events. That’s how you build a team that is a real team, not just a collective of independent professionals.

This kind of leadership is becoming more important than ever as dentistry continues to evolve quickly. Clinical possibilities, patient value expectations, and competition for discretionary spending have never been greater. That’s why, when you are thinking about team qualifications, the experience that really matters most is not the previous job experience they arrive with, it’s the experience they are capable of providing to your patients today.