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The Road to Greatness: Follow these five steps to build an outstanding team by Rebecca Kuma

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Header: Road to Greatness
by Rebecca Kuma

Building a great team is crucial to the success of your practice. To evaluate how well your staff is doing, ask yourself if they share your vision: Do they excel in areas that grow your business? Are they constantly looking for ways to learn and to improve your office? If your answers aren't "yes," it's time to examine the steps to creating a great team.

To achieve positive results you must invest time and energy into your team. To many orthodontists, this process may seem complicated or expensive, but be patient, work through each step and recognize that your investment will be worth it when your team is high-preforming and dedicated to growing your business.

1. Hire your weaknesses
Good hiring is the starting point for developing a motivated, thriving team. Surround yourself with people who are strong in areas where you and team members may be lacking. Find out what's missing by taking an inventory of team skills and strengths. Be specific about which roles team members perform well, and where they struggle. Add those struggles to the search criteria for your ideal candidate.

2. Know what you're looking for When filling key positions on your team:
  • Know exactly what you're looking for. The clearer you are about necessary qualifications for the position, the easier it will be to spot the ideal candidate. It's important to hire for skill—but also consider attitude, and how well a person would fit into the office culture; don't just hire from a résumé! Take extra time to understand candidates beyond their experiences or skill sets.
  • Stay patient. Accept that hiring the right person takes time and effort.
  • Set your expectations with new hires and current employees alike. Most doctors and managers assume that team members instinctively know what's expected of them—particularly if they've worked in other practices—but this isn't the case. Your expectations are usually different from a previous employer's. Be specific.
3. Practice professionalism
Employees who take professionalism seriously make better co-workers, help create a more productive workplace culture, strengthen a company's reputation and keep customers coming back. Unfortunately, not every employee understands professionalism and its importance, so explain to all team members what professionalism means in your practice and how to show it. Help them realize the sensitivity of the work they represent.
  • Ask them to treat everyone with respect.
  • Be sure they value other team members' time and efforts.
  • Let them know it's OK to admit mistakes or weaknesses, which are opportunities to learn and grow.
  • Implement a policy that keeps personal issues and social media at home.
  • Keep the topic of professionalism present in daily meetings, and never forget to demonstrate it yourself at all times. Lead by example—professionalism has to start at the top.
4. Mind the details
Take your expectations of employee performance down to specifics: Start with up-to-date job descriptions that describe the essential functions, tasks and responsibilities of each position, and outline the general knowledge and skills required for an employee to be successful. Be sure each team member has a copy, and that he or they understands the entire document.

Once the job functions are in place and understood, it's important to meet with employees individually to discuss areas where they'd like to improve. Think about where team members can learn new skills, work as a mentor and perform specific tasks that will grow the business. Assist them by providing training through internal and external sources. Once extra training is complete, they can share new information with the rest of the team.

Reaffirming job descriptions and areas where employees need to improve, and allowing them to gain additional training and education, should improve their performance and build value in their positions.

5. Develop problem-solvers
Doctors and managers often spend most of their days solving team problems, so it's important to empower team members to develop their own solutions with minimal help.

The next time an employee comes in with a problem, ask yourself if it's something they could solve on their own. If it is, sympathize and then ask what they think the solution should be. Listen, offer guidance, and ask her to handle it and to follow up with you later.

Letting your team know that you care about their issues, and are focused on helping them find resolutions, is a big step toward empowerment, and will free you up to focus on what's important, instead of what's urgent.

Building an outstanding team takes time and patience, but the reward is priceless—and will pay years of dividends to you and your practice.



Rebecca Kuma Rebecca Kuma, a practice educator with more than 20 years of service with OrthoSynetics. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees from California University of Pennsylvania. As a practice educator, she provides guidance in the areas of customer service, new-patient process, case acceptance, financials, scheduling and team building to dental and orthodontic clients through video education, webinars and meetings held throughout the United States. Her expertise is in comprehensive practice operations.



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April 2024
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