Dentaltown January 2022 - 12

howard speaks
column
Coach Your Team to Success
In baseball, the rule is three strikes and you're out.
You should be applying a similar rule when it comes to
human resources issues in your practice, too.
What's the issue?
If you fi re someone and this news comes as a surprise
to them, you need to reexamine your ability to manage
and lead a team.
Unless an employee has done something egregious,
a fi rst offense should lead to a warning, not an outright
dismissal. You should identify the problem and give the
employee an opportunity to correct their behavior, providing
them with feedback and guidance on how to succeed.
It's true that occasionally, no matter how many times
you tell someone they're not performing and meeting
expectations, they just don't get it. However, more often
than not, managers want to avoid confrontation, so they
don't address the issues and instead avoid the person.
That's doing a horrible job of leading a team.
What's the cause?
An example: Your practice opens at 7 a.m. but your
assistant rolled in around 7:10.
That might bother most dentists, but how many would
bring it up right away? Chances are, you'd consider it a
one-time thing and not say anything-but the incident
would stick in the back of your mind. The next time it
happened, it would make you angry, because you haven't
forgotten the previous incident and you also expect that
your assistant " should know better " ... but you still
probably wouldn't say anything, you'd just seethe inwardly.
But the third time it happened, you'd erupt like
a volcano: " I can't stand this anymore-you're fi red! "
This person had no idea something like this was going to
happen; they have monthly bills they need
to pay and now they're shocked, saddened
and unemployed, all because their coach
never showed up for the game.
Watch any professional baseball game
and you'l see how the coach is intimately
involved during the entire game, standing
at the sidelines calling in plays, timeouts,
etc. Most dentists, meanwhile, retreat to
their private offi ce between every patient
and shut the door.
by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, publisher, Dentaltown magazine
12 JANUARY 2022 // dentaltown.com
What's the solution?
I think a better manager would call the assistant into
a private offi ce, explain the problem, and then open a
Word document and leave the offi ce while the employee
types out in their own words what went wrong and why
it will no longer be a recurring problem. Many times,
you'll come back to learn that she does this because
she always stays an hour after the practice closes, while
the other assistants fl y out the door right at quitting
time, and she doesn't think that's fair. This gives you
the information you need to know so you can work
together to address the issue and build a winning team.
Even in " right-to-work " states, fi ring an employee
can be problematic from a legal standpoint. To protect
your business, you need to demonstrate that you've
given an employee multiple opportunities to correct
the issue at hand, and you can't do that unless you
discuss it with them.
If you hate this part of the business, you need to
delegate to an offi ce manager who has the same authority
to make plays that match their responsibility. You're
either the coach or a player, because you can't be both.
So, play ball ... and set yourself up so your entire team
plays to win. ■
Discover the right way
to address team issues
HR expert Paul Edwards discussed how to
improve team performance in an article that
ran in the June 2021 issue of Dentaltown,
which includes a free downloadable
corrective action form. Find the link in the
digital version of this column online at
dentaltown.com/magazine.
http://www.dentaltown.com/magazine http://www.dentaltown.com
Dentaltown January 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown January 2022
