This article’s title may sound bleak but stay with me because it’s not unusual for dental leaders to struggle with team management issues. Many imagine there’s a secret sauce to get a team aligned and performing, if only they could find it.
Oliver Burkeman, in his book, Meditations for Mortals (Thanks Rita Zamora for the recommendation) quotes entrepreneur Andrew Wilkeson who describes why we get so frustrated and disappointed with ourselves.
“Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder, harnessed for productivity.”
The good news is that your neurotic focus on what you’re doing wrong is fueling your motivation to achieve. On the downside, dental leaders rarely acknowledge successes because they can get so grimly committed to the idea that they’re never good enough.
If you’ve ever heard yourself reply “Yeah, but…” when someone complements you, then you’re stuck on the hamster wheel of perfection fantasy.
Does this mean you should just tell your team to figure it out on their own because you’ll be taking leadership lessons from Real Housewives? Sadly no, but Burkeman’s book has inspired me to share my “meditations” for dental leaders.
Sharyn’s Suggestions for Good-Enough Leadership
Some of your employees won’t like you, they will never like you and that’s okay because it’s not their job to support your self-esteem.
Machiavelli famously responded to the question, “Is it better for a leader to be loved or feared,” by advising that ideally one should be both. But if you have to choose, it’s better to be feared. For our purpose, let’s substitute the word respect for fear. While its lovely to be loved, the truth is that you’re in a transactional relationship with your team: they get a salary in return for their work. While you can be friendly, you can’t really be friends when there is a power imbalance.
So- aim for respect. That may mean providing tough feedback, refusing raise increases, holding employees accountable and sometimes firing folks. This is tough for so many dentists because they are generally kind and caring people who dislike conflict. But your job is to insure the practice’s health; not to win the most loved boss award.
Some dentists are so uncomfortable with making people unhappy – they even sugar coat a diagnosis to prevent patients from getting too upset.
But being a people pleaser is not about ensuring other people are happy. It’s about protecting yourself from being with someone who is unhappy with you. This serves you (temporarily) not them. So don’t make Genghis Kahn your leadership model, but recognize you can’t always be Mr. Rogers either.
You’ll never have time to finish all your admin tasks. Never. A to-do list is like laundry – it regenerates every day. Accept that there won’t be a “I can finally relax moment.”
There are strategies to reduce your load of tasks and chores: schedule admin time every day, delegate more and stop scrolling on your cell phone. But ultimately, if you’re able to tackle that day’s priorities – take it as a win and go home. You don’t get Karma points for worrying about work on weekends. Take a breath, do the paperwork you can but more importantly, enjoy every moment you can.
Accept that you have a finite amount of time and every choice has good / bad consequences. To move forward, choose an action with potential consequences you can live with.
Dentistry seems to attract folks who fall victim to analysis paralysis. I’ve worked with dentists who complain for years about something but get so immersed with their over-thinking, they do nothing else. Ironically, this indecisiveness is also a decision- it’s the decision to tolerate the current situation.
Because most of us can only live one timeline at a time, (aside from parallel universes) every action requires a decision not to do something else. When I attended a high school in NYC geared for “gifted underachievers” (I’m not making up that euphemism) I had a mini breakdown when I realized that I was going to have make endless choices forever without knowing the consequences. I was so freaked out that a friend and I cut school one day to go to the New York public library to research existentialism. (Oh, the irony of a 15-year-old cutting class to go to a library to read about philosophy – isn’t that the definition of a gifted under achiever?)
But let’s get back to your world. It’s no wonder dentists get paralyzed with indecision – who wants to choose wrongly? Burkeman writes,
“It can be alarming to realize that much of life gets shaped by what we’re actually trying to avoid.”
This segues into my last meditation for dental leaders.
You will make mistakes. That’s inevitable. You will disappoint others and yourself. But don’t live your life in a defensive posture. Don’t be one of those people who’d rather complain than change. Elbert Hubbert, a keen observer of human nature from the early 1900’s, has sage (and amusing) advice:
People who want milk should not seat themselves in the middle of a field in hopes that a cow will back up to them.
Keep moving, my friends even if it seems like you’re going backwards. Own that you are an imperfect leader, because like everyone else, you are a work in process.
Mistakes mean you’re reaching for a higher branch on your path towards wisdom. Feel gratitude for your failures because they are the milestones of your growth.
And if you’d like support from a gifted underachiever – you know how to find me.
