”Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles.”
- John P. Kotter 1
Ask a select number of people and the answer will be similar. What say you when comparing management to leadership?
Is it an apples-to-apples comparison? Or would you say there’s a distinct difference?
Actually, the two are thoroughly different processes. I’ll even go so far as to say they’re entirely different mindsets.
This is especially true for you as a Solopreneur or Dentrepreneur®? intent on breaking free from the solo practice environment. Sure, there’s a bit of security in keeping all your ducks-in-a-row, managing the day to day, treating patients, etc.
The call of leadership
Your dentrepreneurial success relies heavily on your ability to lead more than it does on your ability to manage. TWEET THIS
And change is the fruit of your effort.
Management rarely changes things. In fairness, it embraces the need to change but it’s much more concerned on the processes that guide the change initiatives.
Leadership, on the other hand, thrives on change. Leaders raise their sails and willingly embark into occasionally uncharted waters.
According to Kotter, your leadership (as a Dentrepreneur®? ) is to “define,” “align,” and “inspire.” Do this consistently and you’ll occupy at least the top 10% or less of dental practices and dental enterprises that lead change.
The 3 Leadership Practices of Dentrepreneurs® Who Shake-Things-Up on the Change-Front
1-Define your culture around leadership
As a dentrepreneurial leader your consistent task is team motivation. Your motive is to lead them to think and work like “leaders.” TWEET THIS
Why is this a vital task?
It has to do somewhat with management. Don’t get me wrong you need it (management).
But while it’s perhaps been the default within your solo organization it takes a secondary seat to leadership in your culture as a Dentrepreneur®.
Details beg for attention. And you must be flexible and scalable enough to give it to them.
Leadership focuses on vision. Not to the exclusion of necessary or effective management practice but more as a matter of focus.
“For every entrepreneur or business builder who was a leader, we needed hundreds of managers to run their ever-growing enterprises.” 2
Be a leader and leverage leadership throughout your organization. Loop management around your ever increasing tasks, people, and culture time challenges.
2-Align your culture around measurable accountability
Not all accountability practices are good or effective. Sometimes holding your team members accountable is nothing more than managerial control.
This constraint will “kill” innovation and your emerging leaders who are present and equipped to deliver it. Do away with “command-and-control” thinking.
This old-school approach can cause significant problems in today’s fluid, scalable organizational culture. You hinder your team’s effectiveness when you place accountability on them for the mere sake of keeping an eye on things.
Accountability in a dentrepreneurial enterprise should be measurable. Align it around individual team member ownership of your values rather than task oriented, busy work that diminishes their leadership capacity.
Leaders will naturally rise to a higher level of performance. But you must set achievable measurements. TWEET THIS
Implement goals that raise the water level and lift all “boats” into success.
Bottom-line: stop measuring stuff that stimulates control and begin measuring what leverages your entire dentrepreneurial enterprise into owning and working according to your culture’s values.
3-Inspire innovation and improvement that compels your patient care
Why are you in “business?” The practice of dentistry is about patient care, right?
How soulful is your vision as Dentrepreneur® for innovative, ever-improving patient care? And more so, how full of soul is your team to that result?
Those questions tug at the heart of why you do what you do.
Your dentrepreneurial vision ultimately has one purpose - inspire a level of patient care that you could not accomplish solo. TWEET THIS
That brand of inspiration will infuse your culture with more responsive thinking and less reactionary thinking. Prior to becoming a Dentrepreneur® you perhaps reacted more than you responded proactively.
Now, you’re in a tipping point position. You can leverage more of your personal leadership and that of your growing tribe of leaders into patient-driven focus beyond what you could before.
How cool is that?
Very!
And you’re in a position of strength as a Dentrepreneur®. Lead strong!
Speaking of strength, it takes more than you know or have the capacity to deliver on occasion. Join our tribe of dentrepreneurial leaders and contact us with your questions and challenges.
Sources:
1 John P. Kotter, Leading Change, p. 25
2 Kotter, p. 27