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Your Second (and Vital) Layer of Leadership as a Dentrepreneur®?

Your Second (and Vital) Layer of Leadership as a Dentrepreneur®?

4/11/2017 4:33:55 AM   |   Comments: 0   |   Views: 85

“How am I doing as a leader? The answer is how are the people you lead doing. Do they learn…? Do they manage conflict? Do they initiate change? Are they growing and getting promoted?…When you’re confused as to how you’re doing as a leader, find out how the people you lead are doing. You’ll know the answer.” 1

Larry Bossidy

How do you provide standout leadership to your organization as a Dentrepreneur®?? That’s a compelling question and one you must ask consistently.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

That’s an organizational success mantra…remember it!

But there’s another layer to leadership. It’s vital you understand this if you want to avoid any temptation to bureaucracy, dictatorship, or management-syndrome.

Extraordinary leaders are teachers. It begins with values and extends to vision and into the practical, scalable details of your dental group’s cultural DNA.

If you want something other than dentistry-as-usual then you must teach (instill) something different into your team(s). TWEET THIS

Teaching does this.

Otherwise you’ll have a large, bloated organization with no more “soul” than what you perhaps left behind to pursue dentrepreneurship.

Redefining what it means to “teach” (or lead as a “teacher”)

The term “training” is the essence of this idea. Any hesitancy to use the word would have more to do with it’s overuse in corporate circles and less to do with the value of “training.”

Training (teaching) is transferrable. It’s the development of leaders who carry on the mission with or without you.

Again, if you want to evaluate your leadership capacity observe those who follow you. “

Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., all understood this. They had strong ideas, values, energy, and edge, but without disciples to spread their mission, both during their lifetimes and after their deaths, their legacies would have been short-lived.”2

You (have) one job!

You’ll succeed as a dentrepreneurial leader when you understand the primacy of teaching. TWEET THIS

You lead, manage, occasionally treat, but your major role is that of teacher.

Remember you started your journey as a Dentrepreneur®? with an idea or two. Those ideas evolved into a vision then values and now you’ve launched or are in the process of launching a new approach to dentistry.

You’ve moved from solo to team to organization. And your effectiveness along the way has everything to do with the instillment of the vision, values, and scalable systems you’ve developed into the hearts of your team(s).

Teaching does this!

Your Two Teachable Tasks as a Dentrepreneurial Leader-Teacher

1-Have a POV (Point of View) Your teachable point of view reveals that you have clear ideas and values and that you realize the power of communicating them to others. Experience and/or expertise alone will not cut it - you must be in touch with the practical within your experience, extract it, and share it with others.

Do this and your team members and organizational leaders will do the same. What you explain gets explained.

Your influence flows from your teachable point of view. Not merely via your ideas and values but also how those ideas and values compel the same in others.

Keep your POV mobile. That is, have it hip-pocket ready to share when teachable moments arise.

And speaking of…

2-Use teachable moments Crisis, chaos, and moments of general confusion are useful to your leadership. Rather than resent them as the frustration they are - use them to motivate, teach, and instill value.

It’s true that failure is a superb teacher. Understand this and allow for failure in your organization.

Why?

Failure, obstacles, and crisis moments create opportunities to grow, stretch, and discover new strategies. Don’t waste a failure even though it might cost you something.

Team member and culture failures are prime teaching moments. Your role as leader-teacher is to ask proactive questions.
  • What did you learn? (Instead of “why did you do that?”)
  • Where will you improve? (Instead of “when will you learn?”)
  • Who will you teach? (Instead of “who’s at fault?”)
Create questions and responses that unpack team and organizational failure. Sort the scalable principles from crisis and moments of chaos.

Don’t waste a failure. Teach (lead) through it. TWEET THIS

We encourage a “leaders-teach” approach to being a Dentrepreneur®?. Contact us about your team/culture challenges as you launch and/or build your dental group for success.  

Source: Noel M. Tichy, The Leadership Engine-How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level,
1, p. 41.
2, p. 43.
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