DAT podcast listeners loved this episode, so we’re re-releasing it!
The Dental A-Team is hearing a lot about practices’ struggles with communication. In this episode, Kiera and Brit discuss ways to enhance communication in a practice, and even reach a breakthrough point. They touch on the following:
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Establishing ground rules of communication in your office
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Stop assuming everyone knows how to communicate
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How to bring up that you want to have better communication practice-wide
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And more
Episode resources:
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Transcript:
Kiera Dent (00:00)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today we are bringing you something so special. I am so excited because this is one of our most popular episodes from the archives. Whether you're hearing this for the first time or catching it again, I am so excited because it's jam packed with a ton of takeaways that you can start using right now in your practice. We have released thousands, literally thousands of episodes. And I wanted to start bringing a few of these amazing episodes back for you. So I hope you enjoy. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
on the Dental A Team podcast.
speaker-0 (00:32)
And you guys, I have a really, really fantastic consultant on the podcast with me today. If you don't know her, you should get to know her. Her name's Brittany. ? Britt has joined our team. Gosh, it's almost been a year rolling in on our year, and Britt is just a breath of fresh air on our team. She is somebody that inspires me, ? pushes me to be a better consultant as well. So I'm super jazzed to bring Britt back on the show. Britt, how are you today?
speaker-1 (00:56)
I'm good. Thanks for the introduction, Kiera. Always fun to hear what you have to say 'cause it's always delightful.
speaker-0 (01:02)
I know. It's probably the best part of the whole podcast, actually. Like I just get a rave on our team on the podcast, which is something I definitely love. So Britt, you are a a unicorn of a human. It's kind of funny, guys. The way we interview consultants is pretty an in-depth process. Like we have an initial call, then you we encourage them to go through an online course, then we do a mock coaching call where they have to actually coach the consultants as if we were a team. And then typically we have them fly out and go to a practice with me to see if traveling's like in their DNA.
Because I've had a lot of people say I can travel and it just is not their thing. Like there are people who can travel and then there are people who like really can travel. And so Britt, you kinda like skated right through that. We interviewed you and it was just this like, yep, we're gonna hire her. And lo and behold, here you are a year later. It just I'm shocked at how great it worked out because you're just a dream and I love it. It worked out so well.
speaker-1 (01:54)
But lo and lo and behold, I could actually travel.
speaker-0 (01:58)
Well what I I did ask you the question of how many bags do you take when you travel? Because you can tell if somebody's a traveler or not a traveler. But yeah, you are a solid traveler. You and I we trend
speaker-1 (02:11)
I've been stuck in a foreign country, yes. So I feel like that's a pretty good qualify qualifier.
speaker-0 (02:17)
? but no guys, if you have not met Britt, Britt is one of the traveling consultants and offices genuinely love Britt. when I when she goes to offices, I love getting emails or text messages from those offices saying that Britt just knocked it out of the park. So today I'm excited, Britt. You are ? really fantastic on this and you and I actually just consulted a practice together. I I need to stop saying we don't say each other that often because you and I actually do run into each other quite a bit on the road. ?
we do. It's pretty fantastic. So we were just at a practice together a couple of weeks ago and I thought this was such a cool thing that you did with this practice. So ? just to give a little bit of a background, we were with a practice and communication was just a struggle, which I'm not going to lie, every single office. But you tell me if it's on your end, but every practice before we go visit them as the Dental A Team, we send out an anonymous survey. well it's actually an
Anonymous. It's not anonymous. We know who you are. So they it's it's branded. We know your name. ? but it's a survey sent out to all the team members to find out what are their issues in the practice, things that they love about the practice. And I will tell you, without like it's happened a hundred percent of the time, at least one person says communication on every single office. So I know this is a big deal. Britt, how about for you? I absolutely
speaker-1 (03:37)
Every time. Mm-hmm. And it comes up often. And I communication is a constant effort, which is why it comes up often, because it's so important.
speaker-0 (03:47)
For sure. I mean, if you think about it, communication is what we do all day long, whether it's with our patients, whether it's with each other, whether it's with our spouses or our families, like communication is super important. I just think it's always interesting when people say communication, I feel like it's this really broad umbrella for problems. And I'm like, no, no, no. Like let's get to the nitty gritty. Is it communication on? Cause there's great communication, but I think it's just such a large, vast net.
that we cast that it's hard sometimes to pinpoint like what is the communication because I'll have practices that will over communicate. Everybody knows this, this, and this, and they still deal with communication. And so with this practice, ? I think it was just a lot of missed expectations, which I found is typically the reason communication comes up. People are expecting or assuming other people will do something. And then when that's missed, that's when people get frustrated. And so it tends to fall back under communication. But Britt,
Take it away, you did a full team training with this office. It was kind of a retreat style, which I don't know what you've been doing right in this world. You're getting a lot of those retreat styles.
speaker-1 (04:48)
I don't know either, but I'm glad it's working.
speaker-0 (04:51)
So typically our style is like we go in, we'll consult. We're doing like hands on training with an office and then we usually do like a two hour meeting. But Britt's been getting a few offices that are wanting like these three to four hour meetings, which honestly as a consultant, that's like when you guys see your schedule and you just have like crown prep after crown prep after not crown prep, crown seat after seat after seat, where you're like, that's gonna be busy. That's like a four hour meeting for a consultant. I would equate that to like, Whoo, all right, it's gonna be busy.
But kind of walk us through with this practice and other practices. It just wasn't this one particularly, but kind of walk us through what you did to help enhance this communication and really bring some breakthroughs to this practice.
speaker-1 (05:30)
Yeah, for sure. I think you you hit one really key point, which is expectations when it comes to communication. And I think the other thing that goes hand in hand with that when expectations aren't being met through our communication is then we start to lose trust with our team members. And we start to lose trust in communication. And so people really just start to shut down. And it's hard to kind of get that motor going again because everybody goes into a protective mode.
And so we're all just kind of walking on eggshells. We're nervous to have conversations that need to be had. And then it just starts to kind of spiral, unfortunately, into a place where we don't know how to get out of it. And so with this office, I was realizing that that's kind of where we were. We had hit the point where we've kind of lost our trust. We talked about some tools on how to have uncomfortable or crucial conversations with team members.
But they were just still really struggling to see like how does that actually go into play because it's kind of like I've been there, I've tried it and I got burned. So
speaker-0 (06:33)
Well, 'cause like you said something that I thought was I've never thought about this. Because you said people lose trust and then we spiral downward. And I was thinking like, and what's bummer and also awesome is the only solution to it is communication. So the thing you've lost trust in is the key to your success and freedom and happiness. But if you lose trust in that, there's really nowhere else to go. Because if you're not communicating, things won't get better. So
I had never thought about like the thing that caused the problem is the thing that's going to get you out of the problem as well. But you have to really regain each other's trust. And you're right, it's kind of like, but how? I logically understand it. I conceptually can see this, but how is this really gonna work? And I thought you did a brilliant job of breaking down this how.
speaker-1 (07:20)
Yeah. And so it comes down to like yes, at some point someone's gotta put themselves out there and be vulnerable to try it. And it can be really hard when we know there's old habits in play. So we kind of went back to the basics of communication to where we we created and it was with the team, we had their input. All right, what are our ground rules gonna be for communication? Kind of like our rules of engagement.
What are the things that all of us right here, right now today are gonna agree to so that we can feel more comfortable to start engaging conversations with each other that need to happen. And so we created it, we typed it out, everybody signed it. So we all agreed that we're gonna comply with those rules. And it's basic things that just needed to kind of be said and be put out there so that we know we're all on the same page, which are things like we're gonna give each other.
like the benefit of the doubt and give each other the benefit of the doubt, understanding that we're all coming with the best of intentions, right? We all care about this team, we all care about this practice, this business. And so we are ultimately having these conversations to solve things and to work together and to to make improvements. ? some of the other rules we had in place are ? we go talk to the person who can help us solve the problem.
Right. So a lot of times we when we start to lose trust, we'll go and talk about something with our our buddy or our friend that we trust. And at that point we're just gossiping and we're not actually having a conversation with someone who can actually help to solve the problem. So we're actually just feeding into the problem instead of solving anything. ? some of the other rules we had are we speak respectfully, ? which means in volume and tone. ? so we control our volume, we control our tones so that our conversations are productive.
? we listen to each other, right? So we listen to what the other person has to say and we don't interrupt them. We hear them out. we also put into place, I think, if it gets too heated, like someone can call time out and we can step away for a minute, but we're gonna come back to that conversation that day to solve it, right? And we come together, whatever conversation we're having, we come come to solve it. ? some other rules when someone comes to us with ? a topic or something they want to discuss.
we always say thank you, right? Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for being willing to have this conversation, which also just helps to set the tone. So any team that's kind of struggling can come up with some of their own kind of rules of engagement, the the code of communication that we're gonna stick to and agree to. ? so then we know those are the ground rules and I can be more comfortable, even if I've been burned in the past, to give my team members an opportunity to change and to start to have those conversations.
speaker-0 (10:12)
I think it's really brilliant how you did this because hearing this, I wasn't actually there when you did this meeting.
But I know the team. And so what's cool is I can hear rules from different people on that team because sometimes I might not think it's super important to actually listen to somebody. Now you guys might laugh and be like, Kiera, whatever. And I'm like, I'm actually super intuitive 90% of the time and I can pick up on things very quickly. ? and it's just come from years and years of training. But for Brittany, she might want me to actually like that's something super important because she never feels like I listened to her.
And so for all the team members to be able to put their rules into play in a safe place where we're just creating rules of communication with each other versus it being one on one. So it's the entire team working together, building it together. And I would say these are for teams like I think this is a really important like thing to do, no matter what size your practice is, no longer how long you've been in practice. As you were saying it, but it made me think of my family. Like you go to some people's homes and they have like our home rules.
Like we love each other. We have each other's back. And my family didn't technically have something like that. But I knew my mom always said, our home is a place where it's a safe place to be. Like so we wouldn't make fun of each other. We wouldn't yell at each other. Like it was a place like you can get made fun of all day long at school, but you know when you walk through those doors to my parents' house, it is a safe place that all of us are safe to be in. And I just thought like that's pretty much what you did with this practice is you created a spot and ironically, just knowing those things.
can actually fix a lot of the problems because now it's like, okay, great. We all know the rules of the game. ? ironically, Tiffany gave me this really cool calendar and it has a quote. So every day I flip it. And today's quote it says, you have to learn the rules of the game and then you have to play better than anyone else. And I think with this, like, learn the rules of the game. Learn what and how to communicate. And then I really do love that this is play better than anyone else. So listen
better than anyone else does because what's going to happen is I'm not trying to elevate myself above you. I'm really going to listen to Britt and I'm going to listen to understand. I'm not going to listen to respond. Like let me hear what she's saying and then let me like also not come with heated heated emotions on this. Let me come to solve it. Let me come to to really have that. So I think it's important for practices like when you have this, I would say this is like core values two point
Because it's just helpful. We all assume that everyone knows how to communicate with each other, but they don't. We all come from different backgrounds, different lifestyles, different ways to communicate. In my family, it was always one of respect. And I you better believe if we burped at the table, we were doing twenty five push ups. Like I'm not kidding, like it was kind of a joke, but it was just it wasn't this like strict household, but it was one of very high respect. And so I just assume everybody does that. Like of course nobody would burp at the table, like you're gonna have to do push ups. Like obviously. But not
Obviously, people don't grow up the same way. So I thought it was really brilliant, Britt, that you did that. And I've heard from this practice that they've said that they do feel safer communicating with each other and we're rebuilding that trust. And I also think, if nothing else, sometimes I think our dental practices can be little like petri dishes of growth. Like they can teach us how to be different types of humans out in the world with our families, with our communities.
And in the practice, sometimes it's almost safer than even practicing on family members. So I thought you did a great job. Britt if if you were were a practice listening to this, like how would you even go about this? Because it's kind of an awkward thing to say, like, hey, I feel our communication's terrible in our practice and I wanna do this, but nobody else in the practice might think our communication's bad. So like how do you even go about like it's a super awkward conversation that needs to be had. So how do you even like broach this in a practice?
speaker-1 (14:02)
Yeah. And I think it can even be approached from maybe it's not like that we've got a problem we've got to fix, maybe in this situation. Maybe it's like, hey, we want to create an environment where our team members felt comfortable being able to communicate and have conversations with each other. Right. So we want to work together and get everybody's input to kind of set some ground rules and help to give each other some guidance on how we can most successfully communicate with each other. And it might even be people who communicate well. Sometimes it's even just giving each other feedback of like, hey.
Pick your timing right, right? In the middle of the day when am running like crazy between room room from room to room, like probably not the best time to approach me about a conversation. I'm probably not going to give you my best response. So finding a time that works or even letting me know, hey, I need to have a conversation. Let's find a time to have it. Even working through just kind of some of those like tips for each other can be really helpful for a team. And it's amazing with teams, once you create the opportunity for them to give some input.
the things that start to come up. And there's usually even in a well functioning team, there's still usually feedback that a team member would love to give, but they haven't maybe had the right opportunity. And so by just creating the space for it, you'll be surprised at the input you get from your team members.
speaker-0 (15:18)
For sure. As you said that I was like, all right, next traction meeting. Dental A Team's gonna write up our communication rules. Because as you said that, I was thinking, like, shoot, we've got a great team. We all communicate, in my opinion, really well. I feel like there's very little drama within our company because I just refuse to tolerate drama and our team knows like we will go toe to toe at any moment. And it is not a bad thing. Like, bring it out, hash it out. But for as you said that, I thought
There might be some team members on our team that aren't as outspoken, that maybe don't feel as comfortable and maybe they would have some input of how we can communicate better as a company and as an organization. And so I think even for those offices, like you said, that are high achieving, they do well, I think sometimes it's worth it to bring up and then make it very simple. I thought you did a good job, Britt, having it very simple. And for me, I'm thinking, hey, this is great, because this is great onboarding for people when they come onto our practice. Like this is how we communicate.
This is how we operate when we have issues and concerns because I think if we don't realize every practice has issues, every practice has an opportunity to grow and every practice is going to have miscommunication. Period. If you're a practice, you will have those issues and concerns. It's just do you have a plan in play of how we solve those? Or do you wait reactively and hope and pray that they sort it out or the wind shifts and changes and they'll come back happier tomorrow? But guess what? Those things sit and they boil and boil and boil until they'll explode.
And that's what we don't want to have. We want to be proactive versus reactive, especially right now when I think that there's more stress on practices than there ever have been before.
speaker-1 (16:54)
Yep. And for practices, I think especially right now where we've had, you know, a shift, like there's been a lot of turnover in offices. It's just naturally happened. for offices that are really trying to one, either keep their culture or two, build a culture, this is one of those soft skills and those soft things that help you build your culture. It's a clear expectation that you guys stick to and that is expected of the team and that builds your culture.
speaker-0 (17:20)
And I think it also I was thinking because I'm like, I'm sure there's some skeptics listening that think, okay, so what happens if they don't do it? And I'm like, you just got a freaking grading rubric of like, hey, this is what we've committed to. You signed your name on this dot. So you tell me what you think the solution to this problem should be. Like, I don't have to sit here and make it up. It's like, Britt, you committed to doing this. This is what your actions were. You have a very awesome opportunity to give me a good game plan of how you're gonna fix this moving forward.
And then if Britt chooses not to, guess what? This might not be her dream practice. But I think it it becomes a way easier way to hold a team member accountable and give them ownership because they've signed off on it. They created it. And now if they're choosing not to follow through, that's on them. They built this. You didn't build it. Your job is just to ensure everybody follows along with it.
speaker-1 (18:09)
Mm-hmm. And then you can come up with a plan on on how to fix it, how to change it and how to grow it. Cause a lot of so often these things just like everybody has some unwritten rules and everybody grew up differently, right? Our skill levels skill levels are gonna be different when it comes to communication. And some people just really don't know how to make the change. So if you've got someone that's still tr struggling, then be able being able to sit and coach with them to really like
get to know them a little better, see what's making them tick, and give them some specific ways to help them improve.
speaker-0 (18:43)
Absolutely. So I would say action item from here would be set up a meeting for like you heard, we have a full team traction meeting every single quarter. And so things like this that will take some building time. I mean, last time we did a team activity of take however many pieces of toilet paper you think you'd need for the meeting. Britt was the winner of that. Britt, how many squares did you take? Do you remember?
speaker-1 (19:07)
I don't remember. It was a lot. Was it like I wanna say it was like twenty, but I feel like it was more than that.
speaker-0 (19:13)
It
was so many. And what the rule of the game was was however many squares you took, you had to say something positive about yourself. So if Britt had over twenty, she had to write down twenty awesome things about herself and share. And Britt was like, Look, I thought we really had to use this for today. This is how much I needed. So then we turned it into a fun game that everybody only could use that many squares for the rest of the meeting. So you better you better pray you're not having to use much of the restroom time if you were Kiera and only chose I think like four squares. Honestly.
speaker-1 (19:41)
See people, honestly.
speaker-0 (19:43)
?
but thinking, I know we do that every quarter. So this could possibly be the activity that we do as a team of like, let's write the rules of communication. Because I've heard and I think about relationships, like, don't wait until your relationship is in danger to to f to solve and proactively prevent problems. Like do it now while your relationship's great. Same thing with your practice. So whether you're on the side that's struggling on communication or you're on the side that you feel you've got a great culture that's humming along, either side of the spectrum, set a date.
right up the rules of communication, it really didn't take long. I would say probably plan about an hour of it. Have people think of like what what kind of rules of communication would we want here? Like if we had very productive communication, like for me, it's like no drama central. If you've got an issue, go to the person, talk about it, and solve it and move on. Like there is no blame, there is no judgment, but that's my my approach to it. That's how I tend to lead. But I think it's more than just leading, it's actually having it written. So I'd say, ? all of you set a meeting, ?
write these rules of communication where everybody builds the rules of communication. Britt, what would you say? I'm thinking like less than ten rules because I hate too many rules. I'm like, gosh, like it can't be too many or otherwise. I'm not going to want to talk to anybody because I'll be like, shoot, I didn't say this or like I'm thinking like five or less. But what's kind of your take of how many rules you should have on there?
speaker-1 (21:00)
Yeah, I say ten or less. Sometimes depending on the state of of the group, we need to define things a little bit more clearly. So you might need up to ten for some of our groups where it's like we really just need the core things down because we are functioning pretty well. It might be fewer.
speaker-0 (21:14)
I would say less is more on this because you want people to feel like they can achieve it versus feeling like they can't say anything for fear that they're not doing it correctly. So set that up, type it up, print it out, have everyone sign on it. And then I would say add it to your onboarding. so when you do bring on new team members, they know it, they sign off on it as well. and then I'd probably review it maybe once a year, twice a year, whenever you feel like that communication might be slipping up a little bit. And I will promise you, signs of communication going down are team members who are frustrated.
? there's kind of like attitude in meetings or there's quiet in meetings. Oftentimes teams that don't feel safe will be very quiet. You'll have your few people that will chime in, but not the whole team's participating when it comes to group activities. Those tend to be my tail tall signs of like something's off when the body language has shifted, it's more closed off. They're very quiet in meetings. ? and they're just kind of like a come in, don't really want to talk to anybody and take off.
Usually you know there's something going on with communication. Those are mine, but you have anything of like when communication is starting to suffer that are like your hey, we might need to fix this as just some quick like warning signs that you've seen beyond what I just said.
speaker-1 (22:21)
Yep, I think you hit some important ones, frustration for sure. And I think you know when your team's just kind of general lack of engagement. and for some of our teams where we might have one person who's speaking up even when we ask, and they're like, Yep, nope, everything's fine. If it's my person that I know is usually more outspoken and they're the only one saying that, then I also know I've probably got something more going on. My quiet people just aren't wanting to chime in.
speaker-0 (22:45)
Yep. So I think that that can help you guys. Like I feel like we really went over how to do this, what to do, what to look for. And I would say, ? it's just I think it's more relevant right now. Like Britt said, tons of teams have transitioned and we've got a bunch of new people, which means a lot of opportunity to have miscommunication. So let's let's get that commution communication dialed in. That way you guys are proactive versus reactive. Britt, I love it. I love what you bring to the table and I love that you are such a
fantastic communicator. I think that's something you do very well. And you're also good at spotting problems and creating solutions. So thanks for bringing that to the table today. I loved it. Having me. Always. All right, guys. Go implement this. Get your communication on par. and if we can help you, if you're struggling and you want somebody to mediate, I thought it was helpful that Britt was there because sometimes it is hard to bring these things up if you don't have open communication. So if we can be helpful for you guys, facilitate some of those conversations, give us a call, email us. Hello.
speaker-1 (23:21)
Yeah, thanks for
speaker-0 (23:41)
Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We'd love to help you out.
Kiera Dent (23:44)
Dental A Team listeners, I hope you loved revisiting this episode as much as I did. I hope that you found the nuggets, the pearls. You can see why we re-released this one because I truly want you to take away the best of the best of the best of the best. This episode truly hopefully sparked some new excitement, gave you some new ideas. I know sometimes when I go back and I look back on things that I've learned in the past, I'm able to re-implement because like that famous quote says, no man steps into the same river twice because neither he is the same man.
nor is the river the same. You are not the same as you were before, nor is your practice the same as it was before. Different things, different ideas, same principles. And I really want to highlight and hopefully you took today that sometimes all we need to do is simplify and put into place or to refine things that we've already been doing really, really well. If you love this episode, don't keep it to yourself, share it with a colleague or leave us a review and help more practices find the Dental A Team podcast. As always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.