QUESTION: I have a question regarding being the leader. You gave an example of washing the dishes if you see there are dishes in the sink. What if you are continually washing the dishes and no one takes the initiative to do the task and it’s a given that “oh you’ll do it. How do you handle that?

ANSWER: In one of my training videos here on Front Office Rocks I talk about being a leader in the organization and that you don’t have to have a title after your name to be a leader. You don’t have to be the office manager or the lead assistant or the doctor, that everybody should be a leader in their own way and part of being a leader is doing the right thing and leading by example. [mepr-show if=”loggedout”][/mepr-show] [mepr-active memberships=”629,630,37388,37393,37672,37676,37670,37668,37674,44674,232156″ ifallowed=”show” unauth=”message” unauth_message=”Answer hidden, please login or purchase a membership to view.”] Don’t just wait for somebody to tell you to do something. Don’t just do only what is written in your job description but actually find ways that you can help the team out, find ways to motivate each other, do things that are above and beyond what is written in your job description.

You can also watch Laura’s YouTube video message here to listen in on her reply and find more of her advice for handling these types of sticky situations at your dental practice, or continue reading more below!

That is really what a leader is. Leadership really comes down to integrity and integrity is doing the right thing whether somebody’s watching or not! In this example, I talk about the break room and lunchtime and I don’t know about your office but in my office a lot of times what would happen is people would finish lunch, they would throw their dishes in the sink and then the person who has left there at the end had a pile of dishes in the sink. They would throw the dish in the sink and leave and just cross their fingers nobody noticed or they got stuck doing all the dishes.

A good leader, a good person, somebody who I would want on my team is probably going to take the minute or two if they have time to clean the dishes and put them in the dishwasher but here’s the issue that came up and that question that I got from the client which is what if you’re always the person doing it? What if you are the one who’s always doing the dishes to the point now where the rest of the team goes, “Don’t worry, you know ‘Laura’ will do the dishes. She always does them!”.

That’s beyond leadership, that is beyond you being accountable for doing the right thing. That really now is part of a system, policy and procedure in your practice. We all need to follow the rules if we’re gonna work in a team environment, if we’re gonna work together we need to have rules, we need to have guidelines, we need to have policies about who does what and when.

In this example of the dishes and the sink, you need to decide in your practice what is the policy around it? Does everybody do their own dishes, do we all take turns, one person gets Monday, one person gets Tuesday and how are we going to handle this because it’s not the responsibility of one person to clean up after the rest of the team![/mepr-active]

To learn more about leadership and your dental team visit the following course module! [wpcourse course=”45″ module=”4″ module_desc=”true” /]