Building an amazing dental team is hard when everyone is “busy” but daily friction, miscommunication, and inconsistent expectations keep getting in the way. In this episode, Kirk Behrendt sits down with coach Jenni Poulos to explain how written team agreements create alignment, reduce conflict, and make accountability easier.
You’ll learn why individual, unwritten expectations create expensive operational friction, how agreements support core values with specific behaviors, and how to build a living document your team actually uses. Listen to Episode 1038 of The Best Practices Show!
Main Takeaways:
- Alignment reduces daily friction by creating clear, shared expectations for how the team works together.
- Misalignment is expensive because it shows up in tone, handoffs, duplicated work, and ultimately impacts patient experience and profitability.
- The root of conflict is the gap between expectations and reality, summed up as E minus R equals C.
- Team agreements support core values by defining what those values look like in specific, observable behaviors during the workday.
- People resist surprise accountability more than accountability itself, and written agreements reduce that surprise.
- Agreements must be written, modeled by leadership, and used for coaching so accountability feels less personal and more objective.
- Team agreements should be created with the full team and revisited regularly so they stay “living,” not just “laminated.”
Snippets:
00:00 Welcome and Big Question
01:17 Meet Jenny and Why Alignment Matters
03:08 Core Values and Misalignment Costs
05:18 Unwritten Rules Create Friction
07:22 E Minus R Equals Conflict
09:28 Team Agreements Create Clarity
11:22 Written Agreements and Accountability
15:48 Modeling Agreements and Coaching
18:11 How to Build Agreements Together
23:24 Final Takeaways and Next Steps
25:38 Wrap Up and Farewell
Guest Bio/Guest Resources:
Jenni brings to dental teams a literal lifetime of experience in dentistry. As the daughter and sister of periodontists and a dental hygienist, she has been working in many facets of the dental world since she first held a summer job turning rooms and pouring models at the age of 12. Now, with over 10 years of experience in managing and leading a large periodontal practice, she has a firm grasp on what it takes to run a thriving business. Her passion for organizational health and culture has been a driving force behind her coaching career. She has witnessed firsthand how creating an aligned and engaged team will take a practice to levels of success that they never believed possible!
Guest resources mentioned:
