In This Episode:

• Why most dental practices struggle with team dynamics
• The difference between predictive trust and vulnerability-based trust
• Why healthy conflict is necessary for growth
• How poor team communication impacts profitability and productivity
• The hidden cost of employee turnover
• Why accountability should not rely solely on the doctor
• The direct connection between leadership and practice performance
• How “artificial harmony” quietly damages teams
• Why leadership is a learnable skill, not a personality trait
• Practical ways to begin implementing the Five Behaviors framework
• Signs your team culture is improving
• How ongoing coaching differs from one-time training

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction

02:10 – The Five Behaviors overview

07:00 – Building trust on teams

14:00 – Healthy conflict vs silence

22:00 – Accountability and productivity

34:00 – Leadership is learnable

48:00 – Team dysfunction and burnout

1:02:00 – How to start improving your culture

1:14:00 – Final thoughts

Resources:

• KLAS Five Behaviors Flyer.pdf
• KLAS Solutions
• [email protected]

Every dentist I work with wants the same thing.

A practice that runs without them having to micromanage every detail.

But here's what most owners miss.

You don't get there by hiring smarter people or buying better software.

You get there by building a better team that actually behaves like a team.

And today, Ryan Hill is going to talk with us, and we're going to have a conversation through the five behaviors that separate a high performing team from a group of people who just happen to share the same parking lot.

So, welcome back to the Dental Business Podcast.

I'm your host, Phil Cole, the CEO of Class Solutions.

And on this show, we, as you know, dig into the business side of dentistry.

This side, they don't teach you in dental school, but that determines whether your practice thrives or just survives.

I'm excited about today's conversation, and this is going to just be a great conversation because we're talking about something that, in my experience, is the simple, single biggest hidden lever in a dental practice, and that's your team.

And I've got the perfect guess for this, and that is Ryan Hill.

He is our certified team and leadership coach here at Clas Solutions.

He's also a certified EOS integrator, which means he spent years in the trenches helping organizations install the systems, the rhythms, and most importantly, the team dynamics that turn good practices into great ones.

When clients need our help getting their teams unstuck, I guess would be the way that I would say it.

Ryan is the guy that we send in.

So, Ryan, I really want to appreciate and welcome to the Dental Business podcast show.

Good to be with you, Phil.

Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, absolutely.

So let's just dive right in.

Like I said, this is just to have a good conversation with everything that's going on.

For listeners, though, who haven't heard of the five behaviors before, can you walk us through what the model is and what the five behaviors actually are so that everybody can kind of understand what the base is?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the five behaviors are just real quickly, trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results.

So let me back up and I'll break down a little bit each one of those.

So trust.

Trust on teams is critically important.

Often when we talk about trust, though, we miss the mark on what true trust really is on teams.

Many times when people talk about trust, they're just talking about a predictive trust.

And when we're dealing with the five behaviors, we're actually going deeper into something that we call vulnerability based trust.

Let me give you.

Let me give you the difference between the two.

So predictive trust might sound simply like, I trust that if you're on the schedule, you're going to be into work on Monday morning, right?

Because based on your past behaviors, I can predict that you are that reliable that you, we gave you a job, you're on the schedule, you come in and we can be reasonably confident that you'll be there.

That's not the kind of trust that we're talking.

The kind of trust that we're talking about is more of a vulnerability based trust, which means, and this is a really tough word for any person because nobody really likes to be vulnerable.

But vulnerability is really the foundation of learning to trust our teammates, right?

Learning to say things like I'm sorry or I messed up or I'm overwhelmed or I'm in over my head.

Those are all vulnerability based phrases which are difficult for us but necessary if we're going to build true trust on our team.

Second, conflict.

So once, once we can establish some trust on teams, the next level is actually getting to real conflict on teams.

And I know that's kind of a scary word because most of us are led to believe that conflict on teams is bad.

But let me explain.

So conflict on teams is actually, can be a good thing when it is appropriate.

So think about it this way.

If you're sitting at a meeting and people are attacking each other personally, that's not the kind of conflict that we want.

Go all the way over to the other side of the spectrum.

We're sitting at a meeting and nobody's saying anything because they either just want the meeting to be over or they just want to get on with the next thing.

And they just, they're, they're just.

We call that artificial harmony, right?

Everybody's got an opinion about these things, but we're not engaged enough to actually share the opinion.

Healthy conflict is when we're challenging to get the best ideas out on the table, right?

So trust.

But you can't really have that healthy conflict if you don't have trust because people are feel off balance.

They don't want to say the wrong thing, they don't want to make waves.

They don't know how people are going to take it.

All of those things play in so we protect ourselves and don't lay it on the line.

So with trust comes healthy conflict after healthy conflict.

When people get a chance to weigh in, only then will they actually commit, which is the third behavior.

Committing to decisions and committing to the things that the team has decided to do.

But without trust and without healthy Conflict.

People might nod their heads, but their behavior won't change because they haven't actually committed.

Right.

So once we commit and the team members actually truly commit, the next magical thing that can happen on teams is accountability then to that commitment.

And if you're a leader of a team, you know that this is true.

Most people believe that accountability lies only with the leader on the team.

And you get a lot of tattling or you get a lot of monkeys dumped on your desk because people don't want to deal with each other on a one on one basis to rise to a standard that is the norm on your team.

So what we end up doing is either one of two things.

We lower the standards and pretend like things aren't happening, or we keep the standard but dump all of the responsibility of holding people to the standard on somebody else's desk.

True accountability on teams actually comes from the team itself.

Right.

When there's actual commitment, the natural next step is that we would say we're not to standard here and we would have a peer to peer conversation to remind each other of the standard and the commitment that we set and hold each other accountable to that.

But too often we just don't have the skills or we don't have the energy or the engagement to make those things happen.

And finally once all of those things, and this is kind of a stair stepping thing, finally we get to results and the difference.

On really high performing and healthy teams, results really are more about what the team has decided is the best for the team.

Too often on teams though, we end up, we end up in silos and people believe that the best results are the results that get them further forward or make their life easier.

But high performing and healthy teams, individual results and goals then really feed into the results of the team.

So yeah, those are the five behaviors.

Trust, conflict, commitment, accountability.

And I think this is important too is because people mentioned, you know, why is the, if trust is such a big deal, why is it on the bottom?

So I mean, I just think that when you look at that triangle, it's funny to see that people actually get that, that, that.

I've gotten that question multiple times.

I don't know if you have, but it, it's like, well, if trust is such a big deal, why isn't that the top of the pyramid?

Because that' important to the top pyramid.

Yeah, I mean the strength, geometrically the strength of a triangle is always the base.

Right.

So if, if, if you have a strong base and you want to build on that bait, trust has to be there.

And the reality is there is no, there's no way that these behaviors can function to their highest potential.

If a team doesn't have trust, if we don't start there, we'll never get, we'll never get to the, to the place that we want to with the other behaviors.

Trust is critically important to, to any long term success or any meaningful success on a team.

It's just that simple.

Yeah, 100%.

So, you know, I guess the thing that I always, you know, want to make, make sure people understand or you know, kind of correlate because, you know, it seems as though when, when you talk to a lot of doctors, the team thing, the, the leadership thing is something that I feel is always not really considered very important yet.

You and I have seen this over and over and over again.

Those who have the best, the, the practices that produce the best, the practices that just.

The doctors at ease.

The team is at ease is always the guys and the gals that are working and always working on their team.

So when.

I guess my thing is, is when the team's missing one or more of these behaviors, because this is probably what.

Well, at least when I get the questions and I know you probably will agree with this when, when they're missing those behaviors, we have to correlate it to the practice.

Right.

So what, what actually are the cost to the practice?

You know, it's, it's not just, to me, it's not just culture, but it, it's kind of all the real business things that they talk about.

And one of the big things is right now, and it has been since COVID basically.

And I, I can't believe I said covet again, but it, it has happened since then.

That's is retention.

Right.

And then the second one I would think is a big one that I think we come across is then you got productivity.

And then once again, what we're getting from all of our buyers is I, you know, I need a practice that's bringing in a lot of new patients.

So of course then you got patient experience.

And so, you know, what are those real?

What are the real.

Missing any of those behaviors, what does that mean to the, to the team and what does that mean to the practice and the cost that actually can amount to.

Yeah, so yeah, for sure.

You mentioned culture.

Without these, these things being healthy on teams, culture is going to suffer.

Right.

But culture is a difficult thing to kind of put your, put your fingers on.

It's kind of, it, it, you can't really hold it in your hand you mentioned retention.

So let's, let's just look at that for.

Let me give you an example.

It wasn't long ago I was talking with a doctor who had a new team member.

Her team was fairly seasoned.

I think she owned the practice for eight, 10 years, something like that.

And many of the people had been with them for a long time.

Very focused, this doctor, very focused.

And the team as well, because of her leadership, focused on process, on system, on doing things right.

They had done a really, a better than average job of documenting how they, their, their systems and how they do things in their office.

So the time came, they needed to hire.

So they brought in an individual with experience, probably four, five, six years of experience.

So they brought them on that person onto their team and they micromanaged thinking that they were doing the right thing.

They, they rolled out the systems, they gave this person, this is how we do this, this is our way.

This, this and just kind of across the board.

But they, but they, they missed the mark because they were so on top of this individual.

They were suffocating her.

And so every step of the way, all they were doing was pointing out all of the ways that this person was not following to the t, their system for their office.

Now don't get me wrong, those things are good, but the, the underlining assumption that they were kind of giving this, this new individual is we don't trust you at all.

You don't know anything.

So we're going to assume you're just a complete empty vessel.

And we're, we're going to put our thumb on you and make you do it our way, start to finish.

So you probably don't need to even tell you this, but that person didn't last longer than a month.

They, they were there and she was, by the way, on the way out the door, was very honest with the team that she's.

I can't function in this environment because nobody here trusts me.

You guys are just waiting for me to fail.

You're almost assuming I'm going to fail.

And so they, they failed to build some trust and build some rapport and build some, and show some of their own vulnerability in that scenario.

And it didn't last long and the woman just left.

She's gone.

And think about how expensive that is, right?

So now you got all the effort that goes into hiring somebody and then all the effort that goes into training and those kind of things, and then it doesn't even last a month and you got to start all over again.

Just a terrible scenario from business perspective.

Yeah, exactly.

And I don't think that's.

I think so many times there's the doctors fall into the trap of, you know, worrying about the hiring aspect of it, but when you're rehiring, rehiring, the amount of money that you waste that goes through all of that is gigantic.

And I just don't think that people understand that.

All right, so, yeah, let's go on the production side, though, on, you know, once again, not having that trust, you know, and.

Or any of the behaviors.

I'm sorry, but what did it do to the production side?

Yeah, so another.

Maybe another waste example.

Have you, you know, and if you're listening to this and you're a doctor or an office manager or somebody who's led a meeting with your team, think about how much productivity is lost in a meeting where we all had a discussion, we talked about something that we knew needed to be fixed, and we left the meeting without a clear understanding of who was responsible for what.

And so we walk away saying we're going to do something, but the commitment wasn't really there, the team or individually.

And none of the behavior changes.

Nothing changes.

We go back to old patterns, go back to the thing that brought us to the meeting in the first place because we said this isn't working.

But we didn't have a clear understanding and we didn't have a clear commitment.

And so behaviors didn't change.

Now just think about that on a lot of different levels.

Wasted time in a meeting, because what's going to happen at the next meeting?

You can go back in and say, this still is.

This isn't fixed, and they're going to have the same conversation again.

And maybe this happens.

You can get into a cycle as teams where you're doing this month after month after month after month, and you're talking about the same issues.

You're never really fixing them because you just don't have the commitment or the systems or the.

The follow through to make it happen.

In addition to that, you already decided to talk about it because it was unproductive.

That's the reason that the issue was on the table.

You were already.

The thing was already broken.

So now you not only talked about the broken thing, didn't fix the broken thing, went back to the broken thing.

And just think about all the waste there.

From a productivity standpoint, it's just.

It.

It's obvious, but it's really.

It's a hidden thing from teams because we do it all the time.

Yeah, I Mean, when you think about it, you know, if I had a dollar for every time I heard a doctor that says they don't do team meetings or they don't do morning huddles because it doesn't amount to anything.

It doesn't help just waste time.

That, that to me is exactly what you just are talking about right there.

Because you, yeah, you did it by just, you tried it, but you didn't try to.

But you didn't actually implement anything.

And I think that's the biggest thing is, is those.

I mean, you can talk all you want, but if you don't implement something, I mean, yeah, it's a, it's a waste.

What good is it gonna.

What good is it really?

You know what I mean?

And here's it just in response to.

We tried it, it didn't work.

Well, once I, once I tried to shoot a free throw and I missed.

So does that mean that if you're a basketball player and you miss the free, you never shoot again?

No.

That means you get back on stripe and you practice.

These are skills, right?

They're.

They're skills that we're able to develop.

It's not like being tall, right?

You don't have any control over being tall, but you can develop skills.

These are, these are things that with some practice, we can get better at.

And we owe it to the people that we lead in order to continually be developing these skills.

We owe it to them.

That's part of our leadership.

And so, and so just because this just popped in my head because you said that, and when it's sports related, you know, it always cracks me up because you get it.

Most doctors get it when it comes to a sports or something like that.

But for some reason, and I think a lot of times it's just the simple fact of they know that puts them under the microscope a little bit too, you know, for vulnerability that you've mentioned before.

But the thing that is always cracks me up is doctors, I will say, say the comment I hear a lot of times is, well, I'm just not a good leader or I wasn't meant to be a leader.

I'm just a dentist.

And the thing that always cracks me up is, and I know you say this all the time, that this isn't something that is.

And so it isn't something that you're born with.

It's something that is learnable, it's something that you can teach yourself.

And, and so with you doing that free throw thing, that just kind of brings that right to the front.

Right.

Because you, you weren't born to shoot free throws.

You were.

You actually did the.

You were taught how to do the free throws, and then you practice free throws.

And I think the other thing is too, is what is always funny is we, we go.

The doctors that do go through the cycle of doing leader, team and leadership and stuff, the amount of the ones that once again, going back to those practices are really successful.

Right.

Is because they're, they're constantly doing it.

And I feel like there's a ton of doctors that, okay, I did it, we're doing great, and so now I don't have to do it anymore.

And so once again, going back to that sports analogy, it's like, okay, I made the pros and I'm a 90% free throw shooter.

I don't have to practice anymore.

You know, and it's like, you know, Stephen Curry or any of these guys that are the greatest shots of, you know, they.

They say Steve Curry takes.

I think it was 3,000 or 5,000 shots every day still to this day.

I mean, hence the reason why he's great.

And I.

And it's the same thing for our practice.

Commitment to it just as successful.

Is always working on this.

Yeah, no, 100%.

Just, sorry, take your thunder away on anything.

But I think this is important, though, because when we're talking into, when, when we walk into practices that we're preparing to sell or when we're walking into practices that, you know, are just.

They feel the team dysfunction and stuff through our practice health assessment and through our evaluations.

This is, you know, direct correlation to the numbers production by provider, the hygiene reappointment rates, you know, new patient retention.

It's just.

For me, I just.

It's not a soft issue.

It's.

It's definitely one that is a financial one.

But the other thing is when we're doing our phas and we're doing those interviews and stuff, the amount of exhaustion that a team and a doctor have versus those once again, who are working on this at all times, those five dysfunctions or those, you know, five behaviors, that's the, that's what really shows, is it's not just the numbers, but also the, the effort, the tiredness that we see.

Yeah, without.

Without a doubt.

You know, it just.

When these, these things you mentioned that people will call these soft skills or, you know, things that are.

Are kind of a nice to have, but the reality is these, these are human skills.

These are just the people skills that are necessary for any, any amount of Growth that you.

That you want to have on a team.

And if we're not prioritizing that, it.

It.

It.

It's not going to accidentally get better.

I mean, these.

These things never accidentally get better.

It's always, always intentional.

So, you know, you got a lot of practice owners, once again, that would say that, you know, I don't have time to focus on team dynamics.

You know, there.

I'm just.

I'm doing everything I can just to keep the lights on and to make a.

For my.

For my family.

I mean, how.

But just for those out there listening, I mean, how do you get them to see that ignoring what we're talking about today and ignoring those behaviors actually is doing nothing besides slowing them down even more?

Yeah, I think that there's.

I'm going to say this statement, and it's meant to be a comfort, even though it's going to sound like a negative thing to say.

Every team has dysfunction.

Even the best teams have dysfunction.

So if we start there with an understanding that there are no perfect teams, then we can then.

And we also realize that every time an interaction on our teams goes poorly, that does slow us down.

That's just the truth.

So we can start with that objective reality.

Then we can kind of give ourselves permission to say, all right, where can I get started?

How can I just.

I can assess my team.

I can see it for what it is, warts and all.

And then we can go to work on how can we.

How can we start to build a better team?

How can we start to be a better team than we are right now?

Instead of.

Instead of saying, well, I don't really want to look in the mirror.

I don't really want to see that my team isn't.

Isn't functioning at its highest level.

I just want to put my head down and go to work.

Right.

Well, again, we owe it to just from a leadership perspective, we owe it to our teams to.

To just say, hey, the objective reality is, is everybody.

Every team has work to do.

And so let's just.

Let's stop pretending like everything's perfect and let's just go to work.

Let's learn to trust each other more.

Let's be a little bit more vulnerable with each other and just build.

Build that trust and from there, just kind of move up the.

The pyramid again and.

And just go to work.

The other thing that I'll say is.

And I.

And I kind of just said it, but let me just be clear.

All of this is intentional, right?

If we are not intentionally doing this work with our team, what we are actually doing is intentionally saying I'm good with not having a high performing team.

Right.

And, and if, and if, if we're willing to admit that, then what we're saying is I'm, I'm, I'm okay with the, the production levels that we're at and I'm, I'm okay with.

I'm good with being good enough is maybe the, the way to say it.

And greatness is.

Greatness is there for us to have with, with our teams.

It is, but it's a, it's a lot of work and it's a lot of intention and we, we, we can't turn a blind eye and pretend like maybe tomorrow will be better and, and you know, let's make tomorrow better.

But there is a lot of doctors out there that that is good enough and that's fine.

You know what I mean?

For them that.

But you, you can't have the same, you can't have the, the calls or the wants to be more like you.

I get doctors that, you know, I, I want to produce more.

If you want to produce more.

You know, once again, like you said, then there are intentions.

I mean, when, like I said, when we do our pha and we do our interviews with the, the team members and it's, you know, we do it with their confidential so that no one, so no one.

And then the doctor doesn't get to hear who said what.

But we do tell them what we heard when court her.

What we heard when we, when we're presenting the, the practice health assessment.

Yeah.

I think it's amazing over all the years that, that I've been doing this and we've been doing the practice health assessment.

I think it's amazing to, to see the doctors.

I would say that the percentage is so doggone high.

I, I guarantee it's over 70% of the doctors that sit there and say I didn't know they were feeling that way.

And to me that, I mean that's the, the different levels right here.

That's the five behaviors right there.

Right.

I mean, to say that they didn't under, they didn't understand that and then, you know, that you, then the next step is, you know, where, where that person's gonna lie when, when.

With their decision making is when they say, you know, well, I don't agree with that or they feel very, you know, upset that everyone feels that way.

Right.

I mean that's, that's our, that's a big way to see what's Going on.

Yeah.

So two things.

That's that.

That's that behavior is conflict.

Right.

One side, Inspector.

I didn't know they were feeling that way.

Artificial Harmony.

Everything's just kind of going along and not realizing that just below the surface, those things are festering.

And then when it finally comes out.

Well, I didn't know you were feeling that way.

Now that he feels.

Or she feels betrayed.

Right.

Well, why didn't somebody speak up?

Why didn't somebody tell me?

Well, the reason that they didn't is because trust wasn't high enough on the team.

They didn't want to make waves, and so Artificial Harmony was easier.

They didn't want to wade into the conflict because wading into the conflict is scary.

Right.

And it is scary.

It takes a lot of courage and it takes a lot of maturity.

But at the end of the day, it's the only way that we're going to get to being healthy.

And I'll say this to doctors who feel that betrayal, right.

Because my team was hiding this from me.

They didn't want to tell me.

I didn't know that I was creating an environment or that we had an environment or whatever.

However it happened, where people couldn't speak up, stop seeing it as an attack and start seeing it as an opportunity.

Now, you know, now you can do something about it.

Now we can actually communicate as a team, be vulnerable enough to say, I'm sorry, didn't know that this was happening.

And now we can.

That's the vulnerability that I'm talking about.

That's your opportunity to lead by example and say, hey, all right, we're where we are.

The blinders are off.

We're where we are.

So now let's go to work.

Let's go to work on it.

I'm sorry that people have been feeling this way.

I didn't know.

But there's nothing we can do about the past.

We can only control what we do about the future and get intentional about building that trust back.

Yeah, I think what you just said is huge.

That is exactly.

It is, you know, you not knowing, you know, and not.

And.

And just being able to accept the fact that you ignored it.

Whatever you want to say, but you're willing to make that change.

I mean, you.

If we.

If we had time, you could start going down all.

If.

If you and I reminisced about all the different clients and stuff that we worked with, because I can.

Just talking, I. I kind of go into a little bit of a reminiscing mode.

So I. I Forget some.

But it's like, oh, I remember when Tracy said I never go to the doctor because I, I know he's going to.

If I go in there, especially on a busy day, he's just going to yell, you know what I mean?

So there's no trust immediately right there.

Yeah.

Because you can see that they're, they're basically going, I know what's going to happen if I go to this level.

So I'm just starting to go through all those different stories and you can see once again why trusted the base because there's so many of those little things that I was popping head going,.

Same.

Yeah.

I mean, we could talk all, all day about examples that we see.

By the way, we have a team too, and we could talk all day about examples that we see it on our team here at Clash Solutions.

So it's.

Nobody's immune to this stuff.

It's.

And that it's just so important to just be honest about it and say, look, we're struggling with this.

Let's, let's just, let's sit down, let's talk about it, let's figure it out and let's start moving in the direction that we want to move in.

Yeah.

I mean, the huge thing is I always tell doctors when I'm talking to them, it's not, don't because we're coaching, don't act like we're immune to it.

You know what I mean?

We're constantly working on it too.

And I guess that's the big thing too.

That just proves to you that this isn't a one and done thing.

This is, this is to me is when you, when we send you in there, it is for you to change the culture to an extent and get them to understand that this is a, you know, in my, I guess way I look at living, breathing organism that is, that is constantly got to be fed, you know, otherwise it dies.

And I think that that's just so many times doctors.

Because the thing is, is, Ryan, when we, you know, when we go in from doctors that have quit, you know, they did it, you know, five years ago, but now they come back in, they don't, they get frustrated because we, well, we did all that.

But you.

It is starting from scratch again.

Instead of starting from scratch, you know, continue it on and just have little snippets here and there throughout to stay fresh and revived, you know, I think is a big thing.

Yeah.

I mean, it's maybe a way to illustrate it.

You know, diet are, you know, you read all the time you go on a diet, but then as soon as you get off the diet, then you kind of go back to your eating junk food or whatever.

You, you had a particular goal or event in mind and so you got yourself in shape.

But then once the event is over, you kind of backslide into your old habits where, you know, truly being healthy is a lifestyle.

Right?

It's about making everyday choices about what you're going to put in your mouth and what you're going to do with your body to keep yourself on a, on a healthy plane of life.

It's no different with this stuff.

If we think about this as an event, well, yeah, he's coming in, he's going to teach us all this and then everything's going to change after that.

But we don't actually adopt it as a lifestyle.

It's just an event, right?

And once that, once the event is over, we backslide into the thing.

So I always say any kind of coaching program or any kind of, you know, training program or whatever, if, if as the leader in the organization, if you are not fully committed to the behavior changes necessary for adoption into your team lifestyle, don't waste your money.

Just save it.

Save it for something else.

If you really want to, you know, adopt it as this is the way we're going to now kind of think and breathe as a team and like you said, as an organism, then, yeah, then this is.

This is it.

Because this becomes a way of living for teams rather than just something that you kind of do on a Thursday.

And the thing is, is too, is.

Is.

You know, I would kind of count to go along with what you're saying is, is when you start this, if this is your first time and your team is, is at the trust level, you know, way deep into the.

Can't even trust anybody and stuff, this isn't going to be easy in the beginning.

No.

You know what I mean?

No, it's.

It's going to take some time.

And then once you get to the top, that's when it, that's when it's easy.

So it's no different, like you said, for trying to lose weight, right?

Those first few months suck.

I mean, it.

I know from personal experience it sucks that you want to quit so many times because it's just like, is this really worth it?

You know, but when you finally get to the point where you wanted to be at, then just the little, just noticing the little fluctuations, it's like, okay, enough, but get back to what I was doing so that I don't go back because I don't want to go through that struggle again.

And I think that's important for everybody to know.

Yeah.

100%.

So.

Yeah, I mean, I know we've been having the conversation, stuff like that, but now you got practice owners who are listening.

Yeah.

And, and they're going to have the.

I, I know for a fact there's somebody that's listening right now that says, okay, yeah, this sounds all great, but, you know, where do I even start?

I mean, how do I. Yeah.

How do I practically introduce five behaviors, you know, into my team, especially when I've never heard of it and probably none of the team's heard of it.

What, What's.

Yeah, what.

Give me some insight on that.

Yeah.

A few things that, that you can consider.

No.

Number one, you can read the, the book.

So there's a.

All of this training is based on a book written by Patrick Lincioni called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Right.

It's a, it's a New York Times bestseller.

You can pick it up at any bookstore, Amazon, whatever.

Not expensive, but it's written in a fable format, first of all, so it's an easy read.

So he's got the story and then he's at the end of the book, he's got some explanation.

So you could introduce yourself to on a deeper level by reading the book.

If you're not a reader, you don't really want to do that or you don't want to read a long book.

Fine.

We'll leave a link in the description of this video or this podcast and it an ebook that we put together.

So it's kind of a distilled or condensed down version that you could read, that you could share with your team.

They could read it and just kind of that in that way you can introduce the behaviors to your team.

Another thing you can do is have them listen to this podcast or you listen to the podcast, take some notes, share it with.

With your team and just start the conversation that way.

It's the easy way.

We're doing all the work for you.

All you got to do is listen to it and then share with your team.

And then of course, if, if you know, you want to go deeper and you want more resources, just contact us.

You can reach out to me.

Ryan.

Classsolutions.com I've got more materials that I can share with you.

I can have conversations with you around.

What's.

What's going on with your team.

Happy to, to do that with you.

Yeah.

So, yeah, there's four ways, right?

Yeah.

Well, and the other thing is to say too, is, is you are right.

It's an easy read.

I'm not a reader.

The audiobook, though, I mean, you can.

Sure, it's.

It's an easy listen, too.

I mean, it just explode.

And it was just one of those things where it was like, done with that in.

In a matter of seconds.

So it's good.

But I also want to know, those who are listening, that when Ryan says to reach out to him, he means it.

I mean, this isn't a sales funnel.

I mean, this guy is, I mean, certified team coach.

He's offering the opportunity to dive into more tools and help you with getting started on what you need.

So I would say, in my professional opinion, when someone says reach out, sometimes you question it.

I'm telling you, with Ryan, reach out because you're going to have good conversation and he's going to make sure that you're ready for it.

This isn't something that when he's dealing with the customers, he's not trying to sell something because like you mentioned earlier in the podcast, if you're not ready, then we're not going to waste your time because we also aren't going to give you something that you're not ready for.

It's just a disservice to you as, as a client of ours, and it's a disservice to, to your team, too.

So, yeah, having that conversation with Ryan is a big deal.

So, yeah, I just would say reach out.

And like I said on, on the podcast, if you got the video podcast that you're watching, I actually put Ryan's email underneath his name the whole.

During this whole time, just so that you have it and it's easy for you to, to take a snapshot or write, write it down and stuff.

So, okay, so how does a practice owner then know if the model, if they're going to test it out a little bit, right?

You just told them, listen to this podcast, read the book, if they want to test it out a little bit, maybe on their own or something.

But how do you know that once you've implemented the model that it's actually working?

What does a healthy team start to look at?

So they can maybe if they are trying it on their own and they're working on the trust factor, what is it that they are going to see or maybe feel that that's going to sit there and say, okay, this is actually working.

I want to go deeper.

Yeah, I would say initially, look for vulnerabilities, Right.

Are you hearing things on your team like I'm sorry or I'm overwhelmed or I need help with this, which, you know, those are difficult things for people to admit.

Right.

And they're difficult things for people to say, but that understand that that's someone being vulnerable.

So that would be number one, right?

If, if you have those vulnerabilities, well, that's good.

You're, you're at the base of the pyramid and you're, and your team is learning to trust one another.

You know, another, another maybe tell for your team is how engaged are people at meetings?

Is there a lot of conversation?

Is there a lot of healthy conflict?

Are people challenging the ideas?

Are people challenging the status quo?

Are they, are they, are they able to, to bring those things and are you getting to the best ideas or are your meetings really boring and everybody just kind of sits around and nods their head and kind of waits for you as the leader to be, to be done with the meeting so they can move on with other things?

Right.

So that would be, um.

Are, are they, are they engaging at all with some healthy conflict?

Um, how about following through, Are they, are they following through on, on commitments?

When you walk away from a meeting and you make a decision, are those things actually happening in real time afterwards or do you back backslide into what, what you were doing earlier?

I think a big one is from, just from accountability is, do you have any peer to peer accountability?

Are people confronting when behavior falls below the standard that you agreed on?

Or is your team just kind of lowering the standard in order to not have to have the conversation?

Right, so that peer to peer or, or are all the accountability conversations coming to the leadership, whatever that, whether it's office manager or, or the doctor, are you having to deal with all of the messy stuff or, or do you have some maturity on your team where people are saying, you know, we committed to this, we're going to do this together and those things are happening?

Are the goals of your people, Are your people asking that, Your teammates asking, hey, I want to set some goals, but I want them to revolve around our larger practice goals because I'm, I'm, I'm bought into what we're doing here and I want to become a better teammate and I want to set some goals, but I want them to be aligned with the results that we're looking for as a practice.

That's a great indicator that you've got a high level of quality, high performing teammates on your team.

So those are A few examples that you could look at.

No.

Excellent.

So.

Well, unfortunately, we could keep going forever.

I know.

But we're definitely going to have Ryan back on several more podcasts just to continue to dive into the team aspect and the leadership specifically, just the leadership aspect of practice too.

So, you know, this is exactly what.

I would love to do.

Conversation to be.

So before we wrap up though, let me say this directly to anyone that's, that's listening, especially the practice owners.

If, if you took one thing from this episode, please let it be this.

Your team is either pulling your practice forward or it's quietly or maybe obviously holding you back.

You, there, there just can't be a neutral.

And I think that there's too many times that's.

People are, think that they can be satisfied with neutral.

It can't.

There is no such thing.

So if you've been telling yourself you don't have time to work on this, what Ryan just laid out should reframe, reframe that for you, I hope, because I know that it does for the offices that we work with.

The cost of not working on it is showing up and it's showing up in your numbers.

As we talked about your turnover, your patient reviews, and really, really what we see a lot too, is your own stress level.

You're, you're just not connecting the dots yet.

And hopefully that's what this podcast did for you today and, and the other podcasts that we have coming up will be doing that for you as well.

So here's what I want you to do this week and, and once again, not next quarter, not after the holidays.

Pick one of the five behaviors Ryan walked through and run a single team meeting around it.

Just one.

And I would say start with trust, because of course we know that's the base.

But read the ebook Ryan put together.

Share this episode with your team as well.

I think it's important for them to listen to it and then, like Ryan said, start the conversation.

The team that win, the teams, I should say that win in this profession are not the ones with the smartest people and they're not the ones with the healthiest behaviors.

And I'm sorry, they are the ones with the healthiest behaviors.

And those behaviors, once again, I want to rephrase that again, they're learnable, as we talked about, they're not just handed to you.

So if you want help, real hands on help, Ryan is available.

Remember, as I said, reach out to him, let him talk to you.

You can reach out to Ryan directly at ryan@classsolutions in class just for the listeners in case you it's k l a s find us on our website classsolutions.com take the time, learn a little bit more, and allow yourselves a chance to take your practice from good to great.

As far as I'm concerned, a practice that works for you instead of you trying to run a practice will always be the most successful.

So Ryan, thanks for coming on.

It was, it was awesome.

This was gold.

And I hope that everyone listening keep building, keep leading and we'll see you on the next episode of the Dental Business podcast.

SA.