#918: 3 Steps For an Effective Leadership Meeting

Dental A Team Podcast

Kiera breaks down need-to-know pieces of leadership meetings—ones that are regularly scheduled, have focused agendas, and require personal ownership from each person present.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.798)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I hope you guys are just having the best day of your life. I hope that you just remember we are truly so incredibly blessed to be able to be in dentistry. I say this often and I genuinely mean it. I think it's so incredible that we get to be a part of dentistry. We get to be part of all this evolution. We get to be a part of AI coming into our practices and being able to have all these fun things. We're able to help our patients with

PRF and now there's laser that's helping with restorative treatments have less sensitivity and we're able to add it on and have literally patients healing like within three days after a full mouth extraction by using a lot of these procedures like it is truly mind-blowing that we get to be a part of this and giving people their smile. I was in an office this last weekend one of the the team members she's new to dental and she said you know a smile is the universal hello.

And while, yes, I've heard that before, it just kind of hit me again of how beautiful of a work dentistry is where we get to help people with that universal hello of being able to smile and have the confidence and also be able to fuel and be able to eat the healthy foods that we need to eat. To my mother-in-law, she had an accident and she wasn't able to eat. Some things happened and just hearing like how hard it was for her to be able to eat and consume food and how hard it was for her body to heal. just thought...

I think we sometimes forget how important our job and our role and what we're doing in dentistry is and the life impacts we're able to make for people. just wanted to remind you of what a great work you're doing and mass kudos and celebrate your team because we really are doing a work that changes lives. I understand we're not heart surgeons, but we are smile surgeons and we're able to give people the smile and the confidence of their dreams and make that a reality for them. So just wanted to remind you.

Keep doing what you're doing because you're making an incredible impact in this world. So as always, thank you for being a part of our Dental A Team podcast family. If you've not left a review, please go leave those five star reviews. Be sure to share this podcast with someone. Just literally like send it to someone. I want you to think of one dentist or one office manager or one hygienist that you know. Just send this podcast to them because I really am here to inspire and positively impact this world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And the only way I can do that is providing great content.

Kiera Dent (02:21.984)

that you naturally want to share. So please share this with someone. And today's topic is going to be really fun for you to share. It's all about how to run effective leadership meetings. I know. Don't worry. I know how to give a good pitch and hook. How to run great effective leadership meetings. I just came in off the road. did nine leadership meetings in one week. That was my latest record. It's definitely something that I have not done before. And to say I was very tired at the end of it and

What my favorite phrase is, came from Tony Robbins and he said, bone tired, but victorious. And that's how I felt. I was literally physically exhausted. I slept in four different hotel rooms in five different days. It was just very, very like I was running. I was sleeping on all different time zones. But by the end of it, my cup was so full from being able to help so many offices achieve goals and dreams and amazing leadership teams that they never believed were possible.

And for me as a consultant, think my greatest success is watching my offices. Yes, I love numbers. I love hitting up sexy numbers. I love seeing offices who when I first started with them, like I have one office that I'm thinking of, when I first started with them, they were doing about 2 million. Incredible practice. They were doing a great job. And just over the course of a few short years, they are now producing, we're hoping that they end in the 5 to 6 million range.

And so to be able to give that ROI of sexy numbers, those are always fun for me to throw out to you of true real life examples, other offices that are producing 12 million, other practices that started out as scratch startups that are now producing 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, and having very successful profit margins on that too, because I don't care what your top line number is, I care what your profitability is, to see offices that bringing on partners are able to pull in 35 % profit.

Those to me are really fun, sexy numbers, because I think in consulting, you're looking for ROIs. And so to be able to share those success stories, but then I also have other offices that don't have as great of numbers. And I really do look to see what's the difference between them. And I think there's a few differentiators and one is execution and commitment. Offices that flourish truly do execute and commit for at least the three to six months or whatever we've committed to as a team, they commit and they stay committed to that. They don't just like, yeah, we did this. And then they let it slip off.

Kiera Dent (04:41.056)

The owners are very, very strict with that. Something else is the doctor is very much, the owner is very much involved in not necessarily running the meetings or doing all the pieces, but they're there setting the vision. They are there being a part of it with the team and they very much love their teams. And then the other part is they expect their teams to rise up. They expect their teams to have the conversations. They invest in their teams. They pay for the consulting, but they have their teams come to the meetings.

I have an office and like our meetings every single month. We have our leadership meetings and it is never missed and it is never let go. It is and it is in gold and it's so important and they expect the leadership team to go and tell the doctor what they learned at that meeting versus my other offices who are missing the meetings. They're not blocking the schedules. They're not taking the time. They're not following through. And then we're looking at the numbers. We're consistently looking at the numbers to see where we at, where the lovers and we fall in love with numbers.

All of my offices that are very successful know their metrics forward and backward. If I called each of them up right now, they would know their overhead, they know their profit, they know their collection percentages, they know how much is in their AR, they would know how much their doctors are producing, every single one of them. Like literally I would call them, but that's been trained over years of this is what we need to look for and we need to make decisions off of that. And then I train leadership teams to do the same. Training leadership teams to think like owners, to look at this practice and take the ownership of like, yes, the doctor is here.

but leadership teams are now setting the vision. They're setting the goals. They're setting the objectives. The doctor has a small portion of that as the owner, but the leadership teams are ultimately taking the ownership and having an ownership mindset on the practice. The doctors that don't do as well in consulting, or I would say in general, are the ones who are making excuses that are blaming, that aren't having the uncomfortable growth conversations with their team, that aren't expecting their team to show up to meetings. It's crazy. Some teams start right on time. Like the offices that do really well.

They are always set up, prepared. Everyone has a notebook and a pen. They're there usually five to 10 minutes before the meeting starts. And that's the expectation that they have versus other offices. They're coming in. No one has notes. No one's taking notes. No one's following up on what's going on. You obviously have two different stages, two different standards, but both of them have the same opportunity if they desire. And so just giving you guys some tips on how you can run very successful leadership meetings is one.

Kiera Dent (06:59.796)

always have it like set in the schedule and everybody comes and I recommend you always start five minutes like they're there five minutes before and that's on time. We always have an agenda. So there's got to be an agenda. I follow the traction model by Gina Wickman. We call them L10 or level 10 meetings. And there's a very solid structure in there where we start with our personal professional wins of the week. And then we have our expectation of what we're hoping to get out of the meeting. I do this every single time our team does it. My offices that I coach do this.

After that, we then go into reviewing last week. Did we get our action items done? Where are we at? We look at the numbers and the metrics. If anything is off track for that quarter, that goes to an issue that we're going to discuss. And then we move on to issues and issues we don't just go one by one by one. We categorize them, we put them together, and then we look at what's the one, two, and three most important things to get solved and resolved. And we come to meetings to resolve. We don't come to meetings to just talk. So we're coming there to make decisions. We're coming there with all the information people speak up.

Then we commit, we have our action items, people follow through. And a lot of times it's like dependent upon the office manager to tell everyone, no, in very successful leadership teams, you are taking notes, you are writing down your action items of what you need to get done. So you take personal ownership of it. The office manager is just expected to know everything going on. And if something's off track, they go have a conversation with that team member. But if leaders can come to the table this way, if leaders show up this way, leaders are being very involved, the bulk of the time is spent on those issues.

We're not here to debate it of a way of making people right or wrong. We're here to debate of what does the business ultimately need and why is this an issue without blaming? Sometimes it is like you got to call people out like, hey, Kiera, you're not showing up to these meetings on time. And I can either be annoyed, that's the ego, or I can say like, you know what, guys, you're right. And I need to set an alarm 10 minutes before so that way I'm here. I really have found that excuses destroy leadership teams.

excuses of why things aren't happening are what destroy and make it to where we can't move forward. And these are the things that I would recommend and encourage that you actually remove out of your leadership and call each other out of like, Hey, is that an excuse or is that a fact? And encouraging your leadership teams, like I'll throw another plug for Patrick Lanziani's, five dysfunctions of teams book, making sure that we're actually all talking about it. And we're, we're working on winning.

Kiera Dent (09:22.582)

And we've got to have the healthy debate. We've got to be able to call each other out and not take the personal offense. We've got to put our egos at the door and it's okay to feel bad because you didn't meet the standards and you let your team down. But that doesn't mean we make excuses or we blame. We take personal ownership and then we commit and resolve and we don't have it happen again. And so that's how you run effective leadership meetings. And then we always rate them and we rate them honestly on a one to 10. So 10 was, was an incredible meeting. We got a lot done. There's a solid plan in place. Everybody's clear.

One is this was a complete and utter waste of time. And the more honest and truthful we are with our meetings, like I've given my team a six before I'm like, it was a six today because we just got in a spin and we resolved nothing today. And it was an absolute waste of time for all of us. So next time we come in, this is what we need to do differently. I usually don't give that low of numbers, but when it's not a good meeting, leaders need to step up and say the honest truth. Now there's the flip side where people are like, I'm never giving tens or I'm never giving this like, but if it was.

give the celebration and let's celebrate that we did an incredible job as a leadership team. and then the other piece that I always recommend. So we start on time. It's always consistent. We have an agenda. There's someone who's taking notes, but everybody should be taking their own notes of what they're expected to do. There's true follow up. No excuses. Let's have that. And then whatever we discuss in the leadership team needs to stay confidential within.

and we all need to be committed. We're not having side conversations and that's literally being all brought up within that leadership team meeting. And you can also do this within your team meetings too if you don't have a leadership team today. But really making sure we're doing these pieces, we're building the trust, we're having the conversations, we're having the healthy debate, we're fully committed. And then I recommend ending that meeting about 10 minutes before time so that way we can make sure, okay, what did we discuss today? What's the action plan?

who's doing what and what did we truly like solve today to make sure we're all on the same page. And it's almost like giving you a 10 minute time to recap it before we get to the next meeting. And I found that that really, really helped. So even on my calendar, we shrink it up by 10 minutes. That way we can recap it at the end and we can end and be done right on time. And I'm always very committed to we end on time. Now, if you're in the middle of something that's very important and if we could get this resolved, we can move it forward faster.

Kiera Dent (11:37.938)

move the next meeting if appropriate, but try really hard to end on time. I understand sometimes it takes a while to get things there. So I give our leadership team permission of like, let's move our next meeting by 10 or 15 minutes. That way we can get this resolved. Let's be respectful of time. But I think a lot of those things are very helpful for running it. And something I found is I'm obsessed working with leadership teams. I'm obsessed with helping leaders learn how to run a practice and think like an owner. So we look at the numbers to make the decisions. We have the...

growth conversations with each other. fully committed when things aren't there, we figure out how to have the conversations with each other. This is the type of stuff that freaking lights my fire because if I can teach a team of leaders how to be leaders, that doctor is able to then have a practice that flourishes with a team that's bought in and committed to things that they would never imagine possible. This doctor that I was telling you that went from 2 million to about 6 million, we were chatting and he said, Kiera, I never believed that this would be possible. And I'm like, it's because

it's probably not possible with just you. But when you have a leadership team that's as passionate and fired up about it, they go and find the creative solutions. They're thinking about it as a business. And I've had to like work with this team. We're talking a year, two years, three years. We're helping them look at the numbers and learn the numbers because I don't think that that's happenstance. I don't think that this is something where we just naturally get it. And team members, myself included, we're not looking at the business like a business. We're looking at it as a team member of our

Like the awareness piece that we have is all that we know and all that we know is making paychecks and then paying our bills. We don't know what overhead is. Like it would work. Like that's how much is left over at the end of your paycheck. We don't have big tax bills because our taxes are just taken out of our paychecks for us. And so really helping teams understand how this works in a business. I think there was like a golden star moment in one of my meetings where the office manager said,

This is so incredible because you've literally taught me to think like an owner that I'm thinking like an owner and this is going to hit my PNL and what can I do so it doesn't hit my PNL and I make sure that it's fair amongst the other practices in the organization. And it was like chef's kiss, so much love for her because she literally thought like an owner. She thought this is going to hit my PNL. I don't know that I want to pay for this. What other solutions do we have? So that way it's not taking away from our profitability of our practice.

Kiera Dent (13:57.802)

when you can get your leadership team thinking like that and asking those questions, but that takes time, that takes education, that takes having the conversations. And so really, hopefully, that gave you a quick structure of how to run these leadership meetings. But I think the core piece is being consistent, executing consistently, following through, having the conversations, and then staying laser focused. We're all focused on it. Really, really truly is gonna help you guys have incredible leadership meetings.

and incredible practices. So kind of take an assessment of yourself. I gave you a little checklist of like my really amazing offices and then offices who actually don't do as well. Some maybe some DNA traits of these different practices and DNA feels a little unfair to say because I don't think that they're naturally born with it. So I would say that these are more talents that they've developed throughout the years because I believe anybody can be a successful business owner. I believe that anybody can actually have a thriving practice. I believe that practices should flourish.

Somebody I heard, I overheard that they said they thought that the glory days of dentistry is over. And I almost spit like my food out because I was so taken back that we do create our own realities. And I actually would argue that we are in the most glorious days of dentistry. There are so many opportunities around, there's so many ways that we can serve more patients. There's so many amazing things that you can do. And maybe it's just because I consistently see it with the clients that we consult that.

they're living the glory days that they're having these incredible practices that cashflow is not an issue for them. The profitability is there that they can take vacations with ease. Like, of course, everybody goes through ebbs and flows of owning a business, but the glory days are here if you want to. And I think having a leadership team really can help you. So if we can help with that, this is what I think we specialize in exponentially. We definitely do the systems and the foundations. And then we move you into leadership teams and helping them think like owners and the numbers and the pieces. And if that just feels like

Gosh, like I would love that. Reach out, [e-mail] or go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com and click book a call. I promise if you're not quite ready, we'll let you know and we'll give you resources. So no matter what, your time will definitely be well worth it. Cause I will make sure that you get resources and value no matter if you work with us or you don't. Because I think sometimes we just need to have the courage to do something differently and to have the courage as an owner to say, I don't know this. I had to say this this year, like guys, I don't know this. I've never done this before.

Kiera Dent (16:14.764)

We need to hire an expert who has and can teach us the way. What I'm obsessed with of what we do is we do it with the doctors and the team to make sure that doctors, you don't have to just learn it and then go try and execute it to your team. Cause I actually think as a business owner, that's the hardest part. We literally help with that integration with your team, getting them fired up, getting them excited about it, making it easy for them. And that's what I think we're experts in. There's lots of consulting companies, but definitely team does it with doctors and teams, getting our teams to think like owners, getting them to be incredible leaders.

getting goals to be hit with ease and to have a just ton of fun. Like throw the confetti, laugh a lot, have a good time and serve as many patients as you can. So reach out, I'd love to help you. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.