Debunking Team Myths

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy. With us is Robin Reese, the director of the hiring service at All-Star Dental Academy. Welcome. Robin. Thank you. Glad to be here. Yes, and we’re talking about debunking team myths. Is that right? Correct. OK. So what are the myths?

00:25
In all of our conversations with clients, right? There are many stories we tell ourselves in the dental world and we look at practices that have long standing team members and we think, oh, they must be great dentists because they have long standing team members. That’s one myth that we tell ourselves. That’s one story. Another story is that we tell ourselves

00:54
If they have attitude, great attitude and great personality, can teach them the dentistry. can teach them any of the necessary tasks. It’s another myth we tell ourselves. And then the third one is that expectations from the doctors and team members will remain consistent, which of course would lead to high performing team members, right? That’s another myth that we tell ourselves.

01:23
because the reality is completely different. And if we go back to that first myth of, you know, great dentists have high performing and long standing teams, there is some truth to that. But the reality is, is it doesn’t even average dentists have great team or long standing team members. Dentists, just like people on social media tend to put their best foot forward and they don’t want to share

01:53
where things might not be going well. I’ve experienced that personally and professionally where everything’s great, everything’s great. And then, oh my gosh, Dr. So-and-so just closed his doors. The reality being that

02:11
Dentists who are really good at understanding their team, their personalities, their skill sets are going to have those loyal team members. It doesn’t make them a great dentist. It doesn’t make the team a terrible team if the great dentist can’t keep team members. Today’s reality is team members are not going to have that 30 year loyalty to collect the Rolex watch.

02:40
Team members nowadays, the thought process is if you’re not increasing responsibility, if you’re not moving to other dental practices to learn and grow your skill set, then you’re behind the times. And that’s not how a lot of people think in the dental industry. They’re looking for those long-term loyal team members. Yes, that’s still true what we’re looking for.

03:06
And a lot of resumes, a lot of, you know, the gener younger generations are taught and their belief system is that I have to be always learning and always growing. So I want to look for places that allow me to do that. So that’s really the lesson of this myth is making opportunities for growth a part of your culture. Okay. Let me unpack this a little bit.

03:35
First, I want to just note, because you’re talking about where dentists, you’re right, they put their best foot forward. They don’t share. My dad, many of you know, is a dentist, and he would hate to go to study clubs because it’s all BS. It’s bragging, maybe something that’s not really there, and nobody shares what they want to learn because you don’t want to compete. One thing, because it’s fresh in our mind, we just came back from our mastermind retreat, or yeah, retreat, mastermind intensive, whatever you want to call it. And I like retreat, though. Anyways.

04:05
I’ll make a note of that. But we were there and we all share the good, the bad, and the ugly because there’s no competition in the areas. And so I think that’s helpful to see reality and then be able to work on it. And for those who want to learn more about Mastermind, you can go to our website, UlsterDentalAcademy.com and learn more about Mastermind where that’s located in the drop down box. Okay. Now let’s unpack this a little bit. So you’re saying the myth is what? The myth here is what?

04:35
Is great dentists have long standing team. Okay. So you’re saying it could be long. It could be. Um, so you’re saying even the great dentists have a long standing team and you’re saying not necessarily, not necessarily. And I can tell you it certainly doesn’t happen by accident. This is just because they’re a great dentist, right? Or a great boss. Doesn’t mean they’re going to have a long standing team because

05:02
Team needs vary and they change. And the culture is key here. And I think part of it is adjusting our expectation. Because I think what I hear you saying is years ago, team would stay 30 years for the whole entire time. And that is rare. And to look for that, what do we call that? Unicorn is probably going to be a fool’s errand. You may get one.

05:32
or two, but I think that it’s just recognizing the state of economics and culture and generation. Look, years ago, you can open up a practice and patients would come. But that’s not the case anymore. You gotta market run a business. So with this situation, I think what that kind of

06:01
kind of demonstrates it. Let me add this though. So what happens is we have to have a people that stay forever or for a while. And so we’ll only invest in those and we’ll keep looking. And we’re just talking about uncle Jay, you know, what if we, what if we, what is it? What if we don’t train them and they, what if we train them and they leave? Okay. Cause they’re based what you’re saying, but what if we don’t train them and they stay? So I think with this myth,

06:29
We have to say we want to continue to find good team members and always be hiring. Always keep, keep listen. And that was what we discussed as the mastermind group. What if you got somebody who was a great talent, you’d find a spot for them and maybe unwind other people who aren’t there. But being, what is the word, flexible that you can handle the ups and downs.

06:55
that go and you’re not caught with your pants down like you’re not prepared. And no one that’s of the game. back to intention, right? It doesn’t happen by accident. And you have to create a great culture to attract the people that you want on your team. Attract and maintain. And I think what I’m hearing you say is, look, we’re not saying you don’t want a team that lasts a while. Absolutely. That should be our goal. We want to pay them enough to stay. And it’s not just money.

07:25
you, you, you, and people, retaining employees, part of it’s money, part of it’s also they have some autonomy, they feel a part of your practice. It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s about them and they’re about the patient. And if they feel like they’re a baby, where are they gonna go? Right? So you can stack a lot in your favor that lowers the chance of turnover, but it’s still.

07:53
can happen for many reasons. People have babies. They change their mind. They don’t want to do it. It happens. So now let me ask you this, Robin, would you say that the successful dentists and practices tend to have better retention than those that aren’t in general? Absolutely. OK. So you will, if you follow what you’re teaching and you’re training your team, you’re taking them to events, which I love, they feel a part of what you’re doing.

08:21
coaching, all those wonderful things we provide the five steps to an all-star practice. If you’re doing those, you’ll be improving retention. You’re saying that that will help, but still dentists, heed Robin’s word that you’ll still get turnover even when you do everything right and you’re not wrong for it. There’s nothing you necessarily did wrong. It’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up. Just keep working at it. Absolutely.

08:51
Wonderful. So the second myth I mentioned was that you can train anybody to do the necessary tasks. And I, I do believe, um, strongly in, you know, hire for personality and attitude and train for skill. But the myth here to debunk is not everybody has the aptitude or the emotional intelligence or the, um, fortitude to.

09:21
be willing to learn these new necessary tasks that maybe they haven’t been taught in the past. And I’ll give you a great example of this. Dental assistant, 10 years experience, said that she had all of these skills and working for one doctor. you think, wow, great tenure, right? 10 years with this doctor. He was retiring, so therefore she was looking for another position.

09:48
Um, restorative general practice, she, you know, had all this stuff at her working interview. She could barely handle the water and air syringe knew nothing about how to make a temp. It was a fully digital office. She was not used to all the new technology, like scanning and to oral cameras, uh, and things like that. And

10:14
On paper, you would think, my gosh, this is a gem. This is somebody that really could help benefit our practice. However, when she got in there, she didn’t know it. And as they got into the working interview, yes, it’s one day, but as they were showing her the thing, she just said, look, you know what? I don’t think this is right for me.

10:40
I don’t think I have the ability to master all of this digital stuff. That’s just not my thing. I’m just looking for a practice that I can go and do my job and sit chair side and chit chat with the patient, hand some instruments, do air water, and that’s that. So the idea that you can teach everyone the dental skills is not always true.

11:06
Um, and that’s a myth that we tell ourselves that, if I, if they’re great at what they do and, and they’re excited, um, I can teach them all the technical stuff. And some people just don’t have that ability. Right. It’s the, it’s the adage. is a disappointment when, you encounter that, can you teach the dentistry? Absolutely. And the people that have the ability, the emotional intelligence, um, the aptitude.

11:33
do it? Yes, of course you can. But not everybody is going to be the right fit no matter how bubbly they are or how committed they are to learning. Some people just don’t have the ability and that’s okay. so we’re debunking some myths here. So this one is basically the adage, hire for attitude, train for skill. We hear that a lot and we say it from time to time. And what you’re saying is yes,

12:01
but not in all cases. Correct. And I like what, so this is like being realistic. Um, Oh Robin, I was in my head, we’re in the clouds, but so we can’t have a practice where people last forever. They can last more than others, but not forever. We can hire for attitude, train for skill, but not always. So I think it’s, that’s helpful guidance. And I think part of that is in the hiring process, that’s

12:30
while you’re the director of the hiring service where you hire for dental offices is it’s like you said in a prior podcast about being clear on what you want, being clear on what are the skill sets that are required. Because I look at it if we’re gonna build, we’re gonna build certain dental skills on top of someone in terms of what are their baseline? Do they have, and we have to lay out what that is. What are their attitudes?

12:58
What do they need? And one of them is a certain technical prowess. So Shelly, our COO, she’s wonderful. She’s near perfect. But one area which she chooses, she’s amazing. She has one area, blind spot, she admits, and she doesn’t, not interested in changing that, which is, I don’t care about this darn technology, this computer. So she’s always fighting with her computer and she’s smart enough, but she’s not interested in changing that. Now, if we were to hire Shelly, no matter how brilliant she is and what an amazing attitude,

13:27
to be the IT person for the office, she wouldn’t fit for that. Of the few things that she doesn’t do well, she has no interest in either. So we have to understand, I think what I hear you saying is, yes, hire for attitude, train for skill, but let’s unpack that cliche or that motto into reality. It’s just like, you know what, should have a, what should we call it? Reality check with Robin Rees, R-C-R-R, okay? But with respect to that,

13:56
is it’s again, being clear. Okay, if we’re gonna add, if this is a clinical position that requires a lot of detail, so even using disc, which we don’t recommend necessarily for hiring, you use Drake, which is a approved hiring personality profile, but we wanna see do they fit this position? do they have the characteristics? So if somebody has to be detail and they have no C and they’re all I and D, they may not be a good fit for that.

14:26
So when we do hire for attitude, what is their potential in skill that they can receive? So I think you’re saying, and okay. And sometimes, yeah, but if you didn’t do it right, does that make sense? Absolutely. And sometimes no matter how much training and shadowing and, um, follow up and check in that you offer somebody sometimes

14:55
They’re just not going to get it and it doesn’t make sense to hold on to them, to try and fit them into that position if it just isn’t a good fit. And you did steal my thunder about the profile assessments that can definitely help in uncovering is this person going to be a good fit from a dental…

15:20
position which the Drake P3 through Ben Erickson allows us to predict with about 75 to 80 percent accuracy of is this person going to be a good fit for this position, this dental position. So that’s one of the one things that we love using the Drake for is it does help uncover things that you might not be able to know or ask about.

15:45
because the person themselves might not know. So that’s what the assessment really, really is helpful in. But the other thing too is sometimes we really want it to work because we really like the person and we feel that they would be a great addition to our team. We just have to make sure that they do have the ability to learn the skills and not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of accepting mediocre or

16:15
the bare minimum because like you said before, culture is part of it, but attracting people, retaining them, one of those things is opportunities for growth, for learning, for advancing. And if they have peaked or met their ceiling already and there just isn’t any more ability to move forward, the kindest thing we can do is let them find a position elsewhere.

16:44
That’s one nice thing of having you here at All Star for us, as well as for our clients is like realistic Robin. We’re like, oh, this is going to be great. You’re like, that isn’t what I’m seeing in the hiring area. I mean, so it’s wishful thinking and you’re not negative. You’re just saying, here’s the data. We’re doing it day to day. And I’d love what you’re saying. I just don’t see it the numbers. I’m just not seeing here with it. Like we have to accept reality.

17:13
and work with reality and we still can create a wonderful result. All right, tell me about the last method. So the last myth is that if we kind of set it in, forget it. Our expectations are never going to change. And that’s again, just a myth that, if I tell them once.

17:34
they’ll understand it and get it and I don’t have to repeat myself. Like that is the last thing that we know just from a psychology standpoint is repetition, repetition, repetition is the mother of skill, right? So we have to share with our team and know that this is going to evolve or this is going to change over time, just like our systems that we write for our practices.

18:00
over time they’re not going to be as effective so we have to go back and look at them at least annually and that’s what I would encourage teams to help debunk this myth is make sure that you are still aligned with your vision, your values, your commitments of what you want as a owner doctor of

18:22
expectations for performance from team members, because as you introduce new technology, as you learn new science, as you introduce new materials, expectations for this particular role may change. And if you have different tiers of, know, DA1, DA2, DA3, what does that look like? How can somebody grow into each one of those positions and know that, yeah, we need to do a vision check once a year.

18:52
And we want to make sure that we’re all on the same page and sometimes things will change. And I hope they do. I hope they don’t stay the same. I hope they evolve and that you don’t just set it and forget it and figure once you tell somebody one thing, I expect you to be on time all the time that they’re always going to do that. You’re, they’re going to need reminders. Is that still an expectation? Absolutely. Um, but if maybe your hours are going to change, maybe as your practice grows,

19:22
you back off your hours. So again, it’s understanding that just because you said it once, it doesn’t mean it’s never gonna change. And that’s one thing you have always shared with our team, Alex, is things are, this is a moving target. We’re always gonna strive for excellence. There’s no such thing as perfection, but know that we’re going to change.

19:47
We’re gonna change things and I hope we always are changing things. We have to embrace that. We can’t just say, okay, this is what we’re gonna do once and then we’re never gonna go back or change it ever again. So it is something that is part of our All-Star culture is that we embrace the change and it’s always for the betterment of the organization and the clients we serve. That’s beautiful. Well, let me ask you this. Tell me about, so we have these myths.

20:17
we talked about hiring mistakes in a prior episode, is the hiring service. Who is it good for? All right? And what is it? Who does it help?

20:33
It really helps any dental practice that doesn’t have the time, the energy or the desire to enter into the hiring jungle. And that’s basically what it is. It is the wild west jungle out there and it’s changing rapidly. Not always for the better, but we are seeing great trends across the country.

21:00
places that we’re recruiting and we’re having wonderful tons of applicants. And then there are places in the country that, man, we are struggling to just, you know, have somebody apply once. So our hiring service is really built around those practices that might enjoy the recruitment, but just don’t have the time and they don’t want to deal with the stress. We do everything from soup to nuts.

21:30
write the ad, we post it, we have multiple channels that we’re always looking to get more exposure. We do it in a much efficient way, much more efficient way because hiring is all we do all day, every day for our clients. We have the time to devote to spending, scouring the resumes, scheduling the phone calls. It’s okay if they ghost us because

21:56
we’re onto the next one. gives us an opportunity to do a little more research. So we utilize that downtime. If somebody goes to us versus the practice that sometimes they have to stay late to meet with somebody after work or they have to interrupt their day or it takes them away from patient care. And it’s just not the best use of their time.

22:20
So I’m really proud of the fact that all of our hiring specialists have worked in the dental office before. So we understand the business of dentistry. We know what it takes to be a high performing hygienist or a high performing dental assistant or front office person. We’ve had the privilege of helping hire some spectacular team members for offices that just were burned out, stressed.

22:47
couldn’t find anybody to apply. And then they reached out to us and we were able to revamp how they promoted themselves, able to get candidates in front of them quickly. They were super responsive. And they’ve come back. When their team has continued to grow, they’re like, hey, you did a great job for us the first time. Now we’re expanding and we’re looking for additional team members.

23:15
I have this model we talked about in the last session. When you evaluate whether to do it yourself, I’m make this good email. Do it yourself or use a white glove service, hiring service. Are you good at hiring? Number one. Do you enjoy it? Number two. And both those still are yeses. Is it worth your time? Doctors are producing thousands of dollars an hour. Their practice is thousands of dollars an hour.

23:44
Is it worth your time? And does it have a compound effect? Because every time you stop and start something, you’re shifting gears. Focus on dentistry. Let us do the hiring, the coaching, help your practice management, help train your team, do events that are exciting, mastermind, all those wonderful things we do at All-Star. Let me ask you this last question, Robin. I’m gonna be the devil’s advocate here. Why not just do it myself? I I mentioned that. Obviously, I gave you those three prongs.

24:14
And let’s I’m still, still want to do it myself. I said, why use you versus just post of Indeed? I mean, you’re posting, you’re using Indeed and other services. I’ll just do it myself. Why? We are, and great question. If you want less stress, if you want less hassle and you want the best use of your time, of course you want to choose All-Star Hiring Service.

24:43
because our team has more efficient ways of getting your position out there. We do a multi-pronged approach. Yes, Indeed is our number one resource, but we have many others. And we know a lot of the backdoor things on Indeed that a lot of practices don’t because we use them very often. We have great relationships and contacts at Indeed as well.

25:11
as other platforms. So I’d say efficiency, exposure, again, putting the post out to the most effective job boards. We’re not a huge fan of the gunshot approach where it’s hundreds of thousands of job boards. We are very strategic in that. And then we are able to write and craft job posts that are able to convert.

25:40
applicants into people that we can get in front of the practice. So of course you can do it yourself and we’ve given you a lot of the ingredients to do that. Yeah, we give you the framework. you know, again, it goes back to is this really, I mean, the bottom line is, is this the best use of your time? Your time. There are other services out there too, but a lot of them are

26:05
don’t have the dental practice experience like our hiring team has. Oh, and they’re going to make you and they’re going to get you on a contract first of all, and they’re going to make you pay up front. They’re going to wear. We’re hourly. Uh, you can do it with us. You can let us do it or you don’t want to do it. Stop. You know, I mean we do partner with a lot of practices that are concurrently looking and they’ve had to walk in the door, right? those practices, it’s kind of like,

26:35
We work with you. If you want more of a coaching relationship, we’ll coach you with it. We’ll do it with you or we’ll do most like us do it for them. It’s a white glove service. It was interesting. We were at our mastermind and I was just asking you, like, do you contact this? Like there’s a, like, I was so surprised that you do some, many things outside the box. It’s not just indeed. It’s like whatever, sometimes it’s hard to find a hygienist or assistant. You’re contacting schools. You’re doing things like figure out ways.

27:04
that are creative. So I thought that was really interesting that you’re doing a lot of things that that others don’t do. And so it’s not like a one trick type situation. And just the just like, look, it’s like, who would you rather hire for your wedding? Somebody that plays every instrument. And if you want a piano player or one piano player only, like this is all that you all do. And like you’re going to find the hidden code, the details, the quality, you know, listen, you can

27:34
make your bed look like the Ritz-Carlton or you can go stay at the Ritz-Carlton. There’s a difference. There’s a difference in quality. I is a difference. And I do want to mention that the practices that make it really easy for us are those that have a great community presence, that have systems and an employee manual in place that have really created a culture that people are attracted to.

28:03
And when we partner with a practice, yeah, a lot of them will concurrently recruit with us. And sometimes they have somebody just walk in the front door, hand them a resume and they say, Hey, thank you for that. And we’re going to share it with our hiring team and somebody’s going to reach out to you. So they don’t even feel obligated or pressured that they have to do the interview right there. I mean, we have a system in a process. And when some, some practices try to skip those steps,

28:32
It doesn’t always end well. So we try again to coach and encourage them so that they can at some point do it on their own because they feel confident and they enjoy it and they have the time to do it. But when you don’t and you brought up a good point too about the hourly, we can accomplish so much more in an uninterrupted hour than most dentists and office managers.

29:00
office managers can do themselves because again, this is all we do all day, every day. Yeah, I love having these conversations with you because I don’t want you know, we just talk and says, Oh, sign up for the hiring service. And it’s like, but I want people I want to challenge you and have conversations the podcast so people can listen and I’m kind of speaking from their perspective, like where they’re coming from, and maybe some objections they may have. like, it takes time for people to feel safe. And like, it’s kind of fun because

29:28
I love the flexibility. That’s what we do here at All-Star. Our goal, we started this whole thing because people were saying, I can’t use your training service and I can’t do coaching because I don’t have a team. And I’m like, ah, and it was happening so much before COVID, before all this, before it was a crisis. was easy back then. I said, well, hire for you. And that little side hustle became a very successful business. I think we’re one of the top hiring services for dental offices in the country.

29:55
I’m surprised there aren’t more. just don’t think people want to do it and we’re really good at it. And you guys love it. You guys, your team is a strange. Our team is amazing. You love this stuff. But I’ll leave you all with this. It’s nice to work. You know, we’re big fans of coaching. We have dental coaching. We have hiring. We have all these things. It’s so good to be around professionals. And I’ll leave you with this. I have a personal trainer that also does my nutrition and I love it. And I was thinking, oh, you know what?

30:25
I’m just gonna take a few sessions with her and then I’ll get what I need, I’m done. Because I’m like the worst, I would be the worst dentist. I could look up a recipe, right? No, no, I would be the worst. I would just like, tell me what it is, I’ll do it myself. Because you know, listen, I know where you all coming from, I’m the worst. And I started working with her, I’m like, she’s good. And then like, we went from once a week to twice. I’m working four times a week with her and I’m loving it. And I’m getting the coaching and I’m like, this is good. You know, and so, and then one day it won’t be, I now become the.

30:53
I know everything, I don’t need it anymore. But it’s nice to surround yourself. Maybe you end up using people, coaching and things for a long time and maybe you get what you need. But just be, continue to be around those that have figured it out. Put aside hiring. I’m saying in general, precept, be around people that know what they’re doing. Either dabble in their service, learn about what they’re doing, have them around. But I’ll tell you this, the best of the best. That’s why we just came from Mastermind. So we’re all like,

31:22
You know, and Disney, we’re all like high on all the great ideas, but the best of the best, they do it all. They don’t dabble. They have a coach. use the high, they don’t BS because all they want to do is they want to do quality dentistry, take care of their team and have a balanced life. They don’t want to add more frustration, more work and become masters at other things. They don’t want to be a master in hiring. They don’t want to be a master of practice management. They want to be good at it.

31:51
They want people around them to guide them. A great CEO has a great team. All Star is great, not because of me. It’s because of two things. It’s because of a great team and messaging. I put that in one. And more, even more important, great dentists that resonate with what we’re talking about. It is all of you that are what make us who we are, which is you. Ooh, okay.

32:17
So Robin, thank you again. had a little extended chat here. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you have any questions about hiring or whatever, just reach out and we’re happy to give you resources. If you’re like, look, I’m not ready to do stuff with you, but I do want some more resource information. We give it away. Our philosophy is give it away because do it. Let me just share as much as I can, our website, our podcast. If you need more information on topics, we put it out there. Ebooks. Oh, so much good stuff. just want to help as dentistry gets stronger, we all get stronger.

32:45
Thank you Robin Reese, Director of Hiring Service at Ulster General Academy. Alex. Yes, and remember to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, share with your friends, follow, subscribe and all those fun things. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star. An All-Star.