Have you ever heard people talk about self-awareness and leadership but wondered what it really means, or why it matters for leading a dental practice? In dentistry, self-awareness isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the foundation of effective leadership and lasting practice success. Yet, many dental professionals struggle to find clear, practical guidance on developing this essential skill.

That’s what makes the Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership different: self-awareness is at the heart of everything in the course. By understanding yourself, you unlock better decision-making, stronger team relationships, and greater adaptability. You develop yourself into an authentic and confident leader who people follow.

Read on to discover how this unique, accredited course can transform not only your leadership, but your approach to dentistry and life.

What is self-awareness?

Self-awareness is the ability to consciously recognize and understand your own thoughts, emotions, behaviours, strengths, and weaknesses, as well as how these aspects impact both yourself and those around. It involves having a mindful awareness of your character, motivations, and emotional responses, enabling you to objectively evaluate your actions.

Why is self-awareness essential for developing your dental practice leadership?

Conscious versus unconscious – By developing our self-awareness, we bring our unconscious behaviours to the surface so that we are consciously aware of those behaviours and how they impact the people we lead. If those behaviours remain unconscious and we have no awareness of them, they can run how we behave and treat people without us even realising the impact they have.

Better decision-making – Being aware of our different biases and natural preferences helps us interrupt or challenge our own decision-making. We look at other options and consider different perspectives to improve our decision-making.

Ability to connect with those you lead – Being aware of your own natural preferences, values and identity also helps you recognise and appreciate that the people you lead will similarly have their own natural preferences, values and identity. This helps us to appreciate the different perspectives that the other person can add as well as recognising the areas of common ground. As a result, we improve the level of connection with our people.

Manage ourselves to be in the best state possible – Knowing ourselves and how things affect us allows us to be aware of our current state. When we know what state we are in, we can find ways to manage that state according to the situation.

Use our energy in the most optimal way – Giving and managing our own energy is critical to the success of any leader. We only have so much energy we can give, contrary to what many may believe. If we know the things that energise us versus the things that suck energy from us we can look to manage ourselves for maximum energy output.

Click for more information on the Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership (Level 7)

How does the Certificate in Dental Practice develop self-awareness?

The HEART of Leadership

The structure for the course and of my book Lead Your Dental Practice is called the HEART of Leadership.

You will see ego at the very core of this image because it is central to everything that we do as leaders. It is a theme that is a section in its own right, but also affects all the other sections. Awareness of ourselves affects all the different sections of the course and is something I continually bring you back to when applying concepts from the course. Much like the heart, the valves in the middle affect and allow the heart to function effectively.

Ego

I give you a structure that allows you to develop your self-awareness. The assessment involves you undergoing, reflecting and completing a workbook on your answers to these exercises. We look at the following:

• Values
• Purpose
• Vision
• Identity
• You receive and Everything DiSC Workplace Profile
• You do a 360 feedback exercise

At this stage you have a 1:1 coaching session with myself to help you to explore these exercises and further develop you self awareness. We do this at the beginning so that you have this to return to throughout the course.

Alignment

During the alignment section we look at creating alignment of the people you lead so that everybody is contributing to the success of your dental practice. Time is spent looking at the vision, values and purpose of the practice and how this relates to your own personal vision, values and purpose. Understanding and having alignment creates energy for you as a leader.

There is also time focusing on the strategy for the practice to achieve the practice goals and vision. As a leader we look at communication, delegation and allocation. Who you are makes a massive difference in how you would typically approach these three areas.

Being Human

This section is about connecting with the people you lead. At the same time, you  have to be honest and sometimes have difficult conversations. It is about being able to do both. Recognising how we are in these different situations allows us to take a step back and develop those skills. For instance, the fear of damaging a relationship can really put some people off engaging in conflict. Yet those people are often quite effective in engaging in that conflict because they will naturally be quite empathetic. Recognising this helps the individual see that they do have to go out of their comfort zone and that it is uncomfortable but very necessary and that they can be good at having those conversations.

Team Dynamics

Creating the correct dynamics within the team is the overall responsibility of the leader. The leaders themselves and how they respond to behaviours that people demonstrate have a huge impact on this. This is both in terms of direct interaction with team members and also in how you respond to behaviours of team members with other team members.

Reflection

Effective decision-making is critical to the success of any leader. As human beings, we have various cognitive biases that are widely recognised. We explore those so that we understand how they may influence us in a way that doesn’t best serve the dental practice you lead. You also have to put this alongside your own specific biases that you have on particular topics. The more we understand this, the more we can be consciously aware of how we are making decisions. We also explore how we can develop reflection structures to improve our decisions.

Coaching

Whilst coaching isn’t in the model of the heart, it is the blood running through the heart. Effective coaching allows everything to run more smoothly. We explore what coaching really is and your approach to it. We look at principles, models and tools for coaching. Who we are impacts how we like to coach and what is more difficult for us versus what comes more naturally.

Click for more information on the Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership (Level 7)

Practical delivery

The practical delivery of the Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership is set up to ensure that you develop your self-awareness as a leader.

Online platform with video content to watch in advance

Consuming content in advance gives people time to reflect on the content and concepts in advance of the live webinars.

8 x live 90 minute webinar reflective exercises in small groups

Each cohort is limited to relatively small numbers. A maximum of 15. This allows for everybody to engage in discussion and see how the concepts are taken on differently by different people. The content is watched in advance to allow the webinars to be about discussion, understanding and application.

2 x Individual 1:1s

There are two individual one to ones that are dedicated to helping you develop your self-awareness as a leader and to ensuring you develop as a leader in the way you want to develop.

Assignments with reflective exercises for application

A significant majority of the assignments required to achieve the Level 7 Certificate and Diploma are reflective exercises around how this applies to you and your world. This leads you to developing your awareness, authenticity and confidence as a leader. It is not about writing long theoretical assignments.

Conclusion

Self-awareness is critical to being a great dental practice leader. By understanding yourself, you unlock better decision-making, stronger team relationships, and greater adaptability, developing yourself into an authentic and confident leader who people follow.

The Certificate and Diploma in Dental Practice has self-awareness at the core of the course. A specific section is dedicated to this at the beginning with a 1:1 coaching session to help the individual explore this. This allows you to continually refer to it throughout the course to see how that impacts your application of the theoretical concepts.

Click for more information on the Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership (Level 7)