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5 compelling reasons to invest in leadership training for your dental practice

By Jamie MorleyApril 25, 2024

Have you ever wondered how investing in leadership training could transform your dental practice? Discover five compelling reasons as to why it's the key to unlocking your dental practice's full potential. Read, watch or listen!

1. Enhanced Patient Care

Dentistry is a service business. It is heavily reliant on the people within your dental practice to provide that service. It is the people within your practice that enable you to provide the required levels of patient care and enhanced care for the patient.

There are multiple studies that exist demonstrating the impact of leadership in healthcare service businesses. The following systematic literature review of the impact of leadership style on the quality of healthcare provision was performed and shows clearly the importance of leadership in enhancing patient care more broadly across healthcare.

Link to literature review on the impact of leadership style in healthcare provision

Specifically:

1. Certain leadership styles lead to improved patient outcomes. 

2. There is a correlation of leadership with quality care and a wide range of patient outcomes.

3. Transformational and resonant leadership styles are associated with lower patient mortality.

4. Relational and task-oriented leadership are significantly related to higher patient satisfaction.

In the UK primary care dental practices have to pass a CQC inspection in order to operate. The CQC asks 5 questions as part of this inspection and it is no surprise that based on the above evidence of the impact of leadership on patient outcomes one of the five questions is: Is the practice well lead?

https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-providers/dentists/dental-mythbuster-27-well-led

They are reinforcing the importance of leadership with regards to providing high levels of patient care and good outcomes. They specifically state that they want to see leadership which:

• assures high-quality care
• supports learning and innovation
• promotes an open and fair culture

Effective leadership fosters a culture of excellence in patient care, ensuring every interaction is informed by empathy, professionalism, and efficiency. Investing in leadership training enables you to create the culture and focus within your dental practice on what is most important. 

It equips you and your leaders with the skills to lead the whole team in prioritising patient well-being and satisfaction.

Not only that, if you are based in the UK it will help demonstrate to the GDC your commitment to ensuring enhanced patient care.

2. Improved Team Dynamics

The dynamics within a dental practice team sets the tone for positive teamwork, leading to increased collaboration, communication, and mutual support among dental staff. It ultimately leads to a well-oiled machine where everybody knows their role and at the same time is willing to support each other when necessary. 

Leadership training empowers leaders to be able to create such an environment.

It is learning how to deal with the dynamics between teams and team members. Specifically learning how to: 

• create an environment of trust whilst also being able to encourage effective conflict and debate.
• develop the culture of the team. Create clarity of values whilst also understanding any beliefs that exist and how to change them when the beliefs are unhelpful.
• create a dynamic of ongoing learning and improvement 
• increase levels of employee engagement
• effectively develop and manage conflict

This will foster a cohesive team environment, ultimately boosting productivity, increasing morale and continually improving in a way that takes you towards your ambitious for your practice.

Within a dental practice every person interacts in a way that provides an overall service to the patient. In order to provide a smooth and effective service to the patient effective teamwork is absolutely critical. Learning how to resolve conflict. For example situations where team members are refusing to work with other team members in the practice. Learning how to change the culture of a team. Investing in leadership training will develop your ability to do this.

3. Strategic Dental Practice Growth

Leadership training provides dental practitioners with the strategic mindset and business acumen necessary to navigate the complexities of running a successful practice. From financial management to marketing strategies, effective leadership enables dentists to make informed decisions that drive sustainable growth and profitability.

One of the biggest challenges for dental practice owners and leaders is to have a clear plan and strategy. With the challenge of actually providing clinical care for patients as well as leading the practice many dental practice leaders do not take the time to think more strategically. Leadership training will enable you to take this approach and show you how to do it.

It will ensure you take more of a strategic and focused approach so that you can make progress as opposed to throwing away resource in the form of time and money at things that come along and distract you.

What is your overall vision for the practice in the future? What are the key focus areas that will take your practice to that point?

You will also learn how to align and organise your team behind the vision and the key strategies whilst empowering them to think or themselves and take ownership for specific areas of the business. Effective delegation is hugely important within this.

All this is covered in the Diploma in Dental Practice Leadership provided at the Academy of Fitting Leadership.

4. Enhanced Professional Development

Investing in leadership training demonstrates a commitment to the professional development and career advancement of the people who work for your dental practice. Growth and development is a key factor for retaining team members. If people don’t feel they are moving forward, growing and progressing this can lead to them wanting to leave.

You

By undertaking leadership development yourself it shows that you are continually willing to look at yourself and developing your own skills and abilities in order to lead the practice to success. Not only does this obviously improve you it also sets a great example to those you lead of the importance of ongoing growth and learning.

Leaders in your team

With many practice principals providing clinical dentistry at the same time as leading it is vital that you have some great leaders in your team. By providing leadership training to those key people you are giving them the support to enhance their professional development. Alongside this you can start to expand their role as a leader. This will provide them with challenge and growth in their role which will mean you are much more likely to retain these talented people whilst empowering them to reach their full potential and allowing you to focus on doing the practice forward.

By training the leaders in your team you will be empowering them to motivate, influence and inspire the broader team to contribute to the success of your practice. To develop and retain the talent in your dental practice.

Attracting talent

By consistently doing this team members will see this as part of your employer brand and will start to tell their network about your willingness to invest in growth and development. This will attract other talented people to your practice.

5. Adaptability in a Dynamic Industry

The dental industry is constantly evolving, with advancements in technology, changes in regulations, and shifts in patient preferences shaping the landscape. Strong leadership fosters adaptability and innovation, enabling dental practices to stay ahead of the curve and thrive in an ever-changing environment. Leadership training equips dental professionals with the agility and resilience needed to navigate challenges and seize opportunities for growth.

Great leadership will enable you to maintain an overall strategy and direction whilst adapting appropriately within those overall strategies. Not only that but you will be constantly on the look out for dynamics within the external market to see when it may be time to change course.

Change

Investing in leadership training will help you understand how change occurs within individuals as well as within a dental practice. From this you will learn how to make change happen. Ranging from small changes to big changes that will affect everything and everybody in the practice.

Some quick maths

Doing some maths examples can help you see the potential financial benefit of leadership training:

1. Investing in the Certificate of Dental Practice Leadership is £1,450. The Diploma in Dental Practice Leadership is £3,500.

2. What is the cost of losing a team member? At a bare minimum, you will have to give up the equivalent time of a single staff member for about a month. Depending on your geography and the role this is going to range from £1,500 to £3,500. That is the cost of the course immediately paid back. It could be that this prevents the person themselves leaving or any one of the people they lead. This is not to mention the other potential impacts of that person not being there in terms of what they bring to the practice.

3. Practice growth and development. This is where the sums become a total no brainer. If the training ensures that you have clarity about where you are focusing and how to grow and develop that then the impact is huge! As an example, perhaps it enables you to focus on developing the ortho side to your practice. You would only need to get one additional case for the training to be paid back. Imagine though if that focus enabled you to do 50 cases more? At £2K profit per case that is £100K additional profit.

I could go on with other financial impacts of great leadership. The impact is huge!

The Level 7 Award, Certificate or Diploma in Dental Practice Leadership

The Level 7 Award, Certificate & Diploma in Dental Practice Leadership are unique in providing an accredited course that delivers the above. The accreditation really makes you reflect on key elements of your leadership and to actually put those elements into practice for real impact.

Click here for more information and to register