Does it seem like there are communication troubles in your practice? Spoiler alert: That usually has to do with accountability. Kiera and Dana riff on why creating an accountability ladder a) isn't as difficult as you think, and b) will save tons of time, energy, and money.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I've got the one and only Dana back with me today. I wanted to podcast with Dana, so I ⁓ maybe selfishly took her for two podcasts today. So Dana, welcome back to the podcast. How are you today?

DAT-Dana (00:12)

Doing pretty good, I'm ready for round two.

The Dental A Team (00:15)

Good. I do love podcasting because Dana and I were just able to rift and jive and it's fun. I think when you work with people for quite a while and you both have a ton of passion, makes podcasting very easy. So Dana, I wanted to just kick us off today on, I think, accountable teams. I think accountability is a buzzword in practices and people might be like, womp, womp, accountability. But I'm going to say like, no, it's not womp, womp. It's a, if you don't have accountability, your team is freaking chaos. And yet I think

offices don't want to have accountability and then we're going to do a pivot of like what happens if your doctor doesn't want to be accountable. So tune in. I hope you guys are ready. We're going to dive into it because it happens and I don't just think it's teams that aren't accountable. It's also doctors that aren't accountable. Like what do do because if accountability is such a like ick and issue and constant stressor for everybody. Well, like what the heck? Like how do we, how do we fix this and overcome? So Dana, let's dig in. Let's talk about like

I'm gonna just walk us through. It's gonna be a short rift today, but walk me through like, we get new offices. And I found that usually the number one issue they have is communication, which usually leads down to accountability. That's at least what I find. But I think that it's like, well, where do you start and how do you know like, is my team accountable? Is it not like, what do accountable teams look like? What do accountable teams not look like? Walk me down through like what you see in the practices you consult.

DAT-Dana (01:35)

Yeah, I agree with you. It typically will come down to communication. And so when I talk to a team about accountability, I always say, there's accountability ladder, right? So we have to hold ourselves accountable first, right? Then we've got leadership team to hold us accountable. And then we've got practice owner typically there at the top. But there's always a caveat to that. And that is it has to be seen from the top down. So yes, we have to hold those lines. We have to follow those ladders as far as the chain of accountability. But

the tone for accountability is set from the top down. So if we don't have an accountable practice owner, we're probably not gonna have accountable leaders, which means we're not gonna have an accountable team. And so that's usually how I kind of open that discussion and that it does really come down to communication and some personal integrity, right? If we say we're gonna do something, do it. And if we notice that somebody isn't, have the conversation. So like you said, it really truly comes down to 100%.

of communication ⁓ and clear expectations.

The Dental A Team (02:39)

Yeah. Gosh, Dana, like I love the accountability letter. Thank you. I have not heard that from you. So I think that's a fun, like you're right. It does start as you. And then it goes to your leadership team or your direct manager. And then it goes to the practice owner. And as you said that, just thought like, my husband and I were chatting the other day and something Jason, hi, I don't know why I do the things I do half the time. Jason and I were watching love is blind. So we decided to say like, okay, if we were in the pods, what questions would we ask each other?

And Jason, think Jason is a very, uh, he hears what's not being said. And Jason said, I would ask the question of what things are going to make it really easy to be in a relationship with you and what things are going to make it really hard to be in a relationship with you. And I was like, that's pretty good. Pretty great question. And I told Jason, I said, like, one of the things for me with Jason is a lot of times Jason, feel, um, tries to kind of like form himself into the relationship he is. And so he'll maybe not say everything a hundred percent the way like,

Like we had an issue and he was like, you know, like, and tried to just like almost sugar coat it for the person. And I, I called JSAO. I was like, Jay, why, like, why, why don't you just say like, I'm sorry. And Jason told me, he said like, well, in this scenario I'm embarrassed because I didn't do X, Y, or Z. And, ⁓ gosh, this is coming from years and years and years of coaching. ⁓ so that's the only reason I was able to see it. And thankfully Jason and I have a very open relationship where like he tells me like the hardest thing for me is like, girl, you gotta let go of control. think Dana would agree.

Like I need to just let go and like trust people like that is my zone. So he will call me out of like care. That's like you're controlling, like just let it go. Thank you. ⁓ and for him, I was like, just having that personal integrity, I know will give you confidence cause I've done it as well. So for example, if I'm embarrassed with something, say like, Hey, I missed that and I'm really sorry. Like I dropped the ball, but even in those small little instances of like, I don't know if like Dana, I was supposed to do a podcast and I messed up with her. It's like, Hey Dana, I'm real sorry. I dropped the ball on that podcast.

You can count on me in the future to do X, Y, Z. And in those small little subtle areas, I think that that's where you start to build personal accountability and confidence. And then like you said, Dana, it then is like peer to peer. And I know it gets weird and people are like, I'd rather not tell my team. I'm like, really? Cause let's just play, let's play the game. We either tell our team members and we have direct honest communication where we're able to have that. Or we sit in artificial harmony where everyone's walking on eggshells. Like you choose me, which practice you actually want to live in. And then that's also going to help us start to have that.

And I do think, Dana, like as consultants, it's really fun to be able to open the floor to teach people like, okay, let's start with ourselves. And like, this is how we're going to have personal integrity. Like you literally say what you, if you tell someone you're going to get back to them by Friday, you get back to them by Friday. And we start with these little accountability check-ins. Like if you messed up, you take ownership for that and you say what people can count on you for. Then we go into like this week, everyone's going to hold each other accountable to one thing. So everybody's going to do that together. Like

We all know ever...