Episode : #1,227: Build a Team That Makes Decisions For You

Podcast Description

This episode is about decision fatigue as a leader, and how to inspire your team to answer their own questions. Kiera talks about why practice owners so often create dependency with their teams, and gives specific steps for how to about-face those problems so that they’re being solved without your input.

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Transcript:

Kiera (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today, I hope owners I’m speaking directly to you. If this resonates with you, hype five. You’re not alone. it’s the owner interruption problem. Like, why the team keeps pulling you back in when you’re like, listen, all of you could solve these problems. And teams, this is for you to figure out like what are we doing and how could we actually fix it so we’re not reliant on our doctor because I know you don’t want to. So I think that this is something we’re like.

Doctors and myself included, CEOs out there. I feel like sometimes being a CEO is death by a thousand cuts, aka being pecked to death by the number of questions people want you to solve on a daily basis. It’s called decision fatigue. Like literally, there are studies out there that, like, if you’re going into the judge, like if you ever have to go have a judge like determine your fate, you don’t want to catch them right before they go to lunch, nor at the end of the day, because they’ve had all these decisions, they’re actually angry and they do worse sentences. Like, truly, there’s a study on this.

versus the judge at the beginning of the day or right after lunch, they do nicer sentencing. So if you ever have to get in there, I hope you never do. But literally it is statistically proven that there is decision fatigue. And so if you’ve got like 50 questions coming to you, you’re exhausted, you’re like, my gosh, like Jason sometimes is like, hey Kiera, what do you want for dinner? And I’m like, I just look at him, he’s like, got it, decision fatigue, I’ll figure that out. Like that is part of the game. But if we’re getting all these questions, it might not be our team’s problem. It might be that we’ve actually unintentionally trained them.

To follow this process. So a lot of times we think like, hey, this is just normal leadership. Like, I need to be an example. I always need to be there for my team. And the answer is like yes and no. Like there can be both. if we’re constantly having interruptions, constantly having little questions come to us, it might be that like leadership systems are missing for you. And so I want to give you guys today like why our team keeps pulling back into these daily decisions where you’re like, honestly, you know what type of gluma to order, order it.

How sometimes owners accidentally create dependency, like unintentionally, and like being a founder-built company, I can relate with the best of you all. This is Kiera not coming in here with judgment. This is Kiera coming in with a giant hug and saying, Hey, I see you, I hear you, and let’s get you out of that because there is a path out. And then just like some ways for you to stop being the bottleneck in your practice. So, just so you guys know, we’re the Dental A Team. We started about 10 years ago. Can you believe it? That’s wild. And I was obsessed with all things dentistry, being a team member.

To a practice owner, to a CEO of multi-million dollar businesses, I realized there was a complete gap in the industry where I needed like team members, like what teams need versus what owner doctors need. Like, hey, let’s bridge that gap. And so we created a Dental A Team. I’m obsessed with all things dentistry. I’m obsessed with helping doctors and teams live their absolute best lives, learn the numbers, be able to say yes more to the things they want in their life, having your business work for you rather than the other way around. I genuinely believe and I’ve seen that running a successful practice can and it should be easy for you.

So if you’re struggling and you’re like, practice ownership is the worst part of my life, reach out. [email protected]. I’d love to talk to you. I’d love to give you guys like free analysis of your practice, like what are some quick few quick things? because a lot of times you probably know the path, but it just sometimes feels like this overwhelm of like, gosh, there’s so many things. And sometimes you just need somebody who’s not sitting in the practice with you every day, who’s been there, done it, done it successfully so many times over to kind of pull you out and say, this is what we actually need to work on. Let’s focus on this. So reach out.

[email protected]. I’m obsessed with our practices. We meet in person. We fly to your practices. We do it virtually. You name it. There’s probably a different way that we could coach you in your practice. And we do it with fun. Lots of confetti, like not real confetti, but ultimately I believe that life is meant to be fun. So let’s have fun. Let’s get you successful. Let’s help you have the best practice. And realistically, I’m so glad you’re here listening. If you’re obsessed with this podcast like I am, leave us five stars, share it with a friend. That is the way you’re going to help us get into the hands of every practice out there and just know.

That is a massive, massive, massive thank you from me for all of you that have followed us that have been a part of this journey. And if you’re new, welcome. If you’re an OG who’s been here since the get-go, welcome. I’m obsessed with you and I’m rooting for you, and I’m your biggest fan, and I hope you know that. All right, let’s get into it today. We are not going to be having every decision land on your desk after today’s episode. All right. So, step one, I think back to this. I remember there was a girl named Ashley that I used to work with. Ashley was awesome.

All I did, like she’d given the information out, but I knew if I just texted her or emailed her, Ashley would get it right back to me so fast. Fun fact, you probably are the Ashley in your practice where your team comes to you, Doctor, you’re the best, you’re the fastest, you’re the easiest answer. I know if I come to you, you’re gonna give me an answer. I know that you can have it. I don’t have to like wait and wait and wait and remember to follow up with you. So we’ve created this dependency because the problem is that speed creates dependency. If I know you’re the fastest path, I’m gonna go to you. Just like when we were kids, am I gonna go talk to mom or am I gonna talk to dad? Who am I gonna get the best answer from?

That’s who I’m gonna go talk to. Same thing with your team. They’re going to like so what it looks like is a team member comes and asks a question, doctor immediately gives an answer, team member returns tomorrow with another question. Does anybody like you feel like you’re on freaking psycho? And you’re like sitting there trying to do your notes and like hey doc, what about this? And you’re like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you’re just doing your notes like you’re on autopilot. You think that you’re doing the best for your team I’m getting them the answers. Absolutely not. Because now your team stops critically thinking.

confidence decreases. They feel like they always need your approval. You are the one who knows all the answers. And owner becomes a solution to every single thing. Trust me, I’ve been in this boat. Sometimes I’m still in this boat so much. So one of our team members, literally this week, she sent me a slack and she’s like, Kiera, I feel bad bothering you about this. What color of pens do you want? And then she slacked me again and was like, I don’t know why I’m bothering you about pens. You’re the CEO. Stay out of the weeds. I got this. And I was so proud of her and I was so proud of myself because guess what?

For so long I have been the answer person. Being a founder who starts something, like you’re the one, you’re like, you gotta be the scrap who knows how to do everything. But morphing into the CEO, like, you want to become the CEO of your practice, get out of the weeds. Get a team that can make these decisions for you. And a good way is to push back and to say, like, hey, what do you think is the best answer for this? Because when I stop becoming that fast answer, they don’t wanna come to me. And I like, if Ashley would have just put up a little wall and been like,

Well, she did. She did one time. I remember I was like, Hey, Ashley, can you send me this stuff? She’s like, here it’s in an email. Never went back to Ashley. I was let me go check my emails first because Ashley’s gonna make me go check my emails. She trained me, just like you, doctor, to like, hey, what do you think? Or hey, is this in our operations manual? Or hey, I trust you, you’ve got this, go make the decision. It was fascinating because there was another office that I just worked with and I was on a call. So like they were talking to us about working together consulting and

It was an office manager and a lead hygienist, and they were on the call. And I was like, Hey, does your doctor need to be here? Because I know most of the time team members can’t make these kind of decisions. And they’re like, No, our doctor’s worked with us for 18 years. We know we got this. He trusts us to make this decision. I kid you not, later that day they came back to me. They’re Yep, we’re signing up. I have not spoken to that doctor one time and they have signed up. They’re working with us as a client. And I thought about how crazy cool that there’s a doctor who’s given that much autonomy.

trust in their team. They didn’t even go ask, like they talked to them a little bit, but they were able to make a very large decision for their practice. And I’ve never met the doctor. So my question for you is like that team knows how to be critical. They know how to ask the best questions. They know how to ask the best answer. And kudos to that doctor for empowering the team to like be autonomous and to own it. Like I was like taking notes over here. Let me take notes from that doctor because I was very impressed that this team could literally make that type of decision. So when we have this

I would recommend that every single time that you have a team member come to you, and this is hard. Like to me, this is like weight training. Like I hate doing bicep curls. I half the time I try to cheat and I only do like halfway up. I don’t want to like go all the way down. It’s like, no, no, no. We need to flex it. We need to strengthen that muscle of having our team be able to make independent decisions. So I don’t want you to be the fastest answer. I don’t want you to always be the answer. Your team is never going to learn to solve. So this week, when a question comes to you, I want you to ask them, what do you think we should do?

Just start asking them. If someone slacks you a message, write back like, hey, what do you think we should do? They will critically solve. We need to give them the power to do that. And you need to retrain your team because you train them that you’re the number one. And you need to train them, like, no, you’re the number one. Like, think about that doctor. That’s why I want to give an example. I was beyond impressed with this other doctor of like, you literally have given your team so much ownership that they feel like they own this practice. They’re making the best decisions. That doctor was nowhere to be found. Kudos to that doctor, and I think a great example of someone who in real time has done that.

Okay, number two, clarify ownership. So decisions have a home. So a lot of times it’s like, I don’t know who owns this. So I doctor, I’m just gonna go to you because you seem like the easiest person. This is where like an org chart or an accountability chart really comes into play. And I’ll tell you what, this is like a swear word for me. I absolutely hate accountability charts. Org charts, I feel like I’m constantly reworking them because people are like, well, who do we ask for this? And I’m like, go back and look at like I have to have ours printed out. We’ve like shaken our whole company up. And you gotta have it where people just know, like, who do I go to for simple issues?

When I work with teams on quarterly, I ask them, like, all right, who do I go to for ordering? If they all can’t give me a unified decision, I know we’ve got a a problem there because they don’t know who to go to. If I say I need PTO, who do I go to? If I say, Hey, who does this? In our company, I started doing this and they’re like, I don’t know. I was like, cool. We got to clarify this, and that’s why decisions are coming to me or to other people, because people don’t know who to go to. So we gotta like watch out. Are they escalating simple issues? Are we constantly having our managers ask for like routine decisions that we have already told them, like, you’re good to go on this?

constant uncertainty. Well, great. We need to define what ownership looks like clearly, who to go to, like who owns this outcome, and like what are the decision making boundaries? So for example, like that practice, they were allowed to make like up to $100,000 decisions. Like fantastic. Our consulting’s not a hundred thousand, it’s less than that. But that team was able to make these decisions of a hundred thousand. For you, you might be like, I’ve never given away that much. Maybe it’s 5,000, maybe it’s 500, but let them make decisions up to a certain amount where they don’t need to come and ask for your approval.

Also from there, ask them like, are you good? Like, you got this, like I trust you, like you got the decision, make it. So instead of you having like all the follow-up on you, have people own outcomes. So there’s two parts of this, like on an org chart, who is responsible for this and having the KPI or the outcome. So like your treatment coordinator owns schedules full and case acceptance being there. My scheduling coordinator owns hygiene full and how much are hygiene schedules there? My billing coordinator owns 98% collections and less than one month’s worth of AR in there.

Also, anything that comes with billing, I go talk to Sarah. Anything that goes with treatment planning, I talk to Johnny, like whomever it is on the team, but it’s their outcome. So they know what’s expected of their role. Plus, me as a team member was like, who calls on unscheduled treatment? Johnny does because they’re over treatment planning. Perfect. I know I can go ask for this. Like, what happened with this patient who didn’t get this done? Who’s over labs in your practice? Who’s over ordering? Who’s over ordering for an office? Who’s over ordering lunch? Doctors and office managers, if you’re doing it, you’re doing the wrong thing.

Have somebody else, someone else can do this job, have somebody who’s like the party guru of the practice where they do the birthdays, the anniversaries, the lunches, like have them take care of that. So you never have to think about here’s the budget, take care of it. We have someone on our team who does it for us. And she’s like, here, what do you want? And I’m like, I genuinely don’t know. Like this is a decision I don’t want to make. What’s the budget? Girl, I trust you. Rock on, go for it. What protocol is missing so that way you have full autonomy. She came back and she’s like, hey.

My budget doesn’t tell me how much I’ve spent. Is there a way for me to figure this out? Cause I really want to own it and never have to ask you guys questions. I feel like the angels say, I was so proud of her because I’m like, she’s critically thinking, she’s thinking about what she needs to do because she wants to make this decision independently. Rock on. Let’s give her this runway. Here’s some solutions. You got it. You you can take care of it. As much as I can give ownership the clear outcome, what do they own? What’s the budget that they can go up to? Beautiful. Because when everything belongs to everyone, nothing truly is owned by anyone.

So let’s make sure there’s a clear owner who to go to. So this way your team’s not constantly coming to you. They will come back to you until they feel like they know who exactly to go to. So I would just look to see, like, you can even write down like what are all the questions coming to me that might give you and that you’re like, here, I’m never doing that. Listen, we have AI now. Just put on your phone, have every question come through, pop it in there and say, which are my common topics? Like, what do I need to look for? That’s gonna help you tremendously. But genuinely.

Build an org chart, put accountability things, what’s the KPI associated? Who do we go to? And then play popcorn in your team at Morning Huddle. Hey, I need to do PTO. Who do I call? Hey, my kid is sick. Who do I call? What’s the protocol for that? Hey, we broke down the computer system. Who do I call? IT broke down. I need to order these supplies. We are over budget for something, but I need an approval for something. Just ask those questions and see: does the team know who to go to? And if they say doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor.

You’ve got a problem. You got to retrain them of who to go to and give that power and authority to someone else so they can work and not need your your constant oversight. for me, there are rules. Anything that’s gonna sue us, anything that’s financial over X amount, and anything that’s gonna be reputation management of like those are no-go’s. I will still have stamps of decisions. Everything else beyond that, let’s give you a budget, let’s give you the things, you guys have it. Things are going to have mistakes, but I’d rather my team do that than be peppered by a bajillion decision. Choose your heart. It’s your your choice. All right.

And then we want to build leadership layers before you need them. So a lot of times doctors like think, like I’ll tell you, my first leadership team was me and one person meeting in like an apartment lobby. I kid you not, that’s where I had my first leadership meeting. I didn’t know what I was doing. But you don’t need to wait until you have a large organization to build leadership. You can have leadership put into place before you become overwhelmed. And a lot wait till they’re overwhelmed and it’s like, I need you. I need you to take care of these items. So when it’s broken, it looks like every issue comes to the owner.

Office managers don’t have authority, so they’re always de like, doctor, what do you think about this? Like the office manager should be able to make decisions with and without you that you can like confidently feel good about them. The team waits for approval rather than taking action. So if you have that, every decision is primarily coming to you, office manager lacks authority and team waits for approval instead of taking action. We know we don’t have the leadership layers in place and doctor is gonna keep coming back to you. So instead, the flip side of that coin is we have team leads.

We hold leadership meetings. We empower decision makers. So like let them have the autonomy. Let them see how they’re going to make decisions. It might not turn out right. And for me, this is like, cringe. I absolutely like loathe it. I really love things to be a certain way. I love my house to be a certain way. I love my life to be a certain way. Like I and it has unfortunately gotten worse and worse and worse. We didn’t have kids and shoot, blessing and curse. I feel like I’ve gotten like, I can have my life exactly the way I want it to be. That’s not super beneficial for a team when things don’t always go that way.

But the answer is you’ve got to have this in place. And me having a leadership team, like these are your leads. We remind them all the time if you’ve got questions in these areas, here’s who you go to. So that way they can move. The team feels like they’re not waiting for you. And as your team gets larger and larger, used to be me and one team member, we had like four team members. Now we’ve got like twenty five across different like states, and we’ve got people in other countries. It’s getting larger. Your practice might have more. I’ve I teams that have fifty plus people. I’ve got teams of a hundred plus people. Like this is something where we build today for future.

This accountability. So create a leadership team and have weekly meetings. Help them see, like when an issue comes up, doctors, sit back and be quiet and let your team like I have to really like pick me, pick me. Like I’m so used to having the answers that I have to sit back in leadership meetings and see how would my team process and give them like, hey, this is your realm. What do you think is the best thing for us to do? This isn’t my job to solve it. This is your job to solve it. And I need you to own that. You really empowering them, but you will see there will be significant time in your day that you’re not spending.

on solving problems. And if you’re nervous about how people are solving it, ask your office manager to give a rundown every single week. Like, hey, where are we at with things? Until you know that you’re synced up on how you’d make decisions. And I want to really caution you that just because they make a different decision than you does not mean that it’s a wrong decision. So be really cautious and watch yourself to make sure like, hey, is this just me being nitpicky or is this really a big zone that needs to be taken care of? The goal is

is for you not to be needed for everything, is to build a team that can thrive without you. And this is also where I’m really big on you taking vacations. Go take a vacation, see what breaks when you’re gone, see what things fall apart. Send your office manager what breaks when they’re gone. We need to have people gone to see what breaks down, to see what systems protocols, more decision making authority that can be made. there’s an office manager I remember and her doctor, unfortunately, got hit on their ride home on a bicycle. They lived, don’t worry, but they had to go through a ton of hospital

And this office manager had to jump in and just start making decisions, how to hire an associate, what things to do. This office manager has kicked it. And I’m so proud of her because she literally jumped in and saw, like, I gotta start making decisions. And this doctor giving the autonomy to this office manager, like, that’s who you want. Like if something happened, could your office manager click in and make all those decisions that maybe aren’t the same as you, but you know it’s gonna take the practice in the best direct direction? That’s the type of person you want next to you. That’s the type of leadership team you want to create and foster. So

Choose a leader in your practice and like help them, like all your leaders, help them create their decision-making abilities this quarter. So a quick recap of that, stop being the fastest answer. Instead, ask them, hey, what decisions like what do you think would be best for this? Clarify ownership, make sure everybody has an org chart. We know where it’s gonna go, what everyone’s outcomes are. And then when someone comes to you, be like, Am I the right person for this or who should you be chatting about with this? Ask them, they’ll go. They’ll start to like reroute their path. And then the other one is build a leadership layer. So start to help those leaders.

Have the decision-making authority, make decisions, get that muscle built where they really are refining that, and you’re going to have it. This is something where, like, you getting bombarded all the time isn’t a sign that your team’s incapable. It’s a sign that you’ve trained them that way. Hi, I’m Kiera. It’s nice. I like to speak honestly to you. You’ve trained them that way. And the good news is if you’ve trained them that way, you can retrain them into a different path that’s easier, that empowers them, and it makes them actually a lot happier of teammates. So the more ownership your team has, the more freedom you gain.

And I really hope that you take that on. The more ownership your team has, the more freedom you gain. So empower them, trust them. And if you struggle with this, sometimes doctors, it’s hard to get out of your own way. And I love our team to be a mediator for you, to say the things that like I just said, hi, I’m Kiera. Like that’s that’s that’s a you issue. but let’s let’s work through it in a way that’s very professional, very complimentary, but also helps you get out of your own way and empowers your team to do this. We’ve trained that office manager for about eight years who took over her doctor’s practice and

Doctor’s doing great. The team’s doing well. It’s a very large practice. And they didn’t skip a beat. So hey, if you want our help, reach out. [email protected]. This is your life. This is it. If you feel like your practice can’t function without you, it’s not a people problem. It’s a leadership opportunity for you. So reach out. The best leaders don’t create followers. I’ve got this over here. A sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create. And that’s by Gandhi. So think about that. How many followers do you have versus how many true leaders do you have that have decision-making authority and are making decisions?

Think about that. And hey, if you need help, reach out. We’re your friend in the dental world. We’re here to make your life so freaking happy and exciting. So reach out [email protected]. And as always, thanks for listening. And I’ll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.