Finding Your Leader’s Voice

I’ve seen dignified dentists reduced to jelly when I mention the word leadership. Why? Leadership is a difficult subject for dentists. The outcomes of motivating staff, resolving conflicts, and other leadership issues are less controllable than the outcomes of crown preps and other clinical procedures. Have you ever had a great day in which your staff and patients were so happy, and the practice ran so smoothly, that you dared to whisper to yourself, “Gee, I’m a good leader”? Then the next morning, a team member who was happy the day before knocks on your door, distressed over a staff, systems, or compensation issue. Every day you have to delve into your leadership bag for tools to apply to new situations that arise. This is why dentists often feel that the “cure” for staff issues—leadership—is worse than the disease. What would be an approach to leadership that would provide a true cure for frazzled dentists overwhelmed by staff issues, and also would feel completely natural and comfortable to apply?

The first step to being an effective leader lies in debunking the myth noted by Ken Blanchard that leadership is something you do to people, not with people. Leadership communication is not a monolog, but a dialog. According to leadership expert Margaret Wheatley in her book Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time: “We often approach leading people like mechanics trying to fix machines.” (I thought of this when I recently taught a class for senior dental students, and one asked, “How do you make your staff enjoy their jobs?”) “When we allow no input from our staff,” Dr. Wheatley continues, “we must provide everything ourselves: the mission, values, structure, plans, supervision, incentives, and deterrents. This approach is like trying to pump energy into a lifeless mass; it exhausts the leader—and the employees—and causes burn out. Instead of assuming that employees have no capacity for self-creation, self-organization, or self-correction, we can learn to lead differently.” It’s as if Dr. Wheatley were addressing dentistry and the students directly. Dentists have been trained to look at what is wrong clinically and fix it, which leads to approaching people like mechanics fixing machines. Believe me, I’ve been searching for the pill to cure “people issues,” but until it is discovered, we need to roll up our sleeves, clear our vocal chords, and start communicating with a leader’s voice.

What is a leader’s voice? A voice that pushes past cynicism and uncertainty, allowing you to speak the truth, create a compelling context, and challenge others to stand with you. That’s easier said than done. What is an easy first step to accomplish so that you can create your own leader’s voice? Learn to communicate authentically. This is described in one of my favorite books, The Leader’s Voice, by Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland. The authors refer to a leader’s authentic, honest, open communication as “leadership without wax.” No, this term does not refer to a new hair style or study model. It hearkens back to the sculptors of ancient Rome. A status symbol of that culture was to display statues in one’s home. Two kinds of sculptors emerged to produce them. The bargain-basement kind would camouflage their mistakes with wax that was colored to look like the real stone. If, while sculpting a marble bust of someone’s Aunt Agrippina, her nose fell off, the bargain-basement sculptor would simply glue it back on with wax. Such a practice incensed the better artisans, who proudly hung signs on their doors declaring that they were sculptors “sine cera,” which means sculptors “without wax.” (If you don’t believe me, look this up on Google.) In fact, the term “sine cera” is actually the origin of our word “sincere.”

Leadership without wax is the proud sign of the authentic leader. If your nose falls off during a staff meeting, let it stay off. Too many dentists mistakenly believe that they must present themselves to the staff as all-knowing and all-powerful. It reminds me of the old deodorant commercial with the punch line, “Never let them see you sweat.” (If you don’t think it’s difficult to break this mindset, say aloud, “I was w-w-wrong. I need your help.” I’ll bet a few of you broke into hives just uttering the words.) Leadership without wax holds that it is perfectly acceptable to let them see you sweat. For example, assume you decided to lead your staff through the implementation of digital radiography. If you present this project as an expert leader who knows all the answers and has no fears, concerns, or misgivings, it pressures the staff to approach the project in the same unrealistic way. It is natural to embark on sweeping changes with some trepidation. Your staff will not innovate or risk unless you allow for potential failures, concerns, or fears that may occur along the way. They will feel uncomfortable sharing their misgivings with a leader who seems impermeable.

One of the best statements a dentist can make in this situation is: “I have fears and concerns, yet I know we can accomplish this. That’s why I need your help.” You may think such an admission is risky, but you cannot be a leader without wax unless you are willing to be vulnerable. In influencing others, a leader changes, grows, learns, makes mistakes, encounters obstacles, and has setbacks, as well as the staff. You become more credible when you are vulnerable. And isn’t that a more natural, human role to play? I’ve seen a lot of waxy build-up, and all it does is block the leader’s message.

Based on another of my favorite books, The Leadership Challenge, by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, I’ll explain four steps to help you gain your authentic leader’s voice.

They are:

1. Model the way
2. Inspire a shared vision
3. Enable others to act
4. Encourage the heart

Let’s see how you can carve a masterpiece of leadership using these tools.

Model the way

Serving as a role model for others requires that you a) find your voice by clarifying your own personal values, and b) exemplify what you say in action. People admire leaders who believe strongly in something and stand up for those beliefs. The principles and values that you choose to guide your actions cannot be faked, but must be chosen honestly. If you attempt to base your value system on what you think will please others, or on what will sound good in a marketing piece, if it doesn’t reflect the real you, at the first sign of obstacles, pressures, and resistance, you will lose the will to persevere.

Having strong values does not mean that they remain unchanging during your career. The values that form your character, such as honesty, may be unchanging, but the business values derived from your personal values—i.e., what you appreciate most and invest resources such as time, money, and effort in— must change with time. For example, when a practice is in its growth phase, it had better have a business value called profitability, because it will be unable to deliver the best care and service with past-due payables and large credit balances. When a practice is in its seasoned, or peak performance, stage, however, we often see a value shift, such as a greater commitment to excellence, charity work, or time spent with family.

To test the authenticity of your values, ask yourself: Am I truly passionate about this value? Am I willing to publicly affirm it? Am I prepared to act on it repeatedly and consistently over time? If the answer is “no” to any of the above, look for a greater value to support your investment and fuel your passion.

Once you have chosen strong values that you ardently want to achieve, you need to exemplify them in your own attitudes and behavior in order to inspire people. If the value you seek, for example, is excellence in customer service, it is important that you arrive for work on time and communicate with patients in the same manner you expect of your staff.

Inspire a shared vision

A vision is a compelling, magnetic picture of a future outcome that supports your business values and is something you really, deeply desire. Whatever term you use—be it purpose, mission, dream, or calling—your vision is something significant that you want to accomplish and that gives you a sense of meaning and purpose. Without it, your practice becomes a series of tasks, for staff and doctor alike, that feel like a drudgery and lead to burnout.

Once you identify a vision that excites and motivates you, the next step is to inspire the staff to share it. And there’s the rub. One of my favorite quotes from The Leader’s Voice is “[T]he difference between a vision and a hallucination is the number of people who see it.” How many of you have come home from a course excited about launching a new procedure, then three weeks—and a few glasses of wine—later, you discover that your vision was just a hallucination to everyone else? You need to be able to communicate your vision in such a way that people will understand it, commit to it, care about its progress, and take appropriate action to accomplish it.

The biggest problem with leadership communication is the illusion that it has occurred. Do you have a vision that is communicable to patients and staff? Can you describe your vision in the following terms?

• the quality, service, outcomes, and results that you want to achieve in patient care
• the satisfaction, accountability, responsibility, commitment, loyalty, and motivation that you want to inspire in patients and staff
• the knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors of your team that personify the practice goals, and the benefit to the staff for aligning with your vision

Once you can flesh out your vision in this compelling way, your staff and patients will see the horizon and help steer you there.

Enable others to act

I used to advise dentists to “empower” their teams. I have, however, seen so many dentists say they are empowering staff, when they are actually micro-managing or abdicating their leadership roles, that I now consider “empowerment” to be a tainted word. I prefer “emancipation,” because staff who are not allowed to find their own self-leadership will feel like slaves to their jobs. For example, an appointment coordinator who has been given “free rein” to create an ideal day template for scheduling becomes frustrated when the dentist breaks the rules by talking trout-fishing with patients during the hygiene check and throwing everybody off schedule. This staff member will mistrust the leader’s word. What does the dentist need to do to enable others to act? Trust the team by giving them true responsibility and accountability, and show your team that they can trust you to support them in their efforts to carry out your vision and goals.

Encourage the heart

The most important step in establishing leadership without wax is to encourage the heart. “Encourage” means to inspire one with courage, and “courage” comes from the Latin word for heart, “cor.” You can think of the act of encouraging as driving heart into someone. Rather than giving your staff more logic, this step of leadership involves releasing and supporting emotions. How do you encourage the enthusiasm, joy, and passion for a common goal that are the emotional components of a happy and dedicated staff? You need to pay attention to your teams and show them how important they are to you. Staff members want and deserve to be valued. They walk around with neon signs on their foreheads, saying, “See Me,” “Acknowledge Me,” “Appreciate Me,” and “Give Me an Opportunity to Grow.” If you are clear about the standards you want to encourage, and you believe and expect that people can perform like winners, then you’ll find many occasions to catch them doing things right. Think about a growth conference or salary review you recently had with your staff (assuming you use these vital tools). Did your words of feedback result in encouragement, strength, and commitment to excellence? If the answer is “no,” then change your words. The most common complaint we hear from staff members is that the dentist only tells them what they did wrong, but never notices what they did right.

The bottom line is: What gets acknowledged gets repeated.

How would you feel if an assistant accused you of not caring about your patients and staff, but only about your bottom line? Or an appointment coordinator charged that you only like your assistant, and that you don’t know or care about the problems of the front desk? Would thess criticisms give you any solid platform to change, or would they simply sound like attacks and get your hackles up? This is how a steady diet of criticism without positive feedback or criticism delivered inappropriately can sound to your staff.

There is a way to offer corrective feedback, which preserves self-esteem by focusing on the behavior, not the person. For example, have you ever had an assistant who repeatedly gives you the wrong instrument, even after you’ve told her what you needed? How could you communicate to your assistant with your leader’s voice so that you build her self-esteem and allow her to grow in her job? The wrong way would be: “Hand me the wrong instrument one more time and you’re toast!” The right way may be: “When we’re setting up for a crown prep, I see that the tray still has incorrect instruments. What do you need from me as your leader to insure the tray is set-up correctly always? Whatever the answer may be (“I get distracted with so much going on!” or “A checklist would help until I know the trays by heart.”) you’re leading the person to the self-discovery of a solution that can work for him or her.

Being a leader without wax means being sincere and passionate about your values, inspiring others to share them, emancipating others to support your shared goals, and encouraging the best within your people. When you hide behind a façade and remain detached, your voice will fall on deaf, cynical ears. When you communicate authentically, others will hear and be moved. So, the next time your nose slips off at a staff meeting, shine a spotlight on it proudly and say: “I made a mistake, and I need all of you to help.”

The results will be miraculous. Try it and see!

Amy Morgan is CEO and lead trainer of Pride Institute.

Originally published in Dental Economics, April 2006