Summary

In this special episode of The Authentic Dentist podcast, Shawn and Dr. Allison give you a game plan that you can use to give an outstanding annual team meeting!

Team meetings are an excellent way to bring the entire workplace on to the same level, allows for clear communication, and acts as a platform for problems to be addressed and solutions to be created.

But the annual team meeting can seem daunting; what should you say? How do you approach certain topics? What expectations should you set? Shawn and Dr. House answer all this and more in this special episode of The Authentic Dentist podcast!

Full Transcript Below

Shawn: (00:01)
Hey guys, this is Shawn and Dr. Allison House with the authentic dentist. And we’re excited to bring you this special training on how to effectively run a team meeting and not just a team meeting, but the annual team meeting to really start the year off, right. To get your whole team aligned on really what’s best for the practice. So let’s yeah, let’s dive in.

Allison: (00:27)
So we’ve talked about this quite a bit on our podcasts and, you know, 2020 has been an interesting year. So you really want to set this up to do a good job with your annual meeting in 2021

Shawn: (00:39)
This year has really been a challenge, I guess, for everybody. And I think the way that would play into this specific year’s review is that you’re wanting to just touch less on I guess the losses, because you feel that it’s not a good idea to hang out there because the lows are so low. Is that kind of what your thought was about? Because normally you probably don’t have a problem saying, Hey, what are some of the major areas that might have been some losses that we can fix this year? You don’t even want to hang out there. Is that right?

Allison: (01:15)
I think it’s, it’s, it’s always an optimistic. It’s always aspirational. Okay. So we’ll, we’ll get there and how to address some of the losses. Cause I do think you want to focus on the wins. So before you have your annual meeting, you’re going to want to gather some data because you want to be prepared for this meeting. Now, for me, I’m going to have it on a Friday, January 8th, and it’s going to start at seven in the morning and go until about one, we’ll have breakfast. But in times past we had a buffet. We won’t have that I’ll have individual meals. If you have a large team that you can’t spread out six feet, then you may have to wear masks. I mean, it’s going to be a different meeting than we’ve ever had before, but I still think it’s it’s important and somehow you need to get it done.

Shawn: (02:04)
And it’s important where you have this meeting Dr. House, one of the things she does is I would say most of the time you, she hosts people at her house and something about that out of the office, out of that familiar professional environment into something where I don’t know, it’s very open. I think also facilitates the goals of really what you’re hoping for. And that is just to bring the team closer together.

Allison: (02:28)
So you can do it at your house. You can do it someplace else. Don’t do it in your office though, because it does just take something away from it, that personal piece. Again though, this is one of those things you’re really gonna have to strategize with your team on how to do it, because if you have to wear masks, it does take something away from it.

Shawn: (02:47)
So specifically going into the meeting, you want to have a lot of reports already pulled. And Alison actually has a whole list of every single thing and that’s going to be for download. Is there anything you want to touch on right now just to bring clarity to that was on that list.

Allison: (03:06)
So there’s in my software, which is Eaglesoft there’s reports that I can pull. And you want to pull reports from 2018, 2019 and 2020. And you’re going to want, you’re going to want one of those post-it notes that you put on the wall, those gigantic ones to put all this information in. So you all can look at it together as a team. And like I said, we’ll have all the information to download on what data you want, but some of the things she wants or production collections, you want to know how much you did of each procedure. How many profiles did you do? How many new patients did you see, how many veneer cases did you do that kind of data is going to help you see what your practice looked like in the last three years?

Shawn: (03:48)
In three years, I’m guessing that’s because it helps identify trends of progress or areas that might be in decline. Yeah. Okay. So it’s a good, it’s a good sampling of instead of just the last two years where it’s like, I don’t know, it just adds a,

Allison: (04:03)
Yeah. It gives you some continuity. You can see that you’re making progress and this past year is going to be weird. Your data’s going to be weird. So you’re going to want to be able to base what you’re doing in 2021 off of 2019 in 2018, probably.

Shawn: (04:17)
So you have all that ready? You have it written down on one of those large easel, sticky, sticky things that you can have ready. Now, you don’t set that up right off the bat. I’m guessing

Allison: (04:29)
We don’t. Okay. Yeah. Cause we don’t want to start there. I should tell you awesome. Want one of those great big calendars that is year long calendars that you can put on your wall. That’s going to be important in your planning session. So what you do though, when you start is it needs to be a little bit of social, let your team kind of visit with each other. And then you’re going to gather in some way and we set up rules and the rules are we just all agree that we’re going to be kind, we’re not going to say anything negative about each other. There will be no, no being cruel in any way. And also that we’re going to encourage each other. And we just, I just set that intention when we start, because I, I just think it helps. It helps keep everybody focused.

Shawn: (05:19)
It also allows people to be open because you’re really wanting people to be honest about what Allison’s going to share about their goals. And so many things that if, if the environment isn’t kind of conducive for transparency and just for that trust, then the, the, the real impact of this isn’t going to actually manifest. So it’s definitely important. What would you say to someone that has a known critical person kind of on the team that at times can kind of be that downer? Like how would, how would you advise to facilitate it in such a way to, to kind of offset that?

Allison: (06:01)
I would probably talk to them before the meeting, not that day, but before the meeting and just say, it would mean a lot to me. If you were encouraging for this,

Shawn: (06:11)
The buy-in of like, this is the best thing for the practice. Yeah. Okay. Love it.

Allison: (06:16)
Yeah. So once you’ve set that intention, everybody is on the same page. I always open with something big with a dream. And this year I asked my team to, to write the sentence that they would like to have on their gravestone, which is kind of a strange thing. But I, I want them to start thinking about how do they want people to see them and how do they want to be remembered? Other things I’ve done in the past is I’ve given them five minutes and I say, write down every single wild dream you have. Doesn’t matter how crazy it doesn’t matter how wild just write down. And at first people will put like, Oh, I’d like to lose 15 pounds. And I’d like to pay off my credit card, but then they’ll start going. Oh, well, someday I’d love to travel to Europe. I mean, they do the someday and that gets them excited about the future.

Shawn: (07:05)
Yeah. So excited about the future and like the gravestone one is like connecting to your why, which again, gets you to think about the vision. So here it is, it’s placing them in this, this posture of looking forward to the next year upcoming and yeah, it’s getting them to start dreaming and getting excited about that

Allison: (07:25)
And dreaming is a big piece of it. So then one of the most important things is you’re going to let everybody share in your team. So you need to allow for time for that. And I always start, because I I’d say something a little vulnerable so that they understand that this is a safe space, that we can really talk about it. So I’ll just share whatever my dream is, whatever crazy thing I wrote down. And then I’ll let them go around and talk about whatever theirs is.

Shawn: (07:54)
Plus it’s so important as a leader to set the tone, you know, if you’re wanting your team to open up and be real, and then you have an opportunity to share and you hold back and they can tell you’re holding back. Well, it’s just going to kind of set that tone of everybody just being professional or, or guarded. And that’s not what you want. So if you’re going to expect your team to be open and honest, then yeah, starting that way is important.

Allison: (08:19)
You’ll have to be open and honest. Also try and be life-giving to every single person. So if somebody says a goal that maybe other people think is a little crazy, I’ll tell them, you know, that sounds amazing. I would love to see you do that. You know, be encouraging to everything that people say because they are being vulnerable and you want them to start aspiring.

Shawn: (08:43)
Yeah. I think it’s so important. Like you said, to acknowledge and to validate in a non judgmental way, because dreams are so personal. It’s like, this is what I care about. And to even have the courage to share a dream that might be scary with your team shows that vulnerability and anyone that has the courage to do that. Oh gosh. That’s like, the last thing you’d want to do is, is imply or communicate any sort of judgment.

Allison: (09:11)
So then the next thing we do is we start talking about individual goals and we do five individual goals and the first one is physical goals. And so what I start with with a physical goal is we want you to be at your best when you come to the office. So I don’t care about your body weight. I don’t care about any of those things, but I want you to feel great. So whatever that is, you take your vitamins. That’s your physical goal. You eat your breakfast, you decide that you’re going to do some walking or stretching, whatever your physical goal is. It doesn’t have to be crazy. Like I’m going to work out six days a week and I’m going to lift this much. I just want you to be come to the office and feel comfortable and feel good about yourself. And so again, I share one goal and then I let them share one goal about how they’re going to take care of them.

Shawn: (10:02)
And one of the things that Alison does here that I think is so prudent is that she links the necessity or just the value of physical goals to the fact that dentistry is a labor intensive job. It’s a labor intensive career. So to link like, Hey, you being at your best, like, let’s be honest, like working in dentistry can cause lots of fatigue and exhaustion physically. So to be at your best, it’s great to take care of yourself physically. So it isn’t like, I don’t know, it’s not some disconnected goal. You’re not talking to a room of programmers that sit behind their computer for eight hours a day. And maybe, I don’t know, there might be more of a disconnect between whether they go into the gym or not. You know, aside from the fact, we all know like the, the more people work out, the more oxygen to their brain, the better their performances. And that’s really what it’s all about. You want your team performing at their best and when they’re physically taking care of themselves, they can be at their best.

Allison: (10:59)
There’s also been years when everybody had kind of a similar goal. We had one year where everybody was like, I need to eat more fruits and vegetables. And so we decided that once a week we would alternate bringing fruits and vegetables so that we can meet that goal together. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the goals are very different, but it’s interesting to listen to what would be important to, to your team.

Shawn: (11:21)
Yeah. So after physical goals,

Allison: (11:24)
Financial goals, and sometimes bosses are afraid to talk about financial goals because of an income disparity or because they feel like their team doesn’t relate, but everybody has financial goals and it doesn’t have to be a specific number that you talk about. It can be, you know, this year I’d really like to pay off my student debt or this year I’d really like to pay off a chunk of my credit card. You have to see how much, because that might be different, but all have goals of, I look to put more towards retirement. I’d like to, I’d like to start thinking about buying a house. All of these things are financial goals. So you share yours too, but it can just not with the numbers, but with these are things that I’ve been thinking about because you want them to again, start thinking about their financial goals and what they could do to be successful.

Shawn: (12:16)
And I think it’s important. You know, as you’re facilitating this to share like, Hey, as we’re going to talk about financial goals, the point here isn’t to be like, well, I make, you know, X amount and I’d like to make 10% more the point isn’t to talk about specifics. And as Alison was saying, cause so when she first shared it with me, I was thinking, Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I’d want my team being vulnerable about what they want financially, because I feel like as their employer, I’m the one that’s either capable of making that come true or not. So if they’re not happy or they have financial goals that I can’t meet, Oh, it’s just going to be awkward. And Alison really quickly was like, if you position it, like, Hey, if we win this year and if the prac as the practice grows and is more financially successful, it’s going to be a win for all of us. And that, that idea of positioning, like when the practice wins, we all win. That that notion of togetherness linked to financial goals makes complete sense to me.

Allison: (13:16)
So you’re the leader of the team, but your team is really the one that’s going to make this happen. And so they need to be bought in. And yeah, if you’re making a lot more money next year, I hope that you’ll reward your team. If you do have somebody who says, you know what I’d like to like 10,000 more dollars in my salary. And you know that that’s not possible. You can say, I would really like to make 10,000 more dollars in my salary. So let’s make this happen. I don’t know how much that will cost us in production, but let them, let them see that. It’s, it’s not quite so simple as I’m just going to give you a raise. The money has to come from somewhere. Yeah.

Shawn: (13:52)
Everything is tied to value. And that is a conversation I have with all my employees, if they ever want to earn more, I’m like, okay, as a business, we always appreciate value. As value gets increased, then we can compensate that I’m never in the mood to talk about giving someone some sort of promotion or raise based off of anything. That’s not linked to value. It’s like, just because of time or just because of like out of thin air, I can’t take from a business and pay more for something that’s not providing more value. So whenever I think it makes sense from employee’s perspective too, if you link things back to value, it makes sense. Like, Oh, I have, I don’t know. We have to earn it. And that the idea of together, we are wanting to hit these goals for the practice. And then, you know, I, yeah, it’s, it’s brilliant. That’s what have,

Allison: (14:43)
And I don’t talk about bonuses. I don’t in my practice. I don’t have any of that. If you already have those systems in place, then you should definitely about that. You know, meet those financial goals. We’ll have to meet these financial goals in the practice. So you can always link those back. The next one is personal goals and personal goals are things like it’s my kid’s high school graduation. I want to have a party in a socially distant way, or I don’t know. I was hoping that I would move into a different apartment this year or whatever your personal goals. I really want to clean out every single closet in my house. Cause driving me crazy. But those sort of personal goals, and they’ll make you laugh a little bit, but it’s important to share them because there’s a comradery that we all have, these kinds of things in the background.

Shawn: (15:33)
It just humanizes everybody. You know, because a lot of the times you don’t know really what someone cares about outside of the practice, you know, and, and it could be something that’s incredibly selfless, like helping out a loved one or really getting to connect with their kids more because they realize that they’re busy this past year and they really didn’t get a chance to have one-on-one dates with their child every Saturday morning, you know? And all of a sudden you’re like, wow, you know, and then as a team, you’re like, man, I love that. You know, my office manager really is trying to be a better mom. Like it just humanizes us and allows us to all grow together.

Allison: (16:11)
And some of the things that we’ve shared has been really impactful for my life. I had somebody say that they took a grandparent trip every year with one grandchild and I thought, wow, that’s pretty cool. So I arranged when my kids were little to have a trip with one child every single year. So every other year I had one child and I took my mother and it turns out to be this really wonderful thing that I learned about in one of these team meetings. So it’s, it’s nice. It humanizes you some of the things you talked about though, would fall into the spiritual goal. Okay. So it’s possible we do a spiritual goal, but it’s possible that you don’t have a religious team member or you have someone that has a different view of, of religion. And it doesn’t have to be a, I’m going to go to church every Sunday kind of spiritual goal. It can be, how do I make the world a better place? And so a charity goal a giving goal, whatever, whatever spiritual goal they want to set is fine.

Shawn: (17:12)
So thinking of like the contribution that they want to make to the world to be a better place, I love that you phrase it that way, like make the world a better place goal, because that really is like the essence of in your spirit. Like just wanting to just serve or give. Yeah. I think that’s great because it takes it away from the whole like dogma of religion of like, Oh, I just want to be a better person and be more disciplined and read this more or whatever to like, well, no in humanity, we’re all trying to be kinder and be nicer to those that are either in our life or to just strangers, you know? And again, it continues to just humanize the team and get people to connect in a way that you’re not,

Allison: (17:55)
They usually don’t connect. Yeah. Cause

Shawn: (17:58)
Yeah. W like, meaning the professional workplace doesn’t foster that and nor should it, I mean, to make sure that you’re on in alignment to do the best for the practice, you don’t need to be talking about spiritual goals every single week in the practice. So this is such a great time to just make those connections that otherwise wouldn’t be made.

Allison: (18:17)
So the fifth and final goal is professional goals. So now I’m wanting to hear, what do they want to learn this year? What are their aspirations for what they do? I hear a lot of I’d like to learn how to make temporaries like you do. I would love to learn more about insurance and how to negotiate. I don’t understand this procedure that you do. And I would really like to be able to explain it to patients. I mean, these are huge things that would impact your practice if, if you knew. And so this is an opportunity for them to share in a way that’s not confrontational. It’s not bad. They just said, I wish I knew this. I want to learn this. I think we should do some laser therapy in the office. I mean, whatever it is, it really gives you an opportunity to think, okay, how can I make those professional goals happen and wow, what an impact they will have in my office.

Shawn: (19:10)
So at this stage, is there any times where I don’t want to say the conversation gets derailed, but I know I dunno, is there any time when you’re facilitating that you need to make sure that it doesn’t, doesn’t go into something negative of like, the goal becomes something of like, I wish we would have done this better.

Allison: (19:30)
I never let it go there. Okay. Because I mean, you can’t rewind, we can’t do anything about the past. We can only do about the future. So these are just, what do we wish we knew? And sometimes I have to be vulnerable myself just to bring it back and say, wow, I wish five years ago, I had known this. And now that I do that, it made a huge difference. So these are things that we want to change to make our lives easier.

Shawn: (19:54)
And I think that’s amazing. Like Alison is always going back to like, what is the opportunity? How can we grow? What could we learn that would take us to this place instead of blame? Where’s the lack, whose fault is it? Like, it’s never about that. It’s always about look at the excitement of the opportunity and where we can go. So if you ever struggle in, in a section like this, where people seem to be kind of looking at what isn’t, well, you know, I, I really would like this, but it doesn’t seem like we’re ever able to really make change happen. And then someone just leaves it on a high note or like a low note. And they just want to keep going back to the, but I don’t think it can happen or I don’t think we’re capable enough or it didn’t work last year. You know, it’s bringing it back to, I, we can overcome this together and you know, like what, what missing piece do we need to take us to that next place? So you really want to keep it on their

Allison: (20:48)
Professional goals, not the office professional goals, these are their goals, what they’re going to do. Okay. So you’re going to get to that, but you really want to keep all of this on a really high level, really aspirational level, because you want that sort of comradery and teamwork as you go into the next phase,

Shawn: (21:06)
Keep it with tied to the aspirations. Love it.

Allison: (21:11)
So then the next thing you’re going to do is you’re going to put all that, that data that you gathered up on, on a wall so that everyone can see it, and you’re going to start to go through it. And what I always try and do again, is that aspirational let’s count our wins. You know, in 2018, we collected this in 2019, we collected more. Look at us, look at us, go 2020. Hmm. That wasn’t a great year, but 2021 I think is going to be great. You just keep looking at all your wins and just count as many wins as you possibly can from the data that you have. Oh, look at this. I think because we did this, this happened, you know, just get people talking about all of the wins. We’re not going to the negatives at this point.

Shawn: (21:54)
And if the 2020 numbers in every single category, you doesn’t look like their wins because they’re all lower. Like really that’s a great time to be like, look, COVID happened. We survived a pandemic. Other offices closed, we didn’t close. We discovered about team resiliency. Like there is so many wins outside of the numbers. And maybe, maybe what the difference between 2018, 2019 average to 2020 was maybe just a reduction of like 10 or 15%. Like that could actually be a win because the pandemic didn’t completely overcome your business. So it doesn’t even have to be like 2020. There’s some areas where you increased, because if that’s not the case, which it may not be for a lot of practices, the win is, is the perspective you took on how well you did in spite of all the challenges you had to overcome as a practice. So you can, you can take the wins and find the wins. And regardless of what the numbers say like, because of, because of this year, like,

Allison: (22:58)
So once you’ve done all of, all of the wins, you can possibly find, I also try and give people credit for those wins. And when I say people, I mean, I try and like give people all, all of your credit. So we had more hygiene visits in 2020 than we had in 2019 in six months that we were open or whatever it was. Wow. We did that because you know, our hygienist is so amazing and because our assistant is so amazing. And because, you know, we worked on this insurance piece and tie your wins to whatever you learned last year, whatever, whatever you can think of that can bring it into, wow, we did this, we created this because when you start to look at the, Hey, these are things that we could improve and make our practice even more amazing. That’s the way you want to look at it.

Allison: (23:47)
You don’t look at it that next piece, you never look at it like, well, you didn’t do this and you didn’t do that. That doesn’t work. It has to be, wow, what if we did this? Or let your team say, we had less new patients in 2018 than we had in 2020, or, sorry, the reverse, what did we do? That was different? How could we make that better? And sometimes they’ll say, well, we need a better marketing. How do you think we should market ask them? They’re full of ideas and they want to share, let them share. Some of the things may not be possible if it’s not possible. Say given our current budget, that’s not possible. Some of the things might be something simple. Like, Hey, you know, if we had this item, I could move faster. It’s a $12 item. Like, Ugh, I wish I would’ve known that it happens a lot.

Shawn: (24:44)
And it’s really powerful in this section when you’re giving credit, because it’s so important to like, acknowledge that you see people and that you see what they’ve done. Now, this is not a portion that you want to wing. Like you don’t want to wing this part because if you have like 17 members and top of mine, you can, you can say, Hey, I’m really grateful that you did this to three of them. And then the other four, you, you draw a blank. Like this is such an important opportunity to be able to recognize and give credit. You want to make sure you’ve thought this through ahead of time of exactly how you’re going to handle this. Because giving credit to every single person and being able to see them and acknowledge them is really, really powerful. So make sure you take the time to think this one through. And don’t just like, think, Hey, I got the numbers up there. Now I’m going to move on to some sort of gratitude and acknowledgement and wing it because, Oh, it’s easy to hurt someone. If someone feels overlooked, when you’re giving credit out to someone and then you don’t get credit out to a certain person. So do your due diligence ahead of time and just be prepared to be able to give sincere and authentic credit.

Allison: (25:45)
And in our practice, we, we kind of think of like a basketball team. So everything that we do is I get the ball. I do what I need to do, and I’m going to pass it to you. And then you do what you need to do. So when we have a win, it’s never one person that created a win. It’s never just me that created the win. It was, I threw the ball to the front office and they explained the treatment and the, they figured out the insurance. And then the assistant spent some time explaining and somebody got him scheduled. I mean, this was not a, this is not a one person show ever. And getting people to see that is as important. So now you’ve put together a lot of things. You’ve put together some professional goals for them. We’ve looked at some things that you could do in the office. Now I get a sheet of paper and I just start writing out. What are things, our goals. We’re going to buy that $12 item. We’re going to get on eBay into that tomorrow. We’re going to call Burkhart, whatever. I’m getting that item. Our website, we need some better marketing. So that’s going to be on our goals of next year. How are we going to get that website updated? Whatever they’re saying. That’s possible. Put that on the list because that’s going to happen next year.

Shawn: (26:52)
So this is where everything starts taking flesh. It’s like, all this preparation is leading to now, this upcoming year, let’s actually start identifying, what is it we want to do? What do we want to accomplish? What do we want to do? And I’m sure this is a really exciting time. As people are throwing out ideas and you’re seeing and getting written down, because this is where you have the buy-in people are all on the same page. They’re excited. They’ve already, you know, like you’re feeling connected. Like you can tell this is like a like even just the energy of it, like it, you’re getting buy-in from everybody about how you can make this upcoming year, that your best year,

Allison: (27:30)
Because you know how you can contribute. And they actually know how they can contribute. Sometimes it seems like a business just works on its own. And people forget that we do have a lot of control over it. And the better off your team is, the better off you are. The better your practice will be.

Shawn: (27:47)
We all want like our employees performing at their best because ultimately we want our practice to perform at its best. And there’s no way you can get your practice to fulfill the potential that it has. If your team is disconnected, when they’re connected, that furthers the engagement that they have, which leads to just higher, consistent performance. And really that’s what it’s about. It’s not about having a great month. It’s about having stringing 12 great months together because it’s about consistency. And again, just the more your team feels aligned and connected. And that’s why it’s so important what Allison does right here, because this is, it’s getting the buy-in, it’s like my voice is being heard. So that’s why it’s so important to write it up. Even if you know right now, we’re not sure if we’re actually, we’re going to be able to hit that goal specifically. You want everyone to be heard at this time, is that right?

Allison: (28:37)
Yeah, absolutely. So then we do dive into the numbers at the very end. You know, we produced this much, we collected this much and we, I bring it all the way down to how much was that per hour. So I know how many days we worked. I knew how many hours we worked. Sometimes it takes me a while to get all that data. But then I know we produce this much per hour and I do the math for them because I think it’s powerful in my practice. If you add $10 of collection every hour, which is a lot actually, but could be done. That’s $16,000 for the year. It adds up, wow, what if we added 15? You know what, if we, and then what if we worked less, you know, sometimes you find that there’s so much dead time in March. You just happened to look at it. Wow. Let’s take a vacation in March. This makes sense for us to sit here and do nothing. I won’t, I don’t want to sit here and do nothing. Those trends, just looking at everything it’s just really, really helpful.

Shawn: (29:42)
Or like, this is a slow time. Maybe this is when we do some working on the business together, or, you know, get a campaign going in February. So that March isn’t slow. It’s just, it allows you to do something insightful from the data that you’re getting and just act that’s. The whole point of strategy is that you actually have data that informs your decisions. So you can be strategic. So you never know what’s going to come out of this, but it’s just looking at the data and going, huh? I wonder if we could leverage this in a certain way. And I’m guessing it’s surprising what comes out of this part of the meeting, because you don’t know the contribution people are going to make,

Allison: (30:22)
And you don’t know what their ideas are. So one of the things, and I’m sure this happens in your practice too. I go through and I check all the missing hours of hygiene and all the missing hours of my schedule. So if somebody cancels or I have an empty hour, I just go through it and I want to see how many hours that is. If it’s a lot, then we have to talk about it, but we can talk about it in a way that, Hmm, last year we had a pretty good percentage of cancellations and missed appointments. What do we think? And you’re not allowed to blame, not allowed to, to say anything negative, but wow, all these people are canceling. Hmm. Do we need to put a cancellation policy in? Maybe we should change our new patient paperwork. Maybe we should write something. Maybe we should do something different. Maybe we should hire somebody to look at this. You know, let’s, let’s just look at this as a team of how, how can we solve this problem? And the other thing I always try and do is about a month or two in once we’ve tried something, we look and see if it’s working, because if it isn’t working, let’s try something else. I mean, I don’t want to sit here and work on something that’s not, not, not being profitable.

Shawn: (31:29)
And again, I think one of the mindsets that might limit people in this area is like, well, what if we Institute something? And it doesn’t work. It’s that idea of again, like, I don’t wanna say failing fast, but it’s like, if you tried 12 different things over the next year and nine of them didn’t work, but three of them did work. Well, you just found out three things didn’t work. But if you only tried four things and only one of them worked like, yeah, you only fail three times, but you only found one thing that worked instead of failing nine times. But finding three things that work like the more you actually are able to try something out, just be scientific about it. That’s the whole point. Let’s put this out into the market. Let’s put this into practice you know, as a system, as a protocol and let’s see, let’s see how it works. Like it is on you to just lead and as a team, figure it out and don’t be scared if it doesn’t work the way you’re thinking, you are smart. You you’re agile. You can pivot, you can change, but you’ll never learn if you don’t put something out there. So make changes. You can be decisive about them. You can feel good about them, but don’t worry if they don’t work out, it’s not you failing it’s together. As a team, you get to begin more intelligently the next time.

Allison: (32:43)
And really, if you get the team to all agree that this is what they’re going to do, they’re going to do it. And if they tell you, Hey, this isn’t working. That’s great. What’s your next thought? Just put it on them. What, what else do you think we should try? Because they usually have a lot of ideas

Shawn: (32:59)
And Allison like, it’s so evident. She is so open. And that’s what I’m saying. If you’re not open in your practice to actually like learning from your team, receiving from your team and making changes, go through that personal exercise first, before you try to do something like this, because you need to be at a place where you really like you believe in your team and you believe that there’s answers that your team has, that are good for your practice. And if you can empower them to be part of that change and get that co-creative you know, solutions, men, those are the solutions that stick in a practice. If you’re viewing this team meeting as you’re the leader, you’re the one, almost like a dictator that has to have his brilliant plan. And everyone’s waiting on you to just lead perfectly in 2021, you’re missing it. It’s, it’s your team. You’re, it’s not, it’s not on you. It’s on your whole team as, as a unit. It’s how strong you guys are together.

Allison: (33:57)
And I always think about, so I’ve been in my own practice for the last 17 years, which means that I only see my practice and what’s happened there. But a lot of my team members have worked in other practices. They know what worked there, what didn’t work there. They have ideas that I never even thought about because they’ve had the opportunity to see lots of things. Listen to them. I mean, maybe this isn’t the practice that you want to develop. And you can say that, you know, that isn’t the culture that I was hoping for, but I like where you’re going with this. Let’s let’s strategize again. What else do you think we should do? So it usually ends with a really great, Hey, we’re excited next year. It’s going to be great. We’re going to support each other. It, I don’t think it’s ever ended in a negative way, even though we end it with, Hey, what are our, what are our next goals? What are we gonna strategize? It’s always like an energizing. I can’t wait to get it back to work on Monday morning because wow. Some excitement is going to happen.

Shawn: (34:58)
You know? And it’s fascinating for me. I do so much research looking into what is going to lead to again, consistent and high performance. So whether it’s checking out the latest results from Gallup as they do these massive studies or whether it’s just what I’m finding from the Harvard business review. And it’s so funny that all the findings keep coming back to the strange thing that humans actually perform better when they’re fulfilled, when they feel connected emotionally to the team. That they’re part of not when they’re working as a silo by themselves, head down to the grind and just trying to be an independent, good worker. Oftentimes they feel like when they’re not connected, they just do kind of the bare minimum of what’s expected. And the bare minimum of what’s expected, just covering my own back what I’m responsible for. Instead of thinking about how, what I do affects everyone else, it’s never going to lead to that practice of your dreams. So we’re so excited for you to be able to run a successful meeting with your team, to be able to get that connection and that engagement and that alignment with your team, because that is the step that’s going to help you get 2021 to be again, a successful year, as far as profitability, but also fulfillment for you, You and your entire team.

Allison: (36:15)
Thanks for listening.