Leadership shouldn’t be a happy accident or something you fall into simply by virtue of becoming a dentist. It should be an acknowledged responsibility that you treat with genuine seriousness.

Of course, your instincts shouldn’t necessarily be ignored, but can they always be trusted? As the dentist, you are by default a leader. In reality, you should understand your role in shaping your practice’s vision as well as fostering growth for the entire team.

The hardest part about navigating the nebulous realm of leadership is clarifying and meeting the duties ascribed to your role. For dentists, you are actually fulfilling four different roles, all of which are important for general morale and success.

4 Roles of the Dental Leader

Follow the leader has real meaning in a professional space. One of your primary roles is that of the vision initiator. You have to be bold, verbal, and engaged in your vision to help your team attain the same values. You need to be fully present, especially when your practice is new or developing. The future depends on how you see it.

You will also become the educator in your practice, if you haven’t already. You must guide patients and team members toward your expectations for care. They can’t identify with your vision if you don’t yourself have the skills to state it clearly.

Your third role is that of the vision facilitator. At some point, your team and practice will be fully imbued with the tangible effects of your vision. You have to make the effort to prevent that vision from stalling through team building and careful hiring.

Finally, you must embrace your role as a mentor. This may be more challenging if you have a very strong personality, as it can make people embrace your vision even if they don’t appreciate the philosophy. What you want is a sort of vision immortality, so that even if you leave the practice, your vision and leadership live on.

How we demonstrate leadership outside the practice inevitably impacts how we lead once we return. That’s why it’s beneficial to seek out opportunities for growth wherever we can. Choosing to hold a leadership role is one particularly impactful way of doing this.

Leading Outside the Dental Practice

Re-connecting with dentistry and friends in Chicago in mid-February has been a very significant part of my journey in dentistry. The energy and buzz of new technology, new research findings and great speakers is always invigorating. But it’s not just the CDS Mid-Winter that brings me out to the Windy City in February. It’s also the smaller focused groups that make Chicago very significant and special.

The AES, APS, AAFD, AOD AARD and Lab Day are the crown jewels of dentistry that all meet over 5 days. The Chicago mid-winter vibe always reminds me of a family reunion where we catch up with each other and reboot our love for dentistry together. Over the last 30 years, I  have attended meetings held by all of the groups mentioned above.

The place I’ve chosen to plug in and serve in leadership has been the American Prosthodontic Society (APS). Founded in 1928, the APS has always been a voice for collaboration between the specialist, the generalist with interest in the discipline, and the laboratory technologist.

In 1960, LD Pankey served as President. This year, the APS will be celebrating their 90th annual meeting. For the first time in dentistry they will be installing a laboratory technologist as President. I am very grateful for the APS and its voice of commitment to quality learning and leadership in the discipline of restorative care for the patients we serve.

Taking on leadership in an organization like APS is the type of experience that can translate back to better working relationships at home.

Clinical competence is a requirement of a successful practice. If people are going to seek you out rather than just going to someone who is contracted with their benefit provider, they need a reason. Clinical results are clearly one of those reasons.

Leadership Through Knowing Your Work

That being said, how well do you know your work? How well does your team know their work? Do the specialists and technicians that you work with make you better? Becoming highly competent in clinical dentistry begins with a decision. Have you made it?

If you have, are you maintaining that decision in the midst of all the resistance that you encounter as you try? Leadership, at its core, is about making a decision and maintaining that decision in the midst of pressure to do otherwise. Your clinical competence begins with a decision to be competent. How well it continues and develops depends on how important being highly competent is to you.

8 Complex Skills of Clinical Dentistry

Although clinical dentistry is not always complex, it requires a variety of complex skills. This includes:

1. Examination, Diagnosis, and Treatment Planning
2. Spatial Relationships & Esthetics
3. Biologic Principles
4. Local Anesthesia
5. Tooth Preparations
6. Provisionalization
7. Materials Application
8. Patient Management

You can add many more to my list. All of these skills are important in uniquely different ways. This is why continuing education and professional development in dentistry is so vital.

It is just plain difficult to develop so many skills and move them toward competence and mastery. Dentistry is both extremely rewarding and extremely demanding. So how are we going to develop competence that is moving toward mastery?

We need a plan that develops specific habits. We need the habits to serve our WHY. We need great teachers, leaders, and institutions that help us pursue the limits of our possibilities. It is a journey that never ends as long as we are given the gift of caring for another human being.

Part of knowing yourself is knowing what you want. Is what you want crystal clear to you? Does it inspire you to action? Is it a powerful enough motivator that it can survive the resistance you will encounter in your pursuit of it? Do the people around you know what you want and why it is important to you?

These questions are just the beginning. They are also essential if you are going to move in the direction of your dreams.

Envisioning Your Dream

If you are not moving and seem stuck, then a powerful vision of your dream is both a requirement and a determinant. It is the spark to start your engine. Most of us struggle to gain a distinct understanding of what we truly want at any level, but especially at the deepest level.

A blind person wants to see. A lame person wants to walk. A person in pain wants comfort. There are no competing agendas nor is there any confusion about what is most important to them. That is what I mean by clarity and passion for the cause.

Leadership & Influence

Leadership is about influence. The most important person you will ever lead is yourself. You are influencing yourself 24/7/365. Knowing yourself and taking every thought captive toward becoming what you were meant to become is the most powerful weapon that you have. Use it.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Here are several:

1. Reflect on what you would be doing with your life and career, if you knew that you couldn’t fail. Do whatever it takes to get into the mindset to let go and believe.

2. Secure the best expertise that you can find. Build a relationship of trust and intimacy with mentors. Begin a very detailed and guided examination of yourself. Listen, observe, and experience what happens to you in this process.

3. Trust yourself. Act on what you discover. Do it again.

4. Contact me and we will celebrate your successes!

This post is a continuation of the leadership conversation I started in my previous blog. Check it out here.

For the student of the Pankey Philosophy, ‘Know Yourself’ is a familiar phrase. Dr. Pankey spoke often about understanding your own temperament, circumstances, and objectives. Those are the things that are usually known to us and the people around us.

Valuing the Deep Structure of Ourselves

Modern psychology might call that the surface structure of our thinking, feeling, and behavior. Knowing these things is critical to our decision making and moment-to-moment activities. Dr. Pankey was also a student of and eventually a master of the deep structure that is composed of our emotions and the memories from our life’s experiences that fuel those emotions.

Those emotions and memories are less well known to us and their impact is less appreciated by us. However, they are very powerful drivers of our current ways of thinking, feeling, deciding, and experiencing the world around us. The deep structure is the enormous part of the iceberg that is hidden underwater.

That part can represent great strength, endurance, and possibility. It can also be very unknown, dangerous, and limiting. How well we understand ourselves and what we do with that understanding will determine how much we limit our lives or whether we approach the limits of our human possibilities.

Using Personal Insight to Develop Leadership Skills

Twenty years ago, I did not know myself very well. I knew about my surface structure and very little about my deep structure. That knowledge got a huge jumpstart in a leadership workshop with Brian DesRoches, Phd.

Brian artfully blended the use of assessments, the teaching of contemporary brain science and modern psychology, as well as small group experiences to help each of us deepen and broaden our understanding of ourselves.

Subsequently, my professional coach has helped me to continue that development. Just as we rely on superb clinical teachers to develop our clinical skill sets, this kind of work requires the expertise of a trusted professional. That kind of helping relationship provides insights, observations, expertise, experience, and accountability.

Each of us needs this to see ourselves as we truly are. In my view, it is necessary to have professional expertise to grow your understanding of yourself. Knowing yourself is the foundation of change. You can’t start soon enough. There are no substitutes. It requires collaboration, intention, and patience.