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The Mint Door: Team Mistake
44 Plays1 month ago
This week on #DentalFuel, Tanya Sue Maestas, Laura Schwindt, and Karen Tindall dive into the complexities of building and maintaining dental teams. Laura shares an emotional story about the power of vulnerability and open communication, showing how empathy can transform a clinical environment and enhance patient relationships. Karen recounts her early career challenges in setting professional boundaries, highlighting the lessons learned and the importance of respectful relationships within the team. This episode explores professional boundaries, team dynamics, and the significance of compassionate leadership in dentistry. Don't miss these valuable insights on fostering a supportive and empathetic workplace!
Key Takeaways:
- Vulnerability in Leadership: Learn how being open and honest with your team can foster a more empathetic and supportive work environment.
- Professional Boundaries: Understand the importance of maintaining a clear distinction between professional relationships and personal friendships within the workplace.
- Team Communication: Discover strategies for improving communication within dental teams, ensuring everyone's voice is heard and valued.
- Leadership Challenges: Gain insights into the specific challenges faced by young leaders in dentistry and how to navigate them.
- Impact of Empathy: See how empathetic leadership can transform a dental practice, improving both team morale and patient care.
About the Guest(s):
Karen Tindall: Karen Tindall is a former dentist and orthodontist who qualified in England in 2000. After nearly two decades in family dentistry and orthodontics, she moved to the U.S. in 2015 and transitioned to being a stay-at-home mom before retraining as a professional life coach. Karen now focuses on supporting dental professionals through life coaching and co-founding The Mint Door, an organization dedicated to the well-being of people in dentistry.
Laura Schwindt: Laura Schwindt is a former dentist with 21 years of clinical experience. Having served as an associate in various practices and eventually owning her own practice, Laura faced severe burnout, prompting her to seek life coaching. Inspired by her transformative experience, Laura became a professional life coach to help other women in dentistry. She co-founded The Mint Door with Karen to focus on the holistic well-being of dental professionals.
Connect with The Mint Door @themintdoor
Connect with Ignitedds and Dr. David Rice: @ignitedds Free Intro Call
Connect with Tanya Sue Maestas: @tsmaestas.dds
Learn more about 90 Day JumpStart : https://ignitedds.com
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Dental Fuel, the podcast that focuses on what no one else is talking about. Mistakes. The dental world is full of before and afters, and no one is talking about the middle. Dental Fuel brings you the unspoken in-between. Welcome back to another episode of Dental Fuel. Dental Fuel is brought to you by 90 Day Jumpstart, a program to help you increase production and break free from financial stress. Vulnerability and open communication are important when building a team.
00:00:29
Speaker
In this episode, the Mint Door emphasized on the positive impact that a practice atmosphere can have on patient relationships and on the clinical environment. Let's listen in.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah. and Another mistake that we'd like to talk about here at Dental Fuel is team mistakes, which we all know building a team in a dental practice and outside of a dental practice can be challenging. But I would love to know of any team mistakes that you all have made or anything that you, any pearls that you see in building a team, you know, in your life, in a practice. I think that that would be helpful for our listeners. But Laura, why don't you kick us off? I love this question so much. And it's really fun, in fact, because we're We're just coming back from a state dental meeting and I happen to actually see a few of my team members from my what I call my dream team. And just visiting with them about why Karen and I are so passionate about supporting teams and just saying to them, I wish I wish i would have been better yeah back in the day. I wish I i could have done more. and Knowing what I know now, I could have done so much better. And so it really brings it kind of full circle
00:01:38
Speaker
um But one of one of the mistakes I made was um thinking that I had to put on this persona that I had it all together, that I had all the answers, that you know they could they could depend on me to always be the strong one. um And I'll never forget this day. And I'll try and tell the story without crying because it's um My husband, we had a two week medical vacation for my husband. And so I'd been away from the office for two weeks and had just come back and he had some complications. So I had to kind of go away from the office for a little bit and came back and I had this wonderful couple that always came in together. I was um doing some some work on the the wife of this couple.
00:02:32
Speaker
but they always came together. And I was pretending to have it all together. I didn't let on to my staff, to anybody that on the inside, I was a mess. And this couple, they were so intuitive and they just knew. And so they got back in the operator and she's she stopped and she said, before we get started, I have this feeling that you just need a hug. Can can we just do a group hug? And at that moment,
00:03:02
Speaker
I let it all out. I just started crying and my assistant, I was just, you know, I was beside myself cause I didn't want to show that I didn't have it all together. Um, but instead of doing anything, that appointment we just visited and, um, and they were okay with that. The patients, they were okay with that. They were like, I think this is what you needed. I think this is what we needed to know that our providers are real people. They have real feelings and real things going on.
00:03:32
Speaker
And um after that with my team, my you know my assistant you know just was very gracious and just said, I had no idea. I mean, they knew what was going on, obviously, because I had been gone, but they didn't know the level of how I was processing it. And it opened the the doors to things that they were struggling with. And we just started being more open about Instead of leaving it at the door, that old saying, leave everything at the door when you come to work and put on your professional outfit and be the professional. Instead, we started asking each other what was going on in our lives. What was, what was happening? and Do you want to talk? And it, it really enhanced our relationships with each other and it made us better as a team and the energy changed, the energy shifted where
00:04:30
Speaker
the practice was just more compassionate, more empathetic, and that the patients felt that. Laura, thank you so much for, for being vulnerable and sharing that story with us. ah That's a, it's a beautiful story and it goes back a little bit to what Karen mentioned on, you know, dentistry, it's about the people. The clinical aspect can be fun, it can be challenging, but just the people can, you know, they can bring you up, they can bring you down for sure. But it's just so nice when you have just that connection with those patients that come in and with your team. I think that that's really wonderful. Thank you, Laura, for sharing that. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah. How about you, Karen?
00:05:08
Speaker
I'm going to go back to being a brand new dentist. And I'm sure many people when they have their first job, you have to move away to go to a new location, maybe where you don't know anybody. And I've done that I've moved from the north of England down to the south of England, because that's where my husband, he was my fiance at the time he had moved. So I didn't know very many people and being a young woman dentist at that point in time, I think I was, I was just 23 years old when I got my first dental dentist job. And you're the same age as your assistants. And you're in a new place, you don't have any friends. And confusing my assistants and team members is that they were my friends.
00:06:09
Speaker
um And it became, there were incidents that would happen in that, this was my second job at this point, but where when something needed to be done, the very experienced assistant who was a similar age to me would turn around to me and say, no, when I asked her to do something. and Because she didn't have that necessary level of of the respect that if, you know, there comes a time when in the safety of what you're doing, that if the dentist says we need to do something, we need to do it. And she turned around, and I can't remember the exact thing that it was, but she said, no, this wasn't the right thing to do in front of a patient.
00:07:00
Speaker
Completely undermined me in that situation. And I made the mistake of going out with these girls um So ah i would they would all go out for lunch together, I would go with them. They would go out after work in the evening sometimes, I would go with them. um I remember once when I had, I was, well, I was pregnant with my first daughter and she was born um at 36 weeks. Out of the blue, she arrived super early, she she was prim. It was the night of the Christmas party and I rang one of the girls
00:07:37
Speaker
And her answer was, don't tell us you're canceling honours. You can't cancel honours. And I said, hey, I've just had a baby. I'm in hospital. But getting to that point where, and again, it's a confidence thing. I can be your friend, but I don't have to be best friends with you guys. You're my social circle and I'm yours.
00:08:07
Speaker
um And I think that was because I was just so young in a new place that it was easy to do that. I loved, I've had some of the best assistants, you know, over the years that I was in, you know, that I've been working and the assistants I've worked with when I was in ortho, they were by my side, probably two of them for maybe six years each, that they were, they were my right hand. They knew what I was going to do before I was going to do it. We could have you know, vulnerable conversations together and knew a lot about each other. But at the end of the day, if it was a safety concern and I said, hey, we're going to do this differently, none of them would turn around and say in front of a patient, no, that's what we're not doing. And I completely they agree that sometimes an assistant has got a better idea. there They are the experts at what they do and they can have the best idea.
00:09:04
Speaker
but knowing how to say it, not in front of the patient. and For me, I learned that very quickly of how not to not to be best friends. yeah Yes, ah another challenging lesson for new dentists to learn when they're coming out and going into a practice because you're right. Some of us are the same age as they are. Some of us are younger. um It can be really hard to come in and try to be a ah leader and maybe not a friend in a practice and establish, you know, just that I don't want to say sense of authority, but you know, just
00:09:40
Speaker
I guess that's just that sense of leadership over, over the team and and wanting to share, you know, your knowledge with them. um But, but you're right, at the same time, um assistants, they know a lot. You know, they can share their knowledge as well, too. But there is an appropriate way, an appropriate place and time to do that. And learning to navigate that can be, can be really challenging for many. Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker
I'd like to think that through going through that experience, it was able to teach me how to have the best relationships with my assistants, that I would, you know, if, if we had to have a competition of who has the best relationships with assistants, I'd like to vote myself up there. Because it was great. It was amazing. And I could not have done my job without them. They were phenomenal. But it was because I learned early on.
00:10:29
Speaker
how to do that. And I guess if you're if you're a man and with assistance, there's a different dynamic there. If you're you know if like you say if you're younger than your very experienced assistants who've maybe been in a dental assisting their whole professional life, they know a lot they know a lot more about the running of that practice when they come when you're in there. There's so many different dynamics to it, but I will give a shout out to assistants and say we can't do it without them.
00:10:57
Speaker
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Lost without them for sure. Laura and Karen close out our conversation next week by providing some expert advice. Be sure to check them out on Instagram at The Mint Door. If you're looking to grow your practice and need some help along the way, be sure to check out 90 Day Jumpstart. You can start for free by contacting Dr. David Rice. Check out the link to his Calendly in the show notes.