7 Habits to Stop Today for a Healthy Culture

A strong practice culture is crucial to a successful practice, but there are seven habits that threaten to destroy it. These habits won’t collapse it overnight, but rather erode it slowly by weakening trust, communication, and accountability. In fact, you may not even realize you’re being silently sabotaged!

If you’re constantly putting out fires, wondering why your team can’t function independently, feeling like you’re the only one invested in the success of the practice, or seeing a lot of drama and missed expectations on your team, act now and address the toxic habits that are destroying your practice culture!

1. Absence of Trust

Both Patrick Lencioni and Gino Wickman emphasize the importance of vulnerability-based trust — it’s the key to a positive culture. If your team doesn’t trust one another, it will lead to miscommunication, finger-pointing, and ultimately, a culture driven by fear. When that’s the case, it’s not just your team’s morale that suffers, it’s your patient care as well. The key to building this trust? Your team must learn to be genuinely transparent and open with one another, and they can learn how in our Guide to Building Trust.

2. Avoiding Conflict

Building trust first is crucial, because without it, team members will avoid healthy debate. When that happens, issues fester and worsen, wasting your team’s energy. Like Kirk says, “Unresolved conflict always becomes a crisis.” It’s important to remember that conflict doesn’t equal confrontation, and healthy conflict is actually productive, because you need that debate to find solutions to problems.

3. Lack of Commitment

When team members’ voices aren’t heard or valued, it impacts their commitment to the practice. They stop buying into decisions and consistently following through, which results in inconsistent systems, team confusion, and reduced patient trust. You need their weigh-in if you want their buy-in, so you must get in the habit of holding consistent check-ins where you can give everyone time to share what’s on their mind.

4. Avoiding Accountability

Without commitment, team members will avoid confronting their peers about their behavior or performance. Consequently, you’ll find yourself with dropped tasks, slipping standards, and the burden of responsibility unfairly placed on the doctor or manager, which increases the chance of burnout. You want to ensure that everyone is committed to a clear plan of action, which makes them more willing to hold one another accountable instead of avoiding it.

5. Inattention to Results

The goal of the previous steps is to achieve results, but when you have individual agendas outweighing the team’s success, those results will diminish. Patient care, practice growth, and team harmony all suffer when people focus on “me” over “we,” so don’t let short-term, ego-driven decisions compromise your long-term goals. To keep the team working together toward goals, I recommend tracking and measuring your successes.

6. Failing to Lead by Example

A healthy culture doesn’t come from the team alone — it’s up to you as the leader to pave the way, and when you don’t exemplify the behaviors you want to see, they’re not going to be present in the practice. Without you leading the way, you cannot transform your culture. 

7. Neglecting Feedback

It’s important to note that this refers to feedback of all kinds. When you see your team meeting or exceeding expectations, you must acknowledge it and express your appreciation. When expectations aren’t met, provide constructive coaching on what went wrong and how they can do better. If you avoid feedback, you’re going to create resentment and poor outcomes, which will destroy your culture. 

A healthy culture doesn’t happen on its own — it’s shaped daily by what you tolerate, model, and reinforce, so when you ignore these toxic habits, you’re eroding your practice culture. The first step is to identify if these dysfunctions are present in your practice, and that starts with an honest look at your team, your practice, and yourself.

To learn more about ACT and how we can help you build a Better Practice and a Better Life, reach out to Courtney!

Tune in next time and learn how to transform your Hygiene experience!