Every dentist wants a stronger team — one that’s more accountable, engaged, and high performing — but the truth is that the biggest factor isn’t your team, but rather, you. By starting with that self-awareness, you’re able to close the gap between your intentions and the impact you desire. After all, your team doesn’t respond to your intentions — they respond to your behaviors. It’s like Kirk says, “As goes the leader, so goes the team,” so learn to lead by example!
Ultimately, strong leadership comes down to balancing two essential behaviors: caring deeply and challenging directly. Trust and accountability aren’t opposites — they strengthen one another, and your team needs both your support and to be challenged by you.
Learning to balance these behaviors takes practice, and before you can truly grow as a leader, you need to improve your self-awareness. When you’re able to recognize where the responses you naturally drift to under pressure, you can intentionally choose to respond differently and create a different outcome. Leadership isn’t about becoming softer or tougher, but rather more intentional, so start working on making the shift toward being a self-aware leader:
- Replace reaction with reflection. Your first instinct isn’t always your best leadership response, so when something goes wrong, pause before reacting.
- Have the conversation you’ve been avoiding. When you delay a conversation, the problem only gets worse, but when you address small issues early, it builds trust.
- Remember that your job as a leader isn’t to rescue people, but rather to develop them. Instead of fixing problems yourself, trust your people to solve them.
True leadership is not built on occasional moments of inspiration, but rather through consistent daily habits. You don’t need to try to become a completely different leader overnight, but by becoming a slightly more intentional one, you’ll become the example your team needs to grow into a much stronger version of itself.
To learn more about how to build a Better Practice and a Better Life, visit us at www.actdental.com!
