A practice built with character is a practice made up of loyalty, positive culture, and long-term growth. Kiera provides listeners with a list of questions to ask that will set the tone for showing up as the best, truest version. She then gives specific takeaways to meet that ideal culture and stay consistent.

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The Dental A Team (00:01 )

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I hope you're having an amazing day. I hope you're having fun. I hope you remember that dentistry is honestly the greatest profession we could ever get to be a part of. So I hope you're just so excited. I hope you're loving your life. I hope you're happy. I hope that if you're not, that you're committing to make a change in the next week so that way you can be happy. My husband showed me this reel the other day that said, it was from like, I don't know, a Buddhist monk, I think. And he said that yesterday is dead.

 

Today is all we have and tomorrow is not born yet. And so don't wait for the happy life. You want the happy day. And I've thought about this so much because I think so many of us wait for happiness. We wait and we think, once I get this or once I do that or when I have the team or when my practice doesn't have this, then I'll be happy. Then I won't be stressed. And it's like, no, it's actually on the day. It's today. It's the decisions I'm making today. It's the pieces that I'm doing today and finding that happy.

 

And they said when you can have a happy day is when you have the happy life. I think when you can have the less like the more stress free day more consistently, it's when you have the more stress free life consistently. And so with that, just reminding you that it's okay. You don't have to do this alone. And I'm here for you and our team's here for you. And dentistry really is one of the greatest professions you could ever be a part of. So welcome. I hope that if you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm Kiera. I love dentistry. I love helping people. love life.

 

And I love helping people get the life that they always dreamed of and making that a reality. Today, I wanna talk about ⁓ character. My dad and I were talking and my dad said, in the word character, there's the word act. And I had never picked up that the word character has act. ⁓ And I wanna talk about some leadership pieces today and culture pieces for your practice on building a practice with character and how people act. And...

 

I think character is something that you hire, yes, of like how people are naturally and who they are naturally, but also I think it's something that you do lead. ⁓ when we look at this, like when you have a practice of character of how people are acting, it does create loyalty, it does create culture, and it does create long-term growth. And so for everybody just going through that, ⁓ looking at that and seeing what is your character possibly? What is the character of your practice possibly?

 

And what things can we do to evolve your character to make it be a place of things that you want, of the loyalty, the culture, the long-term team. ⁓ And when I look at really awesome practices, the way people act and the character that that practice has is truly something embedded deep into the roots of that practice. going through that, ⁓ Dental A Team's goal is to help offices build to scale, to have the life that they want, ⁓ but to do it in a way that's meaningful.

 

that it's fulfilling, that it has purpose for you. And so ⁓ this is truly trying to help build a culture for team members to stay, for patients to be raving and for leaders to truly be proud of the practice that they built. So character with this act, like step one, if you want, like we'll just kind of go into this whole process is like how you act when it's hard. ⁓ And I think when I look at teams,

 

Culture is something that's like not built during easy times, it's revealed during the hard ones. When our production's not hit, when the cash flow's not there, when like all the things are pushing upon you, how do you act? Do you respond with conflict with consistency, clarity and compassion? Do you admit mistakes as a leader? Do you prioritize long-term trust over short-term comfort? Like how is your character in those hard times? And for you as a doctor, and there's the book, Extreme Ownership by Jacque Willings, and I think about this so much of

 

Like, okay, what is my culture of my company? But what is the culture of me? Because my team ultimately is a reflection of me and how do I act? In high school, I was nominated as most poised and I thought that was such a weird phrase for me to get like most poised. But I actually think about that a lot and like when things are hard, do I lose my temper? Do I yell? Do I shout? How do I act? For me, I almost think like I have the tiger like queen strength. Like what if I was the queen of this

 

I don't know, like kingdom, my business. Who do I need to show up as? And that character, like really looking to see how do you act. And it's crazy because when you look at a team and you want a team to be a certain way, you got to look at the leaders and how are they showing up? How are they acting? And when my dad talked about this character, it's all about how you act. It's how you act in the hard times, how you act in the good times, how you act when no one's watching. It's how you act when people are watching. And what is your ultimate character in your practice? And so, ⁓

 

When doctors start to have consistency, clarity, and compassion, when you say like, kind is clear, ⁓ when you're more clear, when you admit mistakes and you have humility, but in addition to that, you also are focusing on making sure that I don't just admit the mistake, but I find the solution to the mistake so it doesn't happen again. ⁓ When we're doing long-term, we have uncomfortable conversations and we're building trust over short-term solutions. Like I'm not just saying things.

 

And who I was at a leader at the beginning of the NLA team compared to who I am today, she's a much more mature grownup version of herself. ⁓ And it came through a lot of these hard conversations. It came through a lot of these hard awarenesses. It came from asking people, but also asking myself, did I show up as the person that I want to be and the leader that my team needs me to be? And if not, what do I need to do to change that? And so

 

Thinking about that, that's the culture you're building. And as much as I don't want to be like a rip on leaders, leaders are the mold. Like how you, what you do and don't do is a subconscious theme that runs through your practice. And so I think when people feel like they have no hope and they have no way of changing things and there, there is no solution. The answer is like, there actually is a solution. There actually is a process and a path out. It just sometimes is starting with you.

 

and not sometimes starting with you, it's always starting with you. And so if you can focus on building that and the culture you're building constantly, that's going to help and that's gonna lead into the next phase and that's gonna be through core values. And core values, I used to think were so laissez-faire. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, core values. But ⁓ really it's hard to hire the character you want. It's hard to continue to create it if you don't even know.

 

what it looks like in your practice. so core values kind of give this like framework. call them like, to me, they're like a cookie cutter is how I envision it. Like here's the cookie cutter, not like that we're a cookie cutter practice, but it's the shape. So a cookie cutter shapes the dough into what they want it to be. And core value shape the practice into what we want it to be and helps us have this, I would say filter of who we're hiring for. And so it's, what are the three to five core values that define your team and how you work? Now owners,

 

Go back to when you first started your practice and what were the three core things that really made your practice what you want it