Tuesday Tip from Pride Institute: How to bypass bad dental staff meeting and generate real change
By Amy Morgan, CEO of Pride Institute
It never fails to amaze me that whenever I go onsite to visit a Pride office, I see mediocre (at best) staff meetings and morning huddles that are full of “sound and fury, signifying nothing” (aka – no change)!
Everyone knows they “should” be having productive meetings, but the guilty secret is that just as many know it’s not happening in their practice. So the question is, what gets in the way of a productive meeting?
Here are the top five reasons I believe meetings are unproductive:
1) The team does not know or feel comfortable with their roles. Huddles and meetings are often the playground of who speaks the loudest and longest, which leaves the quiet and shy or silently negative out of the loop.
2) The complete amnesia that kicks in when teams analyze what’s right, and the “OCD” that comes out when they address what’s wrong. I know many people tend to be critical, but how about capturing the excellent side of things?
3) The propensity to demand THE solution without fully understanding the problem. I will buy every office a Starbucks latte (I mean it) if you can prove to me you’re using all the tools of problem solving at each and every opportunity for analysis and brainstorming.
4) The much more productive “meeting after the meeting,” which is either in the parking lot or even better, during happy hour. This meeting is where the action really is, but it’s never talked about back in the office.
5) And finally, TIME. No time, compressed time, wrong time, or late time means there was no real value in the meeting in the first place!
I’m laughing on the outside and crying on the inside because meetings can and should be productive and valuable to all! I would love to hear from all of my Pride peeps about what you think keeps meetings from being “the best.” More importantly, how would you fix this dilemma once and for all? I crave your feedback.
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Tuesday Tips from Pride Institute are provided weekly on their Facebook page as well as in this column in DentistryIQ. To ensure you don’t miss any of Pride Institute’s proven methods to take your practice to the next level, visit prideinstitute.com, and like them on Facebook!
