DentaltownUK August 2017 - 84

students

Maximising Professional and
Patient Relationships, and the
Art of Building Great Teams
I'm a dental student, not an expert in
the fields of relationships, but because of
the many opportunities and endeavors I've
been involved with, I believe I've built an
understanding of the characteristics needed to
build great teams and maintain relationships
in personal and professional settings.
Having practical and clinical skills alone is
no longer a recipe for success. In our evolving
profession, dentists with excellent additional
communication skills stand out in a competitive
market and are more likely to be in greater
demand or successful practitioners. These
skills include financial, stress management,
teamwork and leadership and selling.
The staff at a dental practice is fundamental to its smooth day-to-day running. There
are several types of arrangement that staff can
have, most common of which is a salaried
post. Dentists can also engage in associate,
cost-splitting or profit-splitting partnership
deals with other dentists or dental care
professionals. The most successful dentists
have a cloud of expertise that they can rely
on to gain valuable information on demand.

Fig. 1: Maslow's
hierarchy
of needs.1

SelfActualization
Living to your
highest potential.

Esteem
You've acquired the skills that
lead to knowledge and recognition.

Love and Belonging
Achieving deeper, more meaningful relationships.

Safety
Home, sweet home.

Physiological Needs
Food, water, sleep.

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AUGUST 2017 // dentaltownuk.com

How do you create and
manage great teams?
In any profession, the most important
way to manage a good team is through your
own qualities as a leader.
You must motivate and inspire staffers
to want to progress and become masters of
their chosen skills. You must also be flexible,
because dentistry presents many challenges
you must adapt to. You must have a vision
of the type of team you wish to lead and the
goal you wish to collectively achieve, and you
must also be able to effectively delegate by
analysing and identifying the strengths of your
colleagues and giving them responsibilities
and roles that are skill-dependent.
Scheduling regular team meetings helps
air and resolve disagreements and problems.
This, in turn, helps retain team members
and maintain an excellent working group.

by Kishan
Sheth,
DentaltownUK
honorary
associate
editor
The major criticism of Maslow's model
is that some people may, in reality, achieve
higher positions of the pyramid before they
achieve the lower parts, which goes against
the definition of the theory.
Herzberg's hygiene and motivational
model (Fig. 2) posits that there are two types
of factors: extrinsic, which encourage survival,
and intrinsic, which encourage professional
progress. Relating this to dentistry, for a
dentist to consider working in a practice,
it must have a clean environment, good
equipment and lighting, good financial
incentives and stability. To motivate the
dentist to work harder, he or she must be
provided opportunities to train and progress.
Both models have weaknesses associated
with them, and neither can comprehensively
explain why and how humans get motivated.

Our main motivational factors

Getting the best possible team

1. Financial benefits, such as bonuses for
great work.
2. Social factors, such as having interprofessional relationships and feeling
part of a larger cause
3. Having interest and enthusiasm about
the role you carry out.
Motivation can be summarised by two
well-documented models that highlight how
motivation is the result of needs and wants
being satisfied.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Fig. 1) posits
that throughout life, people work their way
up the pyramid and progress is disrupted
if one part cannot be attained. Our
most vital needs appear at the base
and as we work up, we begin to
achieve luxuries.

To have a great team, you must recruit
the right people.
All interviews are two-way processes; they
allow employers to gain an appreciation about
whether candidates are right for the position,
and provide candidates with the opportunity
to see if the role is what they're looking for.
Because the team members are arguably the
greatest asset of a dental practice, employers
should look for people who are committed
to their organisations and want to progress
within the hierarchal business structure.
You must offer team members a fair
salary; higher rates are more likely to increase
motivation, which can affect output levels.
More-qualified professionals will demand
higher wages, so you must have a competitive
wage to retain the best talent in your practice.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DentaltownUK August 2017
