Your response to the question is a reflection of your behavioural style. There is no right or wrong way but there is a smart way! – businesses are increasingly recognising the benefits of training their staff to identify different behaviours and using that information to improve communication, avoid conflicts and utilise the strengths of others to produce better winning solutions.

Most of the time, we are so used to behaving in a certain way, thinking that our way is the right, that it is a shock to most people to discover that  75% of your colleagues or friends will not react to a problem in the same way that you will. Once this is appreciated it starts to become clear why conflict, frustration, annoyance and even bewilderment are the frequent outcome of many business meetings.

But by using simple but highly effective behavioural profiling tools such as DISC, it is possible to understand the different behavioral styles and use the knowledge to improve communication skills and reduce conflict - benefiting personal and professional relationships alike.

Because there is no right or wrong answer, getting your staff to undertake a profile should not be seen as threatening or a cause for concern. It is NOT a test, you cannot pass or fail, it does NOT measure intelligence or values or even recognise gender.

The use of behavioural understanding is equally powerful in the home environment or in a social setting but it is most frequently used by businesses that recognise that people, and improved communication between staff, is a major foundation for success. It is frequently used as an aid to improve recruitment and as part of the annual appraisal process.

It can also be used to ensure project teams are well balanced, to make sure team members are allocated to the right role, to get everyone’s input and not just input from those with the loudest voices.

Owners/Principals, Practice Managers, Senior Staff and Customer Service staff can benefit greatly from understanding how to recognise, negotiate and handle different personality types.

During times of stress or conflict within a business, profiling helps people to fully appreciate other people’s perspective and to adapt their approach to help reach a compromise.

Ultimately knowing yourself and others gives you the power to decide how we want to behave and to adapt our behaviour for mutual benefit.

Challenge 1: Privatisation of the NHS – by the Backdoor

The Tesco quote is actually from an Essex GP, not a dentist, but it applies equally to dentists.

The NHS is in big trouble: despite the big injection of money under the Labour government, it is struggling to provide quality services and to fund them. More than half of dentistry’s output is NHS funded and we know that government funding is set for big cutbacks.

As a result the NHS is increasingly demanding more for less with each negotiation/tender and this is putting smaller practices at a competitive disadvantage to bigger players with financial muscle and business acumen. So in a fragmented industry we are seeing consolidation in the form of the emergence of large multi-practice dental businesses funded by investors and businesses with no previous connection with dentistry.

We expect that if you are a smaller dental practice you will lose business to these bigger players at the contract level and at the High Street level where customers will migrate to their swankier dental surgeries. Consequently you will either go out of business or have to sell out. Or become their employee at a salary they set. Either way individual dentists income
will trend lower by the law of market forces.

By being smart now, that is, by skilling up your practices, dentists could develop regional multi-practice businesses and become significant players yourselves or develop a highly profitable practice whose selling price is more than one that isn’t so well run.

If you would like to find what you need to do to survive the coming storm, or you would like to become one of the big players yourself, contact us now. Or you could end up as an employee of Tesco.

Challenge 2: Winning NHS Contracts

More than half of dentistry’s output is NHS funded but as the funding available decreases, the NHS is becoming a more aggressive buyer with a greater need to demonstrate value. We see this with the NHS increasingly demanding more for less.

From our experience in helping our clients to win tenders, we at cBPE.o+D41rg have observed that most dentists simply do not have the basic business skills to compete and win the contracts on offer. If you cannot win NHS tenders, you can see where your practice is heading. And if that is not enough, delivering UDAs on the new PDS plus contracts has just become more onerous.

We have a track record of winning the majority of the tenders we have helped our clients to complete. If you would like to know how to win contracts and tenders please contact us now.

Challenge 3: Competition – Patient Choice

Patients increasingly have a choice: whether private or NHS, they can choose whether to come to your practice or go to your competitor’s. In addition there is competition coming from non-dentists such as for teeth whitening (remember solicitors and conveyancing?). If you don’t have a competitive edge over your immediate competitors, you risk not just your earnings but your very practice itself.

To get customers to come to your practice, and stay with you, you need to:

• Attract them to your practice (marketing)
• Convert them into customers (sell to them)
• Give them a quality experience of your practice at all times (not just chairside manner but customer relations management)
• Get satisfied customers to refer new customers

This constitutes your competitive edge, being perceived to be better than your competitors. All the above are skills that you and your staff can acquire. Contact us and we will show you how.

Challenge 4: Competition – the New Kids on the Block

It hasn’t escaped notice that dentists can earn 6 figure incomes and we now see that younger, hungrier and more ambitious youngsters coming into dentistry.

These youngsters are in a hurry to succeed and they will not be held back by a practice they see as not progressive. They are more willing to innovate and entice patients into their practices. They are also more likely to be frustrated and want to leave your practice if you still run it in the old way. What’s more, parents are willing to mortgage the second property to give them an earlier start to own their own practices.

If you have young associates like this in your practice, you must run your practice in a way they feel their aspirations can
be met. Or soon you may need to compete against them when they open their own practice opposite yours in the High Street.

At cBPE.org we specialise in getting all staff in a dental practice working together which increases morale, increases productivity and improves practice profitability. To learn more contact us now.

Challenge 5: Dentists Need to Think Like Business People

Consider this: I network prodigiously at all sorts of general business events but in the last 5 years I’ve only met one doctor and zero dentists. Is this not an indication that you men of dentistry and medicine do not consider yourselves to be general business people running businesses?

And yet as the NHS struggles to deliver quality services more cheaply, dentists are finding the need to compete for NHS
contracts, to compete for patients, to deliver services more efficiently, and to manage and organise their staff better. Nothing to do with clinical dentistry but everything to do with running a business effectively, productively AND more profitably.

At cBPE.org we believe that dentists today are doomed if they don’t accept today’s competitive pressures and start to think like business people. As established business people ourselves we can bring to your practice the business skills you need. And invariably once our clients get to know from us what they didn’t know, they ambitions for what they can achieve become bigger. Sceptical? All you need to do is contact us and we’ll show you what we can do for you.

Working with cBPE allowed a new vision to emerge – albeit, the momentum for developing a truly expansive vision kept on stalling because it appeared hard to implement.  Many times in this process, the partners wondered how they would get the necessary changes “past Linda”. Linda turned out to be a staff member who was notoriously difficult about change, greeting any attempted improvements with the insistence that “we don’t do things that way”.

cBPE coaches working in other situations came to hear a lot about similar employees who made managers less willing to consider making changes needed. Coaches coined this ‘the Linda Effect’. Our experts came to realise that, with the Linda Effect, the damage is done without ‘Linda’ ever actually being involved. In fact, the question should not be is Linda stifling your business. Perhaps, what managers and principals really need to ask themselves is ‘Are You Helping Linda to Stifle Your Business?’

The Linda Effect limits the vision of our clients not only because of the actions of ‘Linda’ herself, but, more importantly, because of the emphasis managers and owners place on the practicality of getting changes past all the “Linda types” After all, when we are at the point of discussing potential improvements with our clients, ‘Linda’ has yet to be involved at all, but the concern a manager feels about how she will react creates a kind of glass ceiling on their thinking.

This limits their ability to set a vision with any real ambition. Rather than aiming as high as possible, managers and principals are influenced by the Linda Effect to set their sights much lower. ‘Linda’ is set in her ways and a manager’s knowledge of this stops them from considering new and improved ways of moving forward without ever getting to the point of trying them out.

This is ‘The Linda Effect’.

From their years of experience helping businesses, the coaches at cBPE know that the answer is not simply to get rid of ‘Linda’. When discussing this issue at events we often hear people say that they employ nothing but Lindas, in exasperation of all the problems they have faced. The truth is that removing any one staff member is unlikely to provide a solution. Nevertheless, using some of cBPE’s applied techniques, will alleviate the stifling impact of the Linda Effect. Many times this leads to a owners and mangers of business breaking through the glass ceiling created by a legacy of Lindas. Linda Effects need to be overcome for businesses to undergo ultimately an unlimited thinking and a wider vision.

Suffice it to say, those same dentist principal’s glass ceiling in this respect was shattered. cBPE’s long term work with that business coupled with the momentum of the new vision allowed that business to double in size in only two years. Somewhat better than 10%, then!