How to have better dental practice meetings

26 Aug How to have better dental practice meetings

What is it about most dental practice meetings that makes them so dull, and yet in other practices, meetings can be productive and enjoyable?

If your meetings are dull, essential things are left unspoken, and you will notice things like these:

• Mistakes are hidden, and rarely does anybody say sorry.
• Issues get discussed in the secret WhatsApp group, but to you, its existence is only hearsay.
• Nobody really knows or cares what others are working on.
• “I’m just going to come in, get my work done, and go home, from now on!”
• “I’m not paid enough to do any more than what I do already!

Ironically, your dental team will tell you that there is a need to improve communication (it’s a problem in most businesses), and the apparent solution is to organise meetings and give people a chance to talk. If you’ve tried that, started calling your meeting a ‘huddle’, sent around agendas in advance, varied the format, asked for ideas, tried to include everyone and still found yourself struggling to get people engaged in your dental team meetings, it’s okay, you are not alone!

The solution to boring meetings is, firstly, to have a meeting about meetings.

Start by explaining that you recognise the need to have better, more productive, efficient and concise meetings, where all opinions count, actions get agreed upon, and tasks get done.

What do you need to conclude?

Firstly, as a leader, your job is to get commitment to a new meeting structure. To do that, you need to encourage all opinions, and all opinions matter. Commitment is not the same as trying to achieve a unanimous consensus on everything.

What do you need to get commitment to?

• Content, frequency and timing. Who takes notes, who leads? When and how are ‘carried forward’ and ‘brought forward’ matters discussed?
• What is acceptable behaviour during a meeting? Is eating allowed, and what happens to mobile phones? When does healthy debate become personal, and who will intervene?
• What happens if somebody cannot attend? Does the meeting still occur, and how will information be shared?
• How vital is timekeeping?
• What is an acceptable timescale for somebody to report back to the team?
• What practice results will you share with the team? You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much the team wants to know about the performance of their dental practice. It can drive improvements in standards

Those are the bare bones, and local rules also need to evolve from your meeting about meetings. Most importantly, do take the 45 minutes or so required to do this and make sure that the ‘rules’ are shared, revisited, and everybody is accountable to them.

Rarely do dental practices develop and grow if the background chatter is limited to that secret WhatsApp group. As a leader, it’s part of your job to push online conversations into open discussion.