by [email protected] | May 26, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Where in your relationships, your health, your financial situation, your clinical dentistry, can the realism of progress take precedence over the fantasy of perfection?
At one point in our life, we have been in a situation wherein we strive to be perfect, only to realize that it is only an illusion that we put upon ourselves out of fear of criticism and rejection.
The key to perfection is acknowledging that it doesn’t exist.
Perfection is fiction, and it can be destructive. I’m not saying that you should lower your standards. Set high standards and strive for excellence, not perfection. You can only achieve success through progressive action.
Listen in as I discuss pointers on how you can identify areas of your life or business where the standard of “perfection” should be replaced with progress.
Tune in and find solutions to common practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “When it came time for me to cross the finish line, I looked up at my time and the critic turned on, and I was starting to think of ways that should have improved my time and why the time wasn’t good enough. The standard of finishing immediately changed, and I was looking for opportunities where I could have perfected that run.”
- “That is a metaphor for a lot of or our lives. Where is that perfectionism that we’re trained to notice these meticulous details in the mouth, the dentistry that we’re doing, the margins, the bone levels? We’re down to millimeters and microns and that works really well in dentistry, but it can create all sorts of problems with their teams, with their families, in our life.”
- “We create these environments where there’s learned helplessness because our team thinks ‘Well, I can never live up to the doctor’s standards so why even try? I’m not even gonna put up the effort because I’m getting criticized.’ So, it starts to hamper our relationships.”
- “What is perfect? The reality is it doesn’t exist.”
- “The solution isn’t to really lower your standards. But we have to appreciate that the path to mastery is messy. Whenever you start on anything, you suck at it. So you have to give yourself permission to suck and get better, and better, and better.”
- “The solution is making peace with imperfection and falling in love with process and progress.”
- “Human desire isn’t perfection, it is connection.”
- “Understand that we have to change habits to change identity. Once we start to build that confidence, then the success and the progress are inevitable.”
- “Perfection leads to procrastination.”
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by [email protected] | May 19, 2021 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Have you been scouring the internet trying to look for the best reward system for your employees? Let me tell you a secret; there’s none! I’ve tried different approaches, many times myself, and they didn’t work.
The bonus system aims to give out incentives (monetary or otherwise) to motivate employees to bring out their best and be productive. However, this kind of approach is counterproductive and not to mention expensive.
If you’re looking for a perfect incentive system for your employees, you should not miss out on these three elements: alignment, belonging, and healthy conflict. A reward system should not curb creativity and risk-taking. Once it’s manipulative and punitive, it will predictively fail 100%.
Tune in and find solutions to common practice issues at Prescriptions for Your Practice
Key Quotes:
- “What’s the best bonus system out there? And the short answer, the bottom line up front, is that there is no such thing.”
- “If you work from that mental frame, work for wages, then you immediately assume that if I give more wages, if I give an incentive or bonus program, then I have a better team and I’ll get more and better work… it just doesn’t work.”
- “Modern research says that bonus systems suck, and it can actually demotivate employees, or worse, motivate them to be egocentric, to work on their own self-interests.”
- “Most people are looking for alignment, belonging, and healthy conflict.”
- “You, as the practice owner, are completely limiting the effectiveness of your team if it’s a top-down approach.”
- “If we don’t first fulfill those common human needs, a bonus system will likely be expensive at best, counterproductive at worst.”
- “I really didn’t have the practice or team that I dreamed of until I really dug into the science of human potential, the science of organizational behavior.”
- “No bonus system can match the internal motivations of your team.”
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by [email protected] | Apr 21, 2021 | Legendary Leadership
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I am re-releasing one of the more popular and the No. 1 most downloaded episode of all my podcasts. It features the incredibly insightful Dr. Thomas Grass as he recounts the story of how he found dentistry and the path that led him to this career. This is one of the most powerful conversations I have ever had on the show, as Tom delves deep into the importance of being present and how to avoid always looking to the future or your next achievement.
We discuss what Tom calls the UFO method and how to use this when approaching unpleasant discussions or delivering difficult news. You’ll learn how to create satisfaction out of inherently unsatisfying experiences. Listen in as we share personal stories about making connections with the people in our lives and touch on the responsibility you have to yourself to do the same.
Tune in and meet more Legendary Leaders
Key Quotes:
- “The minute you turn your patients into problems, tasks, or room numbers, you’ve failed.”
- “Dentistry checks all my boxes; you get to take care of people for a long time, you get to know people, and you get to be hands-on.”
- “Hospice is really good at showing you all the pieces and parts that surround someone’s life.”
- “You don’t know what people are living with, what people regret.”
- “Tell people what you need from them and give people what they want from you.”
- “When you are caring for people, you are giving away your emotional energy to them.”
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by Karah Karah | May 23, 2018 | Hints for Happiness
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Growing as a leader starts with growing as a person, and no one knows that better than Dr. David Maloley. He’s going solo today to share a few things that have significantly improved his quality of life, and as a result, have helped him be a more effective leader in his practice.
Listen in to hear the top three gadgets that have become major parts of Dr. Dave’s morning routine, as well as his advice for starting your day off strong. You’ll also hear his tips for improving your mental state and what it really takes to be the leader your practice needs.
Key Quotes:
- “If you can own your day, you can use that as a building block. Then you’re well on your way to building an epic life, and that starts with a morning routine.”
- “No matter what your quest is—building a dental empire, serving your patients—meditation is a good foundation.”
- “All my breakthroughs in my practice were when I was working more on myself than on the tactics within the practice.”
- “Strong systems are really important, but you’re not going to change your life by fixing the way your phones are answered … True growth is going to happen from growth within the leader.”
- “When you transform the leader, you transform the practice, and it must start in that order, or it’s not sustainable.”
- “High performance is about increasing fulfillment and decreasing stress over time.”
- “Health is the wealth. If you’re tired and exhausted, you’re going to be kind of a coward and an ineffective leader.”
- “We’re sold this myth that as we get older, our energy decreases. I don’t believe in that at all. There’s so many ways that we can get our bloodwork right and get our morning routine right so that we have the same energy that we did as a teenager.”
- “When those difficult times come along … I want to be a higher level person so that I can take that head-on.”
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by Karah Karah | May 2, 2018 | Legendary Leadership
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In this episode, you’ll get to listen in to Dr. Dave’s recent interview on the Business of Dentistry Podcast. He shares personal stories of his own challenges and the valuable lessons he learned as he built his career. Listen in to hear his inspiring words about finding clarity, what it takes to be a great leader and more.
Key Quotes:
- “Life moves fast. I used to think about five-year plans and ten-year plans, and now a quarter goes by, and I’m like, I don’t want the same things I wanted 90 days ago.”
- “That’s, I think, a struggle in society, but certainly in dentistry as well, is like you start living out somebody else’s dream and then realize it too late. If you can always be course-correcting, I think that’s probably the best advice, to have a beacon, which would be like your annual plan or even your life plan.”
- “It takes some serious time alone to reflect and design [a life plan, but] otherwise your schedule will get full of other people’s agendas.”
- “My theory was in 2017 that if I did nothing else but worked on myself, that I could make my practice grow, and I didn’t need to be constantly turning all these knobs like hiring somebody or a new marketing tactic or new phone skills.”
- “If you’re the CEO of a dental practice, if you’re the lead producer in a dental practice, you’re the racehorse, and so you have to create ways—whether it be through delegation and leadership or just flat out automating or eliminating things from your life—so that you’re not feeling run down at the end of every week.”
- “What are you doing to take care of yourself so that you can serve? It’s kind of a paradox like you need to be selfish to be selfless is really something that we have to come to comfort with.”
- “Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s doing the things that you’re scared of because you know that gets you to the destination that you want.”
- “Sometimes we use perfectionism as a badge of honor because it sounds really good, but sometimes it’s just fear and excuses packaged in a nice little wrapper with a bow on it.”
- “Your teams need psychological safety, so they need to be able to ask their dumb questions or make their mistakes without feeling chastised; they need to know that you have their back.”
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