Some people dread staff meetings because they can become negative.
The boss or practice manager starts talking about things that have gone wrong in the past month and who’s responsible. This creates a climate of confrontation and blame. People scramble to cover their own backs and nothing productive is achieved.
I recall watching a staff meeting in a practice I visited. The practice manager saw it as her job to give verbal floggings for mistakes from the previous month. What a way to demotivate people! When the dentist eventually sacked the practice manager morale and turnover in the practice increased sharply.
Here’s a secret to more productive staff meetings.
When you identify problems, do it in a specific way. Don’t assign blame to individuals. Instead look at the problems from a systems point of view:
“We’ve had an increase in failed appointments. Let’s see how can we alter our systems to fix this problem.” or
“Every time we do a root filling it takes us 9 minutes to set up. How can we get it done faster?” or
“Last month we had 3 crowns that didn’t come back on time. How can we makes sure that doesn’t happen again?”
Then you all look at the problem together as a group and come up with answers. You’re not blaming individuals; you’re fixing your systems. You’re putting the problem in the middle of the table so everyone can work on it.
When you all come up with the answers together people own the solutions. You document them in your practice manual and they become part of your standard operating procedures.
This change of mindset is the simplest way I know to take the angst out of staff meetings and make them productive.
