If you desire a high-performance dental team, confidence-building is a must. It is important to the success of your dental practice to consistently offer ways to increase the individual and collective self-esteem of your employees. In order to increase the confidence of your team members, you must provide ways for each of them to improve and learn new skills. What are some ways to build the confidence and competence of your team members?
Professional Development
In order to prevent team members from feeling they are not progressing professionally, their skills must be utilized at all times. Provide them access to courses, training, and conferences. Allow time for them to study or invest in a project they are passionate about. Consider holding knowledge-sharing sessions at consistent intervals to let the team members learn from each other.
Delegate Tasks
To help build competence, delegate certain jobs to help them grow. Always assist them until they can perform the tasks on their own confidently. Do not be too quick and give too much responsibility too soon. You must allow them to begin with baby steps until they can master each step of the task.
Know Your Team’s Strengths
Every team member has gifts and skills which can be utilized to help the team. Allowing each team member to contribute their strength to the group will unite them into a cohesive unit. One of your most important tasks is identifying your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Be direct and honest with each team member in order to build a trusting relationship to learn their strengths. Even normal everyday interactions with team members can reveal information about them. These things will help you to better understand your employees and tailor certain tasks to each of their strengths.
Show Support
Here are some of the most effective ways to boost self-esteem in each of your team members:
- connect with them and support them
- always praise your team members for a job well done
- offer them positive feedback when they perform a task well
People tend to respond well to compliments. Everyone likes to feel appreciated. By delivering positivity on a daily basis, your team members will feel better about themselves. Do not overestimate the smallest gesture as a reason to let a team member know they are appreciated.
Remove Fear of Failure
It is ok as you learn to make mistakes. Make your team members feel safe when they fail. They will feel more willing to contribute, knowing they have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes instead of being penalized. It will do wonders to build their confidence and free them to pursue important tasks or projects and be successful.
Celebrate the Smallest or Largest Accomplishment
Learn to celebrate all team accomplishments whether big or small. Let each individual team member know when they accomplish a task. Provide lunch for your team members to celebrate, deliver flowers, or send them home early. Celebrate accomplishments periodically. In this way, the celebrations won’t become a routine or considered unimportant.
Say Thank You
Never underestimate the power behind these two simple words, as they are a form of appreciation and recognition which is much appreciated. Make a point of going out of your way to thank someone the first, and even the second time, they complete a task well to display your gratitude. Taking the time to say thank you personally to your team members will increase their self-esteem and will eventually increase the self-esteem of the whole team.
As dental professionals, it is of utmost importance to bring out the best in your office staff to build them into a team. Each member of the team has skills to benefit the other team members. Help them to build their confidence level by realizing their contributions and talents make a difference. Once you have evaluated how each team member’s strengths can be used, ensure that team member’s role is aligned with their particular strength. The rewards of building a confident team are huge and consist of everything from employee engagement to performance to increased productivity in the workplace. Their work ethic and the results of their productivity ultimately rely upon your leadership.
The staff you employ are one of the most valuable assets to your dental practice. Choosing the most qualified staff members to create your office team is one of the most critical challenges in business today. Strategic Practice Solutions Talent Acquisition offers a variety of solutions to help you identify and locate top talent. They have access to a pool of candidates and can assist you in recruiting the right talent to enhance the performance, as well as the bottom line, of your practice. Let their dental staffing team assist you by relieving stress from your dental team while they are busy maintaining the revenue and customer relations of the practice.
