Plan your 2010 Team Retreat NOW!
Here are four key reasons to have a planning retreat for 2010:
1. To help staff understand the issues, nationally and locally, that will affect patients and the practice. An important part of this is every team member and every department taking responsibility for reducin
g costs within the practice. Team members are responsible to each other in this process.
2. To reassure staff that when everyone works together with a united mission, the team can manage the prevailing challenges. In the process of this, staff will need the opportunity to air their own concerns and discuss the challenges (and solutions) they see.
3. To clarify the mission of the practice and focus on individual and group goals. Part of this process is to build confidence in each other, in the team and in the practice.
4. To focus on training and cross-training at a time when your schedule may more readily allow for this. Once business picks up again, it may be difficult to make the time to focus on training and skill-building.
Click here for ideas about retreats.
The Most Important Quality in a Team Member
The new-hire
You're hiring a clinical team member, so your top priority is the clinical skills or experience of the applicant, right? Though this is vitally important, there is a factor even more important that you must determine during an interview: how versatile or flexible is this person? If you hire a person solely for the learned skills, you are overlooking an issue 
that can affect every other member of the team. For example, a clinical assistant who has superb clinical skills, but is rigid and inflexible is likely to rub people the wrong way.
The associate you're considering must first have the interpersonal skills to be able to get along with many other people and be versatile enough to consider different viewpoints. The receptionist you're interviewing may have a lot of experience and be very organized, but if she is unable to manage relationships or if she is fixed in her ways, she may cause conflict among other team members or with patients.
Flexibility - versatility, is a most important quality in any person you bring in to your team. So how can you determine the versatility quotient of an applicant? Observe the person interacting with others. Watch the body language as well as listen to what the person says. An interview is a stressful situation for an applicant, so some nervousness is to be expected. However, undue rigidity, physical or attitudinal, may present concerns. Get the applicant talking as much as possible because this is when inflexibility can raise its ugly head. Ask questions that indicate how an applicant might approach a problem, such as: "If a patient arrived 20 minutes late for an appointment, how do you think this might be handled?" Does the applicant have a very narrow view of this or does the applicant see variables in how it might be handled?
The current team member
Though ideally we hire individuals who are flexible and versatile, in reality we may have team members who are somewhat or very rigid! Their rigidity may cause problems within the team and even conflict with others.
Sometimes a long-term team member may become rigid over the years and only see one way of doing things. Is it possible for these people to change? The good news ... yes! However, they must first see the weakness in their rigidity and second they must want to change! We can not MAKE other people want to change. They must understand that changing can benefit themselves.
Throughout life our "versatility quotient" can vary. Ideally it becomes greater, where we can see issues through the eyes of others as well as through our own eyes. Empathy is a big part of this; This does not mean feeling exactly the same way that others feel, but instead, understanding how others may feel and having the ability to feel compassion.
Understanding other people is the key component of recognizing behavioral styles and practicing versatility. Click here to read an article about behavioral styles in the dental office.