Posts Categorized:Leadership

75% of employees say that clear communication is the most important quality of a leader. This one principle makes workplaces more harmonious and productive, regardless of the industry. But setting the goal of communicating clearly is not enough to change your practice. Leadership principles are a good starting point for improving your business. But enacting real change takes more. All businesses, including dental practices, need processes that make these principles happen. What steps can you take to change your dental practice leadership? How can you ensure that doing so improves your business? Read on for our brief guide to changing…

As of 2021, there are an estimated 187,000 dental offices in the United States. You’ve worked hard to make your dental practice a reality, but running a professional practice comes with many challenges. You must blend dental know-how with business skills . Like any organization, this means having an efficient team to help carry out your vision and serve your patients. To have the best possible dental office, you will need to understand and deploy consistent leadership principles. To learn more about leadership and management techniques you can use to serve your patients and employees with excellence, keep reading below for the…

Maria Konnikova holds a Ph.D. in psychology. She writes about her research on how quickly people make up their minds and how unwilling they are to change them. She’s a New York Times best-selling author and also a world-champion poker player. For her latest book, The Biggest Bluff, she trained with and then competed against some of the best poker players in the world. They taught her to question every hand. She learned to unpack every strategy and pushed herself out of her illusions–beyond her comfort zone–and she won. Konnikova’s research is so fascinating because it flies in the face of what we…

In his review of the new book, How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions, David Roll shares what is known about the evening before a critical World War II invasion, when General Eisenhower visited the 101st Airborne Division at Newbury, a town in the south of England: “This was the unit whose glider forces and paratroopers, Leigh-Mallory had predicted, would suffer roughly 70% and 50% casualties respectively during the invasion. A famous photo depicts a cluster of soldiers, their faces blackened with charcoal for camouflage and to protect against glare, as they gathered around Ike. Up close, he asked…

Most people, particularly dentists and doctors, need way too much information and are paralyzed by and can’t move forward because of the misconception that they must wait until the time is perfect to move. If you have 80% of the information you need to make a decision, you probably have enough and you should pull the trigger. The key characteristic or defining hallmark of my decision making skill and the ability to navigate and move my company forward has been that I haven’t waited until the time seemed perfect, but instead I’ve waited until the time seems right and I…

When the big stack of mail gets plopped on my desk each day, I won’t lie, there are many letters I’d prefer not to open. When I see a return address from an attorney or the IRS, I react with as much gleeful anticipation as a toddler sitting in front of a very large bowl of steamed broccoli. It’s on these days that a hand-written thank you card from a Burleson Seminars member shines through like a ray of sunshine. I receive a lot of these cards, which I attribute to the caliber of our member doctors and not the…

Ideas come and go. Every day, I write down a handful of new ideas in my planner. I’ve done this for years. I try to write down at least ten, not because any of my ideas are all that great, but because it gets me in the habit of seeing ideas come and go. Also, it doesn’t hurt to capture what’s in my head. Occasionally I will stumble across something really interesting and my only hope of remembering it is to write it down. I’ve read the biographies of too many great thinkers, writers and comedians who keep journals or…

Marcus Aurelius said, “Our actions may be impeded… but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” This simple but profound maxim became Ryan Holiday’s impetus for writing The Obstacle is the Way, a brilliant book I highly recommend you read at least once per year. Today, if you’re honest with yourself, there are at least a few big, hairy obstacles that delay and impede your…

The Smithsonian magazine reported recently that archaeologists uncovered an ancient Roman bathroom, decorated with suggestive mosaics, meaning dirty jokes were built right into the walls. Just like bathroom humor has been around since the dawn of time, there are many things that never change, even in today’s fast-paced, always-on, hyper-connected society. For example, your patients will always want to know certain things from you before they buy, before they refer, before they pay in full, etc. Each year, Jeff Bezos and Amazon ask, “What do we know about the consumer that never changes?” This is an extremely telling secret hidden in…