By Hayley Robins, Senior Accountant at Hive Business

Anyone buying a dental practice is under pressure to create revenue quickly to service the debt and start paying it down. Quite often I see people in this position spending a lot of time in surgery, working as hard as they can. At a stretch they might even manage to manage something. Yet in order to create growth in any enterprise you need a leader, and if that leader is going to be you then you need managers to give you the necessary headspace.

Leaders embrace change and they take risks and coach people. Managers are more myopic and prescriptive — for good reason. They direct people, whereas leaders can acknowledge that people have different ways of doing things. People around leaders see themes emerge around how they want their business to run. Themes emerge because leaders are serious about honest self-reflection and open about what they can do well and what they really can’t do at all.

To be effective, leaders need managers and managers need leaders. Managers work to formula and have little time for self-reflection. They’ve got short term goals and they’re looking to implement a system to meet those goals. Whoever is setting those goals and creating the long term vision, they should be a different person. If they’re not, a vicious cycle begins and the business suffers. If you are too involved in management tasks you will simply not be able to fill the leadership role. You can’t do both, at least not for long. And so you will not be able to grow your business and start paying down your debts.

We have a client who epitomises the good leader. He values his team’s skill sets and has no arrogance or ego about him. He’s open about his strengths and weaknesses and his staff will do anything for him. He has always identified that he doesn’t have much in the way of managerial skills. He doesn’t work to processes or have any particular inclination to monitor processes. He’d rather get people who can, and then step back. He’s aware that the alternative — holding onto everything, doing nothing well and plateauing — is worse. So he pays us to do his monthly reporting.

I think he’s the exception that proves the rule. Dentists tend to be geared towards managerialism. They are mostly risk averse because they have been trained to have 100% success in everything they do. They like finite things, they like a set process. Maybe the dental profession attracts this type of person, or maybe it moulds them into this mind-set gradually. Either way, most don’t cope well with unknowns such as marketing projects where there’s uncertainty and no guaranteed return. It’s uncomfortable.

Discomfort — that feeling of being out of control — means that most associates, when they take over a practice, feel a powerful urge to micromanage everything. Instead, it would be better to appoint the right managers to do this, and then stand back and develop a sense of oversight, checking that everyone’s working to their vision.

The discomfort around ceding operational control usually comes up during our diagnostic days with our clients. We help them see that this emotional barrier to business growth is normal, and even though a new owner might feel like shining a light on their weaknesses is itself a weakness, it’s not. What is a weakness is trying to prove to everyone that you know how to do everything.

People tend to think that they’re not natural leaders, but you’ll never know if you don’t give yourself the time and space to grow into the role. You can do that by putting the right people into management positions, or outsourcing some management functions. That’s how successful practice owners solve the leadership versus management riddle, and it’s the only way a dental practice can ever grow.

Part of this is about self-awareness. People put pressure on themselves when they feel anxious, and they want to show the people around them that they’re competent. In the dental profession competency is synonymous with mastering details. Understandably, it’s a big ask to step away from the details and look at the big picture. But you have to.

Even if you could do everything well, there aren’t enough hours in the day. High functioning people pick what they’re best at and stick to that. They are flexible, they are OK about not controlling, and they are perfectly fine with the idea that things constantly change. They can adapt. Just because they have found a solution to a problem today, they know it might be irrelevant in a week’s time, and that’s OK. That’s the mind of a leader.

If you have any questions or comments about this article please get in touch on 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.