Build Trust; Avoid These 6 Habits

Trust is the foundation of every successful dental practice. Leaders, team members, and patients all must trust one another, or else you’ll never be able to build team loyalty, great patient relationships, or sustainable growth for your practice. Trust is essential, but it’s also incredibly fragile—even the smallest of missteps can break it—and when it breaks, it’s an uphill battle to rebuild it. Instead of investing significant time and effort to repair broken trust, ensure it never gets broken in the first place! 

These are some common pitfalls that destroy trust, as well as steps you can take to avoid them:

1. Failing to Keep Your Word

When you break a promise, it erodes credibility with both your team and your patients. This goes back to one of Kirk’s favorite sayings: “Expectations Minus Reality Equals Conflict.” You create an expectation by making a promise, but then life happens, and as a result, you invite conflict. To avoid broken promises, only commit to what you can deliver, making sure to follow through consistently. 

2. Lack of Transparency

When you withhold information, it breeds suspicion and confusion in your practice. To avoid keeping people in the dark, be upfront about the decisions, challenges, and changes that will impact your team and patients. I recommend using your morning huddles and weekly meetings as an opportunity to keep everyone informed. This free document is a great resource for making sure your communication is consistent!

3. Playing Favorites

Few behaviors create resentment and divide the team like favoritism, so avoiding it is crucial. Your team needs to feel appreciated and respected equally, so make sure to recognize contributions fairly and avoid giving more praise to specific people. You can actually systemize your appreciation, and one of my favorite ways is incredibly simple: put everyone’s birthdays in your calendar so you’ll always have a reminder, and no one will feel left out. Check out this free tool for more help maximizing your appreciation for your team!

4. Ignoring Feedback

When you dismiss the concerns of others, you’re telling them that their voices don’t matter. Instead, try to actively seek feedback, acknowledge it, and take visible steps to address it. I love using a system of regular check-ins to invite feedback, because this one-on-one time is the perfect opportunity for team members to say what’s on their minds. When your team members know you care about them, you can challenge them and they know it is meant with good intent.

5. Avoiding Accountability

Accountability is crucial to a great team, so when you shift blame or refuse to admit mistakes, it truly undermines your leadership. You can’t expect your team to hold themselves accountable if you aren’t doing the same, so lead by example and own your errors—you’ll find you can actually learn from them! 

6. Overpromising and Underdelivering

When you overcommit, you’re setting yourself up for unmet expectations, frustration, and disappointment. You need a clear plan to under-promise and over-deliver, and that starts with setting realistic expectations, especially around timeframes!

When it comes down to it, trust is how you measure the quality of relationships in the workplace. It truly holds the team—and by extension, the practice—together. You NEED trust to prevent your team from falling into dysfunctional behaviors, so get started today with a free self-evaluation! 

To learn more about ACT and how we can help you build a Better Practice and a Better Life, reach out to Gina!

Tune in next time as we demystify some of the biggest myths about leadership!