By: Jennifer C. Zamecki, CPBA, CPVA, DNA, TriMetrix
Practicing dentistry is the least of your worries today… I am sure that is not what keeps you as a DDS up at night. Instead, how about the revolving front desk personnel? Or is it the business management side of running your practice? Or, how about that vacant dental assistant position for the past three months?
Well, one step at a time… This article will address what is needed for your practice to flourish in today’s business climate. In future articles, I will address the other above challenges.
So how do you know if your front desk staff has what the job calls for? The only way to really know is to first understand what this position calls for.
Well-Run Concepts has been conducting research with top dental practices to quantify what is needed for top performance today by defining these key areas:
- Attributes: personal skills or competencies
- Values: rewards and culture
- Behaviors: how they do the job
We used a comprehensive, validated, step-by-step process called the Trimetrix™ system to determine what is needed for top performance. This article will summarize our findings to date and here is what we found.
Attributes tells us if an individual can do the job by looking at what personal skills or competencies are needed in a Top Dental Practice.
The Top Seven Attributes are:
1. SELF MANAGEMENT: The ability to prioritize and complete tasks in order to deliver desired outcomes within allotted time frames.
- Independently pursues business objectives in an organized and efficient manner
- Prioritizes activities as necessary to meet job responsibilities
- Maintains required level of activity toward achieving goals without direct supervision
- Minimizes work flow disruptions and time wasters to complete high quality work within a specified time frame.
2. PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY: A measure of the capacity to be answerable for personal actions.
- Accepts personal responsibility for the consequences of personal actions
- Avoids placing unnecessary blame on others
- Maintains personal commitment to objectives regardless of the success or failure of personal decisions
- Applies personal lessons learned from past failures to moving forward in achieving future successes
3. TEAMWORK: The ability to cooperate with others to meet objectives.
- Discards personal agenda to cooperate with other team members in meeting objectives
- Contributes positively and productively to team projects
- Builds and sustains a trust relationship with each member of the team
- Supports other team members and team decisions
4. PLANNING AND ORGANIZATION: The ability to establish a process for activities that lead to the implementation of systems, procedures or outcomes.
- Defines plans and organizes activities necessary to reach targeted goals
- Organizes and utilizes resources in ways that maximize their effectiveness
- Implements appropriate plans and adjusts them as necessary
- Consistently demonstrates organization and detail orientation
5. RESULTS ORIENTATION: The ability to identify actions necessary to complete tasks and obtain results.
- Maintains focus on goals
- Identifies and acts on removing potential obstacles to successful goal attainment
- Implements thorough and effective plans and applies appropriate resources to produce desired results
- Follows through on all commitments to achieve results
6. GOAL ACHIEVEMENT: The overall ability to set, pursue and attain achievable goals, regardless of obstacles or circumstances.
- Establishes goals that are relevant, realistic and attainable
- Identifies and implements required plans and milestones to achieve specific business goals
- Initiates activity toward goals without unnecessary delay
- Stays on target to complete goals regardless of obstacles or adverse circumstances
7. INTERPERSONAL SKILLS: The ability to interact with others in a positive manner.
- Initiates and develops business relationships in positive ways
- Successfully works with a wide range of people at varying levels of organizations
- Communicates with others in ways that are clear, considerate and understandable
- Demonstrates ease in relating with a diverse range of people of varying backgrounds, ages, experience and education levels
Values make up the next critical success factor needed, which tells us why an individual will do the job or, in other words, what rewards & cultures are they seeking on the job.
The Top Three Values are:
1. TRADITIONAL/REGULATORY
Rewards those who value traditions inherent in social structure, rules, regulations and principles.
2. THEORETICAL
Rewards those who value knowledge for knowledge’s sake, continuing education and intellectual growth.
3. UTILITARIAN/ECONOMIC
Rewards those who value practical accomplishments, results and rewards for their investments of time, resources and energy.
Behaviors tell us how an individual will perform the job. We analyzed which of the behaviors an individual should possess to perform well in the job at the Front Desk of a Dental practice. This is very important information to know in understanding communication styles.
The Top Three Behaviors are:
1. CUSTOMER ORIENTED
The job demands a positive and constructive view of working with others.
There will be a high percentage of time spent in listening to, understanding and successfully working with a wide range of people from diverse backgrounds to achieve ”win-win” outcomes.
2. FREQUENT INTERACTION WITH OTHERS
The job requires a strong “people orientation,” versus a task orientation. The job will comfortably deal with multiple interruptions on a continual basis, always maintaining a friendly interface with others.
3. ORGANIZED WORKPLACE
The job’s success depends on systems and procedures. Its successful performance is tied to careful organization of activities, tasks and projects that require accuracy. Record keeping and planning are essential components of the job.
Now that we have a clear picture of what the front desk staff Job looks like, I would like to ask you this…
- If you are front desk staff, do you have these critical success factors mastered? If not, what’s your plan to develop them?
- If you are a Dental Practice, how are you currently measuring the talent in your front office staff today?
- Do they have the above named attributes, values and behaviors?
- If so, great! You are ahead of the competition!
- If not, how will you develop them or better yet, select talent that already has it?
Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
If you want to know for sure, then run a Personal Talent Profile on yourself or your staff. Then match the results to the benchmark of the Front Desk Staff job in this article.
If you have a unique culture in your practice, you may want to be more specific and run a Trimetrix™ job benchmark with your own stakeholders. Then you can match your talent to your unique culture.
Also, we highly recommend running the profiles on final candidates before they join the team. You don’t want to have the experience as some practices have had… “Our new hire had all the right experience, good references, interviewed like a champ! But here it is 6 weeks later and she is not working out. We can’t ignore the fact she is just not a good match for this job and our office. We made a big hiring mistake, and now we have to start all over again!”
Not only is that a very costly mistake, in hard dollars, but will also hit the bottom line in patient relationships suffering, as well as staff morale.
Well-Run Concepts would like to work with you to develop a scientifically validated system for defining, selecting and developing top talent for your company.
If you would like more information on how the Trimetrix™ system works, or more details of our research, please visit us on the web at www.well-run.com, or email us at success@well-run.com.
Your comments are encouraged and welcomed.
For more information on sales skill training and assessments, visit our website at www.well-run.com or call (877) 566-2900.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Take a minute and check out our latest newsletter. Go to:
http://well-run.com/hottips.html
Thank you~
Jennifer C. Zamecki
WELL-RUN Concepts Inc.
Helping Organizations Define and Develop Top Talent
Ph: (352) 624-2684 Toll Free: (877) 566-2900
Fax: (352) 624-2689
303 S.E. 17th St. Suite 309-170
Ocala, FL 34471
Web Address: www.well-run.com
email: Jennifer@well-run.com
About the Author Jennifer Zamecki
Jennifer Zamecki is the Founder and President of Well-Run Concepts Inc., a Human Resources consulting firm that specializes in the TriMetrix Process for analyzing the unique configuration of personal skills, behaviors, and motivators required for a specific job. Her specialties include:
- Assessments
- Hiring top talent
- Management training
- Employee selection and coaching systems
- Executive Management and Leadership Coaching
- Job benchmarking
- Leadership
- Profiles
- Talent and performance management
- Talent development and coaching
- Talent selection and recruitment
- Teamwork, team building, and communication
- Validated assessment tools
