Can You Define Your Office Culture?

Would you like to know more about how your team operates based on their individual personalities? Clifton Strengths has several options available to help your team work more cohesively. With a more cohesive team, productivity soars!

Check out Gallup Strengths by Clifton.

My research has helped me define office culture as:

“The beliefs and behaviors that determine how a Dental Team interacts and handles the business of Dentistry. Business culture can be definitively defined by the practice owner or develop over time, but solidifies from the totality of the traits of the people the Dental Practice employs. A Dental Team’s culture can be reflected in its dress code, business hours, administrative and clinical systems, HR policies, treatment of patients, and patient satisfaction.”

Becoming critically aware of your office culture is arguably one of the most important components to business success. In order to see it clearly, it’s important to know the modus operandi of all the Dental Professional you employ, including yourself. For example…

Wouldn’t it be great if we could learn more about how all of us operate in order to relate to each other better? Wouldn’t it be helpful to understand why a teammate can’t make a quick decision when it’s such an easy feat for you? I only ask this because the science of office culture has been around in the corporate world since the 1960’s, but in my 50 plus years in Dentistry, it has never been mentioned to me until recently.

Today I can define the issues I’ve experienced in those offices where I was happy and engaged and those where I was so uncomfortable. This includes those teams that worked like a well-tuned machine, those individuals who’d consistently pick up the ball for their teammates. And, there were those offices where team members complained about each other behind their back and even made obscene gestures towards one another.

So, what is it that generates these differences? Healthy or unhealthy, it’s the office culture: the culmination of the various characteristics of the team members and how they relate to one another. Any of you who have been in dentistry for a while know what I mean as you’ve undoubtedly experienced both cultures I’ve mentioned and everything in between.

Fortunately, there’s a very individualized and unique tool that measures our strengths and how we get work done. This tool is called The CliftonStrengths Assessment by Gallup. This tool can help create exceptional work environments where employees and teams excel. It helps boost the performance of your Dental Team by maximizing what your employees do best. An invaluable tool to increase productivity, reduce turnover and drastically improve your office culture. Check it out, there’s always room for improvement!

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”