Our Rose Cottage team now consists of 17 of us. During the busyness of a working week, it’s not often that we all get together in one room. We really value our team meetings as an opportunity to get together and discuss the business of the practice, as well as looking at how we can develop ourselves as team members. This year, we are doing some training to help us be our best selves at work, and hopefully outside of work too. We have been looking at “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. This was recommended on a dental business course that Niki (practice manager) and I completed a year ago.
So far, we have looked at two of the habits. The first is to “be proactive.” We have been looking at our circle of influence and what we can control about ourselves. We learnt that we always have a choice as to how we respond and that we can be “response-able”. For example, we have control over how much enthusiasm we bring to work with us. We may not be able to control whether others are enthusiastic but if we are enthused, this can rub off on to others, and our circle of influence grows. Being proactive is something we want to encourage our patients to do to look after their oral health. We want our patients to be proactive in coming to see us regularly, and in taking responsibility for their oral health with how they look after their mouths regarding diet and oral hygiene habits.
The other habit we have looked at is “putting first things first.” We looked at how we can assign tasks as to whether they are urgent or not, and whether they are important or not. Often things that are important but not urgent can be put to the bottom of the “to do” list but doing these things can prevent a crisis and help us feel more in control of our lives. This habit also relates to oral health, for example, coming for regular examinations with the dentist is rarely urgent, but it is important, and if ignored can then become an urgent and important thing if a dental problem develops.