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4 elements for objective evaluation of the talent in your dental practice and a template to do it

By Jamie MorleyFebruary 28, 2024

Have you ever wondered how to objectively assess the talent within your dental practice? Discover the four essential elements for evaluating your team effectively, along with a powerful tool designed to streamline the process. Read, watch or listen!

Having the right people within your dental practice is one of the keys to success. How do you go about evaluating if you have the right talent in your dental practice? Sometimes this is a question that you don’t want to look too hard at for fear of what you might find and as a result the actions you may need to take. Yet if you don’t do this, you can soon find yourself in a very difficult place if you are not already. 

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great says ‘First Who, Then What—get the right people on the bus’.

Dentistry is a service business which needs people to provide that service. As a result talent evaluation and planning becomes even more important otherwise you can end up in a place where you cannot provide that service in the way you want.

It is easy to have an opinion on people which is influenced by your own personality profile (we tend to like people who we are alike) and recent events, leading to an evaluation that is subjective and not in the best interests of your practice.

Let’s look at four elements for a more objective evaluation.

1. Can they do the job?

This can be split into 2 elements. Technical and behavioural.

Technical

Firstly define what the technical competencies are required for the person to do the job. Break it down into reasonable chunks. Can the person do these tasks?

Rate the person on a scale of 1-10 in terms of whether or not they can do the job. They obviously have to meet the technical, legal and regulatory requirements, but alongside that can they actually do every element of the job. If they can do all of the tasks required of the job, then it is a 10. If they can do 70% of the tasks of the job then it is a 7. 20% a 2.

As an example you may have a role for a general dentist where you want them to be able to perform routine general dental procedures. You may want to break it down into  further specifics about what those different procedures are.

You can then also give the person a score for how well they do that task. So, on a scale of 1-10 how well to they do that task? What is the quality of their work? Looking purely from a technical perspective how good are they are doing that specific technical requirement. So, for example how good are they at doing bridges and crowns. 1 if the quality of their work is poor, 2 if the quality of their work is exceptionally good.

This will give you an overall score for the what they can do in terms of the tasks required for the job and an overall score for the quality of the work they do.

A question to ask for the technical skills that the person cannot do is can the skill be learnt and how long will it take for that skill to be learnt.

Behavioural

Behavioural requirements are not so clear cut but we can work to define the behavioural aspects that are most important to that role. Sometimes known as competencies these are the behavioural competencies that are critical for the role.

An example of this could be the ability of a nurse to be able to build rapport and empathy. On a scale of 1-10 how good is this person at this competency?

With behavioural competencies it is rarely a black and white question as to whether they have that level of competency or not. It is firstly a question of whether they can demonstrate that competency to an acceptable level. So, can the nurse display an acceptable level of developing rapport and empathy with patients? If not, then how long will it take to develop the competency in that person?

When you ask this question, you will typically see that it will take longer to develop these behavioural competencies than the technical skills. Hence this is why people will often say that they will recruit more on behaviours rather than technical skills. Actually people will probably use the word attitude, which is often substituted for behavioural competencies.

You have to be careful with the word attitude. If you look at the definition of the word attitude it is ‘a settled way of thinking or feeling about something’. If you say they don’t have a good attitude, it means you are saying that they have a settled way of thinking or feeling that we don’t like. Actually for me the bigger question is whether or not that way of thinking or feeling is fixed or whether they can be open to change, grow and evolve. This gets into the importance of a growth versus a fixed mindset as Professor Carol Dweck talks about in her book Mindset.

2. Do they want to do the job?

How much does the person want to do the job? If there is a great deal of drive and motivation from an individual to get the job done then it is highly likely they will be successful in doing it, despite their current level of competence. 

This can be split into intrinsic and extrinsic levels of motivation. This article from Simply Psychology is an excellent overview on this topic.

Instrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation means motivation that comes from within the person. It is not motivated by external factors such as money, bonuses, incentives, it is motivated internally. You do it because you enjoy doing it or you get personal satisfication from doing it.

Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. When intrinsically motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external products, pressures, or rewards. Ryan & Deci (2000)

Researchers have identified 4 different types of intrinsic motivation known as the 4 Cs.

• Challenge
• Curiosity
• Control
• Context.

Extrinsic Motivation

Extrinsic motivation is driven by some kind of external separate outcome. So you are doing something in order to receive or not receive something as a separate consequence.

Extrinsic motivation is a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in order to attain some separable outcome. Extrinsic motivation thus contrasts with intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing an activity simply for the enjoyment of the activity itself, rather than its instrumental value. Ryan & Deci (2000)

Researchers have identified 3 main types.

• Reward-based
• Power-based
• Fear-based

People will often be motivated by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The challenge with external motivating factors is that they can often be short term in their effect and so there has to be a continuous provision of these external motivators.

Evaluating the drivers for individuals is really useful in helping you understand your talent.

Whilst you may have an overall feel on how much this person wants to do the job, it can be useful to look at this by individual tasks as well. This may highlight specific tasks that this person is more suited to than others.

Overall how much does the person want to do the job and what is the balance of how they are motivated either intrinsically or extrinsically?

3. What is their impact on the team around them?

Everybody works within a system and everybody is working within a system that is the overall operation of your dental practice. They may be good at their own specific job but if that is to the detriment of the broader team then overall they will be having a considerably negative effect on the success of your dental practice. So, how do you evaluate this? I would look at the following:

Psychological safety

There is more and more data emerging as to the importance of psychological safety. Amy Edmonson wrote the book the Fearless Organisation that dives into detail on this and the research around the concept. Google ran a research project called Project Aristotle where they found that psychological safety was the number one most important factor in high performing teams. I wrote a previous article on this topic.

By asking and answering the following questions we can understand how well the individual is contributing to the success of the broader team.

• Are they being open and honest? 
• Are they willing to engage in effective conflict and debate without heading into mean personal conflicts? 
• Do they allow others to give their opinion and genuinely listen to it? 
• Do they ask for help? 
• Do they share their successes and failures? 
• Do they allow others to be themselves? 
• Do they give help when other team members ask? 
• Do they prioritise the broader team ahead of themselves in critical situations?

Living the values

I have previously written about the importance of values. 

This is about the individual contributing to the values and setting the example by living the values. If the person is living the values and really setting an example then they are significantly contributing. If they are holding others to account in maintain these values then they are having a massively positive impact. If on the other hand they are demonstrating behaviours that are contrary to the values this is undermining everything the practice stands for.

For each value ask and rate the following two questions:

• Are they living the value?
• Are they holding the rest of the team to account for living that value?

Getting in the way of or contributing to the future vision

Is this person contributing to the future vision or are they putting barriers in the way?

This is about change and the direction of travel. Is that person embracing change that is moving your practice towards your vision or are they putting up barriers that are stopping that change from occurring?

By answering the above questions and rating the different areas this will give you an overall score for the impact the person is having on the team around them.

4. What is their potential?

A relatively simple way to look at this is what is the potential of this person to move up hierarchically within the dental practice? As an example, for a dental nurse do you feel that this person has the potential to move into a Lead Nurse role? In which case, they have the potential to move up 1 level hierarchically. Could they potentially become a Practice Manager in the future? If yes, then this person has the opportunity to move up 2 levels hierarchically. You may feel they don’t have any potential to move up in which case their potential score is 0.

It is important to have a balance across the team in terms of potential. You want people who have potential to move up hierarchically, you also want people who are happy to stay at that level.

For some dental practices there may not be much hierarchy currently. In which case, I would suggest thinking about what the future structure of the practice may look like. Could the person move up hierarchically if the practice was to grow?

These are 4 elements to look at in order to objectively evaluate the talent in your dental practice.

• Can they do the job? 
• Do they want to do the job?
• What is the impact on the team?
• What is their potential?

To help you do this I have created an Excel template which you can populate.

If you are signed up to the Fitting Leadership Blog a pop up will appear allowing you to download a template for doing this exercise.

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