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5 perhaps surprising truths about what demotivates the team members in your dental practice and how to avoid them

By Jamie MorleyMarch 28, 2024

Have you ever wondered why your dental team seems demotivated despite your best efforts? Dive into our latest article to uncover 5 surprising truths behind team demotivation in dental practices – and learn how to turn things around for good!

Understanding what motivates the team members in your dental practice is a difficult and complicated question. It is different for everybody. That said there are certain things that typically either demotivate or motivate individuals. Dive into my latest article to uncover 5 surprising truths about what demotivates the people in your dental practice. Read, listen or watch!

The definition of ‘motivate’ is to ‘cause somebody to behave in a particular way’. In which case we have to replace the particular way to behave in a way that contributes to the goals and objectives of your dental practice. What then are 5 ways that demotivate people from behaving in a way that contributes to the success of your dental practice?

Doing it for them

For many leaders and managers this a very easy trap to fall into. It will normally come from 3 different places:

1. If you are a fast paced person and you want to get things done. As a result it feels quicker and easier to do stuff yourself rather than to spend time delegating or training the other person.

2. If you are a person who is concerned about supporting and building strong relationships with your people you will take on board doing stuff for them. You see it as helping them which will strengthen your bond and relationship.

3. You like to keep control. Allowing the other person to do it means you lose control.

How does this prevent the person from behaving in a way that contributes to the success of the practice?

They will feel that you don’t have any confidence in their ability to do that specific task. By not giving them the task and doing it yourself you are in essence saying to them that they are not capable of doing it. As a result at a minimum they won’t do that specific task moving forward. More likely they will also take this as a broader signal that you don’t have confidence in their ability to do their job full stop. This will make them hesitant about doing their job and in particular they are highly unlikely to proactively do something that contributes to the overall success of the practice unless they are specifically told to do it.

This of course doesn’t take into account the burden you are adding to yourself and as a result preventing you doing other work that can contribute to the success of the practice.

How do you avoid this?

Awareness. In what situations do you tend to do this? Write down examples of where you have done this. How could you have approached this differently?

Change your time perspective lens. Think about the time it will take you over a longer time period if you continue to do this.

Not giving feedback

Feedback is something that often gets forgotten with the speed of life and work in particular. Typically as a leader if you do get around to giving feedback it tends to be from the place of either:

1. You are focused on details and standards. As a result you end up focusing on everything that is wrong and giving negative feedback. You tend not to give positive feedback about what is working.

2. You are wanting to encourage and support people. As a result you end of giving supportive and constructive feedback. You tend to gloss over significant issues about what can be done better.

If you don’t give any feedback people will not know where they stand. They won’t know if they are doing a good job or a bad job. This means they can become insecure about what they are doing, start to question themselves and their confidence in doing the job will reduce. Once again they are unlikely to be proactive in contributing to the broader practice in any shape or form.

If you are only giving negative feedback the person will eventually get worn down by this and will start to question their own ability, once again reducing their confidence and meaning they are highly unlikely to be proactive.

If you are only giving positive feedback the person will not be aware of what they are doing that can be improved. These can be behaviours that are negatively impacting the practice. In addition they may also start to feel like they are not really growing or have any space for growth and ongoing learning.

How do you avoid this?

Notice! Pay attention to what you are noticing and witnessing. Find the time to give the feedback. Give clear and specific feedback about what you are noticing. If you are more disposed to seeing what is wrong, change your lens and look for what is right! If you are more disposed to what is right, change your lens and look for what is wrong.

Give separate feedback with balance. When you see something good, give that specific feedback. When you see something wrong give that specific feedback. 

Telling them what to do

In short, people do not like to be told what to do. Yet, this Is often our default way as leaders. It is often drawn from our childhood where we are told by our parents what to do. As we grow and become adults we realise that we have a choice in what we do and so being told what to do becomes more and more demotivating as it takes away the ownership for our own actions. We don’t like to be told what to do. Yet when we move into a leadership role we tend to move into that parental mode that we experienced of telling people what to do, forgetting how much we don’t like being told what to do ourselves!

If you are always telling people what to do they will only do something when you specifically tell them what to do. This means there is always a burden on you of having to tell people what to do. Not only that but you are preventing that person from coming up with new ideas and better ways of doing the task. Ultimately you are preventing them from really taking ownership of the task and their job which is their to contribute to he success of the practice.

You have to tell people what to do otherwise how will they do it?

How do you avoid this?

Look for opportunities to ask the individual. What do they think is the best way forward? How would they solve this?

Avoid the righting reflex. You will think you have the answer and need to tell them. STOP yourself and find out what they believe is the best way forward. Hand the ownership over to them. The result will be that they will start to take ownership. They will start to be proactive, think for themselves and contribute to the success of the practice.

Not listening

This is something that is probably not surprising and is something that if you are reading this you are probably going yes I know that. Obvious!  Maybe, but do you really listen? To reiterate the impact of not listening. In short it makes the person feel like they do not have a voice and that their voice as not value to you or to the dental practice. This means they will not feel valued. The result is they won’t contribute their voice to the success of the practice and if you don’t value them, they won’t value you or the practice. They won’t want to give you that commitment to help you dental practice be successful.

How do you avoid this?

2 practical exercises to do and practice:

1. Do not interrupt! Notice how much you are interrupting. Allow the other person to finish fully. Be ok will a bit of silence before you give your perspective.

2. Seek to understand and listen to the person fully, rather than formulating your response. Fully listen and understand what they are saying. When you have done this you can then formulate your response.

Incentivising people for something they love to do or that is creative

Giving people financial incentives can often be seen to be the obvious solution to motivate somebody to do something. For many years Taylor said that humans are mechanistic. You give them an incentive (a carrot) and they will do it. You give them a punishment and they won’t do it (a stick). More research now shows that it is much more complicated than this and in fact carrots should only be used in quite specific situations and circumstances otherwise not only can they not be effective but they can also damage an individual’s motivation to do a task.

To be specific there are two types of rewards as Daniel Pink outlines in his book Drive:

1. Contingent rewards where you reward an individual if they achieve something and tell them in advance that this is the case. E.g. you will get a reward if you sign up so many patients into treatment.

2. Non-contingent rewards where the reward is given to a person after the event with there being no clear objectives stated to the person before hand.

In broad terms it is the contingent rewards that are more dangerous. Non-contingent rewards after events, as long as they are given on an occasional basis are in general more effective. Yes, I know, difficult to believe but true!

There are 2 specific areas where incentivising people is especially ineffective:

1. Creative work. When people need to be creative, where they need to think of different approaches and come up with creative ideas to achieve something, then giving them a financial incentive to do this doesn’t work. In fact the research suggests the outcome will take longer to achieve and the result won’t be as good as not giving any incentive at all. One of the challenges with this is thinking about what is creative work versus mechanistic work? If it is mechanistic, that is repeatable tasks that don’t require any additional thinking then incentives can be quite effective.

2. Work people love to do. Various studies have shown that incentivising people when they have a strong intrinsic motivation to do the work they do will actually reduce their motivation to do the work. They do the work for the sake of doing it. They enjoy the challenge of it, the learning, the job itself. If you then incentivise them for it you take the joy out of doing it and productivity reduces.

How does this apply to dentistry?

Well let’s look at two different examples. 

The first one is a Treatment Co-ordinator. Does it make sense to incentivise them? 

How much of their role is mechanistic versus creative? 

When I think about this, there is definitely n element of mechanistic work involved on their job. E.g. making sure they respond to enquiries quickly; making sure they follow up on consultations and to an extent this can be done in a fairly routine way. You simply have to do these elements.

What is their intrinsic motivation to do the job? Do they enjoy the challenge for the sake of it? Do they enjoy the challenge of the sale or of meeting the needs of customers? If yes, then perhaps an incentive is not a good idea.

WARNING! If you have already started giving an incentive to people then you have to continue to do this. This is one of the issues with incentives (extrinsic rewards), which is that you have to continue to feed the beast otherwise when you stop there will be a reduction in motivation. So, in essence once you start with an incentive there is no going back….

What about a Dental Nurse? Does it make sense to incentivise them? How much of their role is mechanistic versus creative? What is their intrinsic motivation to do the job?

There is a fair amount of mechanistic work involved but then there is also a side to the role which is about really looking after and taking care of patients. Many nurses will do this because that is what they are internally driven to do this. Perhaps an incentive for the more mechanistic elements of their job?

A final word on a complicated subject, which is that basic needs have to met for these other elements to come into play. Meaning that basic salary requirements have to be to adequate levels before thinking about other types of additional incentives for specific tasks otherwise it creates significant anxiety and people will typically leave.

In summary these are the 5 things that will demotivate your people. Avoid them!

1. Doing it for them 

2. Not giving feedback

3. Telling them what to do

4. Not listening

5. Incentivising people for something they love to do or that is creative

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