Ep. 79: Delegating Effectively to Enable Practice Growth

 

Being able to delegate effectively is an essential part of being a business owner or manager. It’s also the key to having good organization, reducing upsets and disagreements, and being able to grow rapidly without creating a bottleneck. So this week, Jeff dives into the topic of delegation—how to do it well and all the ways it can go wrong.

Topics:

:11 – The importance delegating job duties the right way

13:46 – When it’s time to hire & where delegating can go wrong

34:08 – How to delegate effectively

Links:

Team training video courses - https://ddssuccess.com

The MGE Communication & Sales Seminars - https://www.mgeonline.com/abc

MGE Power Program - https://www.mgeonline.com/power-program 

Listen to full episode :

Have a question for Jeff?

Fill out the form and he will get back to you.

Ask Jeff a Question

Questions From This Episode

Why does a dental practice need a team at all, if a solo doctor could technically run one alone?

Because building a team means deliberately handing off duties and responsibilities that would otherwise fall entirely on the owner doctor, in exchange for growth, higher profitability, better patient care, less personal stress, and the benefit of working alongside other people.

What are the four real reasons to delegate a task or role?

Growth, since one person, or even one doctor and a single assistant, can't scale a practice alone. Reducing stress and burnout that comes from overloading a single employee. Building long-term staff retention by giving people the full, meaningful parts of their job rather than skimming off the interesting pieces for yourself. And making sure each person's time is actually spent on the work that matches their real value to the practice.

If collections or productivity in an area start slipping, is hiring another person usually the right fix?

Not usually. If the same staff who once handled an area well are now underperforming with no real change in workload or process, adding a third person to what's really a two-person problem rarely solves anything, since it's most likely masking a training, accountability, or fit issue rather than a genuine capacity shortage.

What's the most common reason delegation fails in a dental practice?

Not having a clear organizational structure in the first place, specific jobs with specific functions, responsibilities, and expected outcomes assigned to specific people. Without that, there's no obvious place to hand off a task, so it either gets stuck with the owner or gets handed to whoever happens to be standing at the front desk.

What's the simplest way to test whether a new hire is actually going to work out?

Give them a few simple, low-stakes tasks first, like confirming easy patients or scheduling routine hygiene visits, before handing over anything complex. If someone can't execute a basic task in a reasonable amount of time, that's a strong early signal, and it's kinder to both sides to address it immediately rather than dragging out two more frustrating weeks.

Episode Transcript

Previous
Previous

Ep. 80: Hiring Staff with No Prior Dental Experience

Next
Next

Ep. 78: Implementation: How to Turn Those “Great Ideas” into Tangible Changes in Your Practice