A Great Dentist is a Great Leader (Part 1)

Dr. Paul Uliasz, President & Clinical Director

Ready or not, you’re a leader!

As dental students, our training is mainly focused on our clinical skills. Dental schools typically do not spend much time on skills for success like leadership even though every recently graduated dental student is placed in a leadership position by default when he or she starts practicing. Even fresh out of school your degree and your status as “the dentist” will lead your team to place great responsibility on your shoulders. Your team will expect you to take the lead in decision making about not only treatment, but patient conflicts and disagreements and team management.

In over 15 years in practice, I have come to recognize that almost any self-confident, seasoned dental assistant has more leadership ability than a recent dental school graduate. I was no exception to this rule when I was a new dentist! Although I had been a business owner since the age of 18, my main experience with leaders had been as son to my parents. I still had a lot to learn about being a leader, and a follower.

What is leadership?

We don’t have to know the definition of leadership to be a leader. The Dictionary definition states:

Leadership (noun)

1: the office or position of a leader

2: capacity to lead

3: the act or an instance of leading

4: a group of leaders (e.g., the party leadership)

(Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

That seems simple doesn’t it? In practice it is not so simple at all. Dr. Marc Cooper, one of my mentors, said “leadership is a verb and not a noun.” The dictionary defines leadership as a label but when you view it as an action your thinking about what leadership really is will shift. At Blue Sea Dental practices, we believe that “leadership is never given, it is always taken.” The distinction between leadership the noun and leadership the verb is worthy of exploration and will be the topic of a future blog.

Whether you are a dentist who is a business owner or not you need to continually work on developing your leadership skills. I believe becoming an effective leader is much harder than learning clinical skills. You may think you are not a leader, but you most definitely are. You may be a leader in your family, group of friends, work team, or some other social group.  Early in my experience as a practice owner, I realized I needed to learn about leadership and practice it if I wanted to grow as a person and build a productive, successful team.

 In Part 2 of this series, I will share more about leadership styles and how one develops leadership.