The Introspective Leader's Advantage

Your leadership style is influenced, in part, by the natural role you tend to play. Perhaps you're a mentor-type, a great talent-spotter, or a clinical perfectionist. Whatever your style, throughout your career you've probably heard that you have a reputation for demonstrating certain qualities.

If someone pointed your style out to you, there'd likely be a flash of recognition. Chances are, however, unless you've asked, no one is spelling it out for you. This means that it's up to you to stop and think about what your natural leadership style actually is. Leaders who take the time to truly understand their natural roles and how those roles affect those around them have an advantage over those who don't take this inward-looking journey.

Finding your Role - Once you've identified the role or roles that you believe you most naturally fill, it's useful to test them by looking for objective supporting evidence. Start by listing a few of the ways your chosen role might manifest itself at work. Are these actions that you come by naturally? If so, great; If not, ask yourself why not. What is limiting your ability to fill the kinds of roles you would like to fill?It's possible that your selections are slightly off course. If there is no patient demand, it is possible that the role you'd like to play isn't aligned with your abilities. In that case, you need to reexamine the range of roles you identify with and assess whether your aspirations are clouding your perceptions of your strengths and weaknesses.

Is it the Right Role for You? - At the extreme, an increased understanding of your role can help you determine whether your position offers the alignment you need if you are to be satisfied over the long term. Consider the dentist - we'll call him Paul - who, in 2004, bought into a large practice.

Paul was flattered to be at the head of such a large practice, even to qualify for the loan. But many of his colleagues felt that he would be happier as an associate (his longtime position prior to his current position). He does not know if he is doing a good job as owner, he has not had the benefit of any business training. He has been taught he is a dentist, not a business person.

At leadership levels, the opportunities to let natural roles emerge often are limited by the regular demands of a wet-fingered dentist or by situational circumstance, such as key staff out on maternity leave, an intense periods of work resulting from new procedures, or an accounts receivable problem. All these things factor in to the mix of required and voluntary things you do each day. It's true that the day-to-day demands of a dentist can easily obscure the kinds of avenues a leader might prefer to pursue. The struggle is to try and find the balance to free up time to do more of the kinds of things that make your work ultimately rewarding.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of your Role – If we work with the mind set of a dentist as a CEO - we'll call him Paul II - whose clinical schedule is so intense that it crowds out most of the chances he has to step back and reflect or to mentor younger members of his staff, as he would like. The daily demands of Paul II play to his strengths as an intense perfectionist, and practice builder. But they don't allow him to be the people mover he also would like to be. Paul II knows that he is good at envisioning and articulating a long - term strategic view. He knows he is good at motivating and mentoring younger staff, if he only had the time. He knows that his time is invaluable in their eyes. In rare free moments, he meets with these people, answering their requests for general guidance and pep talks. Yet Paul II finds it difficult to incorporate that mentoring into what is already an overloaded schedule. His typical workweek is six days. Does Paul II have "an issue" delegating work? It's possible. More likely, the structure of his “control” isn't optimal. His practice is running him rather than the other way around.

Recently, however, Paul II has made some progress in incorporating more of his would-be role as mentor and visionary into his job, despite the organizational circumstances. His practice has begun offering a coach facilitated “SOS” Staff Meeting to help develop a “vision” and to help get his staff to be more accountable and responsible for their own success in the practice. He has now built into his schedule staff meetings designed to allow his staff input and time to develop strategies that they can collectively commit to as goals. This provides quality time between himself and his staff that they crave (and, by the same token, to allow himself to "indulge" in the kinds of mentoring behaviors he rarely has time for otherwise).

Becoming a Better Leader – Paul II is well aware that he needs to address the design and structure of his team. In the meantime, he has found a way to make his working life more enjoyable in the short term (Staff Meetings) and to send a message that he wants to leave a “Vision” for the long term.This CEO/dentist, Paul II, is also a good example of the benefit of having an increased understanding of one's own natural roles. He has begun to identify others' natural roles as well and, in doing so, is better able to temper the advice or counseling he gets and gives. He is also better able to set appropriate benchmarks for his staff with the understanding gained from staff meetings that actively discuss the roles that dominate his team now. Paul II is constantly seeking people (advisors and or coaches) who will instinctively help the team gel to become more effective.

The point is, at work, if you see something heading your way that doesn't play to your strengths, you can divert it or avoid it. However, you'll be rewarded if you bring people into the practice who can handle the kinds of things you're not great at." Are you managing your practice on the fly?

Adapted from Harvard Business School Press from Your Leadership Legacy - Why Looking Towards the Future will Make you a Better Leader Today by Robert M. Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca. Copyright 2006 Robert M. Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca. All Rights Reserved
http://www.management-issues.com/2007/1/30/opinion/the-introspective-leaders-advantage.asp

A Good Question From A Canadian Dentist

(Reprinted here with the permission of the Canadian Dental Association)

Q: I've found myself in the position of having to decide where to live, 7 years after graduation. My husband has been relocated to Vancouver and I am very ready to own my own practice. The question is, do I wait and associate in Vancouver and buy in Toronto because the remuneration is that much better (ie return to Toronto to live permanently) or do I buy in Vancouver because you do just as well? I realize both are very similar cities- small downtown practices or big all day and all night suburban practices.

I like both cities for different reasons so it's not a lifestyle decision per se.

I'm just wondering how dentists do across the provinces. Does anyone know the stats on that? The last thing I want to do is throw myself into an already saturated mix.

A: Your query is one of the most common questions that new and practicing dentists ask. Determining a good practice location has to take into consideration a wide variety of issues and information., most of them dealing with personal lifestyle choices.

But in terms of some data that may be helpful, incomes in the locations you have indicated, and population: dentist ratios may serve as good indicators for further exploration.

The population: dentist ratios in Vancouver and Toronto in 2005 were 852, and 934 respectively. The Canada average ratio was 1734, therefore both of these urban centres have a much greater concentration of dentists. However, this is to be expected, as the catchment area of patients is from the city centres. Nonetheless, these figures indicate that Vancouver may be slightly more saturated than Toronto, but not a significant difference.

When looking at salaries, occupational income data from the 2000 Canada census indicate that the average employment income for dentists was $108,034. This is the latest information we have from public sources on dental incomes. The average employment income in Vancouver was $79,138 versus $90,139 in Toronto. However, it should be noted that in every city male dentists reported earning significantly more income than female dentists. The median income of female dentists working in both Vancouver and Toronto were between $85,000 and $90,000, therefore, there were no significant differences for female dentists.

When taking this information into consideration, I would say that the differences in these two cities seem negligible and the most important factor when making this decision should be lifestyle considerations.

Costa Papadopoulos

Manager, Health Policy & Information
Canadian Dental Association

Editor’s note:

The CDA makes this information available from their website at www.cda-adc.ca. They have resources for your dental career,
http://www.cda-adc.ca/en/dental_profession/index.asp, and for members they have additional resources at the CDA Resource Centre at http://www.cda-adc.ca/en/members/login.asp or try
http://www.cda-adc.ca/en/members/resource/research/index.asp.

The American Dental Association keeps demographic information too. However the smallest area they cover is by county, not by city. They also have a large state and regional report called the Distribution of Dentists. These materials are available for a fee from their catalog department at www.adacatalog.org or https://siebel.ada.org/ecustomer_enu/start.swe?SWECmd=Start. Also you can go to the ADA home page, www.ada.org, and there, in the middle of the page is a link on Survey Research for Dentistry, or http://www.ada.org/ada/prod/survey/index.asp. Here you can find the free resource of FAQs at http://www.ada.org/ada/prod/survey/faq.asp.