Communication, Clarity and Cohesion within Your Dental Practice is paramount to your success. But how do you achieve it successfully? I’ve just finished reading The Four Obsessions of An Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. It’s a very good illustration of how mindful leadership leads to success throughout an organization. It’s told in the manner of a Rich Dad, Poor Dad type of scenario. One company thrives while the competing company struggles under a frayed culture. While I didn’t find any information that was new to me, it illustrated extremely well how an organization bereft of cohesion, focus, communication and intention suffers and implodes. While an organization driven by a leader with clear vision, strong intentions, transparent and direct communication thrives in an environment of cohesion and unity.
The book echoes my own beliefs and leadership style and I was reminded of a lot of sound principles and strategies. So, it’s a good reminder for a seasoned team leader and an excellent resource for someone new to a leadership role.
Four Principles to Establish in Your Dental Practice
The primary focus of the book to teach leaders how to ensure that their entire team structure is 100% clear on the focus and intention of the organization. I don’t disagree with anything that Lencioni illustrates in the book as important to a leadership role. These are solid principles that will enhance any leader’s role while training new leaders in sound strategies to take into any future leadership position. Lencioni calls them disciplines:
- Discipline 1 – Build a Cohesive Leadership Team
Lencioni considers this the most important of the disciplines in creating a healthy organization with leadership that develops and maintains high-performance.
- Discipline 2 – Create Clarity
The book examines six questions that root out contradiction and cross-purposes in order to create cohesive clarity at the executive level, an essential step before attempting clarity within the organization.
- Discipline 3 – Overcommunicate Clarity
Once clarity is established at the ‘top’ that messaging needs to be communicated over and over again to the entire company, while maintaining consistency, intention and focus.
- Discipline 4 – Reinforce Clarity
The answers to those six questions need to be reiterated again and again to ensure it becomes “embedded into the fabric of the organization” while all functions of the organization are filtered through those answers.
The book makes it clear that it is the leaders’ job to build and fully protect the culture of the organization. And it is up to the leadership team to ensure that throughout the organization everyone understands what the company aspires to be, and the principles with which it operates. The focus, as Lencioni makes clear, is on ensuring that all communication flows down to team members in a manner that continually and consistently establishes alignment throughout the organization.
This book is worthy of your time if you aspire to a leadership role, want to enhance your leadership capabilities or are entering an organization badly in need of a cultural makeover.
How Does the Culture You Create Affect Your Bottom Line in Your Dental Practice?
Culture is built through intentional leadership. As a practice owner, it’s your responsibility to define what’s acceptable, what’s encouraged, and what’s non-negotiable. Without clear direction and consistent follow-through, cultures drift, leading to misalignment, inefficiency, miscommunication, and wasted energy.
At Optimize Practice Alliance, we believe strong cultures are created through clarity, communication, and accountability. These principles don’t live on posters or in mission statements, they show up in everyday conversations between leaders and their teams.
That’s why we created the DESC Coaching Template. This tool gives dental entrepreneurs a simple, effective framework to address behaviors, clarify expectations, and reinforce accountability without tension or ambiguity. When leaders communicate clearly and consistently, trust increases, performance improves, and culture begins to positively impact the bottom line.
Culture isn’t abstract, it’s operational. And when it’s led intentionally, it becomes a competitive advantage.
Ready to strengthen your culture through better leadership conversations?