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Actionable Leadership: Resolving Conflict in your Dental Practice, 1 Tool to Rule Them All

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How do you resolve conflict in your dental practice culture? This month, my partner, Jack Bayramyan, and I are exploring the role of leadership in your dental practice and using your leadership to guide your organization to greater success. So, I want to talk about a tool that I use that has had a profound effect on my leadership abilities.

The Importance of Leadership in your Dental Practice

Team culture is a huge, unavoidable aspect of growing your dental practice. If you don’t have team cohesion and a coalescing around your vision for growth you won’t get from point A to point B. It’s a stark reality, but it’s the truth.  

If you don’t have a cohesive team culture, the issues begin to mount:  

  • Breakdown of communication  
  • Lack of respect for roles and leadership  
  • Reduced productivity  
  • Lack of collaboration  
  • Lack of understanding for the practice vision 

The list sadly goes on. Team cohesion is vital to the growth of your practice. And there is never a more glaring example of this than when a conflict arises within the practice. Without proper cohesion within a business culture, when an issue arises, people resort to bad habits or limited experience with these situations. There are various negative responses to conflict and we’ve all seen them:  

  • Finger pointing 
  • Not taking responsibility for results 
  • Bullying  
  • Retreating or hiding from conflict or confrontation  

When a practice doesn’t have team cohesion, strong leadership and non-existent culture, people will fall back on bad habits or reactive behaviors. But if a practice has strong leadership from you, strong team cohesion and a collaborative culture of teamwork, then, when conflict arises, people have the ability and tools to rise above their reactive behaviors and solve problems together.  

Conflict Reactivity in your Dental Practice 

Fortunately, as a dental practice owner, you do have blueprints and solutions to resolve conflict, spark collaboration and create greater team cohesion even amid disagreement and dissension. First, let’s get a greater understanding of the way conflict tends to play out typically in a business organization with no team culture or cohesion and a lack of strong leadership.  

The Karpman Drama Triangle was first developed by Stephen B. Karpman in 1968. This model was designed to understand the ways in which people react during conflict, professionally and personally. There are three main roles in this paradigm. These descriptions were taken from a brilliant blog post at The Profit Recipe, that reminded me of the importance of using your leadership role to rise above conflict and see it through a new paradigm. 

The Original Karpman Drama Triangle Roles  

  • The Persecutor: The person in this role is very critical, finding fault with others and blaming them for the problem while feeling the need to step in and dominate to set things right. They may be perceived as a controlling bully, but sometimes shift to becoming the next category if they’re called out on that behavior. 
  • The Victim sees themselves as a victim of circumstances or others that make them feel powerless and hopeless. They may complain without taking productive action; are oppressed by the Persecutor; and often seek or receive help from the third role. 
  • The Rescuer, has a default orientation of “let me help.” They’ll automatically step in to save Victims, often doing it in a way that enables victimhood and fails to solve the long-term problem. Further, the Rescuer may morph into the Persecutor/Villain or the Victim if they get frustrated.

We don’t need to get too in the weeds here, but this paradigm offers a good understanding of the general reactionary roles people tend to fall into when there is conflict but no cohesion.  

Generally, people fall into 1 of these 3 roles when there is no awareness or formalized process for conflict resolution predetermined and agreed upon by team members beforehand. And this model, by no means, is set in stone. This is a guideline for understanding human behavior and how it plays out in unstructured and structured settings, as it relates to business environments.  

Resolving Conflict in your Dental Practice
The Profit Recipe: Drama Triangle and Empowerment Dynamic

A Paradigm Shift in your Dental Practice  

Now, I want to share with you a tool that I use myself that has proven incredibly efficient, cohesive and inspiring. I’ve used it in my experience as a team leader, business consultant and CEO, to help me reframe roles while helping my teams sort through issues responsively rather than being reactive.  

If you look at the top part of the diamond graphic, you’ll see another version of the Karpman Drama Triangle. This version is called The Empowerment Dynamic and this paradigm was developed by David Emerald.

The Emerald Roles of Dynamic Empowerment 

  • The Challenger replaces the Persecutor: Individuals in both the original Karpman role and the new one see themselves as “truth-tellers” who call situations accurately. But instead of affixing blame and dictating actions, the Challenger “consciously builds others up, encouraging them to also learn and grow, despite difficult situations.” 
  • The Creator is the positive replacement for the Victim. Instead of viewing themselves as a prisoner to circumstances and problems, they learn they “can choose their response to life’s challenges.” They embrace “what inspires them” and become focused on solutions and outcomes, not the weight of challenges holding them back. 
  • Finally, the Coach steps into the Rescuer role. Essentially, they provide real support for Creators rather than enabling their victimhood. A Coach uses “the art of inquiry, curiosity, and deep listening to support others in discovering what is best for themselves.”

David Emerald describes his paradigm as “a profound, yet clear and simple method to free yourself from your reactive habits.” David Emerald has spent over 30 years in leadership education and executive and organization development and is the author of The Power of TED: The Empowerment Dynamic. And his website offers tools and support for using this paradigm to shift your understanding around conflict.

When you can redefine and reframe the conflict paradigm in your organization, you get to solutions and resolution much faster. This reframing allows people to free themselves from reactionary triggers and stay open to collaboration and solution.  

Using This Paradigm in your Leadership Role

There are two vitally important ways to use this model to get the results you want. The first is with yourself. As a leader, situational awareness is key to your success. It behooves you to know who your team members are and where they sit on the bus (your organization). Studying this dynamic gives you a great understanding and awareness of the way conflict plays out in a professional setting. This awareness will elevate your ability to see these dynamics and help team members avoid these roles.

The other way to use this model is to introduce it to your team and have an open and honest conversation about the model and these roles. You, as an organization and team, can then work towards the paradigm shift presented in the empowerment dynamic and use these new roles to elevate the conversation during a conflict. But awareness is the key here. It first starts with you, as a leader, becoming aware of these roles and how and if they play out in your organization.

Orienting your team around a cohesive culture is your job as the leader. And your awareness around the way your team resolves conflict will equal greater success in communication, resilience and collaboration. You got this.

Improve Your Leadership with Clear Communication and Practical Tools

Effective leadership isn’t just about inspiration, it’s about having the right strategies to resolve conflict, build connection, and keep your team moving forward. While support and community are invaluable, sometimes you need a proven tool to tackle challenging conversations head-on.

That’s why we created the DESC Coaching Template. This free, step-by-step worksheet gives dental leaders a clear framework to describe challenging behaviors, express impact, specify desired changes, and communicate positive outcomes. With DESC, you’ll turn potential conflict into opportunities for growth and understanding, while building greater trust and cohesion within your team.

Whether you’re dealing with day-to-day friction or working to strengthen your entire practice culture, the DESC Coaching Template helps you lead with confidence and clarity.

Ready to resolve conflict and level up your leadership?
Download your free DESC Coaching Template now and start building a healthier, more unified dental team, one conversation at a time.

DOWNLOAD THE DESC COACHING TEMPLATE

Values-Based Leadership in your Dental Practice: 5 Essential Benefits

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When I met my business partner, Josh Gwinn, the thing that instantly connected us was our shared values. So, when we started Optimize we made our shared values a foundational principle in building our organization.    

I started exploring my own personal values and the role they played in my business life while working with Strategic Coach and specifically my coach, Cameron Herold. Defining my core values helped me in so many areas of my business life, including working with my teams, setting expectations for how we worked with patients, even choosing vendors and choosing the right path for scaling my organization.  

So, when it came time for Josh and I to set the groundwork for our vision of Optimize Practice Alliance, our shared values became foundational to both our vision and our strategic planning.  

Using Your Core Values in your Dental Practice 

But is it helpful or even appropriate to use your core values in your business as a dental practice entrepreneur? Implementing your values in your dental practice does have a lot of benefits. With your core values, you can:  

  • Showcase your unique ability and what sets you apart from other dental practices 
  • Find a common basis and understanding for communicating with your teams 
  • Create a strong team culture
  • Provide a foundation from which to make big and small decisions every day  
  • Galvanize your vision for growing your practice 

There are so many benefits to truly utilizing your core values as a dental entrepreneur. And they alone can set the tone and tenor of so many of your daily dealings that not utilizing them can leave you squandering for words, answers and solutions when they are needed most.  

What Are Your Core Values?  

How do you determine what your core values are? My process started in 2014 when I began working with Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach. I went through a process of discovery using a concept called Unique Ability®. In that process I developed a set of beliefs that became my core values.  

But there are many ways of determining what your values are and which ones you want to be the core values in your dental practice organization. It behooves you to take some time and discover what your values are and how to apply them in your dental practice.  

But for now, I’d like to tell you about our core values here at Optimize. You can, of course, check out our About page and read our core values there. But I decided to dedicate an entire post to them, that is how important they are to the everyday functioning of our organization. They are vital to how we interact with each other and lend our leadership and dedication to our partners.  

Our values are the foundation of our actions, participation and cooperation and we strive to center those values in our interactions and daily execution of goals and our vision for Optimize and our partners. 

Using Mission, Core Values and Norms in your Dental Practice

We Believe in Transparency and Integrity  

Integrity and Transparency are the cornerstone values on which all of our other values are built. At Optimize our actions and words are rooted in integrity. We strive for clarity and honesty in all our interactions and take full responsibility for our results. Transparency is the natural companion to integrity, showing everyone, we work with how we do what we do, with the goal of bridging trust between our partners and ourselves.  

We Believe in Collaborative Teamwork 

Collaborative teamwork is how we stay rooted, not just in our vision for Optimize, but in the visions of our partners and clients. We not only value their input and feedback, but we also need those insights for us to stay accountable for the visions our partners trust us to achieve with them, not just for them.   

We Believe in Growth While Staying Focused on Results 

What does “results focused” really mean for us? At Optimize we view problems as tools for designing solutions to quickly and efficiently remove the obstacles to growth. Our ever-present focus is on the solution using accountability, collaboration and commitment to quickly resolve issues and create opportunities to reorient ourselves towards our goals. This unique advantage of seeing problems as opportunities creates an atmosphere of cooperation and cohesion and helps our teams and partners grow both personally and professionally.  

We believe in Giving World-Class Service 

Giving world-class service is a core value for Optimize. We strive to provide a cohesive, synergistic and professional experience for all our partners, clients and vendors. We also espouse this value across channels so that our vendors and service providers offer the same level of professionalism and world-class service.  

We Believe in an Ownership Attitude  

At Optimize our ownership attitude does not end at our doors. We vest our interests and stewardship in every single partnership we create and build. By taking this approach, we balance our organization’s needs alongside those of our individual team members and partners.  Our ownership attitude gives us the freedom to focus on long-term success rather than short-term profits for us and for you.  

We Believe in Optimizing our Potential  

It’s in our name, we optimize our potential through optimizing your opportunities for growth. And we start with the basics and strive for excellence in all we do. In optimizing your systems, operations and processes we learn, measure and grow your business with the best tools, strategies and vision while maintaining our focus on your individual and optimal personal experience.   

These values are what hold us apart from all others and give us the ability to give you the opportunity to grow your vision and live your dream because we believe the future of dentistry belongs with dentists.  

Putting Values-Based Leadership Into Practice

At Optimize, we believe that the best way to give back to our community of dentists is by equipping you with practical tools that bring your values and vision to life in your practice. As a dental entrepreneur, it’s not just about having strong values, it’s about building systems and strategies that make those values a living part of your business every day.

If you’re ready to lead with greater clarity and purpose, our free Extraction GPS Template is the perfect next step. This step-by-step worksheet will help you define your core values, assess your current position, and set clear, meaningful goals for the future of your practice.

Whether you’re aiming to strengthen your culture, set a new vision, or align your team around what matters most, the Extraction GPS gives you a practical roadmap to get there.

Ready to build a practice that truly reflects your values?
Download your free Extraction GPS Template now and take the first step toward a values-driven, growth-focused future.

DOWNLOAD YOUR EXTRACTION GPS TEMPLATE

Follow 3 Principles to Build a Strong Dental Practice Culture: The Power of Mission, Values, and Norms 

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You have the power to create a world-class dental practice or dental organization. In this post I’m going to delve into three foundational principles that will allow you to build and run a premier dental organization. Our current economic environment is one filled with incredible opportunities for growth; as well as challenges in keeping talented, committed and passionate staff. To meet that challenge, we must also be mindful as business owners to provide the right conditions for our employees to stick around. Both aspects of running a successful dental practice are a lot to think about, balance and juggle.  

The 3 Drivers of Successful Dental Practice Culture 

So, how do you strike that balance between attacking opportunity and nurturing a thriving organizational culture? It starts with the basics: your mission, your values and your norms. These three foundational elements are the backbone of your decisions, your priority-setting and your business cadence. Without them, your organization runs the risk of being a rudderless ship foundering in the shallows. So, let’s look at each of these principles one by one, starting with your mission statement.  

Your Mission Statement Defines Culture in Your Dental Practice 

Your mission statement serves as the north star for your dental practice. It defines the purpose and direction of your business. This may seem a bit arbitrary for a dental practice, after all the mission is sort of built into your business structure: take care of people’s teeth. But a mission statement encompasses not just what you do but how your company approaches its work, the purpose of your practice’s existence and its overall objectives.  

When writing your mission statement, make it clear, simple and inspirational. Your statement should align your purpose and goal with your values. It should also be imbued with a sense of passion that inspires your team and rallies them around your goal and vision. A mission statement isn’t just for your patients to understand you, it’s for your teams to align themselves with what you want to accomplish.  

Values Set the Tone for Team Culture in your Dental Practice 

Values are the principles by which your actions are guided every day, and they are a reflection of your life and what you hold dear. Your company’s core values are the guiding principles that dictate how your employees and your organization operate. They are the moral compass of your business. One big advantage in defining your values and setting guiding principles is that it gives your employees an understanding of what you expect from them and what they can and should expect from you.  

Defining your company’s core values might be daunting if you don’t have a clear understanding of your own personal values. Harvard Business Review has a step-by-step guide to help you assess your personal values.  

Here are some elements to consider when defining your dental practice’s values:  

  • Identify the values that are most important to your organization (yourself). They could be honesty, innovation, customer-centricity, or any other principles you hold dear. 
  • Integrate your company values into your daily operations. This means that every decision, from hiring to product development, should align with these values. 
  • Communicate your values effectively to your team. Encourage them to embody these values in their work. Spend some time examining where, in your practice, you and your team can incorporate your practice values and make them known to your patients and prospects.  
  • Define your core values to give your teams the knowledge and confidence in knowing how you want business conducted on your behalf. This will instill your teams with confidence and allows your teams the freedom to act according to the roadmap you have given them.

Norms: The Everyday Behaviors That Build Trust, Communication and Cadence in your Dental Practice  

Norms are the behaviors that govern how your teams interact and work within your dental practice. Norms help set the tone for your practice culture. To establish effective norms: 

  • Create norms that promote inclusivity, respect, and collaboration. Encourage open communication and diversity of ideas. This norm allows your team to feel fully engaged and, well, included in the day-to-day execution of your mission.  
  • No sacred cows: Allows anyone on the team to call out behavior, patterns or ideas that aren’t working anymore and bring something new to the table. Practicing allowing everyone on your team to have a voice might take a minute to establish as a norm, but it allows for greater efficiency, communication and creativity.  
  • Consistency is key to all functions of running a smooth dental practice. So, making consistency a practice norm is key to team behavior and practice management.  
  • Adaptability is another norm that encourages creativity, problem-solving, open communication and efficiency. Be open to ideas to reevaluate and adapt systems, operations and functions as your practice grows and evolves. 

Gallup has a wonderful assessment to help you determine and define what norms are currently working in your practice’s team culture and what are not. Having a starting position of current norms allows you to keep what’s working, while building on that foundation to include what might be missing.  

The Synergy of Mission, Values, and Norms for Your Dental Practice Operations

When you combine a clear mission, well-defined values, and strong norms, you create a synergy that transforms your dental practice culture. Aligning your mission, values, and norms fosters a shared sense of purpose and passion among your team. Engagement stays high when employees understand and believe in what your practice stands for and what they’re working toward. This alignment fuels higher productivity, satisfaction, and a culture where everyone is motivated to contribute their best.

A strong, values-driven culture not only attracts and retains top talent, it also enhances your reputation in the community. Over time, this foundation makes your practice more resilient and adaptable, even when circumstances change.

Culture truly is your practice’s identity. It sets the tone for how you do business, how you care for your team, and how you serve your patients. Mission, values, and norms are the building blocks that shape a practice people want to work for and patients want to visit. Invest in nurturing these elements, and you’ll see your practice flourish.

If you’re ready to clarify your practice’s vision, values, and mission and chart a path to your “point B” we invite you to download our free Extraction GPS worksheet.

This step-by-step tool is designed to help dental entrepreneurs like you get clear on what matters most, set a bold vision for your future, and define the concrete goals that will get you there. Use it to bring your leadership team together, make confident decisions, and guide your practice toward long-term success.

Ready to set your destination and accelerate your journey?
Download our Extraction GPS worksheet today and take the first step toward building the dental practice and legacy you truly envision.

Download Our Extraction GPS Worksheet

The Power of Authentic Partnership in your Dental Practice, Part 6: Values & Norms

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Do you live your values even in your dental practice? In this post, the last of my series on the power of authentic partnership, I talk about the importance of living your values even at the office. It’s been great to write this series of posts. I’ve gotten to relive my experiences meeting my partner, Dr. Jack Bayramyan.  

In my last post I got into the fine print of business deals and how you cannot allow that fine print to influence your core relationships. If a partnership is strong enough it can weather and survive the due diligence of creating a business partnership.  

There is a lot of trust that goes into that process. You both may get along, share common interests, and even share core values and visions. But if there is no trust as a basis of your relationship it will not survive the fine print.  

The Power of Authentic Partnership in Your Dental Practice: Part 6

How Does Partnership Survive Dental Practice Politics?  

So then, how do you wade through the irrelevant to find the meaning in a relationship? This is where I rely on a principle called reciprocity. This is one of Robert Cialdini’s six principles of ethical influence. In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. In the book, Cialdini describes reciprocity as giving first to get something later. When Jack and I were going through due diligence for our partnership, Jack came to me with a simple request.  

He had spent days answering repetitive lines of questioning for lawyers. He knew they had everything they needed for due diligence so he was perplexed by the constant barrage of questions, seemingly searching for a “gotchya” moment, that was honestly never going to happen. Jack was a man of his word; he opened his entire company to our due diligence process and was an open book during this period. So, why were the lawyers hounding him? They were just doing their…due diligence.  

He called me asking me to step in and help out. I knew the lawyers had everything they needed, so I called them off. In essence, Jack had been extremely open, offering up his entire company and entrepreneurial history. I reciprocated by choosing to trust the foundation our partnership was being built on and asked the lawyers to wrap up.  

Figure Out the Values That Will Guide Your Dental Practice   

Why? Why did I reciprocate in this way? Why didn’t I say to Jack, “well, if we’re going to be in partnership, they need to do their due diligence.” I didn’t say that because I knew that Jack had come to me with a simple and vulnerable request. I wanted to honor that and my values first. The lawyers came second.  

I take the values and norms that I instill in my teams just as seriously as I want them to do. I walk my talk and if I don’t, I want people to call me out on it. Our team values don’t just hang in framed photos on the walls in our offices. Our company values reflect our personal values and guide our teams, decisions and visions for ourselves and partners.

Two of those norms are being who you say you are and when you say you’re going to do something, do it. Pretty simple, but they make a world of difference when you live into them day after day. When you live your values, people know where they stand with you; they trust you; they trust your word; and everyone from your teams to your vendors and partners, begin to rely on your consistency and constancy.  

From the beginning, I knew that my relationship with Jack was not transactional. Transactional relationships especially in the workplace, are necessary to move the needle in your business. But longevity in a partnership and in an organization is born of more than just transactions. In order for a partnership to survive and thrive it needs a foundation of trust, communication, clarity of intention and transparency. Those qualities, by the way, are core values at Optimize Practice Services. Read more about our values here.

What are the values you hold and espouse in your dental practice or dental organization?

Trust As a Guiding Principle in your Dental Practice Organization 

Another norm that my team and I practice is assume positive intent. What does this mean? I think in business, it is very easy to assume that people are out to get their mission accomplished, or their goal met, no matter the cost, even if it means stepping on people or overlooking simple societal agreements like courtesy and cooperation.  

It’s very easy to allow that assumption to sort of color our views on the people we work with or see every day. It’s easy to assume that people are just out to get what they want and are planning to disregard you once they have it. However, I have found in my 20+ years of managing teams and leading people that by and large, people don’t walk around with ulterior motives. They don’t even lead with bad intentions. I have found that is the rule, not the exception.

So, I make it a point to lead my teams with this norm and to instill it in our workplace environment. We start by assuming positive intent, that people, by and large, have a positive intention, even if they don’t follow through with what they said they would do as the basis of cooperation and working together. Many times it’s overwhelm and forgetfulness that are the true ‘culprits’ of one not fulfilling one’s obligations, not negative intentions.

Someone doesn’t return an email; someone doesn’t close the loop on the detail of an important project; someone doesn’t follow through with a commitment. It’s very easy in these typical, quotidian occurrences, to assume bad intent or even negligence, isn’t it? So, assuming positive intent really goes against the grain of our thinking. But it’s a wonderful discipline that leads to greater harmony, cooperation and trust among co-workers, teams and partners.  

The Power of Living Your Values and Norms in Your Dental Practice Organization 

Of course, these values and norms I’ve described are just the ones that work for us based on the collective leadership experience of myself and Dr. Jack. I urge you to find out what works for you, your partners and your teams. Values-based exercises: Gallup’s CliftonStrengths finder, Julia Waller’s Unique Ability™ exercises, Via Institute on Character and the Kolbe Index assessments are all wonderful tools to help you determine your values and build them into your teams, organization and partnerships.   

Reflecting on my first meeting with Jack and the partnership that led to Optimize Practice Alliance has been incredibly meaningful. That shared commitment to values, vision, and integrity is what continues to move our organization forward. Scaling a dental practice, entering partnership, and building a lasting legacy are among the most important steps an entrepreneur can take—and those steps are most powerful when they’re rooted in clarity and alignment.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps dental entrepreneurs clarify their values, define their current reality, and articulate a clear vision for the future, so growth, partnership, and leadership decisions are guided by intention rather than pressure.

When your values are clear, your path forward becomes clearer too.

Thinking about scaling, partnership, or the next chapter for your dental practice?
Download the Extraction GPS and start designing a future that aligns with your values, your vision, and the legacy you want to leave.

Download Your Extraction GPS

The Power of Authentic Partnership for your Dental Practice, Part 4: Know Your Teams

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One of things I learned from and most admire about my partner Jack Bayramyan is his ability to connect with people. This is a very important quality in a dental practice owner and, really, any entrepreneur. Being comfortable around people, being comfortable speaking with almost anyone, these abilities help create instant connection and really do half the “selling” in your business.  

The Importance of Social Capital in Your Dental Practice 

Social capital is the positive product of human interaction. It is the cohesion that allows the people within an organization to function together as a whole through trust, and shared identity, norms and values. When a leader invests her or his time in building social capital within their organization that demonstrates an innate understanding of what the human condition needs to flourish, thrive and grow. 

Taking seriously your responsibilities as a leader involves putting time and effort into understanding different leadership styles and which fit your personality best, studying your team’s dynamics and being open to feedback around your leadership. When you have mastered the essential leadership qualities you can begin to craft a team that will be with you for the long haul and fight for your vision as hard as you do.

When you have a leader that innately understands those necessities and builds them into the framework of team structures, that is a leader who understands how to grow a successful business. You cannot grow or expand or scale an operation without team buy-in. To gain team buy-in, you can operate in one of two ways. You can intimidate everyone and rule through fear, bullying and belittlement; or you can lead with integrity, compassion and discipline of message. Of course, there are all kinds of leadership styles, but they mostly fall into one of those two categories, generally speaking.  

Dental Practice Partnership – Making a Lasting Choice 

Before Jack and I made it official, I took a tour of his organization, a chance to “kick the tires” so to speak. We visited one of his practices and the first thing he did wasn’t tell me the revenue of that particular location, or how the systems or operations worked on a daily basis. No. The first thing Jack did was introduce me to all his staff and share with me a little bit about each individual.   

At the time, Jack owned 6 locations in Southern California. And he knew the names and backgrounds of every single person that worked for him. That impressed me more than their profit margins, their EBITDA, their monthly overhead or yearly returns. And by the end of that field trip, I knew I had found the person I wanted to partner with. I knew that if this person took team building, social capital and leadership investment, that seriously this would be a person who understood the power all of that had in building an operation to scale.  

Using Team Cohesion to Grow Your Dental Practice  

Growing and scaling a dental organization is an immense undertaking and it’s not something you can do alone. Whether or not you ever enter into a formal partnership, long-term growth depends on your ability to build teams that are aligned, motivated, and committed to a shared direction.

True cohesion doesn’t come from job descriptions or compensation alone. It comes from leadership that understands what drives people, what inspires them, and what makes them believe in something bigger than their daily tasks. As Theodore Roosevelt famously said:

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

You can hire people who will show up and do their jobs. But inspiring people to fight for a vision requires clarity about where you’re going, why it matters, and how their work connects to that future.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps dental practice owners clarify their values, define their current reality, and articulate a clear vision for where they’re headed. When your vision is clear, team alignment becomes possible. When alignment exists, cohesion follows and growth becomes sustainable.

Thinking about scaling your dental practice and strengthening your team along the way?
Download the Extraction GPS to gain clarity on your vision and give your team something meaningful to rally around.

At Optimize Practice Alliance, we believe the future of dentistry belongs with dentists and that future is built by leaders who lead with clarity, intention, and care.

Download Your Extraction GPS

The Power of Authentic Partnership for Your Dental Practice, Part 3: Building Your Culture 

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In your dental practice, culture is king. When I first met Jack Bayramyan, I was skeptical. A dental practice owner, I could tell right away that he was a nice person, but I had no idea what he valued, what his priorities were or the vision he wanted to achieve. However, all that changed during the course of a day.  

What started out as an intro meeting with Jack and bankers about money and investment, eventually turned into a meandering discussion between Jack and I about culture. In the video below, you’ll see, at one point during that pivotal day, Jack asked me aside for a private conversation. I assumed he just wanted to get to know me, so I obliged because I was interested in the same thing.  

Sitting in a room full of bankers or investors, the discussions tend to focus on one thing: money. But Jack was savvy enough to look beyond those discussions and I was curious as well. During that private conversation, I really got to know Jack, the human being. And maybe even more importantly, I got to know how he worked as an entrepreneur.  

In Your Dental Practice Culture Begins with You 

I’m a talker. I love to talk, but I think that is a by-product of my real passion, which is teaching. Teaching requires two fundamental components: talking and listening. So, in my initial private conversation with Jack, I went first. I opened up and spoke from the heart about the things that mattered most to me in my organization, what did I have to lose?  

I spoke about my values, my goals, and most importantly to me, the culture of my company and how it was created. And I’m glad I had the courage to open up and speak on that level to someone I had just met. Turns out, he shared my opinions on those topics and was inspired to speak from the heart as well. We found we had three primary areas of focus when it came to building an organization: 

  • Culture is foundational to a company, no matter how successful or not 
  • Culture is built by the people and teams that use it 
  • Culture is transformed over time by these relationships 

Any organization, whether it is successful or not, is built on the foundation of the culture of the people that work in that organization. You can have a counterproductive culture built on the naked ambition of the people working within that culture. But you can also build an organization on a culture of compassion, open-mindedness and balance. Many times, it is the values of the leader that begin and build that culture. But if you have an absent CEO, or a leader whose values are based in, say, greed, selfishness and a “my way or the highway” attitude, that will be the driving foundation of the culture that is built.  

So, as a dental entrepreneur, if you want a culture that reflects your values, you need to show up and pay attention to your leadership style, your willingness to change and your focus on a growth mindset. If you’re not paying attention to these things, your dental practice’s culture will be formed by the dominant personalities within your organization. That may or may not be a good thing, but it won’t be intentional.  

Who is Going to Drive Your Vision in Your Dental Practice?  

The second area of focus as a leader is learning to pay attention. You may be intentional in the values and tone you set to build that culture, but it will ultimately be your teams living and working within the framework of that culture that will build and expand upon it.  

So, it’s your job to continually observe, listen and speak from an intentional position. You can’t just build the foundation of something and walk away expecting people to just pick it up and run toward the finish line. As a leader in your dental practice, you must pay attention to the tone you set and the tone your teams keep: are they in alignment? And if not, it’s your job to get your teams refocused on the tone and values you’ve set. For us, at OPS this comes in the form of weekly check-ins and a weekly company huddle as well as quarterly meetings keeping us focused on our vision and culture.  

You may have a very clear vision of where you want to take your organization, but if you don’t have buy-in from your team, you won’t get there. And buy-in comes from team members who want to see you, their organization and themselves succeed. If they don’t have hope that they will succeed, if they feel your eye is not on the ball or if they feel they ‘re just clocking into a job with no future for them, they won’t have the cohesion to rise to the level you need to reach your goals. It starts with you.  

Finally, the third focus is learning to stay aware of how culture transforms over time. It is the relationships within your organization that will dictate how this culture changes and adapts as your dental practice grows and expands. How your culture changes and adapts is dependent on the top team members and how they translate your values and vision company wide. 

If you’re not checking in with your leadership teams regularly and mentoring their leadership styles and directives, the culture you meticulously built in the beginning will erode over time and collapse even as your organization expands and grows. That’s where a lot of scaling organizations run off the tracks, because they can’t contain the fallout that permeates the culture through its growth.  

It Always Starts at the Top in Your Dental Practice 

So, whether you’re building the culture, choosing the people who will live in that culture or caring for it over time, it is your attention and focus on the culture staying healthy, nimble and cohesive that will steer the ship toward your vision.  

And this is what I found out during my conversation that day with Jack. He shared that same level of attention to culture that I have. He knows that to reach his vision he needed a healthy, strong cohesive team and he knew that team had to last the distance to eventually reach his vision. By the time we met, he had reached his vision, so he had a roadmap of leadership style. It wasn’t just about our shared values; it was about having the mindset of attention to culture where we found common ground.  

Your Vision for Your Dental Practice 

Authentic partnerships only work when leaders are clear on their own vision. As Jack and I have both experienced, finding your voice as a leader, and having the confidence to stand behind it, is pivotal to scaling successfully and choosing the right partners along the way.

At Optimize Practice Alliance, part of our role is helping dental entrepreneurs clarify that vision and lead from it with intention. Growth mindset, leadership style, and strategic direction all intersect here. Without clarity, even well-intentioned partnerships can drift. With clarity, alignment becomes possible.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps dental practice owners define what truly matters to them, assess where their practice is today, and map a clear path forward, so every major decision, including partnership, supports the future they want to build.

Your vision should lead the way.

Ready to clarify your vision and guide your practice forward with confidence?
Download the Extraction GPS and start building a roadmap that supports intentional leadership, aligned partnerships, and sustainable growth.

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