After more than two years of mostly virtual contact with others, it’s time to embrace the in-person world once again. This year’s Practice Plan Workshop Tour is back to being a real-life, touchy-feely event once again on the theme of Nourish and Flourish. And who better to front such an event than dental business coach and practice patient experience manager, Michael Bentley?
To try to help drive away the gloomy black clouds of the pandemic and raise everyone’s spirits, Michael will show participants how to nourish their teams so they can flourish. The whole-day event aims to show how to look after your dental family so it can bloom and grow. Having been back working in practice since late 2020, Michael has experienced first hand the difficulties dental staff had to face and knows exactly what they need to help them regain their energy and vitality.
Regain your passion
The pandemic has left people feeling drained and lacking in enthusiasm, so Michael aims to encourage people to try to regain the passion they had for dentistry. He wants people to identify and cultivate their passions as a way of helping them to start enjoying their work again.
He’ll look at cultures within a practice and suggest ways that healthy ones can be established. He’ll also explore some of the reasons unhelpful cultures grow, and what the possible consequences might be to the morale of a team. He suggests ways that unhealthy or unhelpful cultures can be turned around to allow every team member to grow and flourish and become a valuable part of their dental family.
Look to the future
As the threat of lockdowns becomes a thing of the past, Michael wants people to shake off their siege mentality and start looking to the future again. Although COVID is still with us, it’s time to learn to live with it and start planning confidently again. Just as gardeners have to cope with adverse growing conditions, such as the heatwaves we experienced recently, they can help their crops continue to grow by paying more attention to them and, if there is a dry spell, watering them more frequently.
In the case of a team, any members who are struggling may need extra time spending on them and more support. Michael suggests ways to put systems in place that will help highlight staff members who may be in need of some extra TLC, such as training or more frequent welfare checks, to help them survive a difficult patch and thrive again.
Welfare meetings
Building mental resilience within the team is important if you are to survive adversity. As a trained Mental Health First Aider, Michael is able to pass on techniques and practices that can help you to recognise signs that a team member may be struggling and in need of extra support. He’ll suggest ways to support team members in times of stress and underline the importance of having regular welfare meetings. He’ll also stress the importance of looking after every member of the team, including the dentists.
Michael’s workshop tour is exclusive to Practice Plan and Medenta members and gets underway in Solihull on 6th October 2022. It will be held across the country in different locations across 17 dates. To book your place visit here.