Leadership Lessons from Ted Lasso and SSC Live — Episode 9 Who’s Coaching the Coach?

Even the Person Everyone Turns To Needs Someone to Turn To

I just returned from SSC Live in Washington, DC, where Jamison, Jenni and their team somehow managed to outdo themselves—again.

I spent a good deal of time talking with doctors, administrators and other team members about what was happening in their practices: what was working, what wasn’t, and what was keeping them awake at night.

On the second day, I asked several team members what they had enjoyed most about the meeting.

Their answer didn’t surprise me.

“The roundtable.”

Then came the explanation that did interest me:

“It’s amazing. We all have the same issues.”

Exactly.

Different practices. Different cities. Different doctors. Different teams. Different levels of production and profitability. Yet put a group of dental professionals around a table long enough and the same problems begin appearing.

Hiring. Accountability. Communication. Scheduling. Insurance. Case acceptance. Leadership. An employee who isn’t performing. An associate who isn’t producing. A doctor who’s doing too much. A team that wants more direction from a leader who already feels pulled in twelve directions.

What struck me wasn’t that these problems exist. I’ve been looking at dental practices for decades. I know they exist.

What continues to fascinate me is why the same problems keep recurring in so many otherwise successful practices.

What is it about owning and leading a dental practice that dentists are so unprepared for?

I think part of the answer became obvious around that roundtable.

People need other people who understand the game they’re playing.

The value of that discussion wasn’t that someone at the table possessed the magical answer to everybody else’s problems. It was that, for a while, people who normally carry these problems largely by themselves were sitting with others who understood them.

Nobody had to explain why an empty afternoon in the schedule could ruin a dentist’s morning.

Nobody had to explain how one difficult employee can change the atmosphere of an entire ten-person practice.

Nobody had to explain the strange combination of responsibility, anxiety and occasional guilt that comes with owning the business, signing the paychecks and still being expected to walk into an operatory five minutes later and focus completely on the patient in the chair.

They knew.

Because they were playing the same game.

Almost everyone inside a dental practice has someone they can turn to when they don’t know what to do. The assistant can ask the doctor. The front desk can ask the office manager. A hygienist can talk with another hygienist. The associate can walk down the hall and ask the owner.

But what happens when you’re the owner?

Everybody looks at you.

And, as I wrote last week, being a dentist-owner makes the situation even stranger. You’re simultaneously the owner of the club, the coach of the team and one of the players on the field. You may spend the first hour of the morning thinking about payroll, the next coaching someone through an interpersonal problem and the next six doing dentistry.

Then, just as you’re preparing to leave at 5:15, someone appears at your door and asks:

“Do you have a minute?”

Of course you do.

You’re the coach.

Which raises the question that’s at the center of this week’s lesson:

Who’s coaching the coach?

That’s one of the things I find so interesting about Ted Lasso. For all the attention placed on Ted as the leader, he never really leads alone. Coach Beard is beside him from the beginning. Roy eventually joins the coaching staff. Rebecca becomes someone he trusts. Higgins and Nate offer perspectives Ted doesn’t have. And when optimism and a good mustache are no longer sufficient to handle everything going on inside Ted himself, there’s Dr. Sharon.

Ted may be the head coach, but he surrounds himself with people who help him see what he can’t see on his own.

In other words, Ted has his own version of an advisory board.

Maybe dentists should, too.

Build Your Own Coaching Staff

Look at professional sports.

A baseball manager doesn’t pretend to be the sole source of wisdom simply because he’s in charge. There are hitting coaches, pitching coaches, first- and third-base coaches, strength and conditioning experts, trainers, psychologists and analysts. Each brings specialized knowledge that helps the person ultimately responsible make better decisions.

A dental practice owner should think similarly.

I believe every dentist should have some form of personal advisory board.

Your accountant may understand taxes and financial reporting. Your attorney understands legal exposure and employment issues. A financial advisor can help with wealth strategy and retirement planning. Marketing specialists, HR professionals and other experts may all have a place at the table.

You don’t ask your accountant to defend an employment lawsuit, and you probably don’t ask your attorney to design your retirement portfolio.

Different problems require different expertise.

The same should be true when you’re looking for someone to help coach the practice.

There are plenty of intelligent business coaches who understand finance, leadership, marketing and organizational development. Much of what they teach may be perfectly sound.

But dental practice ownership is a very peculiar game.

You’re running a business, but it’s also a healthcare practice. Your customers are patients. The person producing much of the revenue is simultaneously the owner, chief clinician and often the person everyone wants to see when something goes wrong.

You’re dealing with insurance companies, laboratories, regulations, clinical risk, frightened patients, expensive technology, highly trained employees and the occasional 7:03 Monday-morning phone call announcing that somebody won’t be coming in.

That isn’t quite the same as running a shoe store.

And it isn’t the same as coaching baseball either.

So, when a dentist looks for someone to help coach the practice, I believe there’s tremendous value in choosing someone who understands dentistry, not merely business.

Someone who knows what it’s like to have a patient waiting in one room while an employee is crying in another.

Someone who understands why an empty hour in the schedule can feel like a personal failure even though it’s actually aneconomic problem.

Someone who understands the difference between being the doctor, the owner and the leader—and how exhausting it can be to move among those roles fifteen times before lunch.

Coach Beard doesn’t make Ted less of a head coach.

He makes Ted better at being one.

That’s what a good coach should do.

You Don’t Need Another Cheerleader

Beard’s value isn’t that he agrees with Ted all the time.

Quite the opposite.

Sometimes the most important person a leader can have nearby is someone secure enough to say:

“I think you’re wrong.”

That becomes especially important when you’re the person signing the checks.

Over time, people learn which topics aren’t worth raising. The office manager brings up the same problem three times and eventually stops. A team member disagrees with a decision but decides it’s easier to keep quiet. An associate sees things differently but concludes that the owner has already made up his mind.

Eventually, the doctor interprets the silence as agreement.

Sometimes it’s just surrender.

A good coach isn’t there to applaud everything you do, nor should a coaching relationship become an expensive source of validation.

Sometimes the most valuable thing someone can say to you is:

“I think you’re solving the wrong problem.”

That may sting.

It may also save you six months.

Your Destination, Not Theirs

There’s another distinction that matters.

Good coaching isn’t simply telling someone what you would do.

When dentists ask me, “What would you do if this were your practice?” my first instinct is usually to ask what they want their practice—and their life—to look like.

A 38-year-old dentist trying to build three locations shouldn’t necessarily make the same decisions as a 62-year-old who wants to work three days a week, travel more and eventually transition the practice to someone else.

Both may own excellent practices.

They’re simply playing toward different goals.

A good coach doesn’t impose his destination on the person being coached. He helps clarify their destination and then helps them see the field well enough to get there.

And this is where another common assumption deserves examination.

It may seem logical to choose a coach simply because that person has already reached the destination you want. Sometimes that’s enormously helpful. But having traveled somewhere doesn’t automatically make someone good at helping you get there.

The path they took may no longer exist. Their circumstances may have been completely different. Their strengths may not be yours.

That’s one reason many of the greatest coaches in sports weren’t necessarily the greatest players. You don’t have to have won Wimbledon to coach a Wimbledon champion. You do, however, need to understand tennis extraordinarily well—and understand the person you’re coaching.

Ted doesn’t try to manufacture little Ted Lassos.

Jamie, Roy, Rebecca and Nate are very different people. Ted tries to understand who each one is, what they need and what they might become.

Dental coaching should work the same way.

Sometimes You Need Someone in the Stands

A coach also provides something that becomes increasingly difficult to find after you’ve stared at the same practice every day for twenty years:

Distance.

History can cloud our vision.

“She’s been with me for fifteen years.”

“We tried that before.”

“I promised him something when he joined us.”

“The team will never go for it.”

Maybe all of those things matter.

Or maybe some have become increasingly sophisticated explanations for remaining exactly where you are.

There’s a reason we value second opinions in healthcare. Another clinician may look at exactly the same information and see something we missed, not because they’re smarter but because they aren’t carrying all of our assumptions into the room.

Leadership works the same way.

Sometimes the coach needs someone sitting high enough in the stands to see the entire field.

Which brings me back to the question I raised at the end of last week’s article.

Who helps the player-coach?

If you’re the person everyone turns to, who can you call when you’re unsure, frustrated or simply too close to the problem to see it clearly?

Who understands your game well enough to challenge you?

Who knows where you’re trying to go?

Who can distinguish a bad day from a bad strategy?

And who can remind you that the reason you built the practice in the first place wasn’t simply to create another job for yourself?

If the answer is nobody, that’s worth thinking about.

Needing a coach doesn’t mean you’ve failed as a leader. It may mean you finally understand something the best leaders have known for a very long time.

Even the coach needs coaching.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen to become involved with Chairful Dentist. I wanted to be part of a community built specifically around dentists and the unusual challenges of simultaneously owning, leading and practicing within a dental office—not generic business theory imported from an unrelated industry.

It gives dentists access to people who understand the field they’re actually playing on, while helping them build practices that support the lives they hoped those practices would provide.

If you’ve spent years being the person everyone else turns to and have started wondering who you can turn to, take a look.

Learn more about Chairful Dentist

Ted has Beard, Roy, Rebecca, and others because no one person has every answer.

Neither do we.

The objective isn’t to find someone to run your practice for you.

It’s to surround yourself with people who understand your game well enough to help you play it better.