Leadership Lessons from Ted Lasso Ep. 2 BELIEVE — Why the Leader Has to Believe First

There’s a handmade yellow sign hanging in the AFC Richmond locker room.  It’s an adaptation of the sign over the Notre Dame Football team’s stadium entrance that reads “Play Like AChampion Today.”  The Ted Lasso sign must come first.

BELIEVE.

At first glance, it looks like the kind of motivational slogan that belongs on a coffee mug, a refrigerator magnet, or the wall of a dental office next to TEAMWORK and ATTITUDE.

Ted Lasso’s means something more.

He understands that before a group of people can believe in where they’re going, somebody has to believe it’s possible.

And that somebody is the leader.

That’s particularly important in dentistry because practice owners spend much of their day looking for things that are wrong.

We’re problem solvers, so we hunt out problems.  We just call it “diagnostics”.

We’re trained to find the open margin, the cracked tooth, the pocket that got deeper, the contact that isn’t right, the radiolucency that wasn’t there last year.

We’re rewarded for skepticism.

What am I missing?

That mindset makes us better clinicians.

But carried into leadership, it can create an unintended consequence.

We begin looking at our practices the same way.

The schedule has holes.

The phones aren’t being answered properly.

Production is down.

The hygienist isn’t diagnosing enough perio.

The assistant keeps forgetting something.

Case acceptance should be better.

The front desk isn’t asking the right question.

And pretty soon the practice owner becomes the person walking around all day finding open margins in everyone else.

That may be good dentistry.

It’s lousy coaching.

Ted looks at people differently.

He doesn’t ignore weaknesses. He doesn’t pretend the score doesn’t matter. And BELIEVE certainly doesn’t mean closing your eyes, clicking your heels together and hoping everything works out.

It means believing there’s a better version of the team than the one standing in front of you today.

That distinction matters.

Because leaders communicate what they believe long before they say it.

A dentist can announce at a team meeting:

“We’re going to build an extraordinary practice.”

But if every conversation is about what went wrong yesterday, the team hears something entirely different.

You can tell an employee, “I know you can do this,” while taking the task away from her every time she struggles.

You can tell your team you want to become less dependent on insurance while panicking every time there’s an opening in the schedule.

You can tell everyone that patient experience is your priority while running 40 minutes late and never acknowledging it.

Eventually people stop listening to what the leader says.

They watch what the leader does.

That’s where belief becomes leadership.

Somebody Has to Model it First

Almost everything worthwhile begins as something that doesn’t yet exist.

The practice you want doesn’t exist yet.

The team you want may not exist yet.

The employee you’re developing may not yet be capable of the role you envision.

Your patients may not yet understand the kind of dentistry you’re trying to provide.

Someone has to see the possibility before there is proof.

Someone then has to put it into action.

That’s the leader’s job.

I’ve seen dentists make significant changes in their practices only to undermine those changes because, underneath it all, they never really believed they would work.

They introduce a new system but abandon it after two weeks.

They tell the team they’re going to improve case acceptance, then discount treatment the moment a patient hesitates.

They say they want to reduce PPO dependence but immediately fill an opening with another insurance plan because an empty chair makes them uncomfortable.

The stated strategy says one thing.

Their behavior says another.

The team notices.

And belief—or disbelief—is contagious.

If the dentist doesn’t believe, why should the receptionist?

Why should the hygienist?

Why should the assistant?

For that matter, why should the patient?

Patients Borrow Our Belief, Too

This isn’t limited to employees.

Think about treatment presentation.

A patient asks:

“Do I really need this?”

The answer may be clinically straightforward.

But patients aren’t only listening to the words.

They’re reading the doctor.

Do you sound convinced?

Do you appear uncomfortable discussing the fee?

Are you apologizing for the treatment before the patient has objected to it?

Are you presenting what you genuinely believe is best—or what you think the patient will accept?

Patients often borrow confidence from us.

If we’re uncertain, they become uncertain.

If we sound apologetic, they wonder what we’re apologizing for.

If we don’t seem to believe strongly in the value of what we’re recommending, it’s difficult to expect them to.

Belief precedes trust.

And trust precedes action.

Believing in People Is Harder

Believing in a treatment plan is relatively easy.

Believing in people is harder.

People disappoint us.

They make mistakes.

They resist change.

They misunderstand instructions.

They occasionally make us wonder how they managed to get through the interview.

And leaders can fall into a trap.

We begin defining people by their latest performance.

Ted generally refuses to do that.

He sees the player someone is today while remaining curious about the player that person might become.

There’s an important leadership difference between:

“She can’t do this.”

and

“She can’t do this yet.”

The word yet changes everything.

It doesn’t eliminate accountability.

It creates possibility.

Of course, not everyone develops. Not every employee belongs on every team. Leadership isn’t endless patience or pretending poor performance is acceptable.

Sometimes believing in someone means coaching them.

Sometimes it means challenging them.

And occasionally it means recognizing that both the individual and the organization will be better served if they play somewhere else.

Belief is not denial.

It’s the willingness to invest in potential while remaining honest about reality.

The Dentist Has to Believe First

Last week I wrote that dental leadership requires a triple focus:

The patient.
The team.
The business.

Belief applies to all three.

You have to believe in the dentistry you recommend.

You have to believe your people can grow.

And you have to believe the practice can become something greater than it is today.

Otherwise, every setback becomes evidence that you were wrong to try.

And there will always be setbacks.

A team doesn’t become great because the coach gives one inspiring speech.

A practice doesn’t transform because you held one team meeting.

Culture isn’t changed on Tuesday because everyone attended a seminar on Monday.

Belief has to survive Wednesday.

And Thursday.

And the employee mistake on Friday.

That may be the real lesson behind Ted’s little yellow sign.

BELIEVE isn’t an event.

It’s not a slogan.

It’s a leadership discipline.

The leader has to see something that doesn’t completely exist yet—and behave as though getting there is possible.

Because teams take their emotional cues from the person holding the clipboard.

And if you expect your team to believe in where you’re taking them, there’s really only one place to start.

You have to believe first.