Ideas to develop a culture that makes your practice unique

How do you build a culture that feels unique to your team and practice?

Every other practice in your marketplace has the same access to technology, systems, materials, and resources that you do. There is no differentiation there. In my view, our practice culture is the primary vehicle we have to distinguish ourselves. To make our practice stand out from others.

This will help our patients, team, suppliers and all the people we reach understand that difference and want to work with us or be served by us. When you can make this change, you will create a practice that people want to be part of and that will help you achieve the goals for not only your practice but your life as well.

A practice with more clients, dedicated and happy team members and a leader driving it all will see more profitably, stability and long term success.

Here are some of the key components of practice cultures. They are not the only components of practice culture but they are ones that can get you started on the path to developing your own practice cultures that can help you grow your own practice which includes your team, your patients and you.

1. Clinical Skills & Development  (How You Will Keep Your Promises.)

Making the promise of delivering great results is one thing.

Keeping that promise is another.

What is possible for our patients never stops expanding.

We need the team, technology, training, resources, & partners to perform at our best.

2. Identifying / Specifying / Saturating Core Values In Your Practice (Your Guides)

Core values are your guides for behavior, decisions, strategy, processes, and as such, they form the structure of your culture. Doing an exercise as a team to identify the values that you agree upon as an organization and having an opportunity to express what they mean to each person individually and the entire team collectively helps them to come to life in a meaningful way.

3. Developing Yourself / You Becoming You (The Structure of Your Influence With Yourself & Others)

How people experience themselves when they are with you is the most powerful influence on others that you possess. It will beat any and every script, strategy, system, & technology. It will also be the ingredient that brings those very things to life.

Warren Bennis, in his book, On Becoming A Leader, says:

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it’s also that difficult…First and foremost, find out what it is that you are all about, and be that.”

Developing some awareness of yourself with specificity, gave you some clues into yourself. Each of you has personal goals about becoming a certain kind of person.

The “becoming yourself, your true self” that Warren Bennis was talking about.

That means leaving behind roles & identities that you have carried around for years and taking on the identity of your true self. That effort requires courage & intentionality.

How is that going? What are you learning? Where is the resistance? What has encouraged you?

4. Hiring Great People, Developing Them, & Building A Cohesive Team

The first question is: Do you already have the great people working for you, but you just don’t know it yet? It is important to find out.

Most of us understand the value of knowing our patients. Some of us understand the value of knowing ourselves. What is the value of knowing each person on your team?

What are their gifts & talents, strengths & weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and hopes and dreams relative to their career? Who are they away from the practice? What are the parts of life that are really important to them? What growth and development goals do they have or would they have if they knew that you would support them?

To me, this is where coaching as a leadership style comes in.

Effective leaders and business owners are great coaches of the people in their organization. They study their people, discover the opportunities to strengthen their strengths and stabilize weaknesses through positive feedback in real-time, teaching, and supporting other forms of training.

Great people will respond to your efforts. People that aren’t right for your team won’t respond well and that is how you know they aren’t your core leaders and perhaps they are the people that you consider replacing.

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