Estimated read time: 7 mins
My grandparents are avid farmers and gardeners. My grandma has a beautiful greenhouse overflowing with whimsical rainforest vines, ferns and all sorts of other plants, and my granddad has an incredible vegetable garden that is always filled with delicious seasonal produce. My grandparents love spending time in their garden, and in return, they get a beautiful haven and vegetables to share with all the family. As picturesque as this all sounds, there’s also a lot of work that goes into maintaining these spaces. Many hours of preparing garden beds, rotating soil, watering, fertilising, pruning and picking, monitoring the weather and knowing when it’s time to plant and when it’s best to wait — all to ensure the plants have the best environment to grow in.
Now, as much as I wish I could claim that I’ve inherited my grandparents' green thumb, my struggling monstera plant may suggest otherwise. Despite this, all of the habits, skills and techniques I see in my grandparents can be applied to other areas of life, such as growing a highly effective team.
Step 1: Tend to the soil
The ‘soil’ is your team environment, and this is going to build the foundations of your workplace. It’s really important to have an environment where staff members feel supported, appreciated, respected and heard. To do this, it is important that your team has good communication channels.
Communication needs to be open and inviting. In team environments, it is not uncommon for there to be louder group members who may not provide space for others to speak. As such, there may be times where you may need to be a facilitative leader and provide opportunities and invitations for quieter staff members to share their thoughts. This helps ensure all members of the team feel heard and respected. Open communication channels also ensure the team feels comfortable asking for help, seeking advice, recommending changes and celebrating together when things go well. If a team member asks for help, they need to feel confident that their request will be both heard and actioned. As such, when requests are made, it is important to ensure the action is taken in a reasonable timeframe, otherwise the individual may not feel valued and be discouraged from making requests in future.
Opportunities to build communication channels and a good team environment may be formal such as quarterly staff catch ups, or they may be informal through staff lunches, morning huddles or teambuilding days. Communication pathways can also be built into daily conversations, where just asking how staff are going can lead to bigger conversations and insight into the wellbeing of the team. In the dental environment, this is particularly important. As dental practitioners, it can be so easy to get caught up in the intricacies or stress of a procedure and perhaps neglect what is going on around us. There may be really little things you can do to help ensure the workplace environment is supportive, appreciative and respectful. For example, the clinician can introduce both themselves and the dental assistant to the patient at the start of the appointment. Not only does this acknowledge the dental assistant and their work, but often, the patient will personally thank the dental assistants for their work too.
Step 2: What are you planting?
Here, the ‘plants’ are your team members. Everyone is different and it’s important to understand how these individual differences can best contribute to a team. An effective team will be able to understand the strengths and weaknesses of members and distribute tasks in a way that showcases and best uses the skills of the team.
Additionally, everyone will have a different communication and learning style, and it’s important to have an appreciation of this to best deliver messages to the team. Some team members may prefer succinct, direct feedback. Others may prefer a more gentle approach, demonstration on how tasks should be done or very detailed written instructions. Understanding and working with the individual traits of team members and individualising your approach to reflect to how they learn and grow can help build productive workplaces.
It is important to also understand how individuals react when they are stressed. Some may become quiet or reserved and internalise their stress. Others may be blunt or more direct than usual. As dental practitioners, it is not uncommon to be in situations that may be stressful – whether it be an extraction that is not going to plan, or a challenging patient. As such, it is very important to understand how we personally respond to stress and manage stress in a way that is considerate of the rest of the dental team.
Step 3: Fertiliser is necessary
Once you’ve built your team and allocated roles, it’s important to provide ‘fertiliser’ to your team. That is, to provide your team with the extra boosts of energy and acknowledgement along the way to maintain an enjoyable workplace. Whether this is by celebrating individuals with a birthday cake, a team lunch or dinner celebrations, acknowledging procedures that ran smoothly or a simple thank you when tasks are done, these little acts of acknowledging the efforts of others are always appreciated.
Step 4: Watch the weather, sometimes it’s best to wait
Finally, life always throws curveballs, often when it’s particularly inconvenient. When you have feedback, important training or significant changes to implement in your team, make sure you pick your timing wisely. Try and time these conversations when tension and stressors are low as this will ensure the conversation is well received. If you know staff have had stressors occurring in their lives outside of work, perhaps wait until they are in a better headspace to receive the information you’d like to impart. Additionally, it’s important to also look after yourself and ensure that you’re in a good headspace to take on the task.
And so, whether you’re growing cucumbers or dental practices, I hope these gardening lessons have provided some further insight into nurturing your effective teams.
Dr Rachel Brown completed her Doctor of Dental Medicine studies in 2023 at The University of Sydney. During her studies, she was heavily involved in the Sydney University Dental Association (SUDA) where she was a year representative, Vice President and then President of the association. As President of SUDA, Dr Brown established SUDA’s ‘Spreading Smiles’ community engagement programme where dental students volunteer their time to visit local schools and educate students, staff and parents about the importance of oral hygiene. Dr Brown now works in private practice and is particularly interested in paediatric dentistry, aesthetic dentistry and working with anxious patients to help make their dental experience a positive and gentle one. She is passionate about educating all her patients to help them maintain healthy smiles for life.
