This will be an important consideration if you want a team driven practice. In order to get your team to work cohesively and individually in a productive manner you are going to have to inspire them to take action.

You need somebody who will be genuine and honest with you every step of the way. This will help you to develop mutual trust and a powerful productive partnership.

There is no point in working excessively hard in one area of your life at the detriment to the other important aspects of your being. You need solutions that can fit into your life to create harmony and balance so that you can lead a fulfilled rewarding rich life.

Many coaches would rather do group sessions and provide standardised systems given to everybody. However, one size does not necessarily fit all. Although these sessions may be good for the initial learning and philosophy of change; you will require personal and individual attention to implement it in your own unique practice.

Often the key coach is not accessible when you need them. Instead, you may get their associates or other consultants delegated to work with you. The one-to-one interaction necessary for impactful coaching to work is lost.

You may find that certain coaching styles provide a set number of visits or calls or activities. In actual fact, effective coaching requires a bespoke customised approach as one size never fits all. You may need a versatile plan to help you surpass your potential and capabilities.

Coaches that have also owned practices and worked as a principal dentist will fully understand your plight. They will also have much experience to share and will understand your daily predicaments. These things you cannot attain at the same level as a non-dentist coach.

Dental knowledge is useful to facilitate your sales and marketing strategies. Also, this knowledge is important when developing the systems around these topics. Otherwise, you will be left to do all the creative thinking.

It is important that the practice is built around the dentistry you love and the work that is your passion. This is also an important consideration for your team. When this is not taken into account, certain strategies may lead to a somewhat profitable practice in the short term but when you look to the long term – you will have developed an unrewarding practice with a very discontented dissatisfied team.

This is when attention is given to the micro-detail of a business. Albeit, interesting information and somewhat useful information, it prevents you from getting a birds-eye view of where the practice is, taking your energies away from the overall picture to assess where the bottlenecks in your business lie. Micro-analyses are also very cumbersome and time consuming for the whole team with very little return.

If the ideas spoken about are not dependent upon overall team contribution and only on data analysis, then you are in danger of creating a very impersonal and figure-based business. This may well be your objective. However, when strategies are developed in cognisance with team dynamics and with a knowledge of the ground-level operations you are more likely to get your strategies implemented and actioned. Ideas that cannot be implemented remain ideas.

In order to get results, the team need to be trained at all levels to be able to action your business plan. It is more cost-effective for you if your coach can do this also.

Complicated ideas that are not easy to implement become redundant and impractical. If the plan is not actionable it is not advantageous to you. Many can easily mistake activity for progress. Too much attention on every tiny aspect of the business makes you focus on the 80% that brings about the 20% returns on effort. This can compromise your personal lives and lifestyle, taking all the fun out of being in business.

You will find that there is too much decision making based upon figure work and spreadsheets alone. This can be unrealistic and unrelatable at ground level where your teamwork. These businesses are either just about the “money” so you have lost that element of personal satisfaction, or you have lost touch with how people work. Social economics and behavioural science is not just mathematics. In fact, a lot of business success is to do with emotional intelligence. You can easily lose touch with reality on the ground level if all decision-making is robotically done using complex financial logic alone.

On occasion this can sound impressive but what actual value does it provide your business in terms of growth? You will understand where the holes in the business lie but you will still not understand how to plug them. Removing deficiencies in a business requires a cohesively working effective and efficient team that is motivated by impactful leadership. This is because metrics do not account for the large proportion of emotional intelligence required in business success.

Some coaches provide very interesting entertaining concepts and theoretical ideas which are very impressive and dramatic. But when you look at them closely you will find that in reality, they are inapplicable and inactionable with no tangible way of making it work. Ideas that are too expansive in integration do not create results.

Can they really claim “Been There, Done That, Got the badge”? This will reassure you that you will get a return on your investment as they have the necessary business experience.

Over-analysis with fancy charts and complex mathematics can be really impractical for the team. Also, it can become very time consuming with very little return on your investment in salary, since these activities are often carried out by managers. The monitoring of success needs to be simplistic and easy to carry out.

In order to stand out in business you are going to need some unique creativity. This is especially true in sales and marketing. But, is the advice given the same advice given to all clients? There needs to be a deeper involvement on how you carry out sales and marketing strategies.

The main problem with companies that are too big is that they are unable to give you personal attention. You may not have your coach holding your hand through all the change. This can be quite unnerving and stressful.

Some core fundamentals of business growth and success may be missing since the coach may not have the hands-on knowledge required. For example, marketing advice may be so standardised, antiquated and not current with the times. Alternatively, the systematic approach to sales or leadership may be missing.

Some coaches decipher your weaknesses and then build their plan around helping you overcome them. You will never be as good with your weaknesses as you will your strengths. Therefore, it is better to build a business on your strengths and USP’s. However, you do need to use clever strategies to convert your weaknesses into opportunities.

Many companies advocate a Treatment Coordinator (TCO) for the sales process. However, a TCO alone cannot be responsible for the entire success of the sale. Too much emphasis on a few people can lead to team breakdown in the future. Also, this method can never produce a consistent baseline result with the possibility of growth.

Some coaches base the bulk of their strategy on averages, whilst other coaches only advise average percentage of spending on various aspects of a business. The truth is each practice is unique and so you can’t really choose one over the other. Each individual practice circumstances and objectives needs to be looked at carefully and then a plan of action decided upon based upon those requirements.

Many coaches only give you tactical solutions and call them long term strategy. This will only give you short term gains. In reality you need an overall strategic plan of action. One that is easy for you to implement.

The style of coaching may appeal to numerous team members if the coach is entertaining and has the easy casual ability to make friends. However, the coaching must also produce results with real growth. This often takes team members outside their comfort zones and requires a coach with high emotional intelligence to help motivate and inspire the team to action.