Becoming the Leader Your Dental Team Needs Right Now

By Sarah Beth Herman, CEO of Dentistry Support®

If you’ve worked in dentistry long enough, you know something most people outside this industry don’t understand. Dentistry is personal. Dentistry is emotional. And dentistry is relational.

You don’t just walk into a practice and “manage a team. ”You are managing personalities, patient fears, insurance complexities, financial pressures, communication gaps, burnout, and the emotional climate of every person who steps through your doors. And leaders in dentistry are feeling it deeply right now.

A 2024 ADA follow-up study found that over 76 percent of dental office leaders report elevated emotional exhaustion, and more than half cite team conflict or misalignment as their biggest source of stress. Dental professionals aren’t struggling because they lack skill. They are struggling because they lack support, clarity, and culture alignment. Today’s free training is all about changing that.

---

Why Leadership Circles in Dentistry Matter More Than Ever

Every dental practice has an “inner circle.”It may not be called that out loud, but it exists.

Your inner circle consists of:

• The people you lean on the most

• The voices you trust when you make decisions

• The team members who carry influence, spoken or unspoken

• The attitudes that silently determine the tone of your day

• The people who either reinforce your leadership or undermine it

When your inner circle is healthy, your practice thrives. When your inner circle becomes misaligned, the entire practice feels it.

This is not just emotional. This is organizational psychology.

Research from the University of Pennsylvania on team cohesion shows that misaligned interpersonal dynamics increase burnout, reduce patient satisfaction, and directly impact organizational revenue. In dentistry, where chair time governs financial outcomes, these effects are multiplied.

The Hidden Issue Dental Practices Don’t Talk About Enough

Here’s the truth that many dentists confess privately but rarely say publicly. Most dental practices don’t suffer from clinical problems. They suffer from people problems. And the most overlooked people problem is this: We let the wrong people influence the core of our practice.

Every practice has experienced at least one of the following:

• A trusted team member who slowly becomes negative

• Someone who quietly spreads tension through the office

• A staff member who resists accountability

• A person who performs well clinically but destabilizes morale

• Someone who creates emotional pressure others are too afraid to address

These situations chip away at trust, productivity, and the emotional bandwidth of your entire office.

This free training is about identifying these dynamics early, before they cost you team members, patient trust, or revenue.

How to Identify When Your Leadership Circle Needs Restructuring

Dental leaders often feel the shift long before they can explain it. Here are the early signs your leadership circle is impacting your practice:

1. Certain people have more emotional influence than professional influence. Patients become uneasy. Teammates become guarded. You find yourself walking on eggshells.

2. Accountability becomes personal instead of professional. If someone becomes defensive or resentful every time expectations are clarified, that is a leadership red flag.

3. You are emotionally exhausted by the same three to four people week after week. This is the fastest way to destroy a practice from the inside out.

4. Communication feels like a chore instead of a channel. Healthy teams talk. Struggling teams talk about each other.

5. Progress stalls even though everyone is “busy.” This is a sign of hidden relational friction, not productivity.

Leadership psychologist Dr. Jennifer Goldman writes that team conflict consumes 40 percent more energy than the tasks themselves.

In a dental office, that wasted energy shows up as:

• increased turnover

• inconsistent billing

• unfinished insurance tasks

• schedule chaos

• exhausted dentists and managers

Fix the alignment, and everything else becomes easier.

---

Three Leadership Shifts Every Dental Office Needs Before Q4 Ends

Whether you lead a five-person office or a multi-location practice, these three shifts have the power to transform your team culture within weeks.

1. Rebuild Your Circle With Intention, Not Emotion

Not everyone gets a front-row seat in your leadership life. And not everyone should.

Ask yourself:

• Who drains me instead of strengthens me

• Who supports accountability, and who crumbles under it

• Who carries the same values I expect from our practice

• Who can grow with us as we scale

These are not judgment questions. These are stewardship questions.

Leaders are called to protect the culture of their practice, not pacify the emotions of their team.

2. Shift From People Pleasing to Culture Leading

One of the most common patterns Dentistry Support sees in struggling dental practices is this:

Leaders avoid hard conversations until those conversations turn into crises.

If you feel that in your gut, you are not alone. The dental industry is full of high empathy leaders who overextend themselves emotionally, hoping it will prevent conflict. It never does. It only delays it.

Healthy culture comes from:

• clarity

• boundaries

• consistency

• follow-through

Not perfection. Not popularity. And definitely not “keeping the peace” by ignoring what needs correction.

3. Elevate Yourself First, Then Expect Others to Follow

Every dental practice rises or falls with the self-discipline of its top leader. Research from Harvard’s Institute for Leadership Science found that teams mirror the emotional habits of their leaders within ninety days. That means:

---

If you are grounded, your team becomes grounded. If you are reactive, your team becomes reactive. If you avoid accountability, your team avoids accountability. If you grow, your team grows. The greatest gift you can give your practice is the healthiest version of yourself. That is what becoming “her” or “him” truly means. A leader who is aligned, steady, and committed to the identity God placed inside them.

FREE TRAINING CHALLENGE: Audit Your Inner Circle This Week

This is your actionable assignment.

Take ten minutes today to evaluate:

Who is helping your practice rise

Who is silently pulling it down

Who is supporting your vision

Who is diluting your vision

Then, make one decision: Protect the integrity of your leadership. Even if it means shifting the circle around you.

Your practice’s success depends on it more than you realize.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN MONDAY’S EPISODE

On Monday’s new episode of No Silver Spoons, I will be teaching on becoming the leader God designed you to be, and why your circle shifting is not a loss, but a sign of spiritual and leadership maturity. This blog gives you the framework. The episode will give you the transformation. Stay tuned. You will not want to miss it.

References

American Dental Association. (2024). Dentist well being survey report.

ADA.American Psychological Association. (2023). Triangulation dynamics in workplace groups. APA Press.

Goldman, J. (2022). Emotional labor in healthcare teams: Effects on burnout. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 45(3), 211–228.

Harvard Institute for Leadership Science. (2024). Leadership influence patterns and team emotional mirroring. Harvard Press.

Stanford Department of Behavioral Science. (2023). Identity clarity after misaligned group detachment. Stanford University Press.

---

Disclaimer:

To learn more about Sarah Beth Herman, the author of all free training content you can read her bio here. These materials are intended to provide helpful information to dentists and dental team members. They are in no way a substitute for actual professional advice based on your unique facts and circumstances. This content is not intended or offered, nor should it be taken, as legal or other professional advice. You should always consult with your own professional advisors (e.g. attorney, accountant, or insurance carrier). To the extent, Dentistry Support ®has included links to any third-party website (s), Dentistry Support ® intends no endorsement of their content and implies no affiliation with the organizations that provide their content. Further, Dentistry Support ® makes no representations or warranties about the information provided on those sites. You can view our privacy policy and terms and conditions by clicking those pages in the footer of our website