AADOM DISTINCTIONcast – Art of Delegation: How to Manage Everything All at Once

 

Join Nicole as she dives deep into the art of time management, especially when juggling the multitude of responsibilities that come with being an Office Manager. The demands of an office manager seem endless, and it can often feel like there’s just not enough time in the day to complete everything. However, Nicole will share strategies to manage your time more effectively while also empowering your team to thrive and grow.

This podcast will cover:

• Delegation and Team Strengths – Learn how to identify your team’s strengths and how leveraging them can make all the difference in getting tasks done efficiently.
• Prioritizing Your Tasks – Discover practical tools to help you assess which tasks should take precedence and how to stay on top of deadlines.
• Building a Supportive Team Environment – Understand the importance of creating an atmosphere where your team members feel supported, valued, and ready to take on responsibility.

Through Nicole’s approach, you’ll gain a fresh perspective on how to divide your time and responsibilities between what truly matters and what can be delegated. The key to handling it all lies in trusting your team, focusing on your priorities, and learning how to ask for help when needed. Tune in for actionable advice that will not only help you manage everything on your plate but also foster a more collaborative and efficient work environment.

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Ready to see the full version of this DISTINCTIONcast and elevate your skills?

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Read the Transcript Now!

 

Savanah: Hey everyone, welcome to DistinctionCast, where AADOM showcases the best and brightest minds in the dental industry from within our Dental Management Association.

I’m Savanah Carlson, Director of Member Services at AADOM, and thank you for joining us today.

AADOM DistinctionCast is more than just insights into dental management. It’s a dynamic platform designed to amplify the voices of AADOM’s distinction holders, providing them with the opportunity to educate and inspire their peers. By tapping into the expertise of AADOM’s distinction holders who are in the trenches of everyday management, we aim to empower and support leaders as they navigate the challenges and opportunities of running successful dental practices.

I’m so excited to introduce today’s AADOM DistinctionCast Educator, Nicole Sperone.

Nicole is an office manager at Claremont Flanley Dentistry in Claremont, Florida, with eight years in the industry. Her passion started in dental assisting as she was an expanded function dental assistant and her work transformed into educator as she helped students achieve their dental assistant certificates while working at the Dental Assistant Education Institute on the weekends.

Nicole has been a member of AADOM since 2021 and she earned her AADOM Mastership in 2024.

Welcome, Nicole!

Nicole: Hi! Thank you, Savanah!

Savanah: Oh, you are so welcome!

As an AADOM distinction holder, you recently earned your MAADOM at our most recent conference. What has having your master distinction done for you in terms of being an office manager? How has it helped you thrive?

Nicole: So, two of the biggest things for me is the resources. I truly am just putting myself out there—the steps that we would have to take to get even accepted for the distinction is—it’s a lot, but the work pays off.

I never in a million years would have thought that I would have written papers outside of school, you know? Or how to get things published or anything like that. So knowing that, like, oh, that’s like a milestone in my life that I’ve achieved that I never would’ve thought that I would’ve done.

The resources that come with it, the people that I’ve met and the connections that I’ve made truly are, I think, what pushes me to learn and better myself and just to continue with it.

Savanah: I love that. I love that. And I love that, aside from being a dental manager, you’re also an educator at a local, is it a school, an institute? What is that about?

Nicole: Yeah, so, it’s a certificate program and it’s actually held at our office. It doesn’t have anything to do with our office other than we just use the space, but we have students on the weekend who want to become a certified dental assistant.

So, we teach them entry level and they leave with their EFDA. It’s a 10-week program and it’s held every Saturday, and they leave here with their expanded functions certificate and they get to go out into the real world.

Savanah: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Being a dental manager, you’re also teaching on the weekends. Like kudos to you.

Well, I’m so excited you’re here today and I can’t wait to see what you have to present to all of our AADOM members. The floor is yours Nicole.

Nicole: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. So, let’s get started.

Learning How to Manage Everything All at Once

So, I’m going to be talking about how to manage everything all at once,  because we have all the time in the world, right?

Everybody thinks that as office managers, we are here to cater to you. Which, of course, in a sense, yes, that is part of our job. But, we have job duties of our own that we have to complete that we have to set aside actual time for.

So, I’m going to kind of give you guys some tips on how to create that time and to save yourself some time and really set up your schedule to where you can manage everything that you have to deal with.

But I want to start with a couple quotes from Jim, and he’s an author of motivational speech, an entrepreneur. But these two quotes really stick out to me and I’ve related to these quotes a lot in my office management year and a half that I’ve kind of been doing that. I used to be a dental assistant, which transitioned into clinical coordinator, now office manager.

So I haven’t been doing it too long, but I’ve learned a lot within that year and a half.

The Importance of Planning Your Day

So, the first one is: “Either run the day or the day runs you.”

If you do not have your schedule set up to where you know what you need to take head on that day, and you get sidetracked—you let the little tasks kind of take up your time, or you let the fires that you have to put out really take out your time—that day is going to run you and you are not going to get completed anything that you need to get completed.

I’ve learned that the hard way. I used to cater a lot to people in our office, and the reason being is because it’s easier for us to do it instead of taking that moment to say, “Okay, let me show you how it’s done. Let this be a teaching moment. I want you to learn from this and I want you to move forward with how to do it.”

I just say, “Okay, let me go do it real quick.” I can pause what I’m doing. I’ll go do it. Usually it takes a little bit longer than I, you know, predicted it to. Then I come back and I’m like, where did I leave off? And then the phones are ringing and whatnot.

So, plan your day accordingly. Prioritize your tasks because if you don’t, that day will run you.

Prioritize What Actually Needs to Get Done

The next quote that I like is: “Don’t confuse activity with productivity. One is noise, the other is music.”

We don’t want a lot of noise. Just because you’re doing things doesn’t mean that it’s important things that have to get done. Tou want to, again, prioritize your work. Stay active, but stay active of what you need to get completed, not just what makes you look busy.

That busy work, we’re going to learn—you can possibly start to delegate that to your team and can kind of hopefully set aside that time where you would be doing that busy work that you can actually sit down and focus on the payroll, the AR, the insurance checks, the stuff that you really have to focus your time on, to help build the business and to help, to help make sure that it’s a successful business and that it’s growing in the process.

Focus on Managing Each Day

So, the first thing is just managing the day.

Where do you even start?

There is so much that has to be done in the dental office, and as the office manager, you’re overseeing everything, every last bit of it, just to make sure that everything is running properly, that things are getting done that need to be done, that there are no accidents, no mistakes, you know? Making sure that everybody and everything is accounted for.

And it’s a lot! There is a lot on your plate and we all feel it. We feel the heat during the day.

So, take some time out of your day to help you prepare for the upcoming days ahead. Whether that be if you do it at the beginning of the day.

You take like the first 30 minutes of your day and you line out, you know, “Okay, I’m gonna start with sending claims from the prior day” or “I’m gonna start with my AR and I’m gonna call for balances first thing in the morning before people get to work” or “I’m gonna help the assistants real quick in the back with getting their scanners back up and running” or anything.

Just plan out the day to where you know priority as what’s the most important, then what can be the second most important, and then the third can be that busy work, like, “Okay, if I complete these first two tasks and these first two lists, I know I still have time during my day to start that busy work.

Or do it at the end of the day before your next day. You know, take 30 minutes at the end of the day so you know, “Okay, I know what’s coming tomorrow. I know what I have to face. I know I need to get a good night’s sleep. I need to eat my Wheaties. I need to be prepared for what’s ahead.”

But situated to where you know what you need to do that is the most important that has to be completed.

Time management is very difficult. I learned it the hard way. I was terrible when it came to time management. I did not know how to manage my time whatsoever.

I took courses on it and, you know, I’ve gotten things from different courses, but all in all, in the end, it was just me having to realize I cannot do everything. I am not superhuman.

As much as I would love to think that I am, I’m not. I cannot do it all. So I need to lean on my team.

You never know what the day is going to bring—ever. It can be you have all the time in the world because you don’t have anything going on. The next minute you have somebody in your office saying, “Oh my gosh. Our X-ray machine is not working. The systems are down. I don’t know how to get it back up and running. What do we do? We have to close the office.”

No, no. So, there are fires throughout the day that you’re going to have to put out. So, that’s going to have to be managed as well.

But if you can’t get your time management under control, how are you going to be able to manage everybody else’s time in the office. It’s going to be really difficult.

So, that’s the biggest thing today that I hope you get out of it is just some ideas to help you manage your time and how to prioritize your tasks.

You Have to Know Your Team’s Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the biggest things that I’ve learned that has helped me is knowing my team’s strengths and weaknesses.

The team that I’ve worked with is—we are very diverse when it comes to, there’s no barrier. So sometimes there’s barriers between the front office and the back office where the communication is not good at all.

But we have worked really hard to where our back office team, if we have an assistant that’s available, they’re cross-trained where they know that they can come into the phone if they see that the front’s busy or if somebody’s out that day. They can check people in and out. They know how to read ledgers. They know how to take payments.

So it helps us free up some time to where if we do have an available person in the back, whether it’s a hygienist or an assistant, they know that it’s okay to come up and help the front. Their heads aren’t going to get bitten off. It’s not going to be like a, “Oh, I’m higher than that type” or “I can’t do that. That’s not part of my job description.”

I hate that.

Honestly, in the end, if you can cross train—it doesn’t have to be everybody, but at least a couple people—it will definitely help alleviate some of that stress and that headache.

So, I know that we have, like, an assistant in the back who—we have an overflow assistant who kind of works both columns and helps flip rooms and whatnot. And if it’s a slower day and they really don’t have to do much, they’ll sit in the front and I’ll take one of my girls at the front to come help me with my AR or to come help me with my insurance checks.

So it’s like I have somebody cross-trained from the back who can help the front and somebody from the front who can help me with my financial coordinator position, which is great because having multiple people who know the different roles in the office—one, you understand like, “Okay, well that person’s just not up there sitting on their butt doing absolutely nothing,” right? You’re kind of getting a feel for what they have to do and seeing it from their shoes.

But then you have multiple people who are tackling certain tasks to get it done in a timely manner and quicker. And God forbid if somebody is out, you know? If you can’t find coverage or if somebody is sick or if somebody resigns unexpectedly. You have those people who can fill in where need be until you can get your team back where it needs to be.

So having the correct people in the proper positions definitely, definitely come in handy and it just makes sure—it just helps you make sure that you know that your practice, no matter what, is going to be handled properly and you have that trust in your team to where you know, like if somebody drops the ball, you have your team to help you pick it back up and keep it rolling, which is huge.

Keep These Helpful Tips in Mind

So, some helpful tips that we’re going to talk about. The first one is delegating tasks.

I laugh because I never used to do this and I learned this the hard way. But man, when I tell you when you let things go and you trust in your team and you take that time to actually coach and teach your team, it makes a world of a difference.

And then number two is blocking set time for administrative work. We need that set time.

Three: making lists.

Four: take breaks when you’re overwhelmed because that’s very important.

And five: always keeping a positive outlook and attitude.

The Art of Delegation

So, the first one that we’re going to talk about is delegating some tasks.

So, I’ve learned that there’s a difference between delegating and demanding. Delegating, in my mind is I have so much on my plate. I know that you’re capable of doing this. I need your assistance. I’m asking for help.

Demanding is, “I’m above you. You’re going to listen to me because I’m your leader and I’m dictating what you need to be doing and if you don’t do it, then we’re going to have a problem.”

You don’t want to be that type of leader. I’ve worked with leaders like that and it does not—you are going to get nowhere. Your practice is going to get run into the ground.

So, delegating—there’s a fine line. But I never, ever, ever, ever, like I said at the beginning, wanted to ask for help. I never wanted to show and teach people how to do something. If I knew how to do it, I just would rather just do it and get it done with, so I know it was done and it was done right.

But I’ve learned I’m human. I make a lot of mistakes. And on the daily basis I make mistakes. And having a team that you can trust and rely on is important because if I make a mistake, my team calls me out on it, but they help me fix it in the process.

So, knowing that if something is brought to my attention and I had to immediately drop everything that I was doing to go fix something, I don’t have to do that anymore. Now I have people in place where I have like a clinical coordinator to where instead of like little things that are happening in the back, instead of it coming directly to me, I have that person in place where they can go to that clinical coordinator.

And then if that person can’t find the answer, if that person doesn’t know how to do it, then they’ll come to me and we’ll work on it together.

But delegating tasks—it takes a lot of trust and it takes a lot of responsibility in your team.

If your team is not willing to do, you know, what’s expected, or if you ask them to do a task that they usually don’t do on the normal and they give you pushback, do you really want somebody working on your team like that who, when you ask them to do something, they’re like, “Ugh, really? You really want me to do this? And are you going to bump up my pay for today or what?”

Well, no, it’s, you know, we are a team. We have to, you know, sometimes make some compromises and we have to do some things we don’t like to do.

I mean, as office managers, we scrub the toilet, right? We do some, you know, we have to make appliances in the back in the lab sometimes and assist. You know, we have to do the dirty work too. And just because we have to do it, everybody has to know how to do it.

So, if you choose not to delegate the tasks, you’re really going to overload your plate. And when I say overwhelmed, you’re going to be burning your candle at both ends and one person can only do so much.

So, leaning on your team and really knowing how to delegate those tasks and having trust in your teammates is huge.

You have to, have to, have to, have to 100 percent be open to failure. Again, we are human. It happens.

But if you don’t know how to help your team learn from it and, and to continue moving and to continue growing from it, that’s where it’s going to be very difficult for you because you’re going to keep seeing the same repeated mistakes over and over again, or you’re going to have the same people who think, “Okay, well I was able to do this before, I’ll just get away with it again. And you know, slap on the hand, it is what it is.

You have to really emphasize, like, “Listen, this is what I need, this is how I need it to be done. I’m going to hold you accountable for it now that I’m delegating this to you, and I would like to see the results. If you have any questions, of course, come to me, but don’t be afraid of failure.”

You learn from your mistakes and nine times out of ten, those mistakes will not be made again.

Blocking Your Set Time

So, the second tip is blocking your set time.

So, administrative work, it takes up a large part of our time as office managers. And if we can, of course, continuously get interrupted, we’re never gonna get anything accomplished.

So, I like to set, I like to block a specific amount of time every day just for my uninterrupted work. So I’ll put a block on the schedule depending on what practice management system you use. We use Dentrix. I just put a block, like an event block on the schedule that says, “Nicole, administrative, uninterrupted time.”

I have a sign that I put on the door that says, “If you interrupt me, the building must be burning down. If you interrupt me and the building’s not burning down, then you’re gonna buy the whole team coffee.”

So sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. Most of the time I’ll have somebody come in and knock on the door and be like, “Hey, is everything okay?” Or “can I help you with anything?”

And I’m like, “Well, my door’s closed. Is this important or can it wait until, you know, 12 o’clock when I’m, when I’m back and my doors are open and I’m ready to help you with whatever you need?”

And most of the time it’s not important and they can either figure it out on their own or it can wait until I get done with my work.

But if you continuously get pulled and you’re not enforcing that this time needs to be interrupted, then your team will always, always come into your door and always barge in and just think, “Oh, well, the door is open. I’m good to go. She’s fine.”

Or the door is closed, but yeah, there’s a sign on it. But I’ve knocked before and she, you know, she helps me. She stops what she’s doing and she comes out and she helps me.

You need to enforce it. And if you realize that your team just still continues to not respect your uninterrupted time, maybe that time should be done outside of work. Go to a restaurant like Panera or something or work from home maybe for that time or, you know, go somewhere where you know that your time will not be interrupted by your team no matter what.

Things like payroll. You know, if you screw up your payroll because you got interrupted, that’s a big one.

Or if you’re posting checks wrong or if you don’t get the checks in that you need or, you know, it’s for the bank account to pay your bills or payroll. You know, it’s time that needs to be dedicated to you keeping your head down and doing what you need to do and really focusing your time on the tasks at hand.

As office managers, we multitask. That should be on everybody’s resume if it’s not. You, as an office manager, you are multitasking queens and kings. And if you can’t multitask, good luck, because you’re going to have to learn.

But it is something that when you are doing specific duties, you should not have to multitask. You need to focus on that time.

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Don’t Forget About To-Do Lists

The next one is to-do lists. I don’t know about you guys, but I love working off of lists. I like to write out my day, plan out my day, and then at the end of the day, you know, my post it pads—I literally have some right here. It’s just my, my little post it pads that I line out my day, I write down what I need to do, and I highlight it when it’s done.

And then at the end of the day, looking back at everything that I was able to accomplish—that’s really rewarding. And then there’s some days, on the other hand, where I’m like, “Oh my god, I only highlighted one thing. Where did my time go and what did I do with it, and how do I not let that happen again?”

So it’s a learning experience for sure, but lists come in handy.

I make myself daily lists, weekly lists, and monthly lists. And this is actually something that I’ve learned from AADOM.

But my daily lists are everything that I have to do in that day. Anything that has to be completed in that day.

My weekly lists also include my daily lists. But the weekly lists are like if payroll needs to be ran, if I approve time off requests a certain day of the week, or if I have to pay bills a certain day of the week—that’s my weekly list.

And then my monthly list kind of includes all of them. But it shows, you know, my monthly lists for me keeps me on track with what I need to do, but also with what the team needs to get done.

So, like, for assistance, if spore tests have to be mailed out, that’s on my monthly list. If, you know, vac tabs have to be changed, any monthly maintenances, stuff like that. So, I know I’m keeping myself on track, but I know who I actually have to hold accountable for everything else on that calendar and making sure that it’s getting done.

It’s my accountability calendar is what I like to call it, because if I don’t hold myself accountable, how can I hold everybody else accountable?

You’re not going to be able to, and then it’s just, stuff is not going to get done. So depending on the task at hand that needs to be completed, you can just create whatever list works best for you—calendar wise, whatever works best for you.

I just make mine on Word. They have a template, actually, that is a calendar, but without the dates, so you can fill in the dates and the year and whatever. And I just type in for the month, from month to month—my monthly tasks, my weekly tasks, and then my daily tasks.

And then I print it out and I have it on my wall and I know each day. I see it. It’s my calendar. I cross off the days and I know that everything’s done. I check it off and we’re good to go.

So it might be something that might help you. But depending on the size of your offices. Our office, it’s a pretty big office. We have about 22 people. But I like to give each department their own accountability calendars.

So, our front office has their own accountability calendar. Our dental assistants have their own, and our hygienists have their own.

I’ve started to work on the doctor’s accountability calendars, but I haven’t finished it yet. And we’ll see how they take that, but it’s a team effort. Everybody has to do it.

But when it comes to making their calendars, we have department meetings once a month. So, in those department meetings, you know, we bring what’s happening, you know, the positives, the negatives, the good, the bad. We bring, you know, results, and we take that time to work on these calendars to see if things need to be switched.

It gets the team hands on in creating their time frames and what they need to get done, knowing that, okay, this is good for us to learn from because it’s going to keep us on track as well. And then they’re getting hands on with it. So it makes it fun for the team, you know, you can make it fun for them.

But it just gets them involved so they know what needs to get done, when it needs to get done and who is that person that we go to. There’s a go to person in every department that I go to, to where if things aren’t getting done, I’m like, “Hey, what’s going on? It’s time to follow through and this isn’t done yet. What do we need to do to get there?”

And it just helps you stay on track to know what you need to get done in the process for the for the office.

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Ready to see the rest of this DISTINCTIONcast and elevate your skills?

Join AADOM now to access the full content and a world of resources. Your next big step is just a click away!

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Learn About the Presenter:

 

Nicole Sperone, MAADOM

Nicole is an Office Manager at Clermont Family Dentistry, with 8 years in the industry. Her passion started in Dental Assisting as she was an EFDA but soon learned her potential and grew in the industry.

She enjoys spending time with her family and helps students achieve their Dental Assistant Certificates while working at The Dental Education Institute on the weekends. Nicole is a proud member of the American Association of Dental Office Management and earned her AADOM Masterhip in 2024.