AADOM DISTINCTIONcast – Crowning Leadership: Harnessing Learning Styles to Build a Thriving Team
Course Description:
Exceptional leadership isn’t about “filling cavities” or applying quick fixes; it’s about building a solid foundation where your team can thrive. Understanding learning styles is the key to unlocking your team’s potential, enhancing communication, and creating harmony in your practice.
In this session, you’ll explore the “root cause” of team dynamics: how your learning style impacts your leadership and how to adapt to your team’s strengths. Is Sarah, your hands-on assistant, a “Doer” who thrives in action? Or is Jill, your steady hygienist, the “Problem Solver” who keeps her cool under pressure? By tailoring your leadership approach to match their learning styles, you’ll boost productivity and create a team that runs smoother than a freshly tuned handpiece.
Blending humor, hands-on strategies, and leadership tools, this session will leave you ready to inspire your team and drive results the moment you return to your practice.
Why watch?
Leadership isn’t just about managing, it’s about inspiring. Gain practical tools to close leadership gaps, reduce inefficiencies, and create a productive, collaborative team dynamic. Join us and crown your leadership with skills that will make your team and your practice smile!
Learning Objectives:
- Identify your learning style and how it influences your leadership approach.
- Learn techniques to uncover and adapt to your team members’ learning preferences.
- Explore strategies to boost team engagement, communication, and productivity.
- Address common challenges with practical, team-centered solutions.
- Walk away with actionable tools that will elevate your leadership game on Monday morning.
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Read the Transcript Now!
Chavelle: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for our DistinctionCast today. My name is Chavelle Galton-Rice, Director of Membership and Education here at AADOM.
We have a very knowledgeable speaker that will empower you to unlocking your team’s potential, enhancing communication and creating harmony in your practice. She’s gonna help us explore the root cause of team dynamics, how your learning style impacts your leadership, and how to adapt to your team strengths.
It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Joanne Miles. She’s a dynamic force in dental practice growth, often described as the Swiss Army knife of dentistry for her versatile expertise and innovative solutions.
With decades of experience helping practices nationwide, Joanne has mastered the art of guiding dental teams towards success, whether they’re launching a startup or scaling a multi-practice organization. Joanne is passionate about transforming dental practices by focusing on the pillars of success: team engagement, patient experience, leadership development, and operational excellence.
Her proven methods empower dentists and their teams to grow with confidence, staying aligned with their core value and purpose. A champion for elevating others, Joanne believes that the most successful practices thrive not only on numbers, but on full connections and a commitment to excellence. Let’s give a warm AADOM welcome to Joanne Miles.
Leadership Starts with Learning Styles
Joanne: Thank you for having me today. I’m so excited and I’m gonna jump right into probably one of my passionate topics today, which is leadership, which is a big, big word with lots of things underneath it. And today we’re gonna be talking about learning styles.
And the biggest leadership mistake isn’t the lack of knowledge. It’s assuming everyone learns and works in the same way we do.
So, what if instead of fighting those differences, you could use them to bring out the best in your team. That’s what we’re gonna be diving into to today.
Learning Styles vs. Preferences: Understanding the Difference
And the first area I always like to talk about is what comes to mind when you think about or hear what a learning style is. A lot of times people when they’ve heard about learning styles, they think of, “Well, I’m a visual learner” or “an esthetic learner,” or “I’m an auditory learner.”
But science tells us that that’s not really a style, but more of a preference, and that everybody seems to have some pieces of all of that to one degree or another.
An example is you can’t really learn how to sing a song without hearing it first, you know? So that’s a very specific way of how you’re going to learn. It’s an auditory way of learning.
We’ve all learned the cliche is: how do you learn not to touch a hot stove? By touching at once? So that’s that experiential, the tactile learning.
This is different from learning styles and this is what we’re gonna be learning today and getting into today, and sort of creating the distinction.
A lot of the tools I’m gonna be giving you is, I’m gonna give you hands on today. So, the first part, we’re gonna kind of lay the foundations of why this is important, what the distinctions are. And then I’m actually gonna simulate what you’re going to actually do with your team.
So, you’ll be able to go back with your team and simulate the assessment with all of your team, have them actually take this assessment. And then I will give you all the tools that you’ll need to not only run an all team meeting and have fun with this, but also have follow up meetings with your team to really customize how each individual person learns.
Building a Culture of Learning in Your Practice
So, building learning into everyday work, why is this important? First, we need to talk about what the benefits are of learning and infusing that into everything that you’re doing in your practice.
So, what does it mean to do that?
This is really about finding out what’s most important to each individual team member. This is about learning every day.
The company culture is the primary factor in determining the extent and the variety of learning that takes place. The culture and the environment truly sets the stage for how well people learn, how well they’re engaged in the process and if they’re having fun. And then not only that, they’re retaining the information.
Of all positions, the manager that is the leader—you have the biggest impact on creating that learning environment. And managers do have the responsibility as coaches, and you’ll hear me often use the word “coaching,” cause that is what you’re doing. You’re helping and you’re developing and you’re coaching your team.
So, you have the responsibility of transferring knowledge and experience to benefit the employees. Depending on their needs and responsibilities and interests, that’s kind of where you have to adapt and that’s what we’re gonna get into today and what that means.
People have very different learning styles. And then working with your team to identifying what those are is a big part of how you adapt the experience to each individual style of learning.
So, a manager doesn’t always have to be the expert. This is something that I had learned along my leadership journey. I always felt like I had to know everything, and that’s actually not true. You don’t have to be an expert. But what you do have to be is be able to ask great questions and to help this team determine the best course of action for themselves.
So, I’m very curious how often many of you have felt kind of like this at work? I can tell you I have
And that’s what today is about. We’re gonna try to just keep you from doing the little paw boxing back and forth with each other.
Why Coaching Matters
So, first I wanna go into some of the statistics of why coaching your team is so important. And a lot of these next few statistics are gonna be quite eye-opening for some of you. And some of you’re gonna be like, “Yep, I’m ahead of the game. I know this already.”
So, what percentage of all critical work skills are acquired on the job? Well, believe it or not, it’s pretty darn high. It’s 80%.
People learn through experience and learning at work. So, we need to be able to enable the learning to happen on the job.
Think of your office as a learning lab. Great team members are hard to find. So, this is about investing in your team.
Often when I’m working with clients, I will, you know, kind of hear a statement of like, “Well, say an assistant is struggling with how long it takes ’em to make it temporary.” And they’re like, and I’ll hear, “Well, we showed them.”
And it’s like, and then I’ll ask, “Well, how many times did you ask how they learn? Do they need to do a tell-show-do?”
So, much—80% of all critical skills are acquired on the job. So, having an actual training and shadowing and tell-show-do and then reinforcing is very important to the overall performance of your team.
Why Feedback is Essential for Team Performance
The next question is: What is the estimated percentage of non-performance problems in business because of lack of feedback?
And, believe it or not, it’s over—it’s about 50%.
So, employees who are not performing well often lack honest feedback. They’re not being told in a, I would say, constructive way, also, that, “Hey, what you’re doing isn’t working.”
Again, I’ll hear this as a common theme of, “Well, they’re not doing this” or “they’re not doing that.”
And I might ask, “Well, do they have a job description? Are they even aware that this is what is required in their role, and they’re not getting regular feedback where you’re doing some check-ins, particularly in that first 90 days when you’re ramping them up?”
Are you doing a quick, maybe end of week, 15-minute check-in with the team member to see like, “Okay, what’s worked? What were the things you were working on this week? What are some of the things we need to carry over into next week? What tools do you feel are missing for you to be able to succeed in your role?”
Again, did you hear? These are all questions.
So, like I said, that the manager doesn’t need to be the expert in the topic. It’s about asking great questions and then providing the environment and the tools for those people to succeed.
People value coaching and being able to provide that honest correction that is, I would say, there’s a kindness to it in the sense of that there’s grace and that you want them to succeed and they can feel like you want them to succeed.
Learning Happens on the Job
One of the next ones is: What percentage of employees need to do their jobs comes from informal learning opportunities?
And this is another kind of big eye-opener, is 70% of what employees need to do, learn and do on their jobs, comes from those informal opportunities of learning.
So, although formal training is important, and we all should be doing it to some degree, it’s really the informal, day-to-day learning, that can really advance a person’s capabilities.
Coaches have a major role in this. Managers have a major role in this. This is what I like to call: just-in-time coaching.
So, you’re on your feet. You might be hearing something and you wait for the right time. Obviously, you never want to interrupt in the middle of a patient unless that team member is about to like drive off a cliff or something.
But, you know, you take ’em aside. You make them feel supported and you give them that feedback.
Employees Value Coaching and Development
Another great question to ask, particularly actually in the interview process, is: how do you like to receive feedback? ’cause everybody likes to receive it in different manners as well. And if you’re able to give the feedback into the space with which they listen best to, that’s gonna give you some far more success.
And the next area of why this is so important is when someone takes an interest, and helping them do their job better, what percentage of workers believe that on the job coaching is an important developmental tool that improves their performance?
I don’t think you’re gonna be shocked by this ’cause it’s pretty darn high.
90%.
Really, the bottom line is that people value coaching. They value being invested in. They want to know that you value what they bring to the table and that you’re willing to take the time and the energy and sometimes often the expense to invest in their development. That’s what’s gonna keep employees around and keep them engaged and taking great care of your patients.
So, this overall, is one of the key areas that’s gonna help your team perform and improve. But it does take time and it takes time to learn how each person works and how they learn together.
So, this is, again, this is about creating a proactive environment. And I use the word coaching again as interchangeable with leadership and management, because you, as a leader, have the greatest influence and the ability to create that type of environment in your practice.
It doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not a happenstance thing. This takes planning and this takes time where you’re building this in and it becomes a muscle for yourself to develop.
And, as I said, again, the key word is “coaching.” It’s being there, side by side with your team, lifting them up, helping them discover their own brilliance. It might sound a little outdated, but, you know, while knowledge is really important, again, remember that statistic.
It’s that informal, on the job learning. So, it’s that just-in-time coaching that is so important.
And then you want to help enable the others. You wanna be able to enable them and highlight what’s most important in their role to help them succeed.
And so that means by creating opportunities. Sometimes it’s shadowing in the beginning and then having them do the work. So, physically go through the steps while you shadow.
And then you almost have them go ahead and do it while you’re just from afar and let them stumble. Let them learn from their mistakes. There’s a lot of grace that’s involved in this process. No one comes outta the womb doing this stuff perfectly.
But, what I can guarantee you is that if you adapt your ability to train and to coach your team to their individual learning styles, then what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna get this team that’s going to be dancing down the runway, down the hallways, doing their thing, and they’re the little break dance along the way. And it’s a beautiful thing.
The 3 Pillars of Adult Learning for Effective Coaching
So, I’m not gonna go deep into adult learning, but I do want to talk about the three main pillars of adult learning.
As coaches, we can’t teach the same way we coach children. So, the main three foundational areas of adult learning is the Andragogy, it’s the hands on workshop style learning that adults do best with.
They need to understand the why. Why is this important? Why do I need to know this, and why do I need to do it this way, versus why do I need to not do it another way?
A lot of times we learn by consequences as well. So, it’s the why of both sides. What’s in it for me? Why is this important to my role? How is this gonna make me more effective? How is this gonna help me succeed? And how is it re relevant to my success? And also, I would also add: how is this relevant to the overall team’s success?
The other next area is for adult learning is Experiential Learning. It has to make sense to us. So, this is really the hands-on, this is where the learning actually happens.
An example could be role-playing or using the word practicing those treatment conversations, the case presentations.
A new dental assistant—this is where the, you have that peer learning where the dental assistant is doing the work and then they’re getting feedback on the work. So, there’s hands-on.
Um, it’s also important to cross-train a lot of times if the team is well cross-trained, then they have a better understanding of each person’s role and they know how to be able to just support each other.
And then there’s that Transformational Learning piece of it. That’s often called that aha moment, the light bulb that goes on.
And, you know, an example of this, I find often is a lot of people are very shy about having those financial conversations, about asking for money, because their frame of mind is like, they feel like, “Well, I just feel like a salesperson,” or “I’m just having to ask for money.”
But if you can reframe it to have them realize that you’re helping patients get access to care that they deserve and that they need, and that you’re not a salesperson. You’re a patient advocate. You’re here advocating for what’s best for the patient, and you’re putting yourselves like put like your family member in their shoes. Like, what would you do for your family? And a lot of times that discovery and that shift mindset shift is a transformational level of learning for them, cause I get that they’ve, all of a sudden they find the courage to kind of jump and just practice and try.
So, those are the three areas of adult learning that are very important to keep in mind when you’re talking with your team.
So, let’s shift a little bit. I’m gonna give you some coaching tips and then and then we’re gonna shift into kind of a simulation of what the tools that I’m going to be giving you and how you’re gonna be implementing them and using them with your team.
Coaching Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All
Coaching tips for managers. This is not a one size fits all. I wish I could tell you that it was, and unfortunately—whon-whon—it’s not.
This is where you adapt to each of your team’s learning styles. You have to allow, you know, room for trial and error. And then with time, give them time to try it. They might fail. Sit down and talk about the process. Provide feedback and provide that safe area, that safe place for them to make those mistakes and to try again.
Often a lot of team members, I’ve seen this, they’ll just shut down ’cause they all of a sudden are on eggshells because they feel like they can’t make a mistake. And, all of us have made mistakes along the way. I’ve probably learned some of my hardest managing, managerial and leadership lessons were from the mistake where I just fell flat on my face.
So, it’s important to create that space for the team. And then you’re gonna find that balance between challenging somebody and then allowing them to figure it out themselves.
Anybody who’s a parent knows this challenge, or you kinda wanna let your kids free and make the mistakes and fall, and then they wanna protect them with bubble wrap. So, it’s finding that balance.
And you’ll often hear, I use a phrase called: Progress, not perfection. Because this isn’t about perfection. It’s about excellence, and it’s about making progress along the way.
So, give grace. Learning takes time. It’s a process. And I realize that often in the dental office, especially with the changes and teen dynamics and finding good team members, you feel like you don’t have the time for it. But, trust me.
Investing and giving this amount of time and space—it’s going to accelerate the growth and accelerate the culture and really the overall team dynamics in the long run.
What Learning Styles Really Are
We talked about what learning styles are not. Now we’re gonna shift into what we’re gonna be talking about today.
So, here is where we’re gonna talk about. There’s an actual scientific study that was done and learning styles is the way an individual prefers to absorb, process, and act upon the in information and experiences.
And this came from, uh, a Kolby learning theory that was done in 1984 and it was updated and reintroduced in 2015 and, and kind of refined again. So, there’s a lot of scientific studies and proof that are gonna be coming out of this particular assessment that I’m gonna be introducing you to today and then how to kind of deploy it, if you will, with your team.
Chavelle: Hey Joanne. So, I know you mentioned earlier that 70% of the learning that team members do are informal opportunities, or what you call just-in-time coaching. Do you find that team members don’t see that as actual training?
The reason I ask is because there’s, you know, offices that I know I’ve worked in, you know, as a manager in the past where team members say, “Why I was never trained to do that?” And all of those informal coaching is training.
How would you get team members to understand, or I guess what would be the tone to set from day one that new hires know, “Hey, every single time I tell you something, that is training?”
Joanne: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. And that goes to the heart of not only the interviewing process. Like I said, that during the interviewing process, a lot of, I often asked people that I interview, first of all, how do you learn?
And they may not have the exact answer, and I would be giving them this assessment anyway. But it’s an interesting question because it allows you to kind of see if they have some self-awareness to that.
And then number two, during the interviewing process as well, and then the subsequent onboarding process, that’s the time where you’re going to be reviewing the culture and the learning culture and development of the practice.
And so, one of the things that you could say is—a lot of our clients hat I have, you know, they’re in coaching and so they’ll say, “You know, we are very much, our culture is one of learning and development. We kind of believe that we don’t know everything always. We’re always gonna be striving to do better. And so, we wanna know that you’re comfortable with getting feedback and coaching.”
And some of that can and will look like what we call just-in-time coaching. I’ll never, you have my promise, I’m not gonna undermine you in front of patients. I’ll never make you feel less than in front of the team. But there might be times where I might be listening outside the operatory to how your new patient exam is going. And then I might provide you some coaching later.
That’s all part of our training process. So, it’s just laying out the expectations and having both sides sort of have an agreed upon course of action moving forward with those levels of agreement. And then understanding of how we operate. Does that help?
Chavelle: It does. A follow up question to that would be: Do you find that a lot of practices have formal type of training outlines that they follow to ensure that, you know, like you said, team members are set up for success?
Sometimes I think that, you know, when we have a new hire, people get thrown in and there’s not necessarily a guideline or a checklist of these are all the different things that you need to learn of how we do things.
Do you find that more in multi-location practices or larger organizations versus private practice?
Joanne: Yeah, so having lived in both worlds in my career, I’ve been in the large DSOs and I’ve been in many, you know, private practices and of all types of specialties. So, I can say one of the benefits to some of the really well-run DSOs, we’ll just say, their training is stellar. And you kind of wish you could just pick that up and plop it into a single unit private practice.
But what I can say is that that level of coaching is obtainable for the private practice, and it is something that I would highly recommend that every office strives for. It’s interesting because you think about, like you just talked about, Chavelle, throwing somebody in.
Like you hire an admin that day and you’re asking them to answer the phone in the first hour. Yet they don’t even know your scheduling protocols. They don’t know, you know, like, do you place implants there or not? Like, did you have a specialist that comes in?
You know, and so you’re trusting them with honestly the biggest first impression, but yet you haven’t taken the time to train them on that yet.
And again, this comes back to does this take time?
Yes.
Should you have a formal checklist: week one, these are the things that you’re gonna be doing in training week two. This is what it is. Like it should be broken down to that level.
And,your team can help you build those things, particularly the team members that have been there. And you’ll see when we get to doing the assessment, and then the exercise that I’m gonna teach you to do with your team as part of the all team meeting, believe it or not, that’s going to help you build this very structured way of training all the different positions and roles in your office.
Does that help?
Chavelle: Yes, it does. Thank you. I’m so excited to see this next part. Oh, go ahead.
Joanne: Yeah, yeah. When I say I have a lot of resources at the end of this, I have a—I mean, I’m giving you kind of the silver platter right now of developing your team.
So, this first QR code, it will be repeated again. What I only want you to focus on right now is there’s a download for a learning assessment tool that’s right underneath my picture. That’s the only one right at this point that would be good for you to at least look at.
You don’t necessarily have to do it right now, but I do recommend that you obviously do your own assessment first, so you know how you learn and you’re gonna understand why that’s really important here coming up soon.
Understanding the 4 Learning Styles and How They Work
Once the assessment is complete, you’re gonna kind of map out your—it almost looks like a kite. And each quadrant is a particular learning style.
Now, as I said before, you know, we all have, we’re all gonna have some form of how we learn in all quadrants, but there’s going to be a dominant one, and that’s like in this particular outline, once you’ll see, this is the dominant learning style, and we’re gonna go over what each one is.
So we’re gonna go ahead and look at the differences and kind of talk about the different accesses about the learning style. So, what we, what I showed you before is kind of the kite that you draw, and this is sort of the overlay of the quadrants.
So, the four different learning styles is you have a Doer, the Brainstormer, the Problem Solver, and the Integrator.
And on the vertical access that represents how you process data. Some prefer to learn facts and are very metric bottom-line driven. So, some people, if you’re more say down here where that example was, the person was a problem solver, they are kind of like, I need to know the facts. And I’m kind of less about feelings. I’m more about just gimme the facts, ma’am, and I’m just gonna go ahead and either reflect or take action on it, depending on which side you fall on that.
Other people do really care about feelings. They’re kind of more gut driven. They kind of go off of their intuition. And you’ll hear that some people will fall more into that feeling side. And often you’ll hear, and I fall kind of more up here just as a spoiler alert, I’m a doer. That is my dominant side.
And so, you’ll often hear me say, “It just feels right or I kind of just, it’s a gut check. It’s my experience has taught me.” So, I am more of, I’m action and I’m kind of go off of experience and feelings. Although I really do love data, just as a side note.
So, those are the two accesses: feelings and data. That’s the one side and then the horizontal. This is about how we reflect or if we go straight into action.
So, on that side, we get to see on the firsthand we, this is about how we think and how we learn. And before we kind of are moving forward, some people need to do a lot of reflection and some people are like off the starting gate, 0 to 60 in 2 seconds.
And a lot of these different, and these are all gonna have some complimentary. So, we may compliment each other or we may be have kind of this antagonistic feel to it. And I’m gonna go into some of that and give some fun analogies, and how you’re gonna play this out with your team.
So, the goal now is that you have, not only have you taken this assessment, but everyone in your practice, including your doctors, are taking this assessment.
How to Run a Fun, Interactive Learning Styles Team Workshop
And so now I’m gonna kind of shift us into laying the foundation and why all this is important. And now we’re gonna get tactile, and I’m gonna go into how you’re going to conduct this as an all team meeting with your team.
And one of the handouts I’m gonna give you is, um, kind of a scripting, if you will. You’ll see I have it, it’s hard to see it here, but there’s gonna be kind of a scripting that goes along with these slides that you can use. And this is where you get to have some fun. This is where you wanna bring some humor into the, into the group.
So, I like to always at this point of the exercise is I like to talk about with the team, you’re gonna probably have ’em, most of you conduct your meetings in your reception area or you might have a really large meeting room in your practice.
And so, everyone will have done their assessment. They’re gonna bring it with them to the team meeting.
And then what I would recommend you do is, you kind of wanna be in a little bit of a larger room. You’re going to want to have those big post-it sticky notes. So, you’ll have one or two up in each of the quadrants, cause you’re gonna break your team into their learning styles.
And so you’re gonna break ’em up into the four corners of the room and you’re gonna stick your doers over on probably the—over on the upper left side of the room. You’re gonna put your brainstormers in one corner. Your integrators in another corner. And your problem solvers in the other corner.
And, then what I would recommend you do is this is where you have some fun with the team. And I’m gonna give you the scripting and I’m gonna read it to you just so you can kind of see what I’m talking about, about having fun.
So now you’ve broken your team up and you get to have let everybody kind of take a look at each other. Where do they fall?
And extra bonus points. If you really wanna have fun with this, you can maybe find some kind of a fun tchotchke prop for each of them that they can wear. So, example, like, your doers are generally like your Speedy Gonzalez’s. They are the ones that just wanna get things done. Or you could call them like your busy bees, and so maybe you can get the little headbands with the little bee things on it.
You can figure, you can go ahead and assign something fun, little tchotchke for each one that they can be wearing that, and have fun with this.
So, what I would do is with my doers is this is when I start really introducing to them, “Okay, what are my doers? My do doers are all about feelings and action.”
The front desk coordinator who jumps into the new patient script immediately after hearing about it once, no training needed, they already are using the phones and then, you know, using your scripting and your phones in that next call. They’ll try any idea real time. And their motto is, “Why wait? Let’s just do it!”
And then usually what will happen is after you read that, your doers will be like, “Yep, that’s me.” And then the rest of the team will be kind of making fun of them or just laughing it off.
And then you would go to your brainstormers. You’re gonna tell them, like, “Look, brainstormers. You guys are all about feelings and reflection.”
And then you might wanna give them an example of like the hygienist who keeps saying, “What if we offered whitening in a subscription box or maybe a TikTok series on floss?”
They love to generate ideas and staff meetings can go—they’ll talk about blue sky possibilities. Their sticky notes cover their the break room or cover their operatory. They’re always writing things down. They love the sticky notes and their motto is, “No idea is too wild. Let’s just imagine.” So, they’re kind of that dreamer, the brainstormers.
Then you’ve got your integrators. Those are your facts and your reflections. And you could say something like, “The office manager who won’t move forward until they’ve cross checked the CDT codes, updated the procedural manual and built the spreadsheet with color coded tabs.”
And the funny thing is, when I’ve done this in a workshop and I turned to the integrators and I said that, they’re all nodding—yes. They’re all like, “Yep, that’s what we do.”
If there’s a new piece of technology, the integrator, they’ve read the manual from cover to cover and they’ve already created the policy before anyone’s even plugged the machine in.
And their motto is, “Let’s pause until we fully understand the system and have a flow chart before we move forward.” And that’s the personality of your integrator.
And then the problem solver—facts and action. This is, it could be your lead assistant who, when the autoclave breaks midday, they’re already Googling the answer to fix it. They’re calling the supplier rep before anyone even finishes panicking about it.
The problem solvers love efficiency. They’ll often, you’ll hear, we can see two patients at once. We just need to rearrange a schedule like this. No problem. Their motto is: “Just don’t stand there. Let’s fix it.”
So, when you’re at this point in the team meeting, take the time to have some fun. Take the time to go through this and don’t feel like it’s okay to have the pieces of paper here to read the script. Have fun with this with your team. That’s what’s most important at this stage of the exercise.
Once you’ve gone through this piece and everybody kind of understands the differences between each of the learning styles, now you’re gonna actually introduce an activity to them. And this is kind of the area where I was saying with Chavelle, that you’ll actually be setting up, you could actually set up some future training protocols for each role.
So, what I would recommend doing is go ahead and have their broken up into their groups. They have a bunch of pens. And then you have those big post-it posters on the walls. And you’re gonna have each group write out a training program that is specific to how they like to learn.
So, you may say to the doers, “Okay, I want you to create a training program for a new dental assistant coming into the practice.”
And you may turn to the brainstormers and say, “I would like you to create a training program for hygienists.
Then I would have one doing something for an admin or maybe an insurance coordinator, and maybe the other one for a treatment coordinator. You guys can, you can decide how you wanna break it up. But you actually want them to go through the exercise of creating a training program based on how they learn. Okay.
And then give them the time to do this. And this is what’s really interesting, and I have, again, another handout sheet of what to look for while they’re going through this.
It’s quite interesting. I haven’t done this. I haven’t had a time where this outcome didn’t happen. Generally, the doers are gonna finish first. It’s just funny ’cause again, remember there are ) to 60 in like 2 seconds. They’re the ones that are gonna jump in.
What we’ll often find is that the integrators are usually last because they like to discuss everything on the list first. Like they’ll actually make a list and then they’ll all talk about the list and then they’ll reprioritize the list.
Like, it’s just, it’s very interesting ’cause you get to see the how the each way people learn those styles actually start coming out. So, it’s fun to watch this and then it’s fun to point this out.
And then you’ll do a debrief. What I typically like to do is once everyone has had the time to create their training program and, you know, I would say 10, 15 minutes maybe. But, be watching, kind of walk around and see what’s what everyone’s doing.
And then, once you kind of see like most of the steam is run out, then you’d stop it and then move on, and then start your debrief.
What I like to do first is I’m gonna ask each group to give us their process. List what it was, what was behind it, why is that important, why is that important to the way you learn? So, you’re gonna let each group explain their method of how they would do that training program.
And then what you’re gonna do is you’ll ask one of the first questions. And again, you don’t have to memorize these, I’ve got them all there for you. What differences did you notice in how each of the four styles approach the task?
So this is very important to kind of be able to do. Like the doers engaged with a lot of activity. The Brainstormers might have spent a lot of time getting everyone’s ideas first and exchanging ideas and gathering and discussing with as a group, because brainstormers really love to have collective opinions.
Integrators, they’ve studied the company policy. They’ve know the mission statement. Like they just, like, they’re very big picture before you ever get any action out of them.
And the problem solvers tend to just kind of review the job description, create the tasks, and make the assignments, right?
So you’ll start to see some of those traits come out.
And then you can say, “Now, as a team and as we are here to help coach each other.” Because everybody’s there to help each other train. “How does this, identifying this in each other, help us better as a team and help us with training, all of our training programs?”
And then what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna start seeing some ideas pop. And this is another area where you see the manager doesn’t always have to have all the answers. The answers are gonna be in the room just through doing this training.
And then you can go through, there’s some other things that I have queued you to say on this list. But this will be, we’ll walk you through the entire debrief and help them really see and observe with each other, why sometimes you’re gonna have that antagonistic group that they don’t play well together. And that’s this kind of this next area, which is the coaching challenges.
When Learning Styles Clash: Coaching Challenges Explained
And again, I’m gonna give you this sheet so you can, this is another area where you can have fun.
So one of the things is I like to talk about is that I’ll ask the group, “What style do you think most likely you’re gonna have the most difficult time coaching?” And the answer is, it’s the person that’s diagonal to your own.
So, an example, doers and integrators are gonna clash unless you have that awareness upfront. And that’s why this is such a great exercise because you’re going to be able to see this in living color, in real time, with the team gets to see each other and what corners they are, what type of the learners they are.
And so, I love to have a little fun with them. And so, like the doers and integrators, I’ll give them a scenario and say something like, “The doer wants to roll out the new scheduling template today because it just feels right.”
And the integrator insists that they need two committee meetings, a policy draft, and a full day workshop before we can make any changes whatsoever.
And the results are the doers, they say, “You’re wasting time talking.” And how many times are we gonna hear that from some of our team members?
And then the integrators are gonna say, “We’re wasting time doing the thing wrong.” So you see how there’s that antagonistic, they just are gonna butt heads.
And so the humorous angle, you, this is where it’s important to bring humor: show them that the two coworkers trying to put, you know, like I, this is my examples, like two coworkers. You put a doer and an integrator together and ask them to put together some IKEA furniture. That will be very interesting.
One’s gonna start hammering the pieces together while the other is insisting on reading every single line in the instruction manual. So, you’re gonna step through this with the brainstormers and the problem solvers. Those two are going to be the most challenging in working together, also in helping each other learn. And often a lot of this is also how we communicate with each other too.
So the brainstormers want to discuss 10 creative ways that we can make our waiting room more fun, like an aquarium or karaoke corner or therapy goes. And the problem solvers, “Okay, which one are we actually going to buy? And how much will it cost?” Right? And so you get to see the differences in that and you get to go through that.
Lead From the Floor: Adapting to Every Learning Style
And then the key points as we kind of wrap this up is that managers—the most important thing is to be on your feet.
Manage on your feet. This is about presence over paperwork. Don’t walk yourselves in the office because that’s when you’re gonna have those, you’re gonna be creating that environment for that informal learning that just-in-time coaching that happens.
Find a way to build into your day, to manage your time where you’re on your feet in the morning, midday and afternoon, and you’re kind of walking the clinic floor, walking the office, helping your team members.
And you have the biggest influence in creating the culture and the learning environment. Please don’t forget that. You have so much impact and influence on your team and in an environment.
And this is your time to be able to transfer your knowledge and experience to benefit your team. Teresa Duncan often has said, “Leave the ladder down.” This is about lighting the path forward for your team members.
Let them learn from your mistakes. Share that you’ve made mistakes, you know, humanize yourself. Have them see that you understand you’ve been in their shoes. You know the walk that they’re walking. You know what you’re asking of them.
And I remember that this is where the big thing is, is that you have to avoid your bias. So, this is about adapting to others’ learning styles.
So, I’m a doer, but if I’m working with somebody who’s a brainstormer, they’re not gonna learn the way I learn. And it’s gonna be my job to adapt, to teach them how they learn, and to adapt the entire training, training of what works best for them.
Chavelle: I have a question for you. So, I know you had mentioned that doers and integrators clash and then brainstormers and problem solvers clash.
But, what if you actually have a team that’s all doers? Like what if you don’t have a good mix of, you know, all four learning styles? You know, what’s kind of, I guess the—could there be consequences to not having a little bit of all four in your practice?
Joanne: I mean, there can be if you’re not aware of it, right? So, it’s important for, let’s just say you have a smaller team, right? And you might have a mixture of doers and integrators, but you don’t have a brainstormer.
It’s important for them to know what that brainstormer brings to the table and how they think and how they learn, because I believe that there’s strength in that diversity. There’s strength in having that different talent. And so, this is about, again, the manager then, is going to bring maybe some of that to the table and augment with the team.
I mean, people, their dominant learning style is their dominant learning style. You’re, that would be like swimming upstream, you know, like, or against, you know, the current.
So, you’re not gonna, you don’t wanna try to change some of your team members just to have some balance there. But this could be when it’s time to hire the next person, you can have them take this assessment.
Now, it shouldn’t be your sole reason for hiring or not hiring a person. It’s just a tool, right? Because, the other piece of this I will say is that again, you remember, if we go back to that kite. You might have a team member that maybe doer is their dominant, but two other learning styles are just like barely a close second.
And so, they can help you adapt to creating a training that might be more conducive to the integrator or the problem solver if you don’t have one there and you know you’re gonna be hiring somebody and bringing them on, and that’s their learning style.
So, I would say if you have a larger like six, maybe five to six or more team members, odds are you’re probably have multi-categories. But, it is kind of interesting to your point. Like I think about a team that is like all doers. Wow! Talk about it all day long.
Chavelle: Yeah. And that’s—it’s interesting because there may be teams like that. Like I can see where you said that the integrators, you know, finish that activity last and then you think, “Okay, we have, you know, all these different ideas, but then no execution.”
So, it’s like, okay, you know, is it because we lack doers or, you know, because they have more integrators? And so, it’s interesting to think of, you know, it’s almost kind of like personality trait. You know, type of assessments as well.
Just, you know, like where people’s strengths are and that also seeing like, “Okay, why can’t we ever get anything done around here?” Or, you know, why…
Joanne: Yeah. And that could be just, you know, honestly for the team that maybe is smaller or you have everybody kind of huddled into one area, that just doing this exercise with the team could be a monumental discovery all on its own of like, “Oh my gosh! We aren’t, as, you know, we really don’t have the diversity of learning styles and communication styles like we thought we did. And hey, now we know why we have these challenges.”
And then just shining a light on that is going to help the do like, so let’s just say if they’re doers, we’ll stick with that. It’s gonna have the doers figure out a way to fix it. They’re gonna wanna. They are gonna try to find a solution for that.
Chavelle: That’s great. Thank you.
Unlocking Your Team Through Learning Styles
Joanne: Yeah. Because at the end of the day, and we’re wrapping this up, is, this isn’t about changing your team.
You can’t change them. This is about unlocking your team. This is a powerful tool and this is the ability to truly unlock your team.
I’ve seen teams that maybe had some contention, and I would say some culture issues, if you will. And this exercise alone is almost this—this is experiential learning by the way, in action, because there are many aha’s in that moment, because now you get to see like, “Oh, maybe the reason why I can’t seem to ever communicate, or this person doesn’t seem to ever listen to me, is because we’re kind of on the opposite ends of the spectrum and we’re, I’m speaking Spanish and they’re speaking Italian, so to speak.”
We’re not even speaking the same language. But now knowing that I could adapt to help them and they can adapt to help me, just that alone will shift the culture of the practice.
Tools to Implement and Elevate Your Team
So, the next steps, what are you gonna do?
In a minute, I’m gonna show you that QR code again. You’ll scan the code. I would recommend watching this webinar over again. I’m sure you’ll get the recording. Make sure you can do any kind of screenshots.
If you wanna reuse any of these slides, you can, for your own presentation. Adapt it to again, your style and your voice, your authenticity. And, one of the things that, as far as the tools are concerned that I’m gonna give you is, I’m gonna be giving you the assessment obviously.
And then there’s gonna be a kind of a coaching form on how to be a thinking partner with each individual team member to kind of create their own training program and to create their own growth program as well.
So, how to sit down, what great questions to ask people to help them think through the best way for them to learn and to develop and grow. There’ll be also a job aid on just some core coaching practices.
There’ll also be a job aid in there on how to create a lesson plan. So, once we know what we need to do, this is how to create the lesson plan for the learning.
And then there’ll be kind of an employee learning tactical guide. So, this is gonna give you the tactics of how to deploy all of this. Those three sheets that I told you about for those three slides. This kind of the scripting on how to do the exercise, all the notes will be in there.
There’ll also be what I call a W3 form, which is, the who, what, and when. So who’s gonna do what and by when, and you know what the goal is, so you have some measurable goals, so you can create, so you can check back in again.
And then there’s also a worksheet on how to kind of the introduction to the lesson plan and the conversations that you’ll have once all the discovery has been done.
So, all of that is, um, in this QR code as well, which is a little bit farther down. You’ll fill out your information and then you’ll be able to download all of that information.
Chavelle: Thank you much.
Joanne: Any questions?
Chavelle: No, actually, you know, you answered the questions that I have and I know you gave us a lot of information. And honestly, the resources alone that you’re gonna be giving the people watching this is honestly so valuable.
I have a background in education and everything that you are providing is all things that, like I learned in my master’s degree program. So, like, this is so valuable and beneficial, I think, to our managers, you know, that you know, need kind of that guidance of like how to, like, you said, partner, be a thinking partner with their team members.
And elevating them as well, you know, to be a part of something, whether it’s creating training programs and things for their office, I think is so valuable. And, for everyone watching this, please make sure that you scan the QR code and download the resources.
I took a peek at it and it’s so much information that will really, really help your practice. So thank you so much for that. It’s all amazing information that you gave us.
Joanne: As I started off this first hour, this is a passion topic for me because it was, I would say probably one of the most challenging, is your team, right? And creating the culture. And we all, we don’t walk into work every day wanting to make our team’s lives miserable, right? But, somehow we inadvertently do that.
I mean, you’ll often hear me tell a story of in my early parts of my career and leadership, I was like a steamroller. I was very effective, but I had a lot of flat bodies behind me. You know, it was just, it was that trial and error, trial and error, and taking classes and reading books and doing things, and there just wasn’t a lot of available.
So, I always like to give an actual tool and all the resources around it so you can just like, go out there and shine and have fun with your team.
Chavelle: Yes. I love that. And thank you for making it so easy for the managers watching because this is such a great resource. And something that they can implement right away. They don’t have to think about it. You know, it’s just you have everything laid out perfectly for them to implement right away.
So, thank you. And I know this is probably a topic that not a lot of people think about of, you know, wanting to know, like how your team members learn and how that can actually make them, you know, successful by honing in on their strengths and working together.
So, that’s great. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Joanne: And I would like to say, if I can, I’ll give my email address here right now. It’s JoanneMiles@productivedentist.com. And that’s singular dentist. Don’t put an “s” on the end.
If you have any questions after reviewing the material, just, you know, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’ll be happy to help you.
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Learn About Our Presenter:
Joanne Miles, DAADOM, RDA
Joanne is a dynamic force in dental practice growth, often described as the “Swiss Army knife of dentistry” for her versatile expertise and innovative solutions. With decades of experience helping practices nationwide, Joanne has mastered the art of guiding dental teams toward success, whether they’re launching a start-up or scaling a multi-practice organization.
Joanne is passionate about transforming dental practices by focusing on the pillars of success: team engagement, patient experience, leadership development, and operational excellence. Her proven methods empower dentists and their teams to grow with confidence, staying aligned with their core values and purpose.
A champion for elevating others, Joanne believes that the most successful practices thrive not only on numbers but on meaningful connections and a commitment to excellence.
