Volume 9 • 2022 • Issue 5

Learning How to Be an Effective Leader Carrie-Lynn Hotson is a certified human resources leader with the Human Resources Professionals Association, and she has 25 years of experience in the field. She teaches at Cambrian College in Sudbury, Ontario, and is the author of Knowing Who You Lead . Q When you’ve talked with dentists recently, what are they saying about the challenges of finding and retaining staff? Carrie-Lynn Hotson (CH): Ten years ago, there was a strong supply of dental staff and finding a newmember of a dental team was often as easy as simply asking around. Now, due to large societal and economic shifts, including the pandemic, the supply of dental assistants has shrunk and demand is high. Where once there were three dental assistants entering the workforce for every dentist, now the numbers are close to one-to-one. In Canada, health care is among the top three industries experiencing labour shortages. Dentists, like leaders in many other small businesses, are thinking about what they can do differently to attract and retain staff. Some of the dentists I’ve talked to are stressed, frustrated and kept up at night worrying about these issues. My expertise is in working with people and helping people work together, so I have some ideas about what dentists could be doing differently during these difficult times. I’ve delved into what makes an effective leader. I’ve also talked to employees about why they chose to leave a job. One interesting finding is that the reason people quit often is related to the leader of the organization. In some cases, staff decide to leave the dental industry completely. But in other cases, people are leaving because they don’t like the management style of their boss. They don’t feel safe psychologically. They feel overworked. Dental staff now have lots of other options to find a job and a leader that fits their needs better. So dentists themselves have an opportunity to learn how to be better leaders and manage in a way that takes into account the needs of the people they lead. Q What practical steps do you recommend for attracting staff to a dental office? CH: We need to learn more about the people that we’re trying to attract and communicate with them using these insights. In dentistry, a lot of time has been spent considering how to attract patients and the marketing and branding tends to focus on appealing to patients. But dentists should also be thinking about how they come across to potential staff members. 36 | 2022 | Issue 5