By Roger P. Levin, DDS
Leaders by nature love to share knowledge, information, and expertise. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a great leader is that they always spend time educating and teaching others. That is why you so often see retired fortune 500 CEOs take part-time teaching positions after they complete their business career. In a sense, successful CEOs always have to be teachers.
Orthodontists that create a culture of ongoing education and information dissemination will build better teams, and better teams build better practices. The challenge for orthodontists is that they are so busy with patient treatment that they lack time for teaching or taking advantage of “teachable moments.” This is one of the reasons that many orthodontic teams stagnate, and when a crisis such as COVID-19 emerges, they don’t have the ability to pivot in new directions to help the practice stay at high levels of productivity.
