In recent years, there’s a growing need for both employees and business owners to feel a sense of purpose and fulfilment in their work. We’re becoming less motivated by dollars and cents, and more concerned about how the work we do aligns with our values.
On both a personal and a practice level, it’s important to ask yourself what you stand for, what your values are, and what your purpose is.
There’s a lot of evidence that shows that purpose-driven businesses have more devoted employees and customers. It drives performance, productivity, and profitability.
The truth is that employee engagement in Australia is reported as being horrifically low with 76% of workers disengaged at work. When your team feels disengaged, you’ll tend to notice employee churn, lower productivity, low morale, and your team might start looking for other workplaces that are more purpose-driven.
When you’re running a small business, it might feel like finding your true purpose is a “nice to have” rather than a necessity.
However, taking the time to nail this down not only costs you nothing, but it can offer tangible, practical improvements.
And the good news is that you probably already have a good idea of your purpose and what you stand for – it’s just a matter of communicating it effectively to your team, your patients, and your community.
Identifying and articulating your purpose
Let’s start with asking, why did you become a dentist? Out of all the career paths available to you, why dentistry?
What’s great is that we all have very unique reasons for why we chose the path we’re on. The purpose that you articulate might be very different from the dentist down the street.
And once you became a dentist, what drove you to run your own practice? What does your service mean to the people in your community? How does it affect the lives of your team, your patients, and the people around you?
What you’re looking for is a common theme between your answers, something that aligns with your approach to dentistry as well as your approach to practice ownership.
Integrating your purpose into your practice
Sometimes in business, we feel like we need to choose between success and purpose. It’s common to hear of people who appear outwardly successful, but feel dissatisfied because they’re not working in a way that sparks their purpose.
If this is something you struggle with, try looking for your and/and.
What did you want to be before you became a dentist? What do you love doing apart from dentistry?
For example, you might have always wanted to be a comedian. So consider yourself a dentist and comedian!
Incorporate that love of making people laugh into your practice – your marketing can be humorous, joke around to make your patients feel comfortable, have puns on the signage throughout the practice.
At the end of the day, purpose is practice. It’s something we need to embed into the fabric of our daily lives. If you find purpose in both dentistry and another area of your life, you don’t need to see it as a dichotomy. You can integrate the two.
A purpose-driven business attracts the right people without trying. The right kind of team members and patients will see your message, resonate with it, and be drawn to you.
Not only does purpose provide clarity to people looking to work with you, but it also clarifies what’s important to you. Allow purpose to be the North Star that attracts new opportunities, filters out the right and wrong people, and guides you through difficult decisions.
Purpose is a powerful weapon any business can sharpen and use to hone your trajectory, your messaging, and your success. You might be surprised to find what falls into place when you’ve defined the right purpose for your practice.
P.S Want to scale your dental practice and take your profits to 7 figure success?
Me and my team can work with you directly to get you there! Simply book in your FREE 1:1
strategy session, and we can get started on a game plan for you and your practice.
