A team that runs the practice, so you can lead it.
Mark Topley, Team Performance Specialist
I help practice owners build a team that runs the practice, so they can lead it.
I work with principals and their practice managers, together, to build the roles, systems and habits that keep the standards in place when the owner isn't in the building. It's practical, it's one thing at a time, and it's built to still be working when I've gone home.
25 minutes with me, no pressure.
In short
- BEd (Hons), a qualified teacher before I ever worked in dentistry
- Thirteen years leading Bridge2Aid in Tanzania
- Twenty-five years working in and alongside dentistry
- Creator of The Practice Playbook, founder of Go Practice Green, co-host of the Dentistry on Purpose podcast
- Write for Dentistry and Private Dentistry, and speak at the BDA, the Dentistry Show and the BDIA
- Judge for the Private Dentistry Awards and the Dental Industry Awards
From the classroom to East Africa to your practice
I didn't start out as a leadership coach. I started out as a teacher, which means I was taught how people actually learn, and I've been using it ever since, first with my own teams and now with other people's.
In 2006 my wife Jo and I moved to Tanzania to help build something that mattered. We worked in remote communities, set up healthcare projects that could carry on without us, and adopted our three children there. I rose into leadership the way most people in dentistry do, because I cared, not because anyone trained me, and I spent a long time leading teams and handling crises without a manual.
Over those years I learned what makes leadership work and what makes it unravel. It isn't personality or having all the answers. It's clarity, consistency, and being honest with yourself and your team. I also learned it the hard way, because I burned out, properly, and that's why everything I build now gets judged on one question: does this take load off the owner, or pile it on?
A message from me
I've worked with a lot of practice owners and managers over the years, and almost none of them were short of effort or heart. What they were short of was clarity. Nobody had written down what good looks like, roles had grown up around people rather than the other way round, and the owner had become the answer to every question in the building.
I think clarity is one of the kindest things a leader can give a team. When people know what's expected, who owns what and what happens when it slips, most of what gets called a "people problem" goes away, and the ones that are left get a lot easier to talk about.
The value I add isn't in how much I can teach you. It's in how much I can help you put in place properly, so it's still working when I've gone home. That's why we take it one thing at a time.
Mark
What I believe
If that sounds like the help your practice needs, let's talk.
25 minutes, no pressure. We'll look at where things are now and what would make the biggest difference first.
Or read the client stories first.
Standards that hold when you're not in the building.