One of the greatest things you can do if you are privileged enough to have a position of leadership or any sort of directive position where your job is to assist and work with other people to get the best from them, is to say “thanks”.
I've been conditioned to do that, watching people who are brilliant and how they give praise and express gratitude to the people who help and work with them over many years, from many different angles.
I remember being a relatively newly qualified dentist at a newly qualified dentist training day when a very experienced dentist told me about how he would walk around the clinic at the end of every day, saying thank you to every single person, making sure they were alright before he went home. I never forgot that, and I try to do that as much as I can in our place, even if sometimes I'm tired at the end of the day.
Recently I wrote a blog, and I wanted to thank people who work in our academy marketing team, wanted to big them up because they are fantastic, and some of the work that's carried out is exceptional. It gives me the opportunity to go to places like Portugal, Edinburgh, Dundee, South Africa, China or wherever and look like I know what I'm talking about, and I look like I'm good.
In that blog, though, I missed someone out, and that is a criminal offence. So, learn my lesson here, before you have to learn the lesson yourself the hard way.
So, Brooke has worked with us for over 5 years now, since just after COVID. She came as a dental nurse, but from very early on, she was obviously exceptional as a dental nurse. Ultimately, she worked her way through the system and is now the manager of the academy. I forgot to mention her and say thanks.
She took me aside in the most Brooke-type way, understated and non-directive, and said, “I have a bone to pick with you, you thanked everybody else, but you didn't thank me.” And so, here at public, Brooke, I'm sorry —I shouldn't have done that.
It's better not to thank anyone than to miss someone out who deserves your thanks.
There are 63 of us or something like it in the clinic, not including the faculty who teach, and it's impossible to personally thank all of them all the time, but it's also not acceptable to thank almost everybody in one group and miss someone out who deserves your praise.
Brooke is just one of the stories at the clinic of people who came in to do one thing and now do another, and who are exceptional at the other thing that they do.
Perhaps when Brooke entered the practice (in fact, I'm sure of it), she never thought that her job would change to be in management and to manage the academy, and to manage all the logistics of all the courses and the bookings and the sales and the operations and all of the things that she does.
Brooke travelled with us as part of the team that started the course in Dundee this week, and I can’t wait to see where we go next.
It reminded me of a situation years ago, (I should’ve learned a lesson and remembered this) when I was at the ITI congress in 2011, and I was travelling up in an escalator as my PA Marie was travelling down, I was stressed and upset, something hadn’t gone right, and I called her out about it as I passed her on the escalator in front of other people.
Blog Post Number - 4336
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