Have you been following along with our How to Be a Great Boss Series? Over the last couple of months we’ve posted five tips to help you be the best boss you can be, and the response has been great!

We thought it’d be nice to keep them all together in one blog post for easy referencing in the future. With that said – here’s How to Be a Good Boss tips 1-5!

Tip 1: Be nice

It might sound like the easiest thing to do, but the impact is HUGE. People want to work in a place where they know their bosses truly care. Being nice, acknowledging good performance and having genuine interest in your staff adds to your company’s culture and makes your workplace positive and productive.

If your staff feel great at work, they will be happy to show up and work hard every day that they can.

Tip 2: Don’t micromanage.

You might think you’re being a great boss by being completely involved in your staff’s work (or doing their work for them) unfortunately that couldn’t be further from the truth.⁠

Your employees should feel supported, but given enough room to learn and grow on their own.⁠

You serve your team by providing ample training and opportunities to grow whilst proactively asking for feedback and offering a listening ear.⁠
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They serve your business by rising to the occasion again and again. They do their jobs well because they have the space and support to do so.⁠
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Importantly, you understand your staff have the answers to many of your operational problems, and you don’t take this for granted.⁠
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This is the business you can have if you don’t micromanage your team.⁠

Tip 3: Connect your vision to daily work⁠⁠.

Great bosses can show how normal, everyday tasks connect to the bigger picture of what the organisation is trying to achieve. ⁠⁠
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Great businesses become so by knowing where they want to go and what it takes to get there. Often what it takes is comprised of the smaller tasks your staff do daily – offering great customer service, being detail oriented, knowing their jobs well, for example. ⁠⁠
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Show the clear connection of this important work to your vision, and your staff will understand why their work is so valuable to you and the business. ⁠⁠
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The best way to do this is to write SMART goals. (Google if you’ve never heard of this!) From these SMART goals, your staff should be able to pull tasks and create procedures that will ultimately drive the organisation goals and push the business strategy. ⁠⁠

Tip 4: Set expectations. ⁠⁠

Your employee should know what’s expected of them from as early on as their in-person interview with you. Their role and responsibilities should be recorded in a very clear and specific job description. Use the job description as a guide for your interview and give them the opportunity to ask questions and seek clarification.
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Doing this early on will give your employee a complete understanding of the role, and instead of second guessing what’s required, they’ll feel confident and equipped to take on their new job.
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Hiring new staff can be stressful! Choose to have a clear and specific job description to help minimise that stress!
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Tip 5 Communicate!

It’s so important to give feedback to your staff. They need to be told when they’re doing something well and…when they aren’t. This can be achieved by having one-on-one or staff meetings on a regular basis.
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Meetings are an opportunity to get everyone aligned and inspired and can be used to show appreciation, as a place to present ideas, make decisions, and solve problems.⁠
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Often employees don’t even realize when they aren’t meeting standards. One-on-one meetings are an opportunity for you to be transparent and show that you care about them and their level of work. Then if needed, you (or someone else) can choose to mentor them to get them up to standard.
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This will give your staff the confidence and security they need to do their job well. ⁠
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We hope these tips inspire you, and if you’d like to start implementing these principles into your practice, Level Up can help!

Level Up is THE place to write your policies and procedures and use them for staff training. You can assign competencies of learning and track your staff’s progression through a skill. Choose to write your own or use ours! We’ve got over 60 Dental Practice Skills included with your subscription. Book a demo with us or start your journey today! 💜🚀