Cohen & Gottlieb
Building a cohesive, respectful team in a private dental practice
Case study
Over a year, Westwood International helped a discordant dental practice become a more cohesive, respectful and collaborative place to work.
The challenge
Cohen & Gottlieb is a successful private dental practice with eleven full-time employees. Reputation, revenue and patient experience were all healthy. The problem was inside the building.
Dr. Michael Cohen had spent thirty years in the field and had never felt the need for an outside consultant. This was different. The friction between the front and the back of the practice was easy to see, but there were problems between clinical staff too, and the conflict was hard to put a finger on.
The practice knew it could be more positive and more productive. Getting there needed sustained, personal guidance rather than a workshop.
What we did
We designed a custom twelve-month program around staff harmony, teamwork and communication, drawing on research in team building, emotional intelligence and personal development.
Over the year we facilitated seven two-day sessions at the practice: staff interviews, team-building work, and planning meetings with Dr. Cohen and Dr. Gottlieb. The interviews ran regularly throughout the year and surfaced the problems employees were actually living with.
Half-day team-building sessions used team dimension profiles and a listening assessment to show each person their own strengths and preferred way of communicating. Over time the staff learned to read each other's personality types and communication patterns, and to work together despite the differences.
The group settled on respect as the attribute a successful team needs, recognized it was missing from the practice, and worked out what more of it would look like day to day. Before each session ended we met with both partners to plan the next one.
The outcome
In what Dr. Cohen calls a year of enlightenment, the staff became a more harmonious and more positive team.
The relationship outlasted the program. Through Dr. Cohen, Westwood now runs leadership workshops for the Seattle Study Club — the consortium of dentists he founded — and for study clubs, dental practices, medical offices and entrepreneurial teams beyond it.
“Distinct personalities and strong opinions on how things should be done were creating conflict in our office. Ineffective communication strategies along with a general lack of trust were causing a great deal of stress on a daily basis.”
Ready to explore?
The right engagement starts with a conversation.
Tell us where you stand; we will tell you what we see — and if we are not the right fit, you will hear that from us first.
Let's talk