Is it time to "up the team morale" at your office?

Morale is defined as "the state of the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks." Whether you would define your team as having good morale or bad, is up to you. 

We recently had a great staff meeting with our Paragon Program consultant, Hope.  The Paragon Program just celebrated 25 years of dental consulting as one of "America's Profitability Experts."  Every other month we meet with our consultant to discuss our numbers to ensure we're on track to meeting our financial goals for the year. 

After discussing our goals, our consultant suggested that we participate in a team-building exercise that we found to be very beneficial and boosted everyone's self-confidence.  She asked us a series of questions and each of us wrote our own responses on a piece of paper. After everyone was finished writing their lists, we took turns reading them aloud.  

These were the questions:
* What are the top 10 things that you would tell your patients about the doctor that you  work for?
*What are the top 10 things that you would tell your patients about the team member seated to your right?
*What are the top 10 things about your team/office that make you awesome?

This exercise can benefit any team and bring you closer together.  We work with each other on a daily basis, and some may even say we spend more time with each other more than we do with our own spouses!  I hope we never take each other for granted.  It's important to verbalize the importance and significance of each team member.  Most of us don't go around announcing to the world why we're wonderful.  But team members need to hear it from your doctor as well as each other.  Your doctor needs to hear why you appreciate them, and your patients need to hear great things about everyone.  Brag each other up!  It's important to enjoy your time spent at work and those you work with. 

Some of you may be thinking that, "She has no clue - I could never get along with the people I work with."  And it very well may be true that there may be a specific team member(s) that you find it difficult to get along with.  So what?  We've all been there at one time or another - why are you letting that spoil your team's positive morale? Why are we expecting that person to change when we are the one's who can change our own attitudes and actions towards that person to produce a positive outcome?   It's a proven fact that laughter and cheerfulness are contagious.  If you start making the changes your team needs to "up the morale,"  you may just find that others will follow closely behind.