Are You Solving Problems Your Team Should Be Solving?

In most dental practices, the owner is the fastest problem-solver — so every problem routes to them, and coaching your dental team never happens. Michael Bungay Stanier calls the reflex to jump in and answer the “Advice Monster,” and in an owner-led practice, it builds a team that can't function when the doctor steps out. The fix is a quiet substitution: when someone brings you a problem, ask “what do you think we should do?” before you answer, and grow the specific people you identified last week. AI and automation help by absorbing the routine work — reminders, claims, scheduling — so you have the minutes to coach and your team can focus on the human parts of dentistry. This is the Grow movement of The Hanlon Potential Model™ — See, Grow, Back. The weekly move: pick one person and ask, don't answer.

A claim gets denied, and the assistant brings it to you. A patient wants to move an appointment that doesn't fit, and the coordinator brings it to you. A supply order is short, a new patient is anxious, the afternoon is running behind — and every one of those lands on your operatory stool, because you're the doctor, you're fast, and it's easier to just handle it. By six o'clock you've answered fifty questions and developed exactly no one.

Here's the hard truth I learned running six practices: in most offices, the most capable person in the building is also the biggest bottleneck. And it's usually the owner. This week we've been talking about growing people by asking instead of telling. Today it comes chairside — because the practice owner is often the original Advice Monster, and learning to tame it is what finally lets the place run without you in every room.

Key Takeaways

•    In a small practice, the owner is usually the fastest problem-solver — so every problem routes to them, and no one else grows.

•    “Just do it yourself” feels efficient and quietly caps the size and freedom of your practice.

•    Coaching chairside is a handful of questions between patients, not a formal program.

•    Grow the specific people you spotted last week — the front desk, the hygiene chair, the coordinator.

•    AI and automation take the routine off your team, freeing you to coach and them to do higher-value human work.

•    This is the Grow movement of The Hanlon Potential Model™ — developing the potential you saw last week.

The Owner Is the Original Advice Monster

Michael Bungay Stanier calls the reflex to jump in and solve the Advice Monster, and nowhere does it run wilder than in a dental practice owned and led by one clinician. You genuinely are the most experienced person in the building. You can usually see the answer faster than anyone. So the whole team learns, correctly, that the quickest path to a solved problem is to walk it over to the doctor.

Stanier says the monster wears three faces, and every practice owner will recognize their own. “Tell-It” knows the answer and delivers it. “Save-It” swoops in to rescue the situation before it goes sideways. “Control-It” can't hand anything off because what if it's done wrong? Each one feels like good leadership in the moment. Together, they build a team that cannot function when you step out of the room — which is the opposite of what you actually want.

Why “Just Do It Yourself” Is Costing You a Practice

Play the loop forward, and the cost becomes clear. Because you solve everything, no one else develops the judgment to. Because no one develops it, you can't delegate. Because you can't delegate, you can't take a real vacation, can't step back to work on the business, can't open a second location, and can't stop being the answer to every question. The thing that makes you feel indispensable is the exact thing keeping your practice small and keeping you tired.

Think about what you actually want from ownership — more time, less stress, a practice that doesn't collapse when you're not standing in it. Every one of those requires a team that solves its own problems. And a team only learns to do that when the owner stops rushing to solve them first. The practices I saw truly scale were never the ones with the smartest owner. They were the ones with an owner who had grown people they could trust with real decisions.

Coaching Your Team Chairside

You don't need a training program or an afternoon offsite. Coaching in a practice happens in the ninety seconds between operatories, and it's mostly about swapping one instinct for another. When someone brings you a problem, instead of answering, ask a version of Stanier's “What's the real challenge here for you?” or simply, “What do you think we should do?”

The first few times, it will feel slower, and your team may be startled — they're used to getting an answer, not a question. Stay with it. When your coordinator works out how to solve the scheduling snarl herself, she owns the solution; she's less likely to bring you the same problem next week, and she's grown a little. Do this a dozen times, and you've built judgment across your team that no amount of telling could have produced. The goal isn't to withhold your expertise — it's to stop spending it on problems your people are ready to own.

Grow the People You Saw Last Week

Last week's work was about seeing potential — the front-desk team member who's a natural treatment communicator, the assistant with operational instincts, the hygienist who leads without the title. Seeing them was the start. This week is about actually developing them, and coaching is how you do it.

Take case acceptance as the clearest example. If you want the person who presents treatment to get better, don't hand them a script and correct their delivery. Coach them: after a patient declines, ask what they think held the patient back, what they'd try differently, what the patient actually seemed worried about. You'll grow a treatment communicator with real judgment instead of a recording — and judgment is what moves patients from “let me think about it” to “let's schedule it.”

Where AI Frees You to Coach

There's a practical reason owners never get around to coaching: they're buried in routine work. This is exactly where technology earns its place. As Anna Tavis and Woody Woodward document in The Digital Coaching Revolution, “the pattern across every field is the same — let the tools absorb the repeatable work so humans can spend their attention where only humans matter.”

In practice, that means letting AI and automation handle the reminders, the routine claims, the recall, and the after-hours scheduling — the administrative weight that eats your team's day and yours. What's left is the human work no software can do: reassuring the anxious patient, guiding a real treatment decision, and finally, with a few minutes to ask your coordinator a good question instead of just answering hers. The tools don't replace the coaching. They create the time to do it. That's the practice version of what the research calls a simple truth — the practice that pairs good people with good tools will outrun the one that has only one or the other.

The Hanlon Potential Model™, Chairside: The Grow Movement

This month's framework, The Hanlon Potential Model™ — See, Grow, Back — moves this week into Grow. Last week you looked honestly at your team and found at least one person you'd been underusing. This week, you start developing them, and the tool is a question, not a lecture.

Here's the move, and it's small enough to do tomorrow. Pick the one person from last week's exercise. The next time they bring you a problem, resist the answer that's already forming, and ask them what they'd do instead. Then be quiet long enough to let them think. That single substitution — a question where an answer used to go — is how you grow the potential you saw. Do it with one person this week, and you'll see why it's the move that eventually gives you your evenings back.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn't it faster to just answer? I'm slammed. Today, yes. But the same question keeps coming back to you precisely because you keep answering it. Spend the extra two minutes coaching once, and you stop spending two minutes on that same problem every week for a year. Coaching is how a busy owner eventually gets un-busy.

What if my team gives me the wrong answer? Then you've found a coaching moment, not a catastrophe. Ask what else they'd consider, walk through their thinking, and add your view once they've done theirs. A wrong first answer that you help correct teaches far more than a right answer you simply handed over.

Some things really do need the dentist's call. Of course — clinical and legal judgment stays with you, and coaching never means abdicating that. This is about the dozens of operational and interpersonal decisions each day that your team is perfectly capable of owning, if you'll let them build the muscle.

Where do I start when there's no time? One person, one question. Take the team member you most want to grow, and this week, ask “what do you think we should do?” before you answer even once. That's the entire first step, and it fits between two patients.

Final Thoughts

The practice that runs without you in every room is not built by hiring harder or working later. It's built by a quiet shift in how you respond when someone brings you a problem — a shift from answering to asking, made a few times a day, with the people you've decided to grow. It will feel slower for a week and faster for a career.

You already know who your people could become; last week was about seeing them. This week, when the answer rises and you feel your Advice Monster reaching for it, hold it back and ask one question instead. That's how you grow the team you already have — and how you finally get to be the owner instead of the bottleneck.

Sources & Further Reading

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever — Michael Bungay Stanier

The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever — Michael Bungay Stanier

The Digital Coaching Revolution — Anna Tavis and Woody Woodward

Frequently Asked Questions

• Isn't it faster to just answer? I'm slammed.

  Today, yes. But the same question keeps coming back to you precisely because you keep answering it. Spend the extra two minutes coaching once, and you stop spending two minutes on that same problem every week for a year. Coaching is how a busy owner eventually gets un-busy.

• What if my team gives me the wrong answer?

  Then you've found a coaching moment, not a catastrophe. Ask what else they'd consider, walk through their thinking, and add your view once they've done theirs. A wrong first answer that you help correct teaches far more than a right answer you simply handed over.

• Some things really do need the dentist's call.

  Of course — clinical and legal judgment stays with you, and coaching never means abdicating that. This is about the dozens of operational and interpersonal decisions each day that your team is perfectly capable of owning, if you'll let them build the muscle.

• Where do I start when there's no time?

  One person, one question. Take the team member you most want to grow, and this week, ask “what do you think we should do?” before you answer even once. That's the entire first step, and it fits between two patients.