Managing stressful behaviour: Rana Al-Falaki reveals the key to breaking the stress cycle in dental practice.
Imagine it’s Monday morning and you’ve arrived early at the practice, thinking you’re ahead of the day. All is calm.
Then the phone rings… it’s your dental nurse calling in sick. Your practice manager has just handed in their notice. Several patients have cancelled at the last minute. Your associate has been messaging you repeatedly, asking to have their entire day cancelled. It’s also the end of the month, and the practice bills are due.
To top it off, a letter marked ‘official’ sits ominously on your desk, looking disturbingly legal. You don’t have time to open it, but you know it’s there.
And now, you have a full day list of patients waiting for you!
What happens?
For most, the stress would spill over. You might find yourself snapping at an innocent team member who asks a simple question.
You might get distracted during a patient consultation, missing vital details or failing to convert a new patient due to your lack of focus.
The day might spiral into chaos – running late, more frustration, and ultimately leaving everyone in your practice tense, drained and unproductive. This is known as contagion. Your emotional state impacts on everyone around you, your team, your patients – and, ultimately, your business.
This isn’t just one stressful day; it’s a cycle many dentists live with. Dentistry is, after all, one of the most stressful professions. A recent survey by the British Dental Association found that 75% of dentists report experiencing stress-related issues in their work.
Stress impacts not just your wellbeing but also your relationships with patients, your ability to lead your team effectively, and your practice’s overall productivity and revenue growth.
What are you going to do?
This is exactly what one of my clients, Dr AP, described when they came to me. For them, this scenario was more the norm than the exception.
When I suggested emotional intelligence (EQ) as the key to breaking the stress cycle, Dr AP was sceptical. ‘Emotions are fluffy,’ they said. ‘I don’t have time for all that breathing and mindfulness nonsense! I’ve got real problems to deal with!’
This is the biggest misconception about emotional intelligence. It’s not about sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting mantras.
It’s about practical tools that help you recognise and regulate your emotions so that you can lead yourself and your practice effectively and successfully – despite being under constant immense pressure.
The truth about emotional intelligence
Studies show that emotional intelligence is one of the most critical factors in leadership and professional success. The benefits of emotional intelligence include:
- Higher performance: 90% of top performers possess high emotional intelligence. Leaders with high EQ are four times more likely to succeed than those who rely on IQ alone (Soocial)
- Reduced stress: emotional intelligence training can reduce workplace stress by up to 25% (Jobera)
- Improved mental health: 91% of individuals report improved mental health after undergoing emotional intelligence training (Jobera)
- Enhanced decision-making: higher emotional intelligence enhances decision-making skills and improves cognitive focus (Neuropsychiatric Investigation and Frontiers in Psychology)
- Higher productivity: emotional intelligence positively correlates with job performance and leadership effectiveness, leading to higher productivity (IJBMI)
- Positive financial impact: it’s financially rewarding – those with high EQ earn significantly more annually than their lower EQ counterparts (Niagara Institute).
With statistics like these, it’s clear that emotions aren’t fluffy at all!
Instead, I suggested to Dr AP that they view emotions as data. Then I taught them what to do with that data to make the difference between thriving under pressure and being overwhelmed by it.
Ten steps to enhance emotional health
- See emotions as data points – not signs of weakness
- Encourage a team approach to identifying and labelling emotions openly and without judgement
- Collaborate to co-regulate emotions that enhance performance for specific tasks
- Stop using vague terms like ‘fine’ and dig deeper
- Approach emotions – yours and others’ – with curiosity, not judgement
- Practise compassion and reframing to defuse emotional triggers
- Take responsibility for your emotions and identify triggers
- Replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations
- Embrace vulnerability as a strength – it builds trust and enhances performance
- Determine what you want, set boundaries to achieve it and communicate your needs bravely.
Teaching EQ: the RULER model
For Dr AP, I introduced them to the RULER model.
RULER is an acronym that stands for the five skills in emotional intelligence: recognising, understanding, labelling, expressing and regulating.
It is one of the many models within the NAIL-IT system that forms the foundational training at Meddent Leadership & Wellbeing Academy. Let’s explore the steps in more detail.
Recognise
Dr AP began by checking in with their emotions throughout the day using an app I provided for them. By asking, ‘How am I feeling right now?’ several times within a day, they were able to start plotting data that they could use in the subsequent steps. It’s like checking in with yourself before you end up spiralling out of control.
Understand
They explored the triggers behind these emotions. For example, when frustration arose, it was often tied to feeling unsupported by their team. By understanding this, they could address the root cause rather than reacting impulsively.
It was also great at identifying when their stress was not in fact due to their circumstances, but they may have been feeling it from the team around them and being impacted by it.
Label
I taught Dr AP to name those emotions. There are hundreds of different emotions and bringing awareness to that instead of using vague terms like ‘stressed’, or ‘fine’, gave them clarity and helped them navigate next steps more appropriately.
Express
I then taught them several different forms of communication, including needs-based, dynamic and influential communication, so they could express their emotions constructively, powerfully and authentically. Instead of lashing out, they might say: ‘When tasks are delayed, I feel overwhelmed because it affects my ability to focus. Here’s how we can fix this together.’
Regulate
Finally, I taught Dr AP a wide range of regulation strategies, including breathing hacks, reframing situations, best-self associations, externalisation, centring techniques, physical poses, sensory regulation, tension mapping, micro-moment mindfulness, and boundary-setting, among others.
These tools empowered them to maintain calm and composure, even on the most chaotic days, and enabled them to perform better both personally and professionally.
The results
Within weeks of focusing on emotional intelligence, Dr AP noticed a dramatic shift. They were calmer, more focused and better equipped to handle the unexpected challenges of running a practice.
Their team responded positively to their new leadership style as they also started to embrace the power of elevated EQ and the impact it can have on the business and patient care.
Most importantly, Dr AP felt in control – not just of their practice, but their own emotional health with positive results spilling into their personal lives as well.
Stress is inevitable in dentistry, but suffering under it doesn’t have to be. Emotional intelligence isn’t about ‘fluff’ – it’s about mastering the most powerful tool you have: your emotions.
Rana will be speaking at the North of England Dentistry Show on 8 March in Manchester. For more details and to register for free, click here.
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