Episode 173. WhyAm I The One Who Has to Solve Everyone's Problems

If you've ever thought, "Why am I the one who has to solve everyone's problems?" you're not alone.

But what if the biggest reason everyone comes to you...isn't them?

In this episode, you'll discover how your brain quietly rewards rescuing, why you've become the default answer for every question in the practice, and how to break the cycle without becoming less helpful. Because leadership isn't solving every problem. It's choosing the right ones.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to the Dental Life podcast. Let me know if this sounds familiar. You get to the office with a plan, a real plan. You have a list, you have priorities, you may even have one of those beautifully color-coded schedules that make you feel like you have officially become the kind of woman who has her life together. You're thinking, today is going to be different. Today you finally are going to update the employee handbook with the attendance policy everyone keeps asking about. You're going to review that AR report. You're going to figure out why those insurance claims are still sitting there 90 days old. You're going to call the insurance company about the payment they swear was issued three weeks ago. You're going to start building next month's schedule before someone adds six high production cases to the same Tuesday. You may even get your coffee down before it's room temperature and remind you of the woman who you were at 7.45 that morning. But you sit down, you open your computer, and before you can type one complete sentence, someone appears in your doorway. When you have a second, now translation, that means right now. And you know darn well in a dental office that never meant one second. Not once. When you have a second, it could mean anything from where do we keep the printer paper to the hygienist is crying in the bathroom. The patient in room three is furious. The lab case is missing. And the doctor has decided now would be a lovely time to discuss changing the bonus system. But you handle it. You come back to your desk, you reopen the document, and then the phone rings. Patient wants to know why the insurance didn't pay. You explain deductibles for what feels like the 900th time in your career. You sit back down. Someone needs the password to the software they have logged into every day for four years. You help them. You sit back down. The doctor walks in and says, Can we move this patient till tomorrow? You look at tomorrow's schedule and then you wonder in the back of your brain, does he think you're a magician? But you fix it. Then the hygienist needs you because her patient, who was sitting in the reception room clearly for 15 minutes, now wants to know why their insurance won't cover cleanings anymore. Payroll won't process because someone forgot to clock out. The software freezes again, and suddenly everyone is standing around staring at their computer like that's gonna fix it. Then a patient politely lets you know the restroom is out of paper towels. Somehow that has become your responsibility too. And then someone says, Have you seen the blue sharpies? Because apparently you're not just the office manager anymore. You are the official keeper of the office supplies. It is 4:30. You have solved 48 problems, prevented three emotional breakdowns, found two lab cases, reorganized the schedule, explained insurance for the umpteenth time, restarted the router, and located the missing Sharpies. You have been busy every single minute, but you have not completed a thing on your list. So you stay late again. You sit in the quiet office after everyone has gone home, finally trying to do the job you thought you were gonna do all day, and you think, I spend my whole day solving everyone's problems. If that's you, today's episode is for you. So let's get started. Welcome to the Dental Life Podcast, where we explore how you can have both a successful career and a meaningful personal life in and outside of your practices without sacrificing one for the other. I'm your host, Beth Highman, former dental office manager, Turn Certified Life and Health coach, and I'm here to help you navigate the challenges and opportunities that come from being a dental professional. Let's get started. If you are the Sharpie keeper in your office, if you are the lab case detector, if you are the IT, plumber, all those departments, I want you to know something right away. This is not happening because you're disorganized. It is not happening because you lack discipline. It is not happening because you're bad at time management. And it's definitely not happening because you need a pretty planner. Please do not buy another planner. The poor planner cannot save you. The root of this problem goes deeper. It's happening because your brain is doing exactly what it's been trained to do. When I was managing the practice, it wasn't a decision anymore. It was more like muscle memory. Someone looked confused. I was halfway across the office before my brain had even caught up. But today we're going to talk about why solving everyone else's problem can become almost irresistible and why your brain keeps choosing interruptions over your most important work and how to stop treating every small spark in the practice like a five alarm fire. Because your job is not to put out every fire. Your job is to choose your fires. Look, here's what office managers tell me. They say, I can't get anything done because everyone constantly interrupts me. My team, they ask me questions. They already know the answer to those things. Or they should, I've already answered them 14 times. Or I feel like I'm the only person who notices what needs to be done. And if I take off one day, everything will fall apart. I have to stay late because I can't get to my own work during the day. And one of my personal favorites, it's just easier if I do it myself. Oh yeah, that is the national anthem of exhausted dental office managers everywhere. Sometimes, in that exact moment, it is easier. You can enter the information faster, you can call that patient faster, you can correct the schedule, no problem. Submit that claim, you're the one. Clean that room, you can be really fast at it. You can probably do most of it faster because you've done it a thousand times. But here's the problem. Every time you say, it's just easier if I do it myself. You may be making that moment easier, but you're making your entire future harder. I know this because I did it. I became really good at being needed. I could solve problems quickly. I could read the room. I knew what that doctor needed before he even asked. I could tell when a patient was about to become upset. I knew which team member needed a direct answer, which one needed reassurance, and which one just needed to be left alone for 10 minutes before anyone even made eye contact with her. I took pride in knowing everything that was happening. And when something went wrong, people came to me. Now, at first, that felt like success. I thought, look at me, I'm so valuable. Everyone needs me. I have the answers. Nothing happens around here without me knowing about it. That can feel very powerful until you realize you've built a job you can never step away from. Those golden handcuffs. You become the practice's human search engine, the emotional support animal, air traffic controller, IT department, conflict resolution center, and keeper of this sacred Sharpie drawer. And then something really interesting happens. You start resenting the very behavior you've spent years unintentionally rewarding. You wonder why everybody comes to you, why nobody makes a decision, why every problem lands on your desk. But from your team's perspective, they're just doing what has always worked. Bring Beth the problem. Beth fixes it. Why would they stop? That realization, that can sting a little bit. It certainly stung for me. I remember the days when I would think, why can no one make a decision around here without asking me first? But if I were being completely honest, there had been plenty of times when someone tried to make a decision and I jumped in and corrected it. I would step in, I would redo it, or I answered before they even finished asking. I wanted people to think independently, but I also wanted them to think exactly like I did, which is not a very convenient leadership philosophy. Please take initiative, but make sure your initiative matches that invisible answer I already have in my head. Then we wonder why people hesitate. We wonder why they bring everything to us. We wonder why they say, What do you want me to do? They may have learned that asking you feels much safer than risking being wrong. That might stink a little bit too. But here's another part of this that matters. I'm gonna let you off the hook for a minute if I feel like I'm coming down on you too hard. It's not only about what the team has learned, it's also about what your brain has learned. Here's what's actually going on. Your brain has one primary job. Its first job is not to make you successful, it's not to help you become a brilliant office manager. It is not to help you reach your goals or crush those practice goals. And it definitely doesn't wake up thinking, you know what sounds fun today? Let's create systems and have difficult conversations. It doesn't, it certainly isn't trying to help you finally write that employee handbook or build the onboarding process you've been putting off since last year. It is not interested in helping you finally tackle the projects that would actually make your job easier six months from now. It just wants to do what's easy in the moment. Your brain's most basic job is to keep you safe and alive. To do that, it is constantly looking for ways to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. That good old motivational triad at work. That may sound overly simple, but it explains so much of what happens during your day. So let's say you sit down to create a new onboarding system. That is important work. You know the practice needs it. You know the lack of that system is creating problems, it's creating mistakes. You know every new employee is getting a slightly different version of training depending on who happens to be available. So you open that blank document, you have the new notebook, nothing in it. And immediately your brain says, This looks difficult. Where do we even start? What if we miss something? This looks like it's going to take a long time. We could mess it up, not get it right. And then you look at the document. Two sentences on a page by themselves cannot happen. So you spend 30 minutes reformatting the entire document trying to get it all on one page. Would you like to check email instead? Then write on cue, someone walks in your office with a problem. The patient in room two, she's upset. Insurance didn't pay for her x-rays last time. What should I say? Your brain lights up because now this is familiar. You know how to solve this. You understand the situation, you've handled it hundreds of times before. You walk to the front, you explain that balance, that patient calms down, team member thanks you, problem solved. Your brain gets a little reward, you feel confident, helpful, useful, needed. Your brain says, excellent work, let's do more of that. That quick problem had a clear beginning, a clear action, and a fast result. But creating that onboarding checklist that you've been meaning to build for the last eight months, that does not give your brain a quick win. It means blocking off two uninterrupted hours you don't even think you have. It means deciding what should actually be included instead of just winging it. It probably means chasing down the doctor to approve something and then rolling it out to the team and wondering if anyone is actually going to use it after all that work. Your brain looks at all of that and it says, let's just answer another insurance question instead. Or building other systems that don't offer your brain immediate payoff, that requires thinking, making decisions, getting buy-in from the doctor, writing things down that have lived in your head for years, and then training the team, following up when they don't do it right the first time, and trusting that all of this work today will make life easier three months from now. But meanwhile, answering one more question, that's going to give your brain a little hit of dopamine in about 30 seconds. So guess which one your brain naturally picks? Your brain naturally pulls you toward reactive work because reactive work often feels easier, more familiar, more satisfying in the moment. That's why you can spend 10 hours working and still avoid the three things that would actually change the practice and take a couple of things off of your plate for good. Now you weren't doing nothing. You have probably worked incredibly hard, but your brain kept choosing completion over impact. It chose the tiny task that could quickly be crossed off. It chose the questions you already knew the answer to. It chose the fires you were already good at putting out. Because familiar discomfort often feels safer to your brain than unfamiliar possibility. That is important. Your brain would rather repeat a stressful pattern it understands than attempt a better pattern it can't predict. You may hate being interrupted all day, but you know how to do that. You know how to answer those questions. You know how to fix the schedule. You know how to calm everyone down. Sitting quietly and deciding how the practice needs to operate differently, that is unfamiliar. Delegating a responsibility and allowing someone to do that differently, unfamiliar and not at all comfortable. Letting a team member experience the natural consequences of forgetting something sounds like a terrible idea to your brain. Having the uncomfortable conversation that could prevent some issue from happening again and again and again, your brain says, absolutely not. I have just remembered we urgently need to reorganize the supply cabinet. That is also why most capable office managers struggle the most with this. We are good at solving problems. The better you are at it, the more rewarding it becomes. People praise you for it. The doctor says, I don't know what I would do without you. Your team says, you always know what to do. Patients, they ask for you by name. And that sounds wonderful. And it's wonderful to be capable, but praise can accidentally reinforce a pattern that is exhausting you. You begin to connect your value to being the one with the answers. If someone solved something without you, part of you may feel relieved, but there may be another tiny part of you that wonders, do they need me? Am I still important? What if my role isn't fixing everything for everyone all the time? That doesn't make you needy or controlling. It makes you human. We all develop identities around what gets rewarded. Maybe you became responsible early in life, the helper, the person who handled things, the one who could stay calm, the one everyone counted on. That identity followed you into that dental practice. Now, you're not just simply solving problems, you are proving something about yourself every time you solve a problem. You're proving I'm valuable, I'm competent, I'm needed, I'm doing my job. And that is the hidden root of the problem. The problem isn't simply that everyone needs too much from you. The problem is that your brain may have learned that being needed is the fastest, safest way to feel valuable. That's why setting boundaries can feel so uncomfortable. That's why letting someone else struggle can make you feel guilty. That's why you answer the question even when you know they could figure it out. That's why you jump in before anyone asks you to. The right problems. Your job is not to prevent every uncomfortable moment. Your job is to create a practice where people know how to move through uncomfortable moments without requiring you to rescue them. Your job is not to answer every question. Your job is to help build people who can think and answer those questions themselves. And your job is not to put out every fire. Your job is to choose your fires because not all fires are equal. Some fires need immediate attention. Patient's safety concern, your fire. A serious compliance issue, your fire. A team conflict that is affecting patient care and can't be resolved without leadership. That may be your fire. But someone cannot find the form they used every Tuesday for two years? Probably not your fire. A team member doesn't want to make a decision because she's afraid you might choose something different. That may be her opportunity to grow and not your fire. Someone forgot to order an item, now has to call another office to borrow it. Look, that may not be a fire for you to put out. That may be a natural consequence. If the team comes to you because a patient asks a basic question that is already answered in the office policy manual, that may be a training issue. Not every spark requires you to grab the fire extinguisher, pull the alarm, evacuate the building, and call the fire department. Sometimes someone has simply burned the popcorn. But when your nervous system has been trained to react to everything, burnt popcorn and a building fire can feel exactly the same. Everything feels urgent. Everyone's tone sounds important. Every problem feels like it needs to be solved now. This is where the skills of mental hygiene come in. Mental hygiene creates a pause between the problem and your reaction. Without that pause, your brain runs the old program. Problem, attention, take over, relief, repeat. But with that pause, you get to decide. Problem, attention, breathe, evaluate, choose. That tiny pause is where leadership lives. Leadership is not always the big meeting, the inspiring speech, or the new practice vision beautifully printed and hung in the break room where nobody reads it. Leadership often happens in the five seconds before you answer a question. It happens when you resist the urge to rescue. It happens when you allow a moment to be uncomfortable. It happens when you say, tell me what you think. It happens when someone gives you an answer you may not have chosen and you do not immediately correct them because their answer is still perfectly workable. That may be the longest four seconds of your life, especially for those of us who can see the exact right way to do something. You may have to sit on your hands, you may have to bite the inside of your cheek. You may need to whisper to yourself, different is not wrong, different is not wrong, different is not wrong, like a small office manager meditation. But every time you allow someone else to think, to decide or solve, you are helping build a practice that does not depend entirely on you. You are also teaching your brain something new. You're teaching it I can be valuable without being the answer to everything. I can let someone be uncomfortable without making it mean I have failed. I can lead without rescuing. I can allow a problem to exist for five minutes while we decide what actually needs to happen. I do not have to react to feel in control. That is the shift. There is a cost to solving everything, and that's another reason this matters. Every problem you solve has a cost to it, even the tiny problems. Every interruption requires your brain to switch attention, to switch focus. You stop one task, you absorb new information, you make a decision, you solve the problem. Then you attempt to return to what you were doing. But you don't instantly return with the same focus. You have to remember where you were, what you were thinking, what the next step was. That's why interruptions are so exhausting. It isn't just the time that it takes, it's the mental residue that gets left behind. At the end of the day, your brain has 37 tabs open. One of them is playing music. You don't know where that's coming from. One of them is reminding you payroll has to be submitted by five. One is replaying the conversation you had with the patient who insisted that their insurance always pays 100%. One tab is wondering whether the crown for tomorrow's eight o'clock appointment actually showed up from the lab. One's thinking about the awkward conversation that you need to have with the assistant who's been late three times this week. One is reminding you to order an aesthetic before someone notices you're down-to-one box. And one is asking why someone keeps taking the good scissors. One tab contains the employee who said it's fine, but they said it in a tone that made it abundantly clear that nothing has ever been less fine. But then you go home and wonder why you can't turn your brain off. Your brain didn't complete anything, it just spent the day opening loops. It was solving everyone else's problems and repeatedly abandoning your own work that creates mental clutter. Then you take that clutter home. You replay those conversations. You remember things at two in the morning. You anticipate tomorrow morning's problems. That is the deal we need to end. Not by becoming uncaring, not by refusing to help, not by putting a sign on your door that says, solve your own problems. I have retired emotionally. You end that by becoming intentional. You choose your fires. That's the tool I want you to use this week. And it's simple enough to remember in the middle of the day. Before you solve a problem, ask three questions. Question number one, is this actually my fire? Not can I solve it? Of course you can solve it. That's not the question. The question is, is this mine to own? Does this require my authority, my knowledge, or my role? Or has someone brought it to me because it feels easier than them having to think? You can be capable of solving something without being responsible for solving it. That distinction, that's going to change your whole life. Then question number two: what happens if I do not solve this immediately? Your brain will often tell you something terrible is about to happen. The practice is going to collapse, the patient is going to leave, team members going to be upset, doctors going to be frustrated. Everyone will stand motionless in the hallway until you return with clear instructions. But ask yourself, would that realistically happen? Could this wait 10 minutes? Could the team member try something else first? Could they look at the written policy? Could they ask the person whose responsibility it actually is? Could they make a reasonable decision and then report back to you? Many things are urgent only because we have made immediate access to us, their standard. And then question number three: What is the smallest amount of help I can give without taking this over? I love this question because the answer may not be nothing. You may need to help, but helping and taking ownership, they're not the same thing. The smallest amount of help may be a question. What have you already tried? What does the policy say? What do you think the best next step is? What options do you see? What would you do if I weren't here today? Now that one that may create a look of absolute betrayal. What do you mean if you weren't here? But let them think. Silence is not an emergency. You don't have to feel it. Someone thinking for 12 seconds is not evidence that the practice is going to collapse. It's evidence that a brain is being used. Let it happen. They may come up with the same answer you would have given. They may come up with a different answer that will work just as well. They may come up with an answer that needs a little adjustment. All of that is okay. You can guide without grabbing the steering wheel. Let's say team member comes in and says, Miss Gibson is upset. Nobody told her about that cancellation fee we charge. What should I do? The old pattern, you'd immediately walk to the front, apologize, explain the policy, wave the fee, calm everyone down, return to your desk frustrated because no one can handle anything. But what if there's a new pattern? What if the new pattern were you pause, you ask, what have you already explained to her? And you let the team member answer. Then you ask, what do you think would be a fair way to handle it based on our policy? Now she has to think. Maybe she says, I think I could acknowledge that she is frustrated, show her where the policy was provided, and let her know we can make a one-time exception. You may agree, you may adjust that answer, but she participates in the solution. Now, imagine another scenario. Imagine a team member says, we're out of impression material. Old pattern. You roll your eyes, you sigh, you call three different offices, you find some, you drive across town during lunch, you return with that material like a dental version of an emergency organ courier. But what if there's a new pattern? What if you ask, who's responsible for monitoring the inventory? And they answer. You ask, what are your options for solving it today? And what system needs to change so this doesn't happen again? The immediate problem still gets handled, but the person closest to the problem participates in fixing it. And the larger issue gets addressed. That's choosing your fires. You deal with what truly needs leadership while refusing to make every problem permanently dependent on your involvement. And I want to warn you about this. Expect this to feel uncomfortable. When you stop answering every question immediately, it may feel terrible at first. You may feel rude, unhelpful, impatient. You may worry that the team thinks you're just being difficult. Your brain may tell you, oh, just answer them. This is taking too long. They're going to do it wrong anyway. It would be easier if you just handled it. But remember, your brain is asking for familiar relief of taking over. That discomfort, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It may mean you're simply interrupting a deeply practiced habit. Your team may also push back, not because they're bad people, but because the old arrangement was convenient for them. They brought you the problem, you took care of it. That was a wonderful system for them. But you're changing the agreement now. Now they bring you a problem and you hand them a thinking assignment. Naturally, that may be disappointment on their part. But stay steady. You don't need to become cold or robotic either. Please do not respond every time by slowly turning your chair and saying, What do you think? They may stage an intervention. Be human, be helpful, but notice when helping turns into rescuing. Notice when guidance turns into control. Notice when your desire to make the moment easier is making the future harder. Because there's a bigger goal. The goal is not to create a practice where no one ever needs you. You're the office manager. People are going to need you. Your experience matters. Your judgment matters. Your leadership matters. The goal is to stop using your highest level skills on problems that don't require them. You should not be spending your best mental energy on finding printer paper or repeating policies no one has bothered to look up and making every small decision for perfectly capable adults. Your work matters too much. You need the mental space to look ahead, to solve larger problems, to build systems, to develop people, to plan and to think, to notice patterns instead of repeatedly responding to symptoms. Anyone can spend the day chasing sparks. Your role is to notice why the sparks keep happening. Maybe the same question keeps coming up because the training is unclear. Maybe the schedule keeps falling apart because there's no clear standards for emergencies. Maybe the team constantly interrupts because there are no designated times or channels for questions. Maybe everyone waits for you because mistakes have historically been punished instead of coached. Like, hello, am I the only one with that one? Maybe the real fire is the system allowing the daily problem to be repeated. That is the fire worth your attention. So this week I want you to notice. Notice the moment someone brings you a problem. Notice your urge to answer immediately. Notice that little rush that comes from knowing exactly what to do. Notice the discomfort of allowing someone else to think. And then ask yourself: is this actually my fire? What happens if I don't solve it immediately? What is the smallest amount of help that I can give without taking over? And you don't need to change everything tomorrow. Start with one question, one interruption, one fire you choose not to call your own and put it out. Because the goal is not to become less helpful. The goal is to become more intentional with your help. The goal is not to stop solving problems. The goal is to stop solving problems that everyone keeps being dependent on you for. And the goal is not to make yourself unnecessary, it's to make your contribution more valuable. Now, your brain, it's going to naturally choose the work that feels familiar, immediate, and rewarding. Your job is to choose the work that creates the result you actually want. This is excellent mental hygiene. This is leadership. And it's how you begin to run the practice without letting it run you. So remember, not every spark deserves your attention. Not every problem deserves your ownership. And not every fire is yours. Choose your fires. Choose them with intentional. I want you to have a fabulous week. And don't forget to join me in my free Facebook group Beyond Dental Burnout. We're going to keep the conversation going over there. So until then, have a fabulous week. I'll see you in the group and on next week's podcast. Bye. Hey, have you had a chance to download your free copy of my mental hygiene checklist yet? Visit Beth HeilmanCoaching.com to get your copy. It teaches you the practical skills you need to achieve the same level of excellent mental hygiene as your dental hygiene. Don't miss out on this valuable resource for both your personal and professional growth.