Dublin day 2 : a brand new leadership day for 2026

this isn’t a day about dentistry. It’s about leadership.

Today, Friday 23 January 2026, I’ll be delivering a full-day workshop in Dublin that I’ve never presented before. That sentence alone is enough to make me slightly nervous and very excited in equal measure.

Because this isn’t a day about dentistry. It’s about leadership.

Not leadership in theory, or the version you’d like to believe you’re practising, but the leadership your team experiences on a wet Tuesday when two nurses are off sick and the phones are melting.

Over four sessions, we’re going to take an honest look at identity, culture, and the conversations most owners and managers avoid until the situation becomes painful. Then we’ll turn it into a simple 90-day plan with accountability built in.

Session 1: Dear practice

We’ll borrow a powerful idea from Gareth Southgate’s “Dear England” thinking: the notion that the work sits inside something bigger than targets and tactics.

The delegates will do a candid self-assessment of who they are as a leader, draft what they want their practice to stand for beyond clinical outcomes, and identify 2–3 specific leadership behaviours they will model more consistently.

The core message is simple and uncomfortable: your team don’t experience your intentions. They experience your behaviour.

Session 2: Changing the dressing room

This is the culture session. Not the culture written in your policies folder, but the lived reality: how people speak when nobody’s watching, what happens when things go wrong, and whether people truly feel safe to speak up.

We’ll run a “dressing room audit”, then use a practical Stop/Start/Continue framework they’ll leave with two commitments for the next 90 days:

• one clear standard they will enforce consistently

• one weekly ritual they will personally lead

Session 3: Braver conversations, less drama

Most chronic problems in a practice don’t exist because you lack information. They exist because necessary conversations are avoided.

We’ll explore The Karpman Drama Triangle (Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer) and how it keeps practices stuck in noise instead of change.

Then we’ll practise an “adult-to-adult” approach, including a four-step script that keeps them calm, clear and effective.By the end of the session they will have chosen one real conversation they’ve been avoiding and committed to a date to have it.

Session 4: From lessons to action

No vague motivation. No “I’ll try”. This final session turns reflection into a 90-day leadership campaign with a one-page scorecard.

They will define their result, their weekly behaviours, their lead indicators, their key conversations, and their “brains trust” (one person inside the practice, one outside) to keep them honest.

Why this matters

If you want a calmer practice, better standards, fewer people problems and more consistent performance, you don’t start with tech. You start with how you lead.

I can’t wait to see how this lands with our Dublin audience, and I’m equally fascinated to watch how it’s received as we take it to six further locations around the UK in the weeks ahead.