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Show Notes

Hiring the right people is one of the hardest parts of building a business. But should you hire someone primarily for their technical skills, experience, attitude, or their potential to become a leader?

In this episode of The Underdog Dentist Show, Dr. Girish Likhani and Dr. Nikhil Malhotra discuss how our approach to hiring, leadership, accountability, and team building has evolved inside Likhani Healthcare Solutions India and Likhani Group Singapore.

We explore why hiring someone simply to fill a position can create problems later, and why we increasingly look for people who can take responsibility, solve problems, challenge ideas, learn quickly, and eventually operate with genuine ownership.

But identifying those qualities during an interview is difficult.

Can you really determine whether someone is responsible from a single interview?

Can you identify leadership potential before working with someone?

How much importance should you give technical skills versus attitude?

Should probation be considered part of the hiring process?

And what separates an employee who constantly waits for instructions from someone who can eventually lead?

We also discuss how our own hiring philosophy has changed as the companies have grown.

In the earlier years, adaptability, learning ability, and performing under pressure mattered heavily. Today, the conversation goes deeper into leadership qualities, honesty, accountability, problem solving, communication, proactive ownership, and growth mindset.

The episode also explores an interesting hiring problem: people pleasing.

You need people who can disagree with leadership, point out problems, and communicate honestly. But honesty without communication skills, professionalism, or respect creates an entirely different problem.

Finding the balance matters.

Beyond hiring, we discuss the kind of workplace this philosophy creates: giving people room to experiment, allowing creativity to take time, reducing unnecessary urgency, building trust within teams, and creating an environment where people can solve problems before immediately escalating them.

If you’re a founder, healthcare entrepreneur, clinic owner, hospital leader, manager, team leader, or business owner building a team, this episode offers our perspective on hiring people who can grow with the organization rather than simply work for it.

Because the question isn’t only:

Can this person do the job?

The better question may be:

Can this person eventually lead it?

Listen to the complete episode of The Underdog Dentist Show.

Subscribe for conversations around hiring, leadership, healthcare management, team building, employee productivity, workplace culture, healthcare marketing, entrepreneurship, and building scalable businesses.