How might mentor/mentee pairs get more out of their relationship? Learn something in 2 minutes! IV. Meetings. Coaching. Peer Mentors. Networking. Blind-spots. Listening.
image from Dall-E via Bing Chat. “2 physicians with a hilarious and terrifying mentor experience.”
This is an interview between Dr. David Bar-Shain, originator of the PACmentor program. The PAC is the Physician/provider Advisory Council comprised of physicians who attend the Epic User Group, and Dr. Bar-Shain is a senior informaticist at MetroHealth in Cleveland, Ohio. I took the transcript of our 30-minute conversation and broke it down into 2-minute reads.
- I. Find a mentor. Mentor’s job. Confidence. Curiosity. 1-pager. Stories.
- II. Book club. Being Boring. War Stories.
- III. Is Mentorship = Therapy? The Psycho 80.
- IV. Meetings. Coaching. Peer Mentors. Networking. Blind-spots. Listening.
- V. Lateral thinking. More Book Club. Persistence of Memory. Stumbles.
- VI. Failure Resume. CT ruined healthcare. Mentor a mentor? Downstream.
Ready? Here’s part 4 of 6. If you have time to listen, the full 30-minute audio interview is here. Here’s the audio-only interview (33 minutes).
Take-aways from meetings
CT: I have to be careful not to tell too many war stories, but I rarely end up with a big workload. It’s usually, here’s some ideas, let’s see how those work out. I can’t wait to hear how you did with that next time.
One of the things that is important to keep in mind is that mentor-mentee meetings should not be in themselves heavy lifts. I shouldn’t be assigning 17 hours of work to you. I should be talking about, “Hey, read this book if you’re interested and I hope I got you excited about it. Hey, if you’re excited about writing one pager, let’s have you try that out and let’s talk about it next time.”
Both of us should be coming and saying, “I can’t wait to talk about X, Y, Z, but I shouldn’t be dreading it. Ugh. Oh, this deadline is huge. I’m supposed to write this 17-page thing for this person.” No, it shouldn’t be that.
It should be a meeting of the minds, a sparking of ideas, and excitement coming out of it. I can’t wait for the next time.
DB: It really sounds like people get that out of their meetings with you.
Coaching vs Mentorship vs Peer Mentorship
CT: Another idea is that you’re an advocate. The terms can be confusing. Is it coaching? Is it mentorship? I guess there are different definitions.
I meet with lots of folks in my organization. Some are leaders in clinical areas, but don’t report to me. In some cases, we find our conversations mutually helpful. For whatever reason, we’ve agreed, let’s meet again. This was useful to both of us. And it’s not always a power dynamic of I’m mentoring you. Sometimes it’s peer mentorship. “Hey, I can help you with some things. You can help me with some things. Let’s reflect on the common struggles we have.” Sometimes that can be incredibly powerful.
A peer mentor can hold you accountable to move forward in your career. For example: “Why haven’t you revised your CV?” “Oh, yes I did promise to do that with you.”
Networking and mentorship
CT: A mentor is an advocate. Sometimes you say, “Let me introduce you to this other person, because I think he/she could help you achieve what you’re trying to do.” Or, someone else I know in the organization is trying to do something similar and maybe if you team up, you will be more successful. I’m always thinking in the back of my head, “who else in my network can be helpful to you that maybe you haven’t met yet?”
Iit’s always surprising. In fact, what happened among my separate mentees, was one person was complaining about pediatric vaccines and another one had just talked about pediatric vaccines at XGM and I’ll say, “You guys should talk to each other.” And I love to take credit for the two of them talking to each other, coming up with great ideas and say, “You are such a great mentor, because we solved this thing.” And I say, “You’re welcome and all I did was introduce the two of you.”
Mentor’s job: Blind spotting
CT: The other thing I think about is sometimes you can see blind spots.
If you’re only in your own head and struggling to make progress in informatics, sometimes you keep bashing against the same thing and you don’t see it. But just being a person in the room listening, you can sometimes say, “Well, have you ever thought about putting on the other person’s hat and how do you come across to them?” And they say, “Oh, yeah, I must be a big pain in their butt.”
Listening more than talking
And you say, “How would you think about approaching that?” The mentee then says, “I could probably be nicer or I could probably look for something in common.” Then I could say, “These are great ideas.” I love just asking questions and most folks have great ideas that they’re just afraid to voice. And I love just having them talk until they say, well, that’s a great plan. I say, “I’m glad I helped you by asking questions because you already had a great plan. I just needed to give you some space to talk about it and assemble something useful.”
DB: That’s a great idea. The patient often knows their own diagnosis.
CT: Exactly. If they can just express it to you. It’s surprising how often this works with patients. “Tell me more about that. Tell me what ideas you have. Really? That sounds really fascinating. Have you ever tried that? You’ve never tried that? Well, how about between now and next time you try that?” Patients love it and, they think you helped them, but they came up with the idea. I’m just validating.
Listening is so powerful. One of my colleagues used to say. “The more I listen, the more my patients learn.” I suggest the same for mentors.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
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