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Welcome to the MGMA Podcast Network, your gateway to insightful discussions and expert analysis on key topics in healthcare management. Dive into a diverse array of shows tailored to meet the interests and needs of healthcare professionals like you.
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Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We are back with another MGMA Insights podcast, and I'm really happy to let you know we have Doctor. Ruth Gotian here today. Ruth is Chief Learning Officer at Will Cornell Medicine and a leading expert in mentorship.
Speaker 1:I believe we connected on LinkedIn. I'm always looking for good people to connect to there. And, Ruth kept popping up on my feeds. People were talking about mentoring and mentoring is a real emphasis for MGMA right now. We really want to make all of you aware that we've got a mentorship program here.
Speaker 1:So without further ado, Ruth, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here, greetings from New York City.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And I wanted to put in a plug here. Your work has been featured in The Success Factor. It's also been featured in The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring. Think these are both books you've authored.
Speaker 1:Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Two of my latest books. It sure is.
Speaker 1:Wow. So tell us a little bit about just a highlight or two. I know you I'm in the Denver area. You said you were here recently at one of the hospitals. I'm supposing you were doing some consulting work or something along those lines.
Speaker 2:They had one of the they had not one of they had the largest mentorship academy in academic medicine, and I was the keynote speaker. So it was a true honor to be there.
Speaker 1:That is so exciting. Wow. Well, you'll have to let me know next time you're in town.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, us a little bit about your background. What led you into healthcare and mentoring as an expert in that field? Talk about that.
Speaker 2:It's been a long, long road. My first two degrees are in business, and I went to work in investment banking, as often one does after business school. And I lasted two years. I was really good at it, but I didn't like it. And that's when I realized that you could excel at something and not enjoy it.
Speaker 2:And I was not going to spend the next forty years that way. So I said, well, what do I really enjoy? And I really enjoyed working with students. But I didn't want to work with undergrads because I've done that and there were a lot of disciplinary issues and, you know, been there, done that, wanted something else. So I looked at what are the most prestigious graduate school programs I could run those.
Speaker 2:Fast forward, I found out there was what's called an MDPhD program for students who get the dual degrees. This has a three point five percent acceptance rate. You have a better chance of getting into Stanford than into this program. Super competitive, the best of the best. And yet there were attrition issues.
Speaker 2:And for two decades, we were focused on those who were leaving and why are they leaving and what are they doing and why can't we get them to stay. And there were books written about it and articles written about it and conferences. Every year we would talk about it and nothing changed. Now, what did Einstein say when you do the same thing over and over again? Insanity.
Speaker 2:And I said, well, maybe we're looking at the wrong end of the problem. Instead of focusing on those who are leaving, why aren't we focused on those who are staying? And while we're looking at those who are staying, let's focus on those who are really excelling, the best of the best. How can we get more of those people? So while having that job running that MD PhD program at the age of 43, I added one more thing.
Speaker 2:I went back to school to get my doctorate to study this. Success. And I studied extreme success. And it started with physician scientists. And then when I realized they have these four things in common, not habits but mindsets, that's when it took me down the rabbit hole of, well, what about astronauts?
Speaker 2:And what about Olympians and NBA players? And I've been studying high achievers and success ever since. And mentoring played a huge role in that. Because one of the things I realized was that in order to be successful, you have to surround yourself with a team of mentors. And I've been studying both in parallel ever since.
Speaker 1:That is such a cool story. So tell us, just give us an idea of, I guess, on one hand, why mentoring is so successful. And then I guess it's the flip side of it. So you look at the negative part of it, why so many people struggle when they don't have a mentor.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's a lot of research that's been done on mentoring. We know, and this research goes back over a quarter of a century, that those who are mentored out earn and outperform those who are not. They make more money. They get promoted more often.
Speaker 2:They're happier in their jobs. They're happier in their careers. They throw their hat into the ring because they have a higher self efficacy. So when an opportunity arises, they say, look at me, consider me. So they get promoted.
Speaker 2:If they're in academia, they publish more often. And it has decreased rates of burnout. And we know that those who are mentored are five times more likely to get promoted and their mentors are six times more likely to get promoted. And it's a great retention tool for the organization because those who are mentored stay. They have greater loyalty to the organization.
Speaker 2:Now, we know all the benefits. It's not a secret. 76% of people understand the benefits of having a mentor. Yet only 37% of people actually have a mentor. So where is that disconnect?
Speaker 2:And part of that disconnect is we were raised, my whole generation, of that mentor has to be someone very senior, right? Older, grayer, wiser. But that is not the contemporary approach anymore. And that will actually give you a lot of blinders if you only have one mentor who is more senior to you. The more contemporary approach to mentoring is to surround yourself with a team of mentors.
Speaker 2:And this team of mentors should be diverse. It should be people senior to you at your level, what I call fronters, and those who are junior to you who very often can also mentor you, right? That's called reverse mentoring. And you want people in your industry and outside of your industry. So it gives you all these new perspectives.
Speaker 2:It can teach you all these new skills. And you have access to all of these new networks that you didn't have before.
Speaker 1:I am blown away. I've been at this for way more than thirty years, and I've just never heard the whole mentoring thing explained quite like this. And it sounds easy when you talk about it, but I know it can't be. So what are the impediments? I know that one of the things I got in researching your book is organizational support.
Speaker 1:So talk about that. What kind of support is needed from the organization? And then what does it look like in action?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it's simple. It's not easy. I also think that people make it more complicated than it needs to be. The first thing that I want everyone to really listen and pay attention to is please promise me you will never, ever, ever ask anyone to be your mentor.
Speaker 2:Now, know this sounds crazy. You have this mentoring expert. Why would I tell you not to ask someone to be a mentor? The reason is as soon as you ask someone to be your mentor, you're asking them to take on another obligation. And people don't usually have time for that.
Speaker 2:But people do like to help. They do like to pay it forward. The first part of my research on success was defining success. And people are very concerned about their legacy, what they're going to be known for. And at the end of the day, you're going to be known for the people that you raised up, your mentees.
Speaker 2:So what you want to do is you don't want to ask someone to be your mentor. Instead, here's what I want you to do. And this is without any organizational support. If you are approaching someone, right? So you might say...
Speaker 2:You might go up to someone and say, I know you're the expert at this. I'm putting this together. Research. I've done all this work up until this point. I'm stuck on this one area.
Speaker 2:And I know you have a lot of experience in this. Could I show you what I've done and talk to you maybe for twenty minutes? Help me think this through. What am I missing? Where is the gap?
Speaker 2:Well, that is very different because it's contextual. I know what we're going to talk about. I know how long it's going to take. And you've already shown me that you've done the legwork. That's very different than help me with my career.
Speaker 2:But where do I start with that? Right? But if you make it contextual and make it time bound and show that you've already put in significant effort, people are going to want to help you. Because people like to help those who they know, like and trust. But you have to show them that you are someone that they can get to know, like and trust.
Speaker 2:So let's say we meet for twenty minutes. I showed you everything that I've done. You told me where the gaps are. You gave me some ideas. And then I go off.
Speaker 2:Now, the mistake most people make is they go off and never come back. So, I go off. I think about everything that you told me. But now I'm going to make another meeting and say, thank you for meeting with me. I took everything you said.
Speaker 2:I wanted to go over what I finally decided to do, and take you through my thought process. Now maybe you decided... Maybe I decided to take one of your ideas. Maybe I decided to use one of your ideas as a springboard to something else. Or maybe I decided not to take your idea, but I'm going to tell you why.
Speaker 2:Because now this shows you that I've actually put some thought into everything that you told me because you gave me your time. That's your most precious resource. So I'm going to show you that I've really thought about this deeply. And now this starts a conversation because people want to really help those that are invested and take the advice and run with it. You don't have to take the exact advice.
Speaker 2:I don't have to do everything you do. Mentors should not be creating mini mes. Right? They should be helping you be the best version of yourself so you can take the idea and run with it. Use it.
Speaker 2:Don't use it. But go back and explain why. And then continue this all the time. Now, what can organizations do? Organizations can create this culture that mentoring is woven into the tapestry.
Speaker 2:So almost every single Fortune 500 company has a mentoring program. Excuse me. Some of them are great. Some of them, not so great. And part of it is because the matching is completely random.
Speaker 2:They'll say, oh, you're both from Denver. Why don't you two work together? Well, not everyone from Denver is the same. So that's kind of ridiculous. Or you're both accountants or you both went to the same school or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:So that doesn't really make sense. However, there are certain groups, and this is especially for underrepresented groups or certain cultures, where asking for guidance is really frowned upon. It's almost seen as a sign of weakness. Where here it's a sign of strength. So this creates a platform where you don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 2:It's already given to you. So we have the on ramp. Now we need an off ramp. What if we don't get along or we don't have chemistry or it's not the right mix? There has to be a way for the mentee and mentors to switch.
Speaker 2:Now, can whole other conversation about how to scale it and do team mentoring, training the mentors, which is never done, training the mentees, which is rarely done, creating opportunities. 61% of mentoring relationships happen organically. So we need to create opportunities for people to meet each other and start conversations because not everyone knows how to kick off a conversation with a stranger. Right? When I write articles on that, they go viral because people just don't know.
Speaker 2:They don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, you were pointing out something that was really interesting. You were saying, well, just because these two people live in the same location or they're both in the same job function or things of that nature that may not be the best fit.
Speaker 2:That's not enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what is a good fit? I mean, how do you know when you found a good mentor mentee relationship? You know, kind of like match.com or something, but for careers, you know, what... What's...
Speaker 2:But it's the same idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you know when you found a good friend? How do you know when you have found your life partner? You're curious about each other. You want to spend time with each other. You want to learn from each other.
Speaker 2:It's the brains that you like so much that you want to just soak it all in. Teach me. Teach me. I want to learn more. Because what you think is so obvious as a mentor is likely not obvious to the mentee.
Speaker 2:So when you really connect with someone who gets you to think differently and gets you to think bigger and gets you to think and tear down any barriers you might have put in your mind, that's when you found a great mentor.
Speaker 1:Okay. What is the environment that's set up where you have the opportunity to connect to this person? I mean, we're not talking about doing speed mentoring here like speed dating, right? Mean
Speaker 2:Though sometimes that's done. I don't love it, but yes. Look, I feel that where wherever there are interesting people
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:That's an opportunity to find a mentor. But I think people need to take the stress off because people walk into a room and say, I've got to find my mentor here. No, you don't. You don't walk into a room saying, I'm going to find my best friend. You don't walk into a room saying, I'm going to find my life partner.
Speaker 2:But you look for interesting people and interesting conversations. And you have to continue those conversations afterwards. It's not just that one event and we're done. It's a continuous conversation. And that's what really needs to be done.
Speaker 2:That's what's so important, and most people don't do.
Speaker 1:Okay. Now you've written about something called the reciprocal nature of mentoring. Logically, I'm kind of piecing that together in my head, but explain that to us. What does that look like in practice?
Speaker 2:So if you and I are mentor mentee, at some point you don't even know who's the mentor and who's the mentee. Because in the best and strongest mentoring relationships, both the mentor and mentee are learning from each other.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:that's when it's reciprocal. And that's when it's so powerful. Because when you're both learning from each other, you actually want to spend more time together.
Speaker 1:Okay. Then let's go into organizationally, what are the biggest challenges you have found in your research to developing a successful mentoring ship... A mentorship program?
Speaker 2:So there are several challenges. The first one is what's the home for it? Who owns it? And that's part of the challenge. If no one's in charge, then it's not really happening.
Speaker 2:And people need to have the time to be able to mentor. It needs to be rewarded. In The United States, mentoring is not paid. My co author, Andy Lapata, is British, and I have learned that in Europe mentoring is paid. But in The United States it's not paid.
Speaker 2:But there are other ways of valuing other people's time. And that needs to be considered. And we're not great at doing that here in The United States. We've got a problem with time. But I think we need to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:We need to train our mentors on how to be effective in their work and know how to mentor people who are the same as them and people who are different than them. There might be different needs. How to scale their mentorship. What to do when the mentoring isn't working. How to avoid becoming a tormentor.
Speaker 2:All things that people need to know about. And the mentees obviously need to know how to leverage these relationships and also what to do if it's not working out. But I think we have a lot of room for improvement for sure.
Speaker 1:You brought up a really interesting point here is that in America versus some other countries, Europe, there may be an... A benefit, a paid benefit, a bottom line aspect to Yeah. Mentorship. A lot of organizations here in The States. I mean, it's a bottom line business.
Speaker 1:And so this is maybe a more squishy sort of, you know, initially at least, soft skills that we're getting training There's not just like immediately, look, we've increased revenue by 10% through these three meetings we've had. I mean, maybe it's longer term and all of that. So how do you convince upper management? How do you get that buy in from the organization? This is something we need, and we're gonna have benefit from this.
Speaker 2:I can easily make the business case from entering. So first of all, we need to define what would success look like. And I think that's the first step that most people don't take. Is it, and I don't call them soft skills, I call them power skills because it could really give you a lot of power if you know how to do it well. But what would it look like?
Speaker 2:Would it look like promotions? Would it look like new clients? Would it look like taking on stretch assignments? Would it look like greater curiosity, greater motivation, things that are harder to measure? So I think the first step is let's identify what it is that we're going to measure.
Speaker 2:And then we know what the benefits are. So you can look at that. We know that it's higher salaries. We know are they negotiating more? Are they producing more?
Speaker 2:Are they getting promoted more often? Are they taking fewer sick days because they're not as burnt out as they were? Right. These are all ways that we can measure it. Now, if people start becoming more curious and more motivated and more productive, that's going to help the bottom line.
Speaker 2:And if it helps them to become or maintain being a high achiever, well, we know that high achievers are 400% more productive than an average employee. We also know that it helps the mentor. We also know that it helps retention. And we know that replacing anyone is very expensive and very time consuming. There's another great, metric to help the business case for mentorship.
Speaker 2:So that's not a problem.
Speaker 1:That sounds good. What is a fair time frame then? Say you you make the business case, they accept it. Now... Yes.
Speaker 1:How long and how many different mentorship relationships to then you go back to upper management or the exec team and go, hey, here are some results. I want to show these to you.
Speaker 2:I think you need to give it time. Okay. Because a lot of this is essentially built on chemistry at the beginning, and the productivity takes time. So get that baseline and then say, in a year, let's see where we are. Did we build up a momentum?
Speaker 2:Because sometimes that starting ramp might be a little bit longer than when you start plateauing a little bit more. So you want to give it time for that on ramp and say, let's see what's working in a year. Maybe we need to do less one on one and more group. Right? And it's very different for every organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And as far as a successful program, have you measured like what is the percentage of employees at an organization who are involved in the program? I mean, what's a good measuring stick there as well?
Speaker 2:So we didn't look at that. But what I can tell you from the organizations that I did speak with, many of the... Almost every single Fortune 500 company has it. 92% of the Fortune five hundred and one hundred percent of the Fortune 100. So they have it.
Speaker 2:But having it and doing it well are two very different things. So do we have it on paper? Are we leveraging it to its full capacity? I've seen some organizations that do a phenomenal job, truly phenomenal job. And then there are some who say, oh, it's mentoring day, so once a year we'll do something.
Speaker 2:Well, mentoring is more than once a day.
Speaker 1:A final question.
Speaker 2:I mean, a day, once a year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, once a year. I mean, sure. Once
Speaker 2:a day would be overkill too.
Speaker 1:That would be. A final question then. There's just so much talk now about emerging technologies. There's so much that's helping us do our jobs more efficiently and with AI getting involved. What's going on with mentorship?
Speaker 1:Or is there technological advancements? Because I was thinking previously it might be face to face. Like you mentioned, two people in Denver, we go meet in a coffee shop, we talk, but now you and I, we're from two different parts of the country as well. So what's happening in the emerging side of it from a technological standpoint with mentoring?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And in fact, I am literally next week recording a LinkedIn learning course on just this topic.
Speaker 1:So,
Speaker 2:mentoring will not replace the human connection. Mean, not mentoring. AI will not replace the human connection. What it can replace and be extraordinarily helpful with is the back end administrative load. Initial matching, scheduling, note taking, action plan, follow ups, those can all be done with AI.
Speaker 2:But having the conversation at the end of the day needs to be done to humans. And whether that's done in person or virtually doesn't matter. But for my mentoring, I'm not talking to a bot. I'm talking to a human being.
Speaker 1:Okay. All right. Well, that is a great place to end this conversation. So Doctor. Ruth Gotian, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is going to do it for this episode of MGMA Insights. In the episode show notes, I will be putting several links and resources that Ruth was talking about direct links to her books and other tools that you can access. So until then, thanks to everyone for being MGMA Pod cast listeners.