Mentoring has been around since individuals first organized themselves with the common goal of improving their skills. The system of the apprenticeship of a student to a master was the main way skills and knowledge passed from generation to generation in many areas of life and commerce, from baking bread to building a cathedral.
Mentoring Is More Important Than Ever
In today's increasingly complex health care environment, mentoring may be more important than ever. Research shows that mentoring is an extremely effective way for individuals to navigate change, develop new skills and learn how to better deal with people and problems. A good mentoring relationship benefits both your practice and your practice team members. Especially for new graduates entering the chiropractic profession, mentoring can predict career success.
New graduates who receive mentoring are less likely to make errors when establishing a practice that are costly in both time and finances. Mentoring also provides support that reduces the stress of dealing with the unknown. For more seasoned practitioners, participating in a mentoring relationship results in lower employee turnover and increased loyalty. Mentoring can help an existing practice retain a qualified workforce that might go elsewhere. It also helps train both new and long-time practice team members – fast. Today all practices are going through a great deal of change and they don't have the time or finances to send all of their staff members to seminars and classes all of the time. Mentoring is the most effective way to train your team and to help them stay ahead of the increasing pace of change.
Increasing Your Chance of Mentoring Success
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What Goes Into a Successful Mentoring Program?
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Most importantly, any mentoring program must have a clear buy-in from both the chiropractor, as practice owner and team leader, and the members of their staff. Your mentor, you and your practice team must agree to devote time and energy to the relationship. This is not possible if you, as the practice leader, don't make it clear that the mentoring program is important.
Engaging Your Practice Team in Mentoring
A mentor can have a great plan for your practice, but if you and your practice team don't buy into it and are not engaged, it's not going to be successful. If your practice team doesn't support the program with their time and energy, your mentor is not going to be fully engaged and may not give your practice the attention it deserves. This is particularly dangerous, since research shows that having a disengaged mentor can be worse for the morale and retention of your practice team than not having a mentor at all.
Components of a Positive Mentoring Experience
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Setting Clear, Measurable Expectations
You must be able to measure your mentoring program's progress, demonstrate its value to your practice and ensure that you and your practice team members are spending your time effectively. Both you and your mentor are responsible for fulfilling this role. There must be accountability on both sides. A successful mentoring relationship walks a fine line between following a formal, structured program and letting the direction of the program follow a more organic approach. A good mentor balances the immediate needs of the practice with the long term goal of creating lasting change. People rarely excel and thrive if the mentor and program is too structured or too rigid.
The most successful mentoring programs focus on what all parties involved can expect from the relationship and the time commitment that will be involved. One of the biggest reasons formal mentoring programs fail is that mentees don't make enough of a time commitment. Both you and your mentor should have a formal schedule and set your expectations up front of how and how often you will interact. You must both agree that mentoring is going to be a priority and to keep your level of engagement consistent.
Making the Right Match
A mentoring relationship won't be successful unless it is a good match. The mentor must have something to offer the mentee in terms of matching his or her needs. The most successful mentoring relationships require compatible personalities. Mentors are not going to invest their time, energy, resources and their emotional side into developing someone who they don't like. Making a good match is almost an eHarmony kind of mindset – the online dating site that uses in-depth profiling. It is helpful if there is an element of choice built into the pairing. Both the mentor and the mentee should feel as though they are participating in a mutually supportive relationship.
Expanding Your Mentoring Network
Mentoring doesn't just happen in formal programs. Much mentoring occurs outside of these programs. This is a good thing, since the current school of thought is that successful people have more than one mentor. You need different mentors, not just at different points of your life, but for different parts of your life at the same time. This is best accomplished by mining your network of contacts and approaching potential mentors directly.
This process is called multiple mentoring. Take this multifaceted approach to the mentoring process by creating a personal Advisory Board. While the chiropractor of the past focused primarily upon patient care, today chiropractors must take on more of an entrepreneurial and administrative role than ever before. Fill your advisory board with highly effective mentors and professionals who can support this endeavor. This means developing mentoring relationships that support your roles as healer, administrator and entrepreneur. Multiple mentoring relationships with professional coaches and consultants, such as a practice-management coach, financial planner, billing specialist, and marketing specialist, will help to ensure your success.
A Reciprocal Relationship
In the end, successful mentoring relationships are reciprocal and benefit both the mentor and the mentee. As mentees, chiropractors and practice team members value having mentors who provide them with information, systems and accountability to accelerate their success. Mentors benefit from insights that help them track "best practices," stay on top of new developments and gain new perspectives on old problems. Finally, mentors benefit from leaving a mark on the next generation of chiropractic professionals.
Dr. Mark Sanna, a 1987 graduate of New York Chiropractic College, is a member of the ACA Governor's Advisory Board and a member of the President's Circle of NYCC and Parker College of Chiropractic. He is the president and CEO of Breakthrough Coaching (www.mybreakthrough.com).