Laurie Baedke (00:16.095)
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Growth Edge Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Laurie Baedke and I am so excited today to welcome a dear friend and colleague back to the show, Dr. Ruth Gotian. Dr. Gotian is a leadership expert. She's a keynote speaker. She is a scholar and a multiple times bestselling author.
Dr. Gotian, this is your third visit to the Growth Edge Leadership Podcast and your third book just came out last week. Your third book in over three years. That alone says something about urgency and depth of a topic. But before we dig into discussing your recent book, I would love to pass the microphone to you and just ask you to fill in some color commentary. Tell the listener about yourself before we dig into discussing your brand new book.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (01:15.694)
Sure. And if you add the textbook on medical education that came out in 2020, then really you'd think that I've got a screw loose for writing all these books. But you know what? I'm an avid reader and I love to research. And when there's a question that needs answering, I go deep and so deep I write a book about it. that's what I just keep doing. Most of my research is about
Laurie Baedke (01:35.487)
Yes.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (01:43.72)
success and high achievement and high performance. So I get to routinely interview Nobel Prize winners and astronauts, Olympians and NBA champions. And I am a, the former chief learning officer at Weill Cornell Medicine, where I was also on the faculty and at one point even a Dean for mentoring. So mentoring is deeply embedded in my soul. It's one of those things that
When it's done right, it is absolutely beautiful and you can see careers change. But when it doesn't happen or it's not done right, then things sort of crumble and that became a mission to try to fix that. All from snowy New York.
Laurie Baedke (02:24.332)
I, all from very snowy New York. I love that so much. Dr. Gotian, you have spent decades studying mentorship, as you mentioned, and you've written about it extensively. What gap did you see in healthcare that made your new book? Sorry, I just stumbled for a moment. Remind me the title. Yes.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (02:48.066)
The name of the book, Mentoring in Health Care.
Laurie Baedke (02:51.635)
I'm a middle-aged woman and this is my, this is my, this is, yeah, this is my reality. Okay, starting over, mentoring in healthcare. And I would also love for you to tee up to mention your co-authors as well, if you're so inclined, but yeah. Ruth, you've spent decades studying mentoring and you've written about it extensively. What gap did you see in healthcare that made this new book, Mentoring in Healthcare, not just useful, but necessary right now?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (02:53.344)
I get it. Trust me, I get it.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (03:05.1)
Yes, of course.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (03:22.726)
When I previously wrote The Success Factor, I was deeply embedded in the work of mentoring because I was a mentoring dean. And one of my favorite articles at that time was in JAMA, and it was called Mentorship Malpractice. And it was written by Drs. Vinit Chopra and Sanjay Saint. And we had been in touch because I was so enamored by this article. I invited them to speak. They invited me to speak. We had co-authored together.
And then they said, we have this book that needs a second edition. And they wrote the mentoring guide book. And I wrote back to them, I said, it doesn't need a second edition. It needs a focus on healthcare because mentoring in healthcare is totally different from mentoring in every other organization. Because in healthcare, your time is not your own.
Sometimes your mentors are assigned to you. Sometimes they just leave or are on sabbatical and you need to figure things out. So Dr. Vinit Chopra, who's the chair of medicine in Colorado and Dr. Sanjay Saint, who runs medicine at the Michigan VA and I, the three of us, we partnered to write this book, Mentoring in Healthcare that we really needed because the sole focus was on healthcare and everyone within the healthcare
ecosystem, physicians, scientists, physician, scientists, nurses, techs, deans, the leadership, everyone. And it's really broken up into three parts. It's one for the mentor, how to be effective because we're never taught how to do it. One for the mentee, how can you become the mentee that everybody wants to mentor? Everyone wants to pour into and how organizations can do a better job. So it's not just something that
Laurie Baedke (05:05.226)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (05:17.28)
is a checklist. So that's how mentoring in healthcare, the book was born.
Laurie Baedke (05:22.235)
I love that so much. And I love that this collaboration came about fairly organically, but became so specific. So let's dig into this belief that I think many would believe and I would include myself that mentoring is inherently positive, but
Based on your research, where does that assumption occasionally break down and specifically in healthcare because that is the area of focus of your career and your co-authors and this book especially as well.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (05:53.676)
Yes, when it happens well and it's efficient and it's effective, it's fantastic. Careers can change. Burnout is decreased. The mentors are promoted six times more often. The mentees are promoted five times more often. The research is crystal clear that when mentoring works, it is life altering. The problem is when it doesn't work. When your mentor really just likes the title but doesn't want to do the work. They are too busy.
They don't want to give you constructive feedback. You give them a manuscript to review and they hold onto it forever. They are just sort of not even there, not there to help you. They don't engage with you. They don't respond. They don't want you collaborating with anyone because they're nervous, right? That it'll take away their status. That's what we call those mentors turn into what we say are tormentors. And that
practice of what they're doing is mentorship malpractice. And that can just really unwind and become really ugly, really fast.
Laurie Baedke (06:59.123)
Yeah, let's stick with that term because that term mentorship malpractice, how would you define that? And what should listeners understand about how easily well-intended mentoring ends up causing harm?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (07:15.544)
Sure. It's really, breaks down into active and passive mentorship malpractice. There are things that they actively do, and then there are things that they passively do. So if you think about the one who stops you from collaborating or talking to other people because they fear their own status, or the ones who are not responding to your emails or don't have time to meet with you, or just want to be everyone's friend,
They don't wanna have the difficult conversations about authorship, which sometimes need to happen, or they're the bottleneck, right? You're giving the manuscripts to review or an abstract to review and they just don't respond. Those are all active or passive activities that form the mentorship malpractice. And when it happens repeatedly, the mentoring relationship starts to disintegrate, the mentee,
will hopefully start to leave that mentor. And we talk all about in the book about the process of how to do that. But those people, those mentees get hurt the most because once they've been burned by that mentorship malpractice, they don't want to dip their toe into the mentoring pool again because that mentorship malpractice leaves scars. And the problem is then they have no mentors. And we know that those without mentors
underperform those who have mentors. So it becomes even if they've left that tormentor mentor, that scar stays with them and it'll hurt their entire career if they don't take an active approach to it.
Laurie Baedke (08:59.648)
Do you find, and I'm certain that over the course of your career, you mentioned that you just departed a long tenure at Weill Cornell Medicine. Was it, am I correct? Is it right at 30 years you were a part of that institution? So amazing. Yes, indeed, indeed. It is certain to me that you have observed.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (09:12.623)
I'm just shy of 30. Yeah, I started when I was five.
Laurie Baedke (09:24.271)
many, many excellent cases of superb mentorship and generous and really exceptional acts of service and contribution to the formation of others. But likely you have observed individuals or ways that individuals either commit mentoring malpractice or you've watched individuals perhaps be collateral consequence of it in your institution or maybe as they came to you. So
What are some of the attributes of individuals who have been the subject of a tormentor or have been the beneficiary of bad mentoring? What do you see in them and how can, someone is listening and thinking, I think that might be me, that sounds like something I've lived, speak to that person. How do they identify that? And then how do they overcome it?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (10:15.672)
Yeah.
Yeah, and we have a whole chapter dedicated in the book Mentoring in Health Care to recognize those signs, recognize those red flags, if that is happening to you as a mentee, but also how to recognize it in yourself if you're a mentor. If you all of a sudden stop asking for those meetings with the mentor.
If you start not looking forward to it, but you start resenting it and you hope that they will cancel or reschedule because you know it's going to be a waste of your time, time you will never get back. If they are not making introductions, if they are holding onto things, you start to close into yourself and you start to doubt yourself and your self-confidence weakens. All of those are signs of poor mentors because the good mentors, they don't just help you with your career.
Laurie Baedke (10:42.827)
Hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (11:09.72)
They also help you with the psychosocial support. They cheer you on when your paper gets rejected or a grant gets rejected. They're there to help you and support you through that and help you revise it and tell you, they see the big picture, not just that one paper that's rejected. If they're not there to see the forest for the trees for you, you might have one of those tormentor mentors.
Laurie Baedke (11:12.736)
Hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (11:36.705)
If you find yourself getting smaller, if you find yourself not speaking up as much, that could be a sign that you've had a tormentor mentor. If all of a sudden you are not publishing as much, if you are not putting yourself forward as much because you are fearing what they may say, if they're always saying you're not ready and they can't tell you what it would take to actually be ready to submit something, that might be a sign of a tormentor mentor.
Laurie Baedke (11:39.488)
Mm.
Laurie Baedke (11:57.58)
Hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (12:05.27)
And for the mentors who are doing this, I ask why. Why? Why are you doing this? The best mentors in the world are the ones that they want their mentees to outshine them. One of the people who I got to interview for my work on High Achievers was someone who I think might have been a guest on this show was, Dr. Bob Lefkowitz
Laurie Baedke (12:18.891)
Mm.
Laurie Baedke (12:31.689)
Dr. Bob Lefkowitz Mm-hmm. Yes.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (12:32.866)
Dr. Bob Lefkowitz from Duke. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2012. And the co-recipient of that Nobel Prize was his former mentee. And I said, Dr. Lefkowitz, what was it like to share the biggest award of your life with your mentee, somebody who you trained?
Laurie Baedke (12:49.099)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (13:00.737)
And I was expecting him to say it was kind of awkward. It was weird. Why didn't I get it first? But he said, no. He said the biggest moment of pride was the fact that his mentee got to share the award with him. He said that to him is worth even more. That is like the medal on his chest. That's how he is able.
to really say that the mentoring works. And he has mentored over 300 people at this point. He endorsed our book Mentoring in Healthcare He knows what good mentoring looks like. And he wants to be excited about the research as much as the mentee is excited. And he said, if we're not both really excited, it's not going to work. But look for that mentor who's going to be excited for you, really, truly excited when you succeed.
and we'll stop at nothing to help you get there.
Laurie Baedke (13:59.797)
I love that and I love you sharing about Dr. Lefkowitz because first and foremost, it is a hallmark tell of your generosity that one thing that you have done consistently in your and my friendship and knowing each other over these years is that you share your network so generously and many leaders, I have many colleagues who absolutely very much gatekeep or protect the...
premier relationships that they have assembled in their lives. And you are so generous in that regard. So thank you again, as always for that. It is a tell of a really confident, high achieving leader is that they are very open-handed with what they know, with who they know. And they are discerning in that regard, but they are very generous. And I wonder if you would share the audience. It is so important what Dr. Lefkowitz
taught me and shared with me that I think you know as well is just how much the high school that he went to is a fertile garden of current now Nobel laureates and just what the mentorship legacy looks like. I think that that bears a lot of fruit right here as we sit in this part of our conversation.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (15:19.446)
Yeah, and we've had many conversations about that. So he went to Bronx Science, if I remember correctly, which has, I think, more Nobel Prize winners than the entire country of Spain. And one of the things that we have learned is that most Nobel Prize winners were trained by other Nobel Prize winners or their direct descendant. So
Laurie Baedke (15:24.33)
Mm-hmm.
Laurie Baedke (15:45.023)
Yep. Yep.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (15:46.847)
They know what it takes and they're willing to share that information and train you in that right way. And if you look at it, it's the same thing with Olympians. How many Olympians were trained by other Olympians? Because they know what it takes to get there. Look, you have to have the raw material. If you're not willing to do the work, no amount of somebody sharing their network is going to help. You still have to do the work and you still have to be talented at it.
Laurie Baedke (16:06.218)
Yep.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (16:15.096)
but somebody is showing you the path and you are willing to learn and take in as much as you can. And I think that's what it takes at every step of the way in every industry. So you have to listen to these people who are sharing their information. You have to be discerning also about, I understand everything? Do I believe in everything they're saying? And if you don't, you should talk to them about why. Because
They might be willing to pivot if it doesn't align with your values or if it doesn't allow you to, it doesn't align with something else that you value so much, maybe a work-life balance, whatever it is. But there has to be someone who has walked that path, knows somebody who walked that path can steer you in the right direction. They're not there to remove the bulldozers and the craters that are in their way, but they're there to teach you.
how to overcome them. And that's what you want the mentor to do. You don't want someone who's clearing the path. You want someone who's teaching you how to overcome anything that gets pushed in your way.
Laurie Baedke (17:28.923)
I love that so much. And I think that also then begs the discussion of one of the unique differences between mentorship and coaching, because there are many similarities between the two practices and there are some elements about each that are very, very unique. And I think that, and I welcome your pushback or perspective on this, but as it pertains to mentorship compared to coaching, there really is a necessity that someone has been there, done that.
they have done what you aspire to do. And that is not always the case with coaching. And coaches can be very effective and the coaching as a practice is important, but it is so essential to be able to have community with individuals who have walked the path that you're on. And so it's one of the reasons why mentorship is so prevalent in academic environments, right? But.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (18:23.118)
That's right. That's right.
Laurie Baedke (18:24.798)
outside of that. And I think that this is a great call to action for any of the listeners to just say, what am I perhaps missing or hungry for?
Right now, that could be provided through seeking the counsel or the wisdom or the lived experience of someone who has been there, done that. And let's be honest, the farther that you ascend in your career or ascend in leadership, the more challenging it can be to find someone who is doing the very rare or unique thing that we are aspiring to, yes.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (18:55.278)
That's right, or it can get you to think a little bit differently. And I think that one of the things we have to keep in mind is the old school way of thinking about mentorship is that it's one person who's older, wiser, grayer, likely not the same gender as you and I. But now the more contemporary approach is to have a team of mentors, because one person cannot give you everything that you need. And with that,
Laurie Baedke (19:06.587)
Mm. Mm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (19:24.91)
comes something else that's new, our mentors are not always senior to us. Sometimes they are peer mentors, they are at our level, and sometimes they are junior to us because we can learn from people who are junior to us, something that's often referred to as reverse mentoring. So that's with mentoring. And one of the things that I have learned from my last book, The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, which I wrote with Andy Lopata who's based in the UK,
Laurie Baedke (19:30.047)
Yes.
Yes.
Laurie Baedke (19:36.715)
.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (19:54.199)
is that in the United States, mentors are volunteers. They don't get paid. But in Europe, they do get paid, which is very interesting. Now, on the flip side, coaching, which you and I do as well, is very different. I do a lot of coaching also with a lot of elite athletes. I don't play in the NBA. I work with astronauts. I don't, and I'm not going to space. But there's something.
Laurie Baedke (19:58.38)
you
Laurie Baedke (20:15.914)
You don't?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (20:22.722)
to be learned, there's somebody who will hold them accountable. And where mentors often give a lot of answers, coaches ask a lot of questions. And they get you to think deeper about things. And they get you to think about things in a way you may not have seen because you have blinders on. And they're going to hold you accountable. They will hold your feet to the fire and they will hold you accountable. And they are not afraid of those difficult conversations.
Laurie Baedke (20:26.389)
Mm-hmm.
Laurie Baedke (20:32.607)
Yes.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (20:50.732)
because the goal is to make you better. And the coaches get paid and the good coaches get paid extremely well. And I'll let you in on something. Every CEO in the world worth their weight in salt has an executive coach without fail, every single one. So there's a reason for it.
Laurie Baedke (21:14.204)
and the highest performing ones actually listen to, take the advice of and change because of what their executive coach shares with them, encourages them to undertake. I love this so much. Here's kind of a new pivot. I love the piece of your book where you were talking about mentorship and its structure. It's not just a one way obligation.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (21:25.998)
100%.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (21:38.606)
That's right.
Laurie Baedke (21:39.057)
What is it Ruth that mentors owe mentees and just as importantly, what do mentees owe mentors? What are some of those attributes or elements or practices that are essential in a best practice relationship?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (21:54.208)
Absolutely, mentorship when it works really well is bi-directional. Both the mentor and the mentee are getting something out of the relationship. So the mentor has to make sure that when they're coming, they are prepared and they are not distracted. And I'm telling you now, if you have a grant deadline coming up, that's not the week for the mentorship meetings. It just really isn't. So they are ready and they are willing to share their knowledge.
and share their social capital, their network. But the mentee, you have to earn that. Laurie mentioned that I am very generous with my network. Yeah, for the people who have earned the trust. And I know that they will do good with it. And I know that they will not harm my name or reputation in any way if I share someone from my network with them. So that's very important. You have to
Laurie Baedke (22:26.155)
Yeah
Dr. Ruth Gotian (22:53.134)
Be willing to do the work. You always want to strive to do more. You want to keep them updated, not just when things go right, but also when things go wrong. And one of the things I want you to keep in mind is when you send those follow-up messages, which I hope mentees are always doing. Laurie, let's say that you're my mentor. I will send you an email, Laurie, thank you so much for the conversation.
I really appreciated discussing this. Of the four ideas that you had, I decided to go with one and two, and here's what happened. I decided to table number three because of this reason, and I decided not to approach number four because of this reason. Now this shows that I have listened to everything you said. I came up with my own conclusion.
But not just because I want to be difficult, but I actually gave it some thought. And all of our discussions have layers. We may not have gotten to all the layers why I could not implement number three now or number four is not correct. But I have now kept you in the loop. Before the meeting, I always let you know the topics I want to discuss. I limit those topics. And in between our meetings, I am keeping you updated.
When you start to have the communication, communication is so critical. It's so helpful. And if the mentor knows in advance what they want to discuss, they can either read up on something, they can start thinking about who is the right person to introduce you to, and all of those things will make a difference. So that prep work before the meeting is critical. Keeping the meeting focused is very important.
learning emotional intelligence and how to read when something is off, which is a whole other discussion, is critical as well. And also knowing when this mentorship relationship has run its course and it's time to move on. All things that are critical.
Laurie Baedke (24:59.296)
Yeah, I'm going to come back to that in a moment when we talk about kind of exiting mentorship relationships, but let's linger here for just a moment because everything that you've just said, I think is so important, Ruth, because I so frequently encourage individuals to be a model mentee. Those steps of etiquette that you just described and that active management, that managing your mentor up is essential because if you're doing
what Ruth just described, you are making it so easy for someone to be your mentor. You're keeping them apprised. You're demonstrating that you've got skin in the game. The actions that you're undertaking, you're giving them transparent line of sight to your thought process, your discernment, your actions, and you're reporting back. And now you are motivating that individual even more so to be on your team.
and you're making it a light lift for them. One thing I also believe deeply is the more strategically that we do this, the more that we practice that mentorship etiquette, the mentee is the model mentee, the more it motivates our mentors. And then it also tees us up to occasionally activate our mentors to become sponsors on our behalf. And when you're doing what Ruth just described,
Dr. Ruth Gotian (26:18.712)
Yes.
Laurie Baedke (26:23.112)
Now you are laying the bricks in the foundation or the pavers in the path toward your mentor, knowing when you're going to be ready for that next stretch assignment or that promotion or that high visibility opportunity that they can endorse you for because they have seen consistent evidence of the fruits of your labor and their labor as well. I just think it's such a win-win and it may seem like that extra mile.
but that extra mile is rarely crowded, is it?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (26:54.604)
You know, it's usually not crowded at all. And I'm glad that you brought up the idea of turning that mentor into a sponsor, because I think it's so critical. They have, those mentors have access to people and opportunities that you don't even know about. But they're not going to push you in that direction. They're not going to open up their network unless you have proven yourself. People like to throw themselves behind winners.
So you have to prove that you've got what it takes to be able to do that. And that means that not just are you doing the work and keeping them apprised of everything, you are also looking for opportunities. And you say, I would like to apply for this fellowship. I would like to apply for this grant. I would like to apply to this speaking opportunity for whatever it is, this award. What do you know? What should I do?
Laurie Baedke (27:22.943)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (27:53.026)
What should I be thinking about? And you start to ask those questions and they'll tell you what they need to do and then you're going to follow up and then you can say, would you be willing to nominate me? What can I do to make it easier for you to nominate me? And you will give them whatever it is that they need, a bio, a drafted letter, whatever it is so that they don't just talk about what you've accomplished, but they're able to talk about your work ethic. They're able to talk about your character.
Laurie Baedke (28:04.382)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (28:22.775)
They're able to talk about your innovative way of thinking, things that you can't just see on an 83 page academic CV, but something that you want that letter of recommendation, that nomination letter to talk about because that is going to be the differentiator. And that is how you turn your mentor into a sponsor.
Laurie Baedke (28:43.645)
I love that. Okay, so one little topic I think is directly connected to this is that leaders often struggle with how to support those standout mentees without creating favoritism or inequity. So what does your research suggest that leaders can do differently here to make sure that they're avoiding that little fine line of thin ice?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (29:05.258)
We talk a lot about that in the book Mentoring in Healthcare. And I'll share it with a story. I was asked to go into a major academic institution, which we all know. And this one longtime mentor came to me. And he said, I'm really struggling. I've been mentoring for decades. And I want to take out the mentees for an after work drinks and golf.
And I don't understand why it's only a certain demographic of people who are coming to those meetings. And I said, well, after work, you are excluding any young parents who have to help kids with homework and getting dinner on the table and spending time with their families. That alone is an entire demographic of people.
Laurie Baedke (29:59.339)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (30:02.893)
And not everybody likes golf and you have to keep that in mind as well. So those are some of the things that I think getting that outside perspective is so helpful. I recommend that you make a list of your mentees if you're the mentor and color code them by any demographic that you want. If you don't have a rainbow as a list and it's
everyone is predominantly the same, you're working in an echo chamber and you as the mentor are also missing out because remember I said the best mentoring relationships are bi-directional, you will learn from the mentees as well. But if the mentees are a mini version of you, you are missing out an entire opportunity to learn something completely different about these different experiences.
Laurie Baedke (30:33.982)
Mm-hmm.
Laurie Baedke (30:44.011)
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (31:00.019)
And the former CEO of Virgin took somebody who was significantly more junior, different gender, different ethnicity to mentor him. That was the reverse mentoring. That was Patrice Gordon. And that opened his mind up and his whole world about how an entire demographic of people within the company he runs are having certain experiences that he was not aware of.
Laurie Baedke (31:00.074)
Yes.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (31:28.587)
So you need to have that entire rainbow of people within your mentoring group of the people who you mentor so that you as a mentor can also achieve greater things because you will learn other things when your mentees are different from you. And the opposite is also true. Mentees should not only have mentors who look like them. Many people think, I am a woman. I am rising in academia. I should find other women who are rising in academia.
Laurie Baedke (31:43.285)
Yes.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (31:57.718)
Maybe so, but two problems. One, not that many women up there. And if they're all mentoring, when are they going to do their job? And two, if I'm only hearing from people who are like me, I'm not going to learn how other people are doing things. A great story is when there was a major award in my industry. And I once told someone, I think you would be great for this award.
It went back and forth. agreed to nominate him. Within 30 minutes, I received a bio. I received verbiage of what I can include in the nomination letter and three additional people that I can ask for letters of recommendation, which he already reached out to. Now, I had not realized that that is how that world operates, that you can actually do this, not just ask for these nominations, but essentially write it yourself as well.
Laurie Baedke (32:48.747)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (32:54.976)
I was significantly more junior and naive then. Once I learned that, and by the way, that person, not the same generation, not the same gender, not the same ethnicity, not the same religion, totally different. But I learned from that experience. And if I would not have learned, I would not be able to pass it forward and teach it to other people. And I used that same method myself, and I won the award two years later.
Laurie Baedke (33:16.052)
Indeed.
Laurie Baedke (33:20.852)
I love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing. Okay, our time is running short, but I have two more quick questions for you. We need to come back to this, you know, the end of mentoring relationships. In your book, you address what a lot of other books avoid or just touch on, which is when mentoring relationships should evolve or end. How can the listener, whether they're a mentor or a mentee, bring closure in a way that reflects growth rather than failure?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (33:49.995)
Yeah, so in the book Mentoring in Healthcare, we actually give scripts for how to do that. There's the natural time when mentoring relationships end, and those are easy. You're graduating, you're done with residency, you've gone on to a different job, all is great. Those are easy. But then there are times when it's just not working anymore. And you don't wanna burn your bridges. So you want to...
Laurie Baedke (34:09.931)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (34:15.074)
really craft the message very carefully. And we give scripts for how to do it either in person or via email, where basically you are saying that either you are looking at going things in another direction or what have you. That's one way. And we give the ways to craft that carefully. When it's truly toxic, this is where your mentoring team comes in, because it's beyond what you can do.
and they help pull you out and find a new mentor for you. But you have to rely on that mentoring team to help you. And that's one of the things that they're able to do. But you are able to say, either I'm switching labs, or I found someone whose time more aligns with my ability to commit to this project, or has more time to help me, or is not as busy right now.
or our work aligns a little bit better. All gracious ways to make that exit so that you don't burn those bridges because academia is a small world.
Laurie Baedke (35:24.349)
It really is. It really is. I'm so glad. I love that part of your book. And I, again, we're going to be putting the link to the book in the show notes. And so I can't wait for individuals to go run, don't walk to pick it up. But last question for you, Ruth, is if the listener is just wanting to perhaps or needing to take one concrete step in the next 30 days to become a better mentor or a more effective mentee, what would you want that one step to be?
Dr. Ruth Gotian (35:51.246)
I do want to tell you how you can mentor more people effectively because everybody wants to mentor. Everybody wants to be mentored. Nobody has it so much time in the day. Think about how to scale your mentorship. How can you learn from several people at once? And think about getting a group of people together where you are learning from one or two mentors and you are learning from each other simultaneously. And if you start doing that and there's different ways to do that, first you can try
quietly by lurking in certain groups, either on social media or in WhatsApp groups, but then you can actually start creating these groups either in person or on Zoom. They will wildly, wildly change your career. And I do want to say for the listeners, if they want to see the maturity of their mentoring relationships and what they can do to make it grow. My co-authors and I, we've created an assessment.
that your listeners can take. It's on the book website, which is mentoringinhealthcare.com. There's a link there. They can download the first chapter, and they can also take that complementary assessment, and they get an entire report to learn more about it.
Laurie Baedke (37:04.116)
I love it. Ruth, thank you so much for this delightful conversation. Thank you for your contributions to our world, both in your academic and scholarly publishing and in your mainstream publishing and just all the great work that you're doing as a speaker, as a coach. I'm to be providing links to how listeners can find you and follow you as well as purchase the book. So thank you so much. Stay warm and stay safe in this new chapter.
Dr. Ruth Gotian (37:31.457)
Thank you.
