Show Notes
Description
Dr Kim Tartaglia visits the FAMEcast studio for the inaugural episode of our podcast! We kick off our program with a discussion on mentorship and coaching in academic medicine. Why are these activities important? How are they best implemented? When are faculty ready to mentor and coach? And what can participants expect? We have answers to these questions and more!
Topics
Mentorship
Coaching
Learning Objectives
At the end of this activity, participants should be able to:
- Compare and contrast mentoring and coaching roles in academic medicine.
- Outline effective mentoring and coaching strategies that support learners and junior faculty on their career journey.
- Develop a personalized approach for advancing mentoring and coaching activities within your academic institution.
FD-ED Credit
This episode is approved for FD-ED credit through the Center for Faculty Development
at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. FD-ED credit expires 3 years from this episode’s release date.
Guest
Dr Kim Tartaglia
Interim Director, Mentoring and Engagement
Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Links
The Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement (FAME)
Mentorship Is Not Enough: Exploring Sponsorship in Academic Medicine
Measuring Faculty Retention and Success in Academic Medicine
Mentorship Readiness Assessment – University of Wisconsin
Mentorship Readiness Assessment – Stanford University
Mentor Readiness Assessment – Washtenaw Community College
Helping People Change (book)
Episode Transcript
[Dr Mike Patrick]
This episode of FAMEcast is brought to you by the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to FAMEcast. We are a faculty development podcast from the Ohio State University College of Medicine.
It’s episode one, our very first episode, and we’re calling this one Mentorship and Coaching in Academic Medicine. I want to welcome all of you to the program, and thanks for joining us for the very first episode of FAMEcast. We are excited you are here, and as our preview episode indicated, we are a faculty development podcast from the folks at Ohio State.
We’ll be focusing on faculty and academic medicine, that is our target audience, at Ohio State and beyond. And I say beyond because we are here for our own faculty, of course, but many of our topics will transcend Ohio State, and we hope will be useful for academic medicine faculty across the United States and around the world because we are all in the same boat together. And so, the things that we face in our career journey at Ohio State also pertain to folks in other places, and while each and every institution may have its unique flavor, there are a lot that unite us as well.
Of course, as a brand-new podcast, we’re going to ask your help in raising awareness and spreading word of our mission of supporting faculty in their career journey. You can do that by leaving a review wherever you get your podcasts and sharing our episodes on your social media feed. Of course, we also welcome your feedback on our contact page over at FameCast.org.
Future topic suggestions and comments on the show, both good and constructive, are always welcome, as we want FAMEcast to be a beneficial resource for all of you. So, what are we talking about today? Well, as the title of this episode suggests, we are considering mentorship and coaching.
We’re also going to talk about sponsorship or sponsoring, which is all these are very important topics for a faculty development podcast. We’re going to take a big overhead view of these topics today, because really, each could be an entire series of episodes on their own merit. And perhaps we will do that down the road, but today we’re going to stick to a broad overview.
And in what will become a regular aspect of FAMEcast, we have a terrific studio guest who will be joining us. Dr. Kim Tartaglia is a professor of medicine at Ohio State and interim director of mentoring and engagement for our Fame program. We’ll get to her shortly.
I want to let you know the information presented in FAMEcast is for general educational purposes only. Your use of this audio program is subject to the FAMEcast Terms of Use Agreement, which you can find at FameCast.org. So, let’s take a quick break.
We’ll get Dr. Kim Tartaglia settled into the studio, and then we will be back to talk about mentorship and coaching in academic medicine. It’s coming up right after this. Dr. Kim Tartaglia is a hospitalist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, and she serves as the interim director of mentoring and engagement for the Fame program at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She’s also a professor of medicine at Ohio State. Dr. Tartaglia is passionate about supporting faculty in academic medicine as they embark and progress along their career journey. This includes mentoring and coaching, which are the topics of today’s discussion.
But before we jump into that, let’s offer a warm FAMEcast welcome to our guest, Dr. Kim Tartaglia. Thank you so much for visiting the studio today.
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, thanks for having me.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, really appreciate it. This is our very first episode of FAMEcast. So forever from now, we will remember that Dr. Tartaglia was our very first guest. So, a special welcome to you. I think it’s appropriate that we’re talking about mentoring and coaching for our very first episode. Why don’t we start with some definitions, and I’m going to throw a third word in there as well, and that is sponsoring or sponsorship.
So, what is mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring, and how are these things different?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, so thanks for having me. And January is National Mentoring Month, so it’s a great time to talk about this. I think of mentoring, sponsorship, and coaching as three slightly different but overlapping helping relationships in our professional lives.
So, with mentoring, you know, something that it’s important to do early in your career for sure, but it’s an opportunity where someone with a little more experience, perhaps lived in professional experience and some wisdom to help guide you along a career path or a professional journey. Coaching is something that you might seek out intermittently. It’s typically a short-term relationship where someone is using questioning and tapping into your intrinsic motivation to really help identify what’s important to you and what your next steps might be, either in your leadership career or in your career at large.
And then sponsorship is something that, you know, a mentor or even potentially a coach, I guess, could do, but it’s really crucial later in your career. As you need increased visibility inside your organization or nationally through a professional organization, a sponsor might use their kind of social and professional capital to help nominate you or encourage you to apply for certain positions.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
So mentoring is really more of a formal, long-term relationship between someone who’s sort of journeyed where you are journeying and can sort of help one another. And coaching is going to be more short-term, correct? And maybe even project-oriented?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, exactly. So, you can think of coaching as being skill-specific or you can think of coaching as a professional identity type. And so slightly different uses of the term coaching, but it is generally short-term and quite specific.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
And then I think sponsorship or sponsoring is probably the one that most folks in academic medicine maybe are less familiar with, but that’s really using your professional capital to advocate for your mentee, correct?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, exactly. And it’s something that we’ve probably been doing, but maybe just didn’t put a term to it. And so, a few years ago in academic medicine, Dr. Ayala and others at Hopkins did a nice kind of qualitative study to show you where mentoring and sponsoring overlap and where they’re slightly different. Yeah.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
And there is an article that we’re going to put in the show notes over at FameCast.org called Mentorship is Not Enough, Exploring Sponsorship and Its Role in Career Advancement in Academic Medicine. That’s from the journal Academic Medicine. And we’ll put a link to that in the show notes so folks can read up and learn a little bit more about the differences and maybe get a nice introduction to sponsorship.
So, let’s focus on mentorship here for a little bit. Why is mentorship important in healthcare? I mean, I think we all in our various departments get emails about, hey, do you have a mentor or are you interested in being a mentor?
And so those go out a lot. And I think a lot of people may just, you know, it’s another email, you stick it, archive or you delete it, and you think, well, maybe I’ll be reminded again in six months, and you keep putting it off. Why should you not do that?
Why is mentorship important?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, I think it’s easy to put mentorship, finding a mentor, something in the I should do category and not realize the benefits it can have. But it can really be transformational in your career. And sometimes it’s the difference between staying in medicine or staying at your organization or leaving.
And so, studies that have looked at this, faculty who have gone through formal mentoring programs typically have higher career satisfaction, increased productivity as defined by scholarship publications or leadership positions and higher retention rate. And so, you can think about as a system that’s really important as well, having your faculty be productive and stay there for long term because it’s expensive and inefficient to replace faculty who have left. But then when we even look at another study on university faculty, mentoring was associated with, you know, increased leadership opportunities, increased grants, increased time bought out for those scholarly activities that you want to do that sometimes you’re having to do in the fringes of your day.
And so, yeah, I think all of those reasons suggest that we shouldn’t ignore those emails. And I think, honestly, mentoring benefits both the mentee and the mentor. We always think that it’s the mentor giving their time.
And so sometimes as a mentee, we’re hesitant to ask for that time. And really studies have shown the exact opposite, that both mentees and mentors really benefit from this relationship, both from a connection and a sense of belonging, but also just skill sharing and kind of this reverse mentoring concept.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
It seems like there’s really advantages all around, not only for the two people involved in the mentoring relationship, but also for your particular department or division. And, you know, retention is so important because, you know, from a financial cost, there’s a big price in onboarding a new faculty member. And so, if someone leaves, someone new has to come in.
And so that can put a burden on a department or a division. And then, of course, success just as a group, if each individual faculty member is succeeding in their career, it really elevates your entire group that’s practicing together. Correct?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things we’ve done at our institution is to invest in a mentor matching service.
And that allows faculty within our College of Medicine to find mentors or for mentees across departments. And so, several of the people I’ve mentored over the last few years have not been in my department. And I can offer my perspective and share some wisdom, but it’s been really, I think, productive and, I guess, fulfilling opportunity for me as a mentor to get to know people outside my department, make those connections, see where, you know, things are going well and where we can improve across the organization.
And so, you know, siloing mentoring in your department, I mean, that’s great, but consider finding mentors that are a little bit different from you for that different perspective.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. And I think in today’s post-pandemic world of virtual meetings, it does make it easier. I mean, you might even be on a different campus, but if you can get together in a Zoom meeting, for example, once a quarter, we’ll get into more what the relationship looks like and how often they should meet and things like that.
But it’s certainly easier today than it was, you know, when everything was in person and this virtual stuff wasn’t an option. Absolutely. We also have an article, another one in Academic Medicine called Measuring Faculty Retention and Success in Academic Medicine.
So, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. You know, you may say, well, this is so important that we should, everyone should have a mentor, and we should just assign them. But we really do want it to be voluntary because you’re going to, you know, when you are motivated to do something, you’re most likely going to put more effort into it.
And you certainly don’t want just four meetings a year and you’re just doing it because you’re supposed to do it, but you’re not really getting anything out of it. We want to avoid that too, correct?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Absolutely. You get what you put into it. And so, we really want both parties to be invested in the relationship, which is why I think having an opportunity to vet potential mentors and select them is absolutely crucial to the relationship.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, absolutely. So then what components make mentoring relationship productive? What does the relationship itself look like in terms of best practices?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, well, you know, we just mentioned good fit. And so, what does that mean to have a good fit? When you’re thinking about a potential mentor, you want to look for someone who shares your values, who you have some mutual respect for, and who you have a personal connection for.
And so typically, that might be someone you know a little bit. Or if your potential mentor is someone that’s brand new to you, it’s worth doing almost like a pre, you know, sort of confirmation meeting to assess, are those things there? Do you have some shared values and personal connection?
And then really, I think clear expectations are a must for any good mentor mentee relationship. And I just want to say that, you know, it’s, I’d love for everyone to have at least one mentor, but it’s a huge burden for one person to be your one helping role. And so, whether it’s multiple mentors, a mentor and a sponsor, a mentor and a coach that are different people, I think that can really take the burden off any one person and create a richness of experiences for that person who is looking to, you know, further their career.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you really want to connect both on a personal level, but then also sort of where you’re journeying to, it may be helpful to have someone who has taken that route before you. And next time on our podcast, we’re going to be talking about the professional mission statement.
And so, if you’re not quite sure where you are journeying, be sure to listen to our next episode on that, because it is important to sort of have your goals in mind as you’re thinking about who your mentor could be. What are some of the behaviors that mentees should think about in fostering success in their mentoring relationship?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, you just mentioned the first one. You know, a mentee really needs to know sort of what, where they’re going, what they want out of their career. And so, if you haven’t done that work, trying to do that work, because that’ll help you find the right mentor for you.
And then I think about what mentees can do to be successful before, during, and after a meeting with their mentor. So beforehand, you want to, you know, think about your needs, communicate those expectations, and ideally even set an agenda for that meeting so that the mentor knows what to expect. And then during the meeting, you know, giving opportunity to get some feedback, accept that feedback, ask questions.
And then after the meeting, kind of following through on the tasks that you’re going to do that. And also, we know mentors are busy. So, if a mentor has agreed to review a paper for you or to do something after that meeting, you know, give them some time to do that, but then follow up when they’ve forgotten or missed their internal deadline with you.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
When does the transition happen between being a mentee and being a mentor? Like, how do you know when you are ready to be a mentor? And then can you be both a mentee and a mentor at the same time?
Maybe you’re mid-career and you’re helping a very junior faculty member, I’m thinking, you know, associate professors, for example, but you may still need some work on your career too.
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Absolutely. We know that that mid-career faculty is actually a vulnerable time for people getting burnout, leaving the organization. And so, we think that’s a huge gap.
It’s, you know, when my mentors either retired or left the institution, I went several years without a formal mentor. And I think after some thought about that and discussions with my division director, it was really an important gap I needed to fill. So yes, you can be a mentee and a mentor at the same time.
You can also, in a peer mentoring type relationship, if you’re kind of near peer mentoring, you’re going to session to session, maybe trade off, are you the mentee or are you the mentor?
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, that’s a good point. Are there tools to assess our readiness to be a mentor or to help us along the way of being an effective one?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yes. No, I think that’s great follow-up. I don’t think you’re ever ready to be a mentor the first time you’re asked, just like you’re never really quite feel ready to be a parent until you’re a parent and you just do it.
I had one of my first mentees really taught me a lot about how to be a great mentor, in part because she was such a great mentee. She was prepared. She was clear on what she needed.
She kept us on track and made sure our meetings happened. But for mentors, I think there are some tools you can use to assess your readiness. We use something called the mentor readiness assessment tool.
So, it’s not such a catchy name, but it’s clear what it does. And it just asks you some questions to reflect. Do you have the ability to be a mentor, whether that’s the organizational awareness, a little bit of clout in your area to do those?
Can you help someone develop a career path? So those would be the abilities. Do you have a commitment and a willingness to be a mentor?
So, are you willing to carve out that time and commit to doing what you say you’re going to do? And really that’s, I think, looking at your plate, what can you do? Also, am I in the right headspace to do this?
If you’re burnt out yourself, if you’re overwhelmed yourself, perhaps that’s not the time to take on another mentee. We really try to protect faculty from being overextended with their number of mentoring relationships because we want to focus on quality, not quantity. But those mentor readiness assessment tools, and I even found some great ones at Stanford and at the University of Wisconsin has some great ones that you can look to if you feel like, I’m not sure I’m ready.
Let me take a look at this tool.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. And we’ll put links to those in the show notes as well. So, folks can find that episode one over at famecast.org.
So, let’s switch gears here a little bit and talk about coaching. What are the benefits of coaching relationships? Yeah.
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
So coaching, I think, is kind of a hot topic in medicine, but it’s existed in a lot of other places and in business. And we know from the business leadership, it’s really great for enhancing leadership skills and accelerating career growth. But the studies that have been done for coaching in medicine actually have focused on burnout and emotional exhaustion and quality of life and career satisfaction.
And in all of those cases, having a coach has shown improvement in those domains, whether they were faculty or they were trainees, residents specifically.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
And so, what is the theoretical basis for coaching? Mentoring, I feel like, is more sort of established as an academic relationship and there’s a lot of literature out there on mentorship and how to do it and the advantages that you get. Is there a similar theoretical basis for coaching in medicine?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, I think the difference is really with coaching, you’re not coming with answers. You tend to come with more questions and sort of thoughtful, reflective type questions to get the person you’re coaching to think about what it is they want, what is it they need, and what strengths and skills can they draw on to meet those needs or meet those goals. And so, when I think about coaching at the executive level, for example, I think about a couple of different theories that have been really helpful for me.
One is adult learning theory, that adults want to be intrinsically motivated and self-directed to learn when they have problems they need to solve, and they want to apply their experiences and relevant past life to learn what they need to learn and apply that to something new. So, you can think about the learning theory. You can also think about self-determination theory.
This is what taps into our intrinsic motivation. When we feel like we have some autonomy over what we can do, we have an opportunity to show some mastery, and we have a sense of belonging, we’re going to be more motivated to show up and learn new skills and grow as a professional. And then, of course, there are all the change theories.
And in medicine, we talk about the trans-theoretical model or the stages of change when we want a patient to quit smoking, for example. So, we know that, but there’s this theory called intentional change theory by Richard Boyatzis, and that’s really how I was trained as a coach to really tap into these different areas of motivation and how do we get there. Yeah.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Let’s talk about that particular theory, the intentional change theory. As I understand, there are five core components of intentional change. Let’s run through those.
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, absolutely. So, change is never linear, so you don’t necessarily have to go through these in order, but there is a general process. We call them a series of five discoveries or aha moments that you can go through, through any change process.
And this is for sustained desire change, so something you’ve decided you want to do, and you want to sustain long-term. So, the first one is kind of discovery of the ideal self. What does your true authentic self want?
And so, tapping into your values, maybe that 10-year vision of what you want, your purpose, and even a personal vision statement, and so that your next episode is going to be right on track for that discovery number one. The second stage would be a discovery of the real self. What is it that I can do well now and what are my opportunities?
And we’ve learned from a lot of literature that sometimes tapping into our strengths actually gets us more leverage than trying to elevate our weaknesses. Of course, we all have weaknesses maybe that get in the way sometimes that we do need to work on, but for the most part, people can get a lot more leverage by tapping into their strengths. The third part is developing a learning agenda, which I think this would be familiar to anyone who has developed some SMART goals.
You can start with a big goal like I want to learn a new language and break those down into more concrete action items. The fourth step is the opportunity to experiment and practice. And when you do this, when you’ve set a goal for yourself and you’ve created an action step, we want to get people into the learning mindset or learning framework and not the performance framework because when you’re in that performance mindset, you’re afraid to fail, but when you’re in the learning mindset, it’s okay to fail because failure is a type of learning.
And so, giving people an opportunity to kind of set action items, learn from those, figure out what works, and if it does work, keep performing it to a mastery level versus if it doesn’t work, let’s figure something else out. And then the fifth discovery really can be embedded throughout, but it’s developing what we call resonant relationships or those trusting, supportive relationships that you’re going to use to leverage to reach your goals. And during a session with a coaching client on this, I might say, well, who are your personal board of directors or who is your developmental network who helps you get things done, supports you, serves as a role model, and even stretches you because I think we need all of those types of people in our professional lives.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, absolutely. I am going to try my best to summarize those five discoveries just to help embed it into our brains. So the first is we want to find out where we want to go, who do we want to be, what is our ideal, and that’s based on the things that we have strengths in and what our motivations are, our passions, our goals, and kind of really look at where do I want to be in X number of years.
And then the second is where am I right now? What things do I need to learn? What do I need to practice?
What steps do I need to take to get to my ideal self from my real self right now? And then that really goes into the learning agenda, which how am I going to accomplish that? And I love that you said smart goals.
I’m going to try to remember what that means. So, a smart goal is something that’s specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. So, I have an idea of when I’m going to do it.
I did not have those written down, by the way.
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
That was amazing. Awesome.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Oh, yeah. I mean, it is. And really, even in not only in mentoring and coaching relationships, even in patient and family education, you know, if you want to change other people’s behaviors into a more healthy way, having smart goals and thinking about all of those components of it’s going to be really important.
So then once I have my smart goals outlined, then I’m going to experiment with new behaviors and try practicing some of the things that I need to do to get from where I am today to where I want to be. And then looking for those relationships to help me do that. Maybe someone who has done those behaviors in the past or someone who has gone from a real self to an ideal self, very much like what I want to do, you may be able to find folks.
And I’m thinking, too, perhaps a coaching relationship is a nice place to start. And that also lets you see, hey, I’m really connecting with this person. We really do have a lot in common.
Maybe a coach could then become a mentor. Or maybe you’re like, no, this is not going to work. I’m going to need to find a coach for a different project, and maybe that person will end up being my mentor.
Is that right on track?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, that was a really nice summary of the five discoveries. Yeah.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
And there is a book, too, called Helping People Change. And we’re going to have a link to that in the show notes as well. Is that a book you’d recommend for folks to take a peek at?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, that was Richard Boyatzis’s popular press book that describes the five discoveries and intentional change theory and how you put it into action. It does have a few exercises, but I think it’s a really nice, easy read that’s applicable not only to medicine, but really any kind of coaching relationship you might be involved in.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Now, we can have some pretty lofty ideas of mentorship and coaching and like, oh, this is going to be great, and it’s going to work out, and I’m going to advance my career. But there are also some challenges involved, right? So, what are some of the challenges that exist in mentoring and coaching, and particularly within healthcare?
Yeah.
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
So, in healthcare, we get paid to see patients and do that kind of work or to write grants and do research. And so, mentoring and coaching are one of those things that are so important to our careers, but it’s difficult to advocate for and carve out time for amongst the competing demands we have. And so, we want to figure out how much time can we really get for people to do these, have these meetings, because it does take time.
Coaching isn’t the most efficient sort of process, but it is a really transformational process. I think the other things are that, especially with coaching, but even with mentoring, you need a little bit of faculty development. This podcast is a nice way to get faculty development on the go, but we want people to feel well-prepared in those roles, and we want mentees to feel well-prepared too.
So having the time to train people to do that. And then I think there’s a number of people who look to see who are available mentors or coaches, and they don’t see anyone that looks like them. They don’t have the same lived experiences.
They don’t have the same professional challenges. And so, we need to address that kind of diversity inclusion barriers as well.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, that’s really important because where we come from really sort of determines what kind of barriers and challenges that we’re going to face. And it’s going to be so helpful if you have folks who can sort of give you a heads up on challenges that you may not even have considered, but because they have a similar background and are kind of journeying, have journeyed ahead of you, they sort of know what to expect. And if you’re prepared even before a challenge comes up, that’s a lot better than dealing with it new for the very first time.
So that wisdom, I think, is so important. I imagine that these relationships really also evolve over time. How do things change as the relationship moves forward?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that the most time intensive part of the relationships are in the beginning, developing the relationship, the action items, and the quick follow through. But over time, I found that I generally have to meet less frequently with my mentees or my coaching, my coaches.
It’s kind of we get into a maintenance phase where they’ve done the big changes, and now they’re maintaining. So, we may be able to meet less frequently. But I do think there are other ways that the relationship can mature over time where, again, that reverse mentoring, you form almost like a peer mentoring relationship.
Or you can figure out like this actually mentoring is not really the right fit for this. Let’s move more of it to a coaching role. So sometimes you’re going to put on a coach or a sponsor hat as a mentor because that person needs less mentoring over time.
We’d like for them to be kind of self-sufficient and outgrow you as a mentor.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
And that’s kind of that transition then from becoming a mentee to becoming a mentor as time goes by. We’ve talked a lot about the transactional piece of the relationship. So, what is a mentor doing for a mentee?
And even, you know, mentees are going to have some advantage and help mentors grow also. But there must be some self-awareness at play here so that we not only are looking toward the person that we’re in that relationship with, but we’re also looking in toward ourselves. And of course, we do that in the beginning when we think about those five discoveries.
But that really, that self-awareness piece should probably be at play throughout the whole time, right?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, absolutely. I think building self-awareness is such a crucial step in our success in our professional and personal lives, honestly. And you can lean on the work by Dan Goldman on emotional intelligence where self-awareness is really one quadrant of that.
I think having a trusting, supportive relationship is a great way to build self-awareness because hopefully that person is going to ask you questions to help identify your own blind spots, you know, what don’t you see about yourself, give you feedback, maybe help identify sources of feedback. So many of the people I’ve coached recently are really people that are very hard on themselves, and they don’t even trust the sort of compliments they get because they sort of have figured out how to write them off. So, like, it’s important to help, you know, your mentees or your coaches unpack that.
What are these defense mechanisms at play that maybe you served you in a former life but aren’t serving you now? You know, where do you think you’re actually better than you really are or worse than you really are? All of that, all those kinds of conversations help build our self-awareness so that I think the difference between our ideal self and our real self come closer together.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
You know, all of this is time-consuming, as you have mentioned several times. And in academic medicine, because there are so many different roles that we play, you know, in terms of clinical care, education, research, administration, I mean, often we are pulled in lots of different directions. How can our institutions better support us as mentors and coaches and make sure that we have the time to do it right?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, I think it’s important to not only make time for it and to incentivize it but also provide the resources. So, there’s an expectation for many in academic medicine, especially as you get to the associate professor level, that you do mentor people. But, again, what does that mean?
Having a couple of quality mentee-mentor relationships is really important, having the training. So, can we give people time to do that work? And we’ll say, even though it’s not revenue-generating in the traditional sense, we know that the kind of return on investment is huge.
I also think that, again, both mentoring and coaching are kind of one of the antidotes to burnout. Not just in being coached or being mentored, but to give back. Because you see and you celebrate the successes of the person that you’re working with, and that brings a level of professional fulfillment that, you know, you can’t put a dollar on.
So, again, how are institutions supporting that and then how are they making it easy? I mentioned earlier one of the barriers, which is finding potential mentors, especially if you don’t have someone really close to you that it’s an obvious choice in your department. Can you find a mentor somewhere else in your institution or through your professional organization at another institution?
And so, again, at OSU, we’ve developed kind of a mentor match service to make it easy to find potential mentors. And I recently had the benefit of, you know, finding someone who was very high up in the kind of health information technology space, a space that I feel like is a perceived weakness for me. And so, you know, he was like, oh, how do you still need a mentor?
How can I be of help to you? But he actually had a really important skill set and connections with people that made that mentoring relationship so valuable. And it wasn’t a high-touch mentoring relationship.
We only met quarterly, but it was so valuable for me. And, you know, I hope he got something out of it, too.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Speaking of you only met quarterly, is there best practice for how often you should meet?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
I think it depends on the relationship. So, if you’re thinking about, I’m in a research lab, I’m a postdoc, I’m, you know, early in my career, starting my lab, you’re going to meet with your research mentors probably weekly because you’re working on research projects. If you’re talking about career mentoring, our expectation is that at the start you meet about monthly if you can.
But honestly, I think there are many times that monthly doesn’t need to be that frequent. Every other month and every quarter, I think, is fine. I think once you’re getting less frequent than every six, you know, every six months, then the question is, is this relationship still, like, need to exist?
And are we getting something out of it? So, if you find yourself only touching base with a mentor once a year, perhaps see if it’s ready to come to a close. But otherwise, you know, every couple of months, it should be fine.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
I’m a talker, which is evident in the fact that I host podcasts. But when you’re in a mentoring relationship, I would imagine that for some people, you know, pleasantries and like, hey, how’s it been going? Like, that can take up a chunk of time.
How do you get to the point quickly and really maximize your time together? Or do you just make it, you know, like a longer meeting than you probably think you need?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Yeah, that’s great. You know, I think building that relationship is something for those of us who are efficient and want to get task oriented. We shortchange that small talk and that building a relationship.
I think that’s actually very crucial. So, several of my mentoring relationships, we choose to meet at a coffee shop, you know, off campus, we might only meet quarterly, but we’re going to meet for 60 to 90 minutes, because we’re going to allow 30 minutes to catch up with each other on our lives. It’s such an important part.
And I think, you know, I can speak for women, that, you know, women and mothers in medicine, you know, need to be able to integrate like what’s going on at home with how that impacts their career. So never shortchange that. I think being a talker and connecting with people at a personal level is something that is valuable.
And especially if you’re meeting quarterly, you can have a little bit of a longer meeting.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Good to know. So, then what are our key takeaways here for folks who have listened to this whole thing? What are the, if we distill it down to the most important points that folks need to know about mentoring and coaching?
What are those important takeaways?
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
I think so many important things, but if I could distill it down, they’re all-important helping relationships. And so, you know, seek them out, give them a chance, even if you’re hesitant. And know that, you know, mentors have offered to do this because they care about you, and they care about your professional development.
So don’t feel like you have to apologize for their time. And then as the mentor or the coach, understand that, you know, the best change and the best sort of professional fulfillment comes from internal motivation, readiness to change, and kind of boosting those. So, you know, I think sometimes talking less as a mentor, asking more questions, taking that coach approach to mentoring can actually be really helpful.
Because then I think people, whoever you’re mentoring can identify solutions for themselves, really increase not only their self-awareness, but also their self-efficacy, and then lean into strengths. And so that final part about, you know, encourage your mentees to lean into what they’re good at, because chances are what they’re good at is also what they love to do. And they’re going to put more effort in it, and it’s not going to feel like work.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, so important. This has been a really fantastic conversation. And for those who would like to learn more about mentoring and coaching, we do have some great links again in the show notes over at famecast.org for this episode, which is our very first one. We have a link to the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement, which sponsors this podcast. That’s FAME at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. And then we have a couple of those articles from Academic Medicine, Mentorship is Not Enough, Exploring Sponsorship, and Measuring Faculty Retention and Success in Academic Medicine.
We have those mentorship readiness assessment tools for you, and then a link to that book, Helping People Change. So once again, Dr. Kim Tartaglia, Interim Director of Mentoring and Engagement for the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Thank you so much for stopping by today.
[Dr Kim Tartaglia]
Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
We are back with just enough time to say thanks to all of you for taking time out of your day and making FAMEcast a part of it. Really do appreciate that. Also, thank you to our guest this week, Dr. Kim Tartaglia, Interim Director of Mentoring and Engagement for the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. You can find FAMEcast wherever podcasts are found. We are in the Apple Podcast app, iHeartRadio, Spotify, most other podcast apps for iOS and Android. In fact, if there’s a place where you get your podcasts and we are not there, so a search for FAMEcast wherever you are in podcast world.
If there is a place where you are regularly listening to podcasts and you can’t find us there, let us know and we’ll do our best to get included in their lineup. We also have a landing site for you. That is Famecast.org.
We will have our entire archive of programs there. Show notes for each of the episodes. So, as we talk about resources and links, we’ll always put those in the show notes.
Our terms of use agreement and the handy contact page if you would like to suggest a future topic for the program. Reviews are also helpful wherever you get your podcasts, especially when you have a brand-new podcast. People really do want to see those reviews and we do appreciate when you share your thoughts about the show.
If you have something constructive to say, I would ask that you use the contact page over at Famecast.org. We’d love to hear constructive feedback, but sometimes that’s a better one-on-one, especially as we are finding our way as a brand-new podcast. Now, speaking of, this is the first episode of FAMEcast, but I am not a newbie at podcasting.
In fact, I’ve been podcasting since 2006. I wanted to share just a little bit about myself here at the end, just so you have some background. I am a pediatrician.
I actually practiced in a primary care pediatric office for about 10 years, and now I practice pediatric emergency medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. I serve as their medical director of digital health, and I am the director of digital education for Fame at Ohio State. There’s a couple of other podcasts that I host on a regular basis.
If you are pediatric faculty, we have PediaCast CME. That stands for continuing medical education. It’s similar to this program in terms of format, but we do cover clinical topics in pediatrics that’s really aimed at primarily primary care folks.
We do turn the science up because we offer a free category one continuing medical education credit for those who listen, and that not only includes physicians, but also nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, and social workers, also dentists, because we do have accreditation from all of those professional organizations. If you are a pediatric provider in any of those disciplines, we offer the credits that you need to fulfill your state’s continuing medical education requirements. Of course, check with your state, and details for that program are available at pediacastcme.org.
I also host a podcast for moms and dads, and this is the one I’ve been doing since 2006. It is an evidence-based podcast. We cover pediatric news.
We answer listener questions and interview pediatric experts. Those shows are available at the landing site for that program, pediacast.org, and both of those are also available wherever podcasts are found. Simply search for PediaCast.
So, at least a little bit of background on my experience with podcasting, but I’m really excited to share a faculty development podcast with all of you. I think there’s just so much that we can all learn from each other, and that is going to be our goal moving forward. And until the next time, I just want to say thanks for stopping by.
And until then, this is Dr. Mike saying stay focused, stay balanced, and keep reaching for the stars. So long, everybody.
