MHA6100 WEEK 5 DISCUSSION AND PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

MHA6100 Week 5 Lecture Notes

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Finding and Engaging Mentors for Maximum Impact

A mentor is someone who you do not report to but who is willing to provide you with support, guidance, and advice for your development. A mentor is different from a leadership coach, because a mentor is not formally contracted and does not necessarily have any specialized training. Mentoring is widely recognized as an important resource for leadership development generally and healthcare leadership specifically. Through their relationships, mentors tend to have higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and career success.

Mentor vs. Leadership Coach

Basis of Difference

Formality

Mentor

Mentoring is an informal agreement that is typically not paid. Although this relationship can be made with specific goals in mind, the relationship is mainly informal.

Leadership Coach

This relationship is usually a paid contract carried out by a series of dynamic, private sessions designed to achieve goals that will result in improved effectiveness for an individual.

Time Period

Mentor

Mentoring has no set time period. This relationship can continue through the career of each individual.

Leadership Coach

The contractual nature of the relationship is normally specified for a period of time. This time is used to enhance a specified set of competencies or skills and to provide guidance.

Qualifications

Mentor

A mentor can simply be an individual who is in a position that a mentee aspires and can even be a respected individual at a higher position than the mentee. Normally, this is a supervisor who has shown interest in the careers of his or her direct reports.

Leadership Coach

A leadership coach is expected to be qualified through specialized training in the coaching process itself.

Identifying a good mentor begins with a clear understanding of what you want out of the relationship. Most of the time, the desire is guidance on the career track you are pursuing and skills you are trying to learn and what you are willing to put into the relationship to get what you want. Your career path interests should drive who you target for a mentoring relationship.

Mentors and the mentoring relationship can take many forms. Sometimes, an informal arrangement works best. Although if you want a long-term commitment from someone, requesting a more formal arrangement makes sense. A good approach is to simply let the potential mentor know that you would like to “pick his or her brain” and that you are interested in learning more about a specific aspect or topic. Once they have agreed to meet you, be sure to come prepared with an agenda and direction for the meeting.

Always approach your mentor with the mind-set that he or she is a valuable resource. When meeting, always convey your appreciation for the help and that you want to be as helpful to him or her as he or she is being to you.

Here are a few mentee “must dos”:

· Prepare well for your meetings.

· Use time between meetings effectively.

· Look for ways to make it a two-way relationship.

· Build periodic reviews.

· End the engagement well.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, read the following chapters:

· Mentors: Finding and Engaging for Maximum Impact

· Developing a Feedback-Rich Working Environment

From the South University Online Library, read the following article:

· Professional Growth: Empowerment through Mentorship and Leadership 

Developing a Feedback-Rich Working Environment

Throughout the course, we discussed the importance of a feedback-rich environment. This lecture discusses different techniques proven to improve feedback in healthcare settings.

Instant feedback sessions are those in which instant feedback is provided on a routine basis immediately after a given performance. You should make it a routine to stop and reflect on your work. To use this technique, a leader (or a coworker) asks the principle performer what went well and what would he or she do differently if given a chance to do the performance again.

After-event reviews are more formal and structured than instant feedback sessions. This technique began in the military and has migrated to healthcare. Although this technique has many different approaches, most involve addressing the following four key questions:

· What was our expected outcome?

· What was the actual outcome?

· What caused the differences between the expected outcome and the actual outcome?

· Based on our experiences this time, what should we do and not do next time?

Developing a shared competency language involves meeting as a group to develop shared competencies, help staff develop their own language, and reach a comfort level with it.

A performance calibration meeting involves leaders in a particular department or service line having a dialogue about how staff members are being rated on performance appraisals. Through this process, leaders can refine their own thinking by hearing from their peers and thus view and discuss performance in new ways.

Talent reviews are periodic meetings of leaders to discuss employee performance levels in relation to current and emerging organizational needs.

360-degree feedback involves soliciting feedback from a variety of actors surrounding a role and then providing that feedback to the person being reviewed in a way that masks the sources of the feedback.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, read the following chapter:

· Physician Leadership Development and Competencies

From the South University Online Library, read the following article:

· The Influencing Mechanisms of Authentic Leadership on Feedback-Seeking Behaviour: A Cognitive/Emotive Model 

· Physician Leadership Development and Competencies and the Exceptional Leadership Model

· Many organizations are still struggling with developing physician leaders. The specialized training of physicians consists of technical and clinical aspects. Looking to physicians for leadership training is a relatively new concept.

· Leadership competencies fit well with the scientific nature of physicians. As scientists, physicians are quantitative and prefer to deal with objective data. The use of competencies moves the understanding of leadership toward a more objective view.

· Unlike nurses who tend to move into their first leadership role in their mid-twenties, physicians are often in their late-forties before they move into their first leadership role. One benefit of a physician leader is his or her clinical background. Knowing what is done in the care process can provide a significant edge in shaping strategy and implementing change in healthcare organizations.

· Most physicians contrast with traditional leaders in the following ways:

Physicians	Administrators
Science oriented	Business oriented
One-on-one interactions	Group interactions
Value autonomy	Value collaboration
Focus on patient	Focus on organization
Identify with profession	Identify with organization
Independent	Collaboration
Solo thinker	Group thinker

The differences do not disqualify physicians from leadership. They just emphasize the need to apply competency-based approaches to leadership.

Exceptional Leadership Model

This model was created with two things in mind:

· To capture the characteristics that most consistently distinguished exceptional healthcare leaders from their well-performing counterparts

· To create a model that would be practical and useful in the field

The model should not be considered all encompassing. It does not cover every competency imaginable. However, the sixteen competencies cover practically all other competencies and can be applied to the leadership needs of the organization.

Exceptional Leadership Model Competencies

Competency	Description
Leading with Conviction	Leaders know they are in touch with their values and beliefs. A leader is not afraid to take a lonely or unpopular stance if needed, is tough in situations, and can be relied on to maintain consistent or tense circumstances.
Using Emotional Intelligence	This includes recognizing personal strengths and weaknesses. The leaders see the links between feelings and behaviors and manage impulsive feelings and distressing emotional cues. Ultimately, the leader shows sensitivity and respect for others. The leader can handle conflict, difficult people, and tense situations effectively.
Developing Vision	The leaders are able to see the future clearly and anticipate large-scale and local changes that may affect the organizations and its environment. They are able to project the organization into the future and envision multiple potential scenarios or outcomes.
Communicating Vision	The leader is able to move complex strategies into a compelling call to action that inspires and helps others to see the core reason for the organization to change. He or she moves organizational talk beyond the day-to-day tactical matters, shows confidence and optimism about the future state of the organization, and engages others to join.
Earning Trust and Loyalty	The leader is a direct and truthful person who is willing to admit mistakes and show sincere interest in the concerns and dreams of others. The leader shows empathy and a general orientation toward helping others. He or she consistently follows promises with promised actions, is able to maintain confidence, and discloses information ethically and appropriately. He or she is open and transparent.
Listening Like You Mean It	A leader should maintain a calm, easy-to-approach demeanor. He or she is seen by others as warm, gracious, and inviting. Patience, open-mindedness, willingness to hear people out, and ability to see through the words that others express to the real meaning are some of the virtues of a leader. The virtues also include the ability to keep the formal and informal lines of communication open.
Giving Great Feedback	The leaders are supposed to set clear expectations and bring important issues to the table in a way that assists others to hear them. They should show an openness to facing difficult topics and sources of conflict, deal with problems and difficult people directly, provide timely criticism when needed, and provide clear and unambiguous feedback.
Mentoring	The leaders invest time to understand the career aspirations of their direct reports. They work with their direct reports to create engaging mentoring plans, support their direct reports’ skills, provide opportunities that support skill development, and model professional development by advancing their own skills.
Developing High-Performing Teams	This involves the ability to select executives who will be strong team players, actively support the concept of teaming, develop open communication, and encourage healthy debate on important issues. The leader is able to create compelling reasons and incentives for the team members to work together. He or she effectively sets limits on the political activity that takes place outside of the team framework.
Energizing Staff	The leaders should set personal examples of good work ethic and motivation, talk and act enthusiastically and optimistically about the future, enjoy rising to new challenges and take them on work with energy, passion, drive for success, and assist others in recognizing the importance of their work and find it enjoyable. They are goal oriented and ambitious and have a determined working style that others find infectious.
Generating Informal Power	This includes understanding the roles of power and influence in organizations, developing compelling arguments or points of view based on a knowledge of other’s priorities, sustaining useful networks throughout the organization, developing a reputation as a go-to person, and effectively affecting others’ thoughts and opinions, indirectly and directly.
Building True Consensus	A leader frames issues in ways that facilitate clarity from multiple perspectives, keep issues separate from personalities, skillfully use group decision techniques to ensure all group members are drawn into the discussion, and assure the consensus-making process is viewed as fair and appropriate.
Mindful Decision Making	The leaders are conscious of the approach they take toward decisions. They make decisions based on an optimal mix of ethics, values, goals, facts, alternatives, and judgments; use decision tools effectively and at appropriate times; and show a good sense of timing related to decision making.
Driving Results	A leader should mobilize people toward the greater commitment to a vision, challenge people to set higher standards and goals, keep people focused on achieving goals, and give direct and complete feedback that keeps teams and individuals on track.
Stimulating Creativity	This includes looking outside of the typical. The leaders are consistently open to new ideas and are effective with techniques for stimulating group creativity. They see future trends and craft responses to them. They are knowledgeable in business and social trends and are aware of how strategies play out in the field. They actively read within and outside of healthcare and make connections between industries and other trends.
Cultivating Adaptability	The leaders quickly see the essence of issues and problems and effectively bring clarity to situations of ambiguity. They approach work using a variety of leadership styles and techniques, track priorities, readily interpret their implications, balance consistency of focus against the ability to adjust course as needed, balance multiple tasks and priorities so that each gets appropriate attention, and work effectively with a broad range of people.

How to implement a competency-based model in your organization? One particularly helpful approach is called cross-walking or cross-mapping of competency models. Cross-walking involves comparing two or more models side by side to identify points of overlap and then collapsing the models into a single one.

Leadership competencies can also be helpful in making hiring decisions. Competencies can be helpful in the onboarding process by clarifying expectations.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, read the following chapters:

· Physician Leadership Development and Competencies

· Final Questions Regarding the Exceptional Leadership Model

From the South University Online Library, read the following article:

· The Affordable Care Act and Its Effects on Physician Leadership: A Qualitative Systematic Review