A Guide to Mentoring and Developing Others
/Mentoring
Mentoring and Leadership
Mentoring has become a highly visible technique for adding value to the development processes for individuals and for the organizations where they work. Creating a mentoring culture and enhancing the mentoring skills of all leaders is now a part of the effort to enhance the creativity, innovation, satisfaction, and success of the health care organizations.
The benefits from creating this culture and building the skills to sustain it are numerous at all levels. For the individual leaders being mentored, it creates an easier on-boarding process to being successful in the job they are doing. Rather than leaving this process to trial and error, the mentor can help the developing leaders to understand what skills and abilities will be needed for success and also assist in ensuring that these skills are developing in an appropriate and timely manner. By reducing the anxiety around this process, leaders can focus more time and energy on developing those around them. The mentor’s team gains in the process because once the skills of developing others and building collaborative and supportive environments are learned, they will carry over to the culture of the rest of the group. All group members will benefit from more emphasis on collaboration, improved communication, supportive professional development, and a decrease in the distractions that can derail individuals and teams. For the senior person, learning the context and skills of being a better mentor will mean more efficient use of time, as trial and error development efforts are replaced by systematic and informed efforts. It will also mean improved skills for developing others in the organization and in project teams due to an increased emphasis on important organizational discussions, collaborations, and development. The entire organization benefits when leaders learn how to be productive, creative, and successful thereby contributing more and sooner to the overall goals of the company. It also contributes to the creation of a culture that supports success, employee engagement, and builds overall attractiveness to join the organization.
In brief, the goals of this mentoring initiative are to:
• Enhance the proportion of leaders that produce creative, innovative, and impactful change.
• Build skills of mentors in order to achieve the first goal, but also make efficient use of their time and engage them more fully in building a collaborative and supportive culture.
• Enhance the dynamics in units, groups, and teams so that they can more effectively support each other’s leadership and change work.
• Contribute to an overall culture in the agency that is supportive, collaborative, innovative, rigorous, and successful.
This Guide
This guide is a first step in a broader effort to upgrade the skills of mentoring; to hold leaders accountable to develop and use effective tools and techniques for mentoring, and to continue to emphasize and support the creation of collaborative, innovative, supportive, and successful cultures across the company or organization.
The guide has three parts. The first part looks at mentoring in general and the characteristics of successful mentoring. The second part is a review of the five steps that are needed to be a successful mentor. These steps are:
1. Become self-aware of mentoring strengths and development needs.
2. Build and sustain supportive relationships in mentoring.
3. Learn a pathway to becoming successful in health care organizations.
4. Assess the development needs of others and give effective feedback.
5. Assist in the creation of a development plan for improvement.
The final part of the guide will examine how the skills and insights of being a better mentor can be applied in enhancing the quality of communication, collaboration, innovation, and success for the entire group or team.
Part One: Mentoring in General
Many of the general characteristics of good mentoring are a part of successful mentoring in any organization. These include: building a supportive relationship, focusing on specific job and general career development, and changing the dynamic of the relationship, as development needs change.
Supervisor and Mentor - The senior person playing the mentoring role will often be the person who also serves as a supervisor for the person being mentored. This can cause conflict between the need to develop a trusting and supportive role on the one hand, while also being the person who will make an assessment of annual progress for the employee.
However, any conflict that seems to be a part of these roles can be eliminated or at least minimized by taking a few proactive steps.
The first thing to do is acknowledge that there might be times that these two roles may seem in conflict. Open and candid discussion of issues, from both sides, can go a long way to making sure that there is as much alignment as possible. Another important step is making sure that clear goals and benchmarks for success have been developed and are fully understood by both sides. Sometimes this can be difficult and the conversation between mentor and mentee can gloss over differences. It is better to push for clarity early and often to make sure that there are no surprises at the time of the annual review. The supervisor-led goals for development and the mentor-led goals for success must be completely aligned. It will be necessary to deal with some topics and issues that are different, but any conflict between them needs to be surfaced as the goals are being set, as opposed to discovered at the end of the year. There is more to be said about relationships later in this guide, but making sure that the relationship is open, trusting, and improving can go a long way to resolving the supervisor – mentor split.
Individual and the Team - Another tension in mentoring is the one between the needs of the individual and the needs of the team, unit or organization. Some leaders have been trained to work as solo contributors. Many of the rewards in organizations are given for individual effort and achievement. In addition, many people pursuing clinical careers have self-selected into the career because they do not perceive it as heavily dependent on the politics of group or teamwork. While the supervisor – mentor issue might be resolved in great measure through the establishment of clear goals, open and frequent communication, and the development of a good relationship, the pressure to advance research as an individual contributor may nonetheless be incommensurable with the needs of the project team at times. The solution may involve more of a balancing act than a resolution. Here are a few tactics that can help to create a better balance:
• Look for work that fits within the project teamwork.
• Be clear about the pathway for developing into a successful leader within the organization. There is a great deal of time wasted by young leaders who do not know what this pathway is and learn by trial and error. This is very costly.
• Be disciplined with time allocation and management. Setting specific research goals, limiting team contributions to what is absolutely necessary, and limiting new collaborations until a good balance between individual and teamwork has been achieved are all ways to ensure that the valuable resource of individual time is wisely balanced.
Creating a Supportive and Challenging Culture - The creation of a supportive, yet challenging environment is addressed in other parts of the guide, but it deserves a few comments in this section as well. To create and actively participate in such environments is characteristic of a successful career pathway. Creating such an environment for all of those on a team is an essential part of being a good mentor. But the environment must achieve the dual goals of being supportive and challenging. Finding the right balance and then consistently reinforcing it is a big challenge and one that is successfully met when leaders at all levels are clear about the direction and goals of the organization. Modeling the expected behavior of acceptance and support, coupled with challenging inquiry and curiosity helps create the right environment.
Step-by-Step Mentoring
Becoming a better mentor is a process not unlike being a more creative and successful leader. Obviously some people already have the competencies and skills needed to be an effective mentor, but most of us need some help along the way to actually achieve the goals we have in this domain.
This guide offers five steps that can assist you in improving your skills as a mentor. The first step is to understand what you bring to the process. What are the particular ways that you approach the world, interact with people, get inspiration and insight, do your work, and channel your drive and energy? Being a successful mentor is driven by how well you understand, accept, change when needed, and effectively use yourself to achieve the goals of mentoring. Developing this self-knowledge is an essential step in being a good mentor.
Good mentoring involves more than just the technical process of sharing information. It is fundamentally about developing a solid and supportive relationship in which information can be shared both ways in a trusting and supportive manner. Without this relationship dimension, the very best insights and observations about another person’s development will be wasted because without trust the messages will not be heard, fully understood, or valued.
The third step is to have an understanding of the pathway to becoming a successful, creative, and innovative leader. Learning a general set of principles for this path is the starting place for this, but it does not mean that the task can be achieved by slavishly following a cookbook guide. There are some principles that will need to be considered to help a young leader understand the path to becoming successful. And there are similar ones for you to follow in becoming a successful mentor.
Good organizational work requires a feedback loop and mentoring does as well. This is a two-step process of assessing what is needed and providing feedback in ways that can be heard and understood. Good mentoring means, in part, making accurate assessments of what is needed for the next steps of improvement on the path to being a creative scientist. But it also means being skillful at giving and receiving feedback so that the mentee is fully engaged in the process and accepting the input in ways that grow their commitment and enthusiasm for the work.
Finally, this work must be intentional. A shared plan for development must be a part of the process. It needs to be visited often and updated as needed. And it needs to provide the benchmarks for when success has been achieved and when more effort is needed. Most of us want to be better. Those that set and measure goals achieve this end.
The next few pages will provide more details to more fully understand these steps. To review, effective mentors:
• Are self-aware about their understanding of mentoring and the skills needed.
• Value the relationship with the mentee and know how to build it.
• Understand what the pathway to being a successful leader in your organization involves.
• Use skills for assessing what the mentee needs and gives feedback accordingly.
• Use a tool for setting a development plan and actively coach toward those goals.
Competencies of Effective Mentors
To begin the work of being a better mentor, it is important to have in mind an image of an effective mentor that looks like in your organization. Here is a list of competencies derived from successful individuals and organizations that are recognized as having effective mentorship cultures.
• Develop a trusting and supportive relationship with leaders in your charge.
• Focus on what it will take for them to be successful.
• Balance your role of supervisor and mentor. Ask them to help.
• Develop your own understanding of what a successful career pathway looks like in your organization.
• Understand how to adapt this model to individual needs and differences.
• Be able to give priority to innovation and creativity over management and supervision.
• Communicate with the person you are mentoring in a clear, courageous, honest, and frequent manner.
• Know how to assist your mentee in the creation of a development plan. Be able to review and adjust the plan as needed.
• Be able to give positive and negative feedback in a supportive fashion and in the right balance.
• Help elevate the level of leadership through challenging discussions.
• Assist your mentee in developing networks both inside and external to the organization.
• Include your commitment to their success in your role.
• Define how you view the mentoring relationship and invite them to share their perspective.
• Share your professional experiences and struggles candidly.
• Only discuss your own experiences, not that of others, unless the examples are given anonymously.
• Positively reinforce actions that are effective and responsive to missteps with curiosity and discussion, not judgment.
• Share some part of your non-professional life and create an environment where they do as well, but be aware of your and their personal boundaries.
The Five Steps to Better Mentoring
1. Self-Awareness
It might seem odd to begin this process with a consideration of what you bring to the mentoring process, but mentoring is a relationship and therefore a two-way dynamic. There are a couple of things that will be useful to you as you think about your role as mentor.
The first is to examine what your definition and experience of mentoring is. Is this a new concept that you are unsure of? Do you have positive models of mentoring in your past? How valuable do you believe this process is or can be? Do you have a clear picture of how effective you are as a mentor? All of these issues will inform how you approach the task. To get an assessment of your image of mentoring, make a list of those attributes that you think all good mentors should have.
The second part of the self-awareness equation is the preferences for the various dimensions of a relationship. We all have a set of preferences on how we like to be in the world. Some of these have a big impact on mentoring. Some of the key preferences that play into mentoring are:
• How much do you like the situation to be controlled?
• How much do you like to have that control?
• Do you prefer the big strategic picture or the details and operational concerns?
• Do you like to keep things open, or do you prefer to close every issue with a decision as soon as possible?
• Are you more extroverted or more introverted in your communication style? •
• Do you enjoy the relationship parts of professional life or more of the work itself? These and other qualities will inform how you approach working with others and mentoring.
The third part of self-awareness is how your preferences fit with those of the person you are mentoring. This fit is important not because you or they need to change, but because creating awareness will give insight into whether or not either side of the preference equation is getting in the way of an effective mentoring relationship. The senior person will need to take the lead in shaping and leading this conversation.
Self-Awareness Practices:
• Develop your own list of effective mentoring practices using the competencies above. Share this with a colleague who you believe is an effective mentor. Ask them to add things they think are important and give you feedback on what you do well and where you might improve.
• Ask a former direct report to give you feedback on your mentoring skills. Be sure to tell them you are trying to improve, so strengths are appreciated, but improvement areas are the most helpful.
• Use behavioral data such as MBTI or FIRO-B to help develop a “mentoring profile” of how you are likely to approach mentoring. Use the large categories discussed above to start with.
• Share your list of mentoring competencies with your supervisor and ask for input on key development areas for you.
• With the same list, ask your supervisor for additions from their perspective on what good mentoring looks like.
• Try to assess the person you are mentoring and what preferences he might have around key areas of communication, control, etc.
• Share and discuss these with the person you are mentoring; sharing your understanding will help you develop a better sense of theirs.
• Ask the person you are mentoring to give you feedback on your mentoring style after they have had some time to assess it and you have had time to develop a supportive relationship.
• Develop your own plan for improvements that you would like to make as a mentor. Share it with your supervisor or a colleague. Make sure the plan includes very specific improvement goals.
Relationship
The relationship between the mentor and the initiate may be the most important dimension of being a good mentor. A good relationship can overcome other deficiencies and lead to the opportunity to solve problems together.
In clinical, research, academic, and scientific settings we often observe two types of relationship problems.
The first is the “feelings are not part of this work and I will just act like they don’t exist” problem. Here the senior person acting in a mentor role gives all types of feedback without first establishing a relationship that is trusting and safe. In this setting, the feedback cannot help but be taken personally, and bad things start to happen.
The second is just the opposite. Not having confidence in the relationship, the senior person fails to pass along any feedback from fear that it will damage the relationship and the recipient might become too emotional. They end up not passing along information that is vital for success, and this pattern of miscommunication and lack of clarity brings down the relationship and the progress that is needed by the mentee.
To address both of these and other problems, it is best to begin a mentoring relationship that establishes trust and safety. Here are a few things that can help establish such an environment:
• Clearly establish that your role is to partner with them to further their success.
• Be clear as to your definition of the mentoring relationship. Establish how you would like to work together on this and invite them to share their perspective.
• Share your professional experiences and struggles candidly.
• Only discuss your personal experiences and not that of others, unless the examples are given anonymously.
• Positively reinforce actions that are effective and respond to missteps with curiosity and discussion, not judgment.
• Be open to sharing some part of your non-professional life and create an environment where they do as well, but be aware of your and their personal boundaries.
A good relationship always goes two-ways. There are certainly going to be power, age, experience, and role differences between you and your mentee, but the more you can work to develop a shared environment in which communication and feedback go both ways, then the stronger the relationship will be and the more effective the mentoring. Without this shared approach, the mentor can become too dominating and the mentee too passive for significant change to take place.
In an effective mentoring relationship all interactions need to characterized by honesty. But two warnings to the mentor are important here. First, honesty will only be effective if the mentee believes that you have her best interest at heart. Otherwise the candid comment will be heard as critical of her as a person, not good advice on how to be a better employee.
Establishing that trust before you take on lots of “constructive” suggestions is essential. Also, mentors can be direct and honest with things that need to change, but less forthcoming with observations about success and positive developments. Both are important.
To be supportive as a mentor does not mean that everything you say or suggest is always positive. It does mean that all of your words and actions are contributing to making positive progress toward a goal that you and your mentee have agreed on. This will at times mean that you will be offering critiques of actions. Sometimes this will be in areas that you have already gone over in the past that point out where additional or different work still needs to be done. When doing this it is important to do three things:
1. Remind them that you both have agreed that getting this right is important.
2. Tell them that you are always going to give them candid feedback, even when it is hard because such feedback promotes their success.
3. Develop the next experiment for improving their work. Keep moving and do not fixate.
Relationship Practices:
• Practice being curious rather than judgmental.
• Be aware of body language and facial expressions when engaging with the person you are mentoring.
• State clearly that your job is to help them be successful.
• If something needs to be said, don’t delay, share it. But do so in the context of curiosity and improvement.
• Share some dimensions of your personal life and experience so that the relationship can move beyond just the professional.
• Leave the conversation open so that they feel safe to share some of their life experiences as well.
• Make sure that the relationship develops in a way that is safe for them to participate fully.
• Be courteous.
• Allocate time to develop the relationship and give it time to develop.
The Path
There is a pathway to being successful in your organization and an essential part of your job as mentor is helping your initiate learn how to best navigate the path along the way to their success. The first part of helping with this pathway is making sure you understand it yourself. Do you have good answers, opinions, or insights into these questions?
• What is good leadership and how is it different in your organizational environment?
• How do the values of being in your organization make for a leadership pathway that differs from other types of healthcare organizations, companies or academia?
• How do you balance the excitement of individual spontaneity and creativity with the responsibility of operating in a highly regulated environment?
• What are your practical suggestions for how to achieve this balance?
Assessment and Feedback
Assessment is an essential part of mentoring. It evolves over time as new skills are developed, new demands come forward, and you develop a deeper relationship.
Initially, the assessment will require three things and you already have one of them in hand. By developing a good understanding of the sequence of competencies, skills, and abilities needed to be successful you will have the baseline and context to make an assessment. At the outset, all you need to add to this is your assessment of where your initiate is on this scale and, importantly, where they believe their abilities and development needs lie.
This data collection process needs to be handled carefully because if done clumsily it can seriously impact the newly developing relationship in a negative way and make you less able to be an effective mentor. That said, you do need to get started.
One easy way to do this is to have a conversation with your initiates early on and explain the skills needed for success in the early years. This should be your version of the first phase of the “path” described above. Your task is to take this generic list and translate it into a
specific pathway for them to follow a successful career. It should be more focused and specific in the near term and lead to more general goals in the more distant future.
Once you have a sense that they have a good understanding of these criteria you might ask them to take a first pass at assessing where they stand on these criteria. They need to see this as an opportunity to grow in a supportive and trusting environment.
This is probably all of the assessments that you will need to make in the first six months. However, you will want to keep notes of where you see some development opportunities to be shared in a conversation after that period.
There may be some concerns that you see from the first day, but by letting them set the agenda for development, within the context of your criteria for success, you will assist in building their investment in the process and their sense of trust in the relationship. There will be plenty of time and opportunity to get to these later.
Creating a Constructive Feedback Environment
Before specific mentoring feedback is given it is helpful for mentors and leaders to work toward the creation of a constructive feedback environment. Such an environment creates the shared expectations that both parties involved have shared goals, values, culture, and expectations. The mentor is the principal person to establish such an environment, but when it is successful, both the mentor and their charge contribute to sustaining the environment.
Creating such a constructive feedback environment requires actions by the mentor. Here are four elements that are important to such a culture:
1. Clear sense of purpose and common ground – All mentoring relationships need this as the first step. What are we to expect from each other? How does this fit with my broader work and job responsibilities? How will the balance between mentor and supervisor be achieved?
2. Acceptance– Most people come to new ventures with some anxiety about acceptance and performance. Some of this is constructive and produces effort, but it is important for the team leader to create an environment of acceptance and trust. Otherwise it will be difficult to mentor in a situation without it seeming judgmental on a personal level. This leads to defensiveness, cover-ups, and emotional outbursts, as the feedback seems more personal than professional. The ideal place to be is: “We are in this together and it is in all of our interests to address the issue.”
3. Two-way nature of most situations- Almost every situation and dynamic in an organization that is problematic and requires feedback has two sides. Unfortunately, most of the two-sided discussions people have are focused on fixing the blame on one side or the other; the famous “he said she said” dynamic. There are situations where one person or group has acted in a unilateral and conscious manner to be dishonest or harm another or subvert a process, and these should be dealt with accordingly. However, for the vast majority of problems, the two sides perspective points to the reality that each side has contributed something to the situation and these elements need to be teased out and addressed.
4. Expectation of improvement – Every person being mentored must go into the situation with the expectation that improvement is always possible.
Giving and Receiving Feedback
Remember, a constructive feedback culture goes both ways. Therefore, learning how to both give and receive feedback is essential. Here are some general rules to keep in mind.
Giving Feedback
Be confidential – Feedback is always given in private and is a conversation between you and the person receiving the feedback. Do not bring a lot of other people into this conversation by representing their feelings or attitudes.
Be supportive – The point of the feedback is improvement so that the person receiving it can improve and be successful in a work setting. Being non-judgmental is a major part of this. Be encouraging and non-threatening. Attacking in any way will just make the person defensive, resentful, and likely to not hear any of the things you want to say.
Be clear – If it is important to offer feedback, then it is important to be clear about what you want to say. Here are some steps to clarity:
• Think about it beforehand.
• Share it with another person who is outside of your work setting.
• Question your own motivations in giving the feedback.
• Figure out what outcome you would like.
Be timely – Nothing is worse than waiting until the annual review to give feedback on something that was important, but happened six months ago. While it is important to be timely, it is also wise to remember to give yourself some time to cool off if the item of feedback you want to share has brought out an emotional response in you.
Be focused on a specific behavior or situation – General feedback is generally a fuzz ball when the feedback giver is uncomfortable with what needs to be said. Just say it. A clear, short non-judgmental message opens the door for a conversation to solve the problem.
Anything else opens the door to lack of clarity, emotional response, and inappropriate escalation of the significance of the problem.
Describe, don’t judge- Your job is to raise the issue and broaden the understanding. If you have already decided what caused the problem and what needs to be done, then you are not giving feedback, you are passing judgment. This is where the famous “I” statements can help. You don’t give up your opinion or what you have observed, but you are signaling that it is only one perspective and you are inviting them in to share their view. Remember to not generalize or make absolutist statements such as “You always do that.” Don’t make a simple situation worse by overreacting.
Direct the feedback to changeable behavior- Observing that someone might be smarter about something is not really helpful feedback. Observing that they were quick in making a judgment and reacting, and that others including you seemed to be offended by this action, is an observation they can consider and perhaps do something about.
Don’t lead with advice – Feedback is not advice-giving. It is sharing observations about a situation. After that is understood and valued, then it is possible to guardedly offer advice. In a constructive feedback culture the advice is generally asked for right away. A helpful question for the feedback giver at the outset of feedback is, “Are you getting the results you want from this approach?” Let the other person answer and then explore alternatives.
Check it, briefly –It is quite all right to check to see if the feedback is understood, but do so briefly. After two checks the questioning becomes abusive as in “What part of this don’t you understand.”
Remember that constructive feedback is always given to help the individual who is receiving it. The more the feedback comes across as supportive and helpful, then the more successful it will be. This does not mean that continued inattention does not require more specific requests for change from the manager, leader, or co-worker. But such a response should always be reserved until needed.
Receiving Feedback
Receiving feedback is as important as giving it. If you are truly going to create a constructive feedback environment, then it has to go both ways and as with giving, you are the best at modeling the behavior. Here are a few rules of thumb for receiving feedback.
Don’t be defensive – The moment you become defensive it stops being feedback and becomes, well, a defense. All information flow stops and the value of the feedback plummets. The temptation will be to explain away the feedback, but if someone is doing a good job and telling you that when you act a certain way they feel threatened, it does not help for you to say: “You don’t understand, I didn’t mean to threaten you.” You did and you need to hear it.
Question to understand, not to dismiss – It is important for you to fully understand, so after they have gotten the first parts of it out, give them a break by calmly asking questions that indicate you want to understand the situation.
Determine if the feedback fits – You have the option of deciding this on your own. But don’t do it in the moment. Thank them for the feedback. Tell them it was helpful and then take a day or two to think about it. What you want to understand is to have some insight into what behaviors you are projecting that create the reaction that the feedback giver is reporting.
Share your thoughts to the feedback – Obviously this is not a license to over react, but if you are troubled by the feedback then tell them. Your face will show it anyway. But do let them know that you value their taking the time and thinking enough of you to give you the feedback.
Decide what changes to make (if any) – You don’t have to make any accommodations, but you need to have good reasons. If you never make adjustments, then you will cut off their efforts to help you out.
The Plan
Without a plan for change, much of the mentoring work will amount to a series of conversations, perhaps interesting, but not very effectual in improving performance. Moving this work forward will require intentional efforts at improvement. The easiest way to accomplish this is to establish a pattern of assessment, review, goal setting, frequent informal check-ins on progress, and periodic review that is a part of scheduled conversations.
The last thing that the mentoring process needs is the addition of another bureaucratic form that is more burdensome than help. However, the process does need to have some formal shape so that goals and activities to pursue those goals can be written down and shared. This also gives a written record for review after a quarter or two.
The form below is suggested as a place to begin as you and your mentee develop a plan that fits comfortably with their development needs and your approach to mentoring. The plan should be used as a tool to capture the discussions you have, formalize goals, and review progress throughout the year.
Sample Career Development Plan
Name:
Date:
1) Career Goals
Long Term Career goals: This should be medium to long range in focus and very aspirational.
Examples: Lead a Medicaid policy division at the state level. Become an expert in drug discovery with sustained record of high impact contributions. Organize and lead an effort to incorporate social determinates of health in the operation of a clinical organization.
Near term goal: This should be a goal that is achievable within three years.
Example: Lead a policy development and deployment effort in next two years. Get promoted to a Project Team Lead role within the next two years.
2) Review of current achievements
Education and experience:
Current leadership contributions:
Organizational contributions:
Documentation of achievements:
3) Identification of areas for growth and plan to address:
Identification of leadership growth areas:
Example: Better feedback skills- Get input from direct reports, take feedback course, and practice with one individual.
Creating a Mentoring Culture
It might seem odd that the last section of this mentoring guide is about creating the culture of a unit, team or organization. After all, mentoring is essentially a one-on-one affair with the mentor providing coaching and support to the developing junior person. But if the values of collaboration, support, open inquiry, and the excitement of doing the work are not reinforced in the larger culture, all of the great mentoring will be for naught because the values and the work simply will be reinforced and sustained over time.
The good news is that taking the work of being a better mentor and enlarging it to being a better leader is an easy extension of many of the same skills that are at the core of mentoring. As a senior person in the organization, you are responsible for leading teams that carry out projects, operate labs, and provide service functions. These teams need to exhibit the same values and practices that are characteristic of good mentoring.
What do we know about what makes a good team? There is an interesting set of research from a similar technology company that can offer some insights. In late 2015, a team from Google People Operations (Google speak for HR) released their work to unlock the secret of successful teams. Julia Rozovsky, one of the analysts on the team, described the work this way:
“Over two years we conducted 200+ interviews with Googlers (our employees) and looked at more than 250 attributes of 180+ active Google teams. We were pretty confident that we'd find the perfect mix of individual traits and skills necessary for a stellar team -- take one Rhodes Scholar, two extroverts, one engineer who rocks at AngularJS, and a PhD. Voila.
Dream team assembled, right?”
The research actually came up with a surprisingly different set of characteristics. The team membership mattered far less than the team dynamics of openness and safety of the culture, accountability to each other, clarity of role and goals, and the intrinsic meaning and impact of the work.
The five dynamics of successful teams in this research are:
Psychological Safety – Is this an environment in which full engagement with the work by every team member is encouraged? The keys were whether or not the team left any member with a feeling of security and free to ask questions, venture novel ideas, or be creative without fear of embarrassment. Is there a team leader that understands and models the creation of trusting and supportive relationships among team members, who are respectful and helpful to each other while they create work that aggressively pursues the work goals of the team?
Dependability – Do the members of the team trust that everyone is fully engaged? Does each member complete their work on time? Dependability means that every member brings the very best to every task and that they are committed to producing the highest quality work. Is there a leader that models that dependability and also - when needed - is an accountability agent?
Structure and Clarity – Are the goals, roles, and processes of the team understood, valued, and adhered to by every member? Establishing the direction, responsibilities, and basic operating principles contributes to the core hygiene of any team. Establishing them early and reinforcing them when needed is essential. Is there a leader in place who can coherently articulate the work that is being done and how it should be shaped? Can the leader work with the team in a manner that engages them across their different orientations, backgrounds, training, and interests?
Meaning of Work – Does the work have inherent value for every member? This value may be different from the perspective of each member, but each one must see and believe that it is worth it. Is there a leader in place that can connect the work of the team to the larger goals of the organization?
Impact of the Work – Do all members of the team believe that this work contributes to the overall goal of the team and do they see how this fits into the overall strategic work of the organization? If I value the work, then I want to think that it valued by the team and the overall organization. Is there a leader that can create an environment where every member understands their value in doing the work of the team, fully sees and supports how their work contributes to the overall work of the organization, and is able to make significant contributions?
For the most part, one of the benefits of work within clinical care organizations and Medicaid agencies is that the work is meaningful and that it has attracted a large number of people who are about advancing this mission. Much of this opportunity comes about by effective leadership that can create various kinds of teams that have fidelity with the following three principles: safety, accountability, and clarity.
Ensuring safety in a team – Much like building relationships in mentoring work, creating a safe and supportive team environment means being fair, exhibiting the behaviors you would have all team members express, being curious rather than judgmental, and focusing on the work and problems you face (not others). It also means recognizing real contributions and achievements when they are made, giving corrective feedback in confidence, exhibiting professional values in all interactions, and focusing on the human connectedness that all effective teams develop, exhibit, and demonstrate as they carry out their work.
Demonstrating accountability – To perform as effectively as possible there will need to accountability demonstrated by all team members. It is the team leader’s job to model that accountability, hold themself just as accountable as everyone else, and also share this role with other team members as the team develops. Accountability is both about the work that is done and how the work is done.
Championing structure and clarity – Lack of clear goals, no rules for decision-making, inability to foster creative conflict, and no assignment of roles or responsibilities can all be debilitating to the work of a group. The leader must balance the need to shape these with the necessity of engaging the entire team in creating direction, order, and rules so that the work can get done with as little drama as possible.
Observing and Measuring Success
Being a good mentor and developing a team culture that is supportive is an important undertaking for all leaders in the organization. You may have the commitment to this and even new skills to use, but how will you know that progress is being made? Here are some suggestions to help interpret the overall progress of the group.
• How often do leaders voluntarily share ideas – is this increasing or decreasing?
• Is there an even balance in how much of the conversation is dominated by you vs. them?
• Do they ask you questions?
• Do you observe that collaborations between people in your group are increasing, particularly when they come about without you suggesting them?
• Are you learning new things from them because they are sharing their science?
• Do meetings feel safe and relaxed?
• Do discussions at these meetings have the potential to go in new and creative directions?
• Do all team members engage in giving positive feedback and help when they make suggestions?
• Do you welcome the interactions with them because of the positive tone and active engagement with questions?
• Can you point to a change that they have made in their leadership because of feedback you have given them?
For individual mentoring, assessing progress against the detailed goals of the development plan is a good way to assess annual and even quarterly effectiveness of mentoring. For the team or group, it may be helpful to write down goals for the group such as more active engagement by them (and less by the leader), or a goal number of active collaborations across the team. Another tactic with the group would be to ask them to help set goals for the group and suggest ways to measure progress.