Qualities in a good Mentor

David and Colleen presented on mentoring and spoke about different forms of mentoring and also what makes a good mentor.  There are peer mentors, role model mentoring, reciprocal mentoring (alternating roles of mentor and mentee), Reverse Mentoring (older executives paired with younger employee), and group Mentoring. In my life I do not have a whole lot of experience with having a mentor. I have however been an academic mentor for the past 2 years. What we do is help students get back on the path of success through study strategies and time management. This style of mentoring is closest to the peer mentoring somewhat mixed with role modeling. One thing they spoke about is that in a mentor position whether you are the mentor or mentee, usually both sides are getting something positive from it. In my experience this is true, since starting as an academic mentor I have consistently made deans list which i did not do before starting the job. This was because to be a mentor and teach others how to succeed I need to improve my own skills first. What also contributed to this is also my students unique ways to approach situations gives me new and creative ways to go about my own. In the presentation they mentioned that the mentor and mentee must commit to continuous learning which is something that is challenging to do in my position. I find myself teach similar strategies to most the students I meet with, and from their perspective we are only paired together for 4-7 weeks so it is not a very long lasting mentorship. In my job though I could focus more on learning from my mentor rather then me commanding the meetings like they spoke about. The relationship should be more open to both sides sharing thoughts and ideas rather then just me telling them what will work.

Disconnect Inside Organizations

Today Jason and Erin presented about the Disconnect between management and doctors. They started byfocusing on ways to stop conflict and talked about the three examples below.
Stopping conflicts proactively
Blaise Pascal: Suggest to change someones mind instead of completely disagreeing with them, by offering different perspectives.
We/They: Making others out to be the bad guy example: if it was up to me it would be yes, but management says no. Even when its not positive management must take ownership of it, and not put blame on others. this equals bad management. This must be stopped to create a better team culture.
Asking Instead of Telling: need to promote an organization where employees are encouraged to speak up. This can be done in the form of questions, and this way it does not come across as a lower employee correcting a senior employee but instead it is them trying to genuinely learn what is happening.

I agree with these all in some aspects. As Professor Bonica said never put the blame on the boss it will usually only end in a negative way. In general this sounds like common sense but in many situations most people don't rationally think a small comment like this will have any real effects.

In my academic mentoring job I currently work at I am responsible for helping student attain the grades they want to achieve through study strategies and time management skills along with my own experience in these classes. My go to strategies when dealing with these students I mentor is the asking instead of telling strategies. I do this for many instances not just when correcting a students error. This also allows them to fully question themselves to come to a conclusion rather then just have myself tell them the correct answer. This strategy resonates with students better and allows them to fully remember what we spoke about because they came up with the solution and not me.

When speaking about my organization the conflicts between the Admn and Physicians is something I do not see as much. This is because my revenue department is not actually in the hospital so its not as clear to me on the relationship. I believe knowing each sides reasons for the actions they take and getting these motives on a similar lever is a great way to minimize conflict.

First Evaluation

As I spoke about last week I had my first Evaluation at my job at Wentworth Douglass last Friday. Being my first evaluation I was a little nervous going into it but I knew there was not a lot at stake since I am still new and only working part time while I am there. For this evaluation The day of I was told that I needed three to five goals to bring with me to this meeting and these goals will eventually be looked at to see whether I have met them which will dictate a pay increase at the time of my next evaluation. This Evaluation was an introductory one so it did not emulate any specific type of evaluation that the specific group had spoken about in class. The closest type this related to was critical incidence which uses specific points in times as examples on what is going well and what could be improved upon. For the most part everything was very positive and the things that management wanted me to improve upon were explained in a way that was not confrontational but also got the point across. This is something that was talked about how the areas of improvement should have detail behind why they need to be improved but put in a way that does not cause the employee to feel attacked. My manager said at my next evaluation which is going to be the more important one, I will be evaluated by a numerical scale being 1-5. I found this interesting since this was described the same way professor Bonica had us do evaluations last semester for our group members. Usually 3 is expected work to be done and anything higher means we have gone above what we were supposed to do, and if you give a 1,2, or 5 there will have to be an explanation why those were the way they were. So far this job has been challenging to juggle while being a full time student and also an academic mentor but I have enjoyed it so far and look forward to hearing any feedback to what I can do to improve my work.

Delivering Bad News

For most managers the worst part about their job is having to deliver bad news to employees even if it is rightfully so to this person. Whenever you are work with someone for some time it becomes much harder to break bad news. the article I posted below speaks about how great leaders go about delivering bad news.
The first step talked about is speaking up. This does not mean your volume but instead telling employees the news sooner then later. Some managers are either afraid of what might happen if they tell employees bad news and just go with out saying anything until it happens. This is by far the worst thing you can do for this. My manager at Wentworth Douglass has been very vocal about the merger with Mass General and what could happen which has been better then staying quite,
The next step is to be accurate.When managers try to twist the facts it can be much worse in the long run. At my old job as a purchasing coordinator for a point of sale electronics company, the management announced that we were expanding out plant facilities in new Mexico. People on the business side of the company were safe but this could have meant layoffs for many of the warehouse and tech employees whose jobs would be decreased. When the question was brought up at a company meeting one day, one of the employees had asked about potential layoffs and it was obvious he was avoiding the questions which was a clear answer that there were layoffs coming but instead of being honest he dodged around the answers making employees dissatisfied.
Another one is taking responsibility. Bad managers will play the blame game but a good manager knows that many issues in some ways can be traced back to them, and even if its not their fault they should take responsibility. When companies do not take responsibility we see cases like with BP. Initially the owner said that the spill was not entirely their fault. This only worsened the companies image even more then the spill already did. As a manager you must own up to mistakes and errors but not stop their. You have to also address what the next steps are in combating the issues. That shows a good leader because they are taking blame but addressing things need to change and they have to improve.
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For more of the reasons you can see them in this article below.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2013/03/06/how-great-leaders-deliver-bad-news/#61ca52cd3dc6

MBTI

My first post was about the MBTI and how when other take it we tend to see different results. For one of our classes we did just this. When i took this i got an INTJ which stands for introvert, intuition, thinking and judging. I personally agree a little bit with this, I have become more introverted as I have grown up and like to rationally think decisions out before making them. With this being said I had my roommate who I met this year, and also my older brother take it as me. The results where pretty cool this time in the past when I did this I had a close friend take it and they were somewhat similar. This time my roommate and my older brother had both got ENFJ. This was a little concerning seeing that 2 people in my life view me so drastically different then I view myself. I have said that these should be taken with a grain of salt since there is not much science behind it but they still have valid reasons why it gives you the type you have. This will be a little bit helpful for me to think about in everyday life whether it is work, school, or just hanging with friends. It will be important to fully understand how people view me and also knowing who I fully am myself. In on of my management classes my teacher says "that you can only manage one person an that is yourself but you can motivate others." I will need to work on fully understanding myself before I could ever start to try to motivate others in a management role.

Performance Evaluations

In my life I have never had a formal work evaluation, at my academic mentoring position I get one at the end of each semester but those are based of what the students I help say and are never negative. It is a weird coincidence that when the group in my class is giving this presentation, I also have my first evaluation for my position as a revenue analyst. Being part time why at school I assume it will not be to intensive.The group presenting spoke about different performance reviews which are numerical (tangible scale number), Forced Ranking (percent of company), management by objectives (based on goals and deadlines), 360 Degree appraisal (info gathered from customers employees and management), Critical Incidence (describing specific incidence positive or negative). They spoke more about how many of these can be used together as well when evaluating. They have also said it should not all be evaluated once a year but instead throughout the year.

I have not been told how they evaluate employees at my position and I am sure it will differ from on position to the next. The billers in my company will most likely be evaluated over the amount of claims they send out and also the efficiency. As an analyst we measure many of these vital statistics that the billers get measured on but its harder to tell whether an analyst s doing a solid job or not. From the presentation I believe it will be management by Objectives. As an analyst, management asks us to work on different projects and to meet deadlines and this most relates to us. With this being said I personally feel like I have met all my deadlines and tasks higher management has asked for me even with being a part time employee during the school year. It will be interesting to see how it goes this week. I hope that it helps me progress as an employee so I will be able to perform better and stay there for longer.

The evaluation that I believe would be best would be a mixture of critical and 360. This way there is not much competition put on the employees to do better then others. This will also have good feedback to employees with specific details on what is good and also bad. The 360 aspect allows this to be heard from many different stakeholders in this employees life. Its important to hear everyone's opinion of an employee because people might shed light o something that is being overlooked elsewhere.

Vertical vs Horizontal Management (and matrix)

There are three major ways you can set up the organizational flow of information and power. The first one is a vertical organizations. The companies who have this type of organization tend to have many middle managers from the CEO to the front line staff. This leads to clearly defined roles and is great for someone who wants to advance through an organization. Relating to my last post I believe this is important for me to make sure my company that I end up with has a Vertical structure since I would rather stay with a company and advance internally rather then job hop.

When it comes to a horizontal structure they have few layers from the top to the bottom which allows quicker flow of communication and decision making. This is great for startups and more innovative companies. There is an article below this post which talks about how "Today best companies are horizontally integrated". I believe that this is true for certain industry and extremely not true for others. If innovation is a key player in your industry I absolutely believe that its better to have a free flow of communication avoiding the bureaucracy of many modern companies.

In today's society many companies are also attempting a Matrix structure which somewhat combines both of these styles. This style tends to bring in specialist while also keeping the specific lines of business. The biggest issue with this one is that it is hard to have the employees focus both on their own individual work while also contributing to a team projects and could find employees falling behind in one.
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There is no best option overall, but there absolutely is a best fit for specific employees and specific industry's.  This becomes increasingly important for owners to have a clear vision for their organizational structure to be the most competitive and innovative in their industry.

https://hbr.org/2012/12/todays-best-companies-are-hori

Staying with one company

I recently read an article which I have posted at the end of this post, but it got me thinking quite a bit about what my career path will look like. I have been taught my whole life to work hard and do your best and you will be able to advance within a company. This has been my mind set most of my life and I somewhat hoped that I would be able to grow within an organization. The article brought up many great points about how it could be easier to advance pay by leaving for a new company, The downside to this method is that it becomes increasingly hard to find new jobs because it comes across as someone who won't stay and is likely to leave. The article also shines light on staying with a company how you tend to plateau around the age of 45 in pay and position. They also talk about how staying with a company your whole life limits your experience and also could hurt your overall skills. I believe being at a job for to long is good as long as you are advancing and not staying in the same place.  Personally I just got a job at a hospital and as long as they are willing to bring me on full time I would love to be able to stay there and work my way through the ranks. Many people in my hospital have been leaving for new positions and many people have also risen to higher positions relatively quickly. My ideal plan would be to try to stay there for 4-5 years and if I do not have any advancement of either compensation or position I think I will start looking for around at other places. I know that this sounds a little unreasonable but I do not want to be an analyst my whole life, I really want the opportunity to work my way up to a management position so I am able to lead and guide people below me. For now I am, taking it a step at a time but I think staying in one place is not a bad thing.

http://lifehacker.com/is-it-bad-to-stay-at-one-company-for-very-long-1295782130