Spotlight on Mentoring
Dean Mazzoni, Vice President of Operations at Virtua Health's West Jersey Hospital in Marlton, NJ and Lisa Satteson, Manager, Performance Improvement, Quality & Patient Safety at Catholic Health East in Newtown Square, PA recently reported on their positive experience participating in the HLNDV Mentorship Program. Dean and Lisa were introduced in early 2008 as a result of the work done by members of the Career Development Committee.
Dean Mazzoni – The Mentor Perspective
"I have had the good fortune to benefit from relationships with mentors who are leaders in the healthcare industry. So, my hope from the outset of this mentoring opportunity was to share a similar positive experience with my mentee, Lisa Satteson. In the end, I found that I have learned as much from this experience as I had hoped to impart to Lisa. My experience through the HLNDV Mentoring Program has been very rewarding to say the least.
"I would like to begin by thanking John Kiernan and Chuck Walczak for their assistance in getting us started on the right path. At the outset, John and Chuck scheduled an introductory conference call with Lisa and I that was very helpful in breaking the ice and beginning our dialogue together. In addition, they have always been available if we needed some additional direction.
"There are several keys that I attribute to our successful mentoring. In addition, the HLNDV Mentorship Program Guide entitled "Components of a Quality Experience" and the ACHE website both served as useful resources for mentoring.
"Early on, Lisa and I developed a list of goals that became a guide post, almost like a relationship mission statement for our journey together. The goals are both individual and mutual in nature. At the same time the goals are a reflection of professional aspirations as well as objectives for the mentoring relationship itself, and these have helped to focus our later discussions. Although our relationship is faced with the potential challenge of distance, from my perspective, it has not in any way hindered our ability to make significant progress. Most of our meetings, with the exception of a single meeting that included a tour and history of my current hospital, have been via telephone.
"To that end, I believe it has served us well to treat our mentoring experience as a partnership. It is important to establish a regular schedule of meetings and calls, and more importantly, to make every effort to keep these appointments. Maintaining the schedule requires a level of commitment and sends a clear message that you value each other's time and that the experience is important.
"It is also very helpful to have a committed mentee. Often times Lisa will take the initiative and develop an agenda in advance of our regularly scheduled calls. We then converse via e-mail and jointly finalize the agenda prior to our phone discussions. This ensures that we make the best use of our time together and keeps us on track in terms of the initial goals we had jointly set. It has also helped to allow for some advanced preparation prior to our meetings.
"For my part, I believe it is important to not necessarily serve as an advisor during the mentoring process. I have preferred to engage in active listening and then draw upon my experience to serve as examples that might relate to the topic of discussion. I have found this approach much more instructive and useful than simply giving advice. Despite best intentions, it is possible to give bad advice. I have been determined that in order to promote a positive learning experience and foster the trust and confidence necessary to a relationship such as this I would not give bad advice.
"Lastly, it has been helpful and instructive to share materials from conferences each of us have attended as well as industry literature. This has served to guide some of our regular discussions around industry issues and current events and has been a component of our overall agenda topics. Once again, I have been afforded the chance to learn as much as I have shared.
"I would recommend mentoring through the HLNDV program to anyone interested. For me it has been a refreshing experience and I am grateful to have worked with Lisa through the HLNDV Mentoring Program."
Lisa Satteson – The Mentee Perspective
"I have been a member of HLNDV for nearly three years now; and, early on in my membership, I sought to take advantage of the mentorship program after reading about it on the HLNDV website. Shortly after I submitted my contact information, I received a call from Ellen Nassberg, a member of HLNDV's Career Development Committee, who spent a significant amount of time talking with me to better understand my previous work experience, my developmental opportunities and my career goals and aspirations. At the end of the conversation, she acknowledged that it would likely take some time to connect me with a mentor who would best meet my needs in terms of how I would like to benefit from the mentorship program, but that the committee would do their utmost best to find a match best aligned with my career goals. Fortunately, after about nine months, I received a call from Ellen informing me that a mentor had been identified, and we eagerly made arrangements for the initial "meet and greet" via a conference call. And, while most might think that nine months is an unfortunate wait, rather the wait was certainly well worth it.
"In January 2008, I was introduced to Dean Mazzoni, Vice President of Operations at Virtua Health's West Jersey Hospital in Marlton, NJ. In the past, I had participated in formally arranged mentorship relationships, which frankly speaking, did not fair so well. Not only was it difficult to make a connection and cultivate an open, safe, and trusting milieu over the phone, the essential crux of any successful mentor-mentee relationship; scheduling conflicts and cancelled calls soon became the norm and the mentorship abruptly ended without warning or reason. Having gone through this experience, I was apprehensive, and as we typically do in healthcare, I hoped for the best but prepared for the worst. Thankfully, many of the barriers I had experienced in the past never surfaced, most of which I attribute to the care HLNDV took when pairing Dean and I together, and Dean's genuine willingness to commit his time, share his experiences, and lend an indiscriminating ear.
"Since our initial meeting, Dean and I have continued to engage in bi-monthly calls which are oftentimes spent reflecting on past situations and/or challenges both of us have faced and then centering our discussions on the positive "take-aways," lessons that are typically realized retrospectively. It is through this type of sharing that in my opinion, a truly beneficial and meaningful exchange occurs. But even more importantly, over the course of eight short months, I have grown to understand and appreciate what it takes to be a successful leader in healthcare. Not only has Dean shared significant insight on the topics of leadership and hospital operations, the most powerful lesson came when I observed him first hand while on a site visit at his hospital. As we walked through the hallways and various departments, I was amazed at the ease by which he remembered the names of nearly every staff member we encountered, how they greeted him with enthusiasm and respect, and their eagerness to "talk shop" on some of the tough issues the hospital was working to resolve.
"As I aspire to assume a leadership role in hospital operations, having Dean as a mentor and subsequently the opportunity to live through him vicariously and thus benefit from his expertise and years of experience, well, this experience is priceless. In addition to equipping me with good tools and some supportive and sound advice, Dean clearly emulates the type of leader I want to be. In having the opportunity to know him, both as a person and a leader in healthcare, he inspires me through his words and actions to become just that."
