Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | March 4, 2024 | Worcester Business Journal 33 Mentoring is good for your career and your soul BY CONNIE ASKIN G rowing in your career oen comes with increased requests for your time, including requests to mentor others. Whether the request is from the workplace, your alma mater, or with a local nonprofit, people oen hesitate, wondering what makes a great mentor? ere is no common definition of mentoring. If you ask five people to define it, they will most likely describe it in five different ways. Just Google "mentoring" and see the depth and breadth of defi- nitions. is is because mentoring happens every day in formal and informal ways. e inconsistency of the definition only highlights the many dimensions one can grow, learn, and benefit from these kinds of relationships. I like to say being a mentor just means you are a couple chapters ahead in the book; the most important factor in being a good mentor is simply that you care. In the workplace, employees and employers benefit from implementing corporate mentorship programs and engaging as volunteer mentors in their communities. Research firms Gartner and Capital Analytics conducted a five-year, 1,000-person case study that found employees who participate in mentoring programs are five times more likely to receive a salary increase in relation to their peers who are uninvolved. Participation makes employees more adept in their roles and improves leadership and de- cision-making. Additionally, professionals with a mentor are five times more likely to get promoted, further empha- sizing the importance of mentorship in the workplace. As an employer, if you implement a mentorship pro- gram at your company, you will see significant benefits, including increased retention and decreased burnout. A paper published in the 2022 Journal of Interprofessional Education and Practice found employees in a mentoring relationship were less likely to report burnout. Mentoring can even make you happy! Laurie Santos, the Yale University professor who lectures on the science of happiness said in a lecture, "Helping others makes people happier than they expect." At its core, mentor- ship is about giving of yourself to provide support and guidance to a mentee. Literally every mentor I have spoken to at Big Brothers Big Sisters says they find deep meaning from experiencing the world through their Littles' perspectives. Embracing mentorship is not just about doing good; it's a strategic move with a double bottom-line impact. By fostering a culture of mentorship, you not only enhance the effectiveness of your workforce but increase employee engagement, retention, and satisfaction. e power of mentorship lies in its ability to transform individuals and organizations. It's not just about guidance and support; it's about growth, development, and creating a positive impact felt through your community. Connie Askin is CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Mass & MetroWest. Health care's problems are far beyond one greedy executive T he ills of the Massachusetts healthcare system seem to have found a villain to represent everything wrong about the industry. Steward Health Care's CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre may be the pinata of the month, but the high-profile woes facing the for-profit Steward risk overlooking the structural weaknesses in our entire system. Steward is accused of not paying its bills and creating fears of service interruptions at its seven Massachusetts facilities – including Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer – and de la Torre has been rebuked by Gov. Maura Healey for dishonesty and a lack of transparency. Investigative reporting from the Boston Globe called out de la Torre for his lavish lifestyle, including a $40-million superyacht, $15-million sportfishing boat, and a fleet of private jets paid for out of Steward's finances. While there is no defending the glitzy salary and outrageous perks of a healthcare executive, this narrative is all too commonplace: A company in a struggling industry hits an extended rough patch and makes ill-advised decisions to remain viable, causing service to further erode and public sentiment to shi against it, focused on its highly compensated leader. It's easy to argue jobs could have been saved and service interruptions avoided if leadership hadn't been so greedy, or the financial pressure to deliver the bottom line so great. Steward and de la Torre may be deserving of this public thrashing, but it risks overlooking the much larger issues in Massachusetts health care: COVID funding masked structural funding issues for hospitals, especially the smaller ones relying more heavily on Medicare and Mass Health to pay the bills. For instance, providers like Heywood Healthcare in Gardner are delivering essential services to patients from poorer populations, but Heywood has struggled to make ends meet, with its bankruptcy reflecting that struggle. In contrast, the state's larger hospitals who have more patients on private insurance can focus their efforts on higher-margin specialties. like cardiology, gastroenterology, and certain forms of oncology while nonprofit providers like UMass Memorial Health in Worcester are le with operations barely scraping by. While de la Torre has earned the ire of Steward employees as well as public officials, Healey and the Massachusetts legislature should not react to the crisis with ill-advised reforms, like banning for-profit operators from the healthcare space. at would not solve the core challenge, as any healthy industry needs a mix of players with a variety of business models to meet consumer needs efficiently. We need to focus on solutions to benefit the entire industry, especially supports for our smaller hospitals and those serving lower-income populations. Otherwise, the systemic struggles will be worse. The above Editorial is the opinion of the WBJ Editorial Board. The Viewpoint column, the A Thousand Words cartoon, and the Word from the Web commentary represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of WBJ or its staff. WBJ welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Send them to bkane@wbjournal.com. W W Connie Askin

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