supervision

Good mentorship is about more than the occasional chat over coffee

30 August 2024 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

Good mentors serve as role models, advisers, teachers, guides, sponsors, and protectors. They help junior professionals forge identities and realise dreams.

For senior professionals, mentorship fulfils a deep-seated urge to guide younger generations of professionals.

Authentic relationships lie at the heart of good mentoring. But not all mentoring relationships are created equal: some are superficial and transactional.

According to Professor Herminia Ibarra, senior-junior professional relationships can evolve naturally through five stages:

Mentor: The senior provides advice and support privately.
Strategiser: The senior shares ‘inside knowledge’ about how the junior might advance.
Connector: The senior provides introductions to key stakeholders and includes the junior in meetings/events that give the junior access to people who can be instrumental for career development.
Opportunity giver: The senior seeks out high visibility projects/roles for the junior to take on, e.g. a presentation, strategic project, or membership of an external board.
Sponsor: The senior is committed to the junior’s long-term success, with both professionals giving and receiving value, openly sharing ideas and a mutual sense of competence and confidence, as well as a bias for taking concrete actions.

The ideal mentor relationship includes career-advancement help, public advocacy for growth opportunities, and support and validation. Done well, mentorship bolsters confidence and fosters the development of a caring, mutually satisfying bond.

Source: Ibarra, H. (2022). How To Do Sponsorship Right. Harvard Business Review, Nov-Dec, 111-119.

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For more on supervision, check out our book “How to supervise speech pathologists properly in private practice“.

9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in one-to-one supervision sessions

3 June 2022 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in one-to-one supervision sessions:

If we could improve in any way, how would we do it?
What’s the number one problem with our practice? Why?
What’s not fun about working here?
Who’s doing a great job? Whom do you admire?
If you were me, what changes would you make?
What don’t you like about our services for clients?
What’s the biggest opportunity we’re missing out on?
What are we not doing that we should be doing?
Are you happy working here?

Source: Horowitz, B. (2014). The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Harper Collins, NY, NY.

9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in supervision sessions

For more on supervision, check out our book “How to supervise speech pathologists properly in private practice“.

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.

9 ideas to increase engagement and reduce burn out by designing work your team will love

2 June 2022 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

If less than 20% of your work consists of things you love to do, you are far more likely to burn out. Practice owners should design work with love in mind:

Encourage staff to set goals, both for their career and personal life.
Invest in each employee’s ongoing education, either directly through training or by giving employees time to pursue their own projects.
Stay connected with your alumni.
Don’t over-rely on standardised competence tools: there is more than one way to be a great speech pathologist.
Organise around teams: workers who feel part of a team are 2.7 times as likely to be engaged, 3 times as likely to be highly resilient, and twice as likely to report a strong sense of belonging.
Hire interesting speech pathologists: each person’s “loves and loathings” can be combined with others to make the team greater than the sum of its parts. Assign projects based on each individual’s strengths and interests.
Discard rituals that erode team trust, like staff rankings based on output-based KPIs.
Pay individual attention to each speech pathologist. Supervisors who check in 1:1 every week drive their team member’s engagement up 77% and reduce turnover by 67%.
Schedule once-a-week 1:1 supervision check-ins. Ask four key questions:
- What did you love about last week?
- What did you loathe?
- What are your priorities for the next week?
- How can I help?

Source: Buckingham, M. (2022). Designing Work That People Love. Harvard Business Review, June 2022.

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.