Recognizing The Value Of Mentorship In Your Journey – And How You Can Give Back

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I had the opportunity to sit down with Intermountain Health’s CEO, Rob Allen , for a special in-person recording of Disrupt Yourself. Some quick stats on IMH: 33 hospitals, from Montana down to Arizona, with over 68,000 caregivers in their system. The episode was released last Friday, and I wanted to use today’s newsletter to spotlight a thread that ran throughout our conversation. What does it mean to have a mentor in your life – and how can we be mentors for the folks who most need our perspective right now?

For Rob, that journey of mentor and mentee started with his mother, on their family farm in Star Valley, Wyoming. Their small town had one hospital – 15 beds, one doctor, and two nurses, including his mother.

“The doctor had a cattle ranch 30 miles from the hospital,” Allen said on Disrupt Yourself. “So, if you went to the hospital and needed the doctor, if he wasn't in his clinic seeing patients, you had to wait for him to get to the hospital.”?

“Any time an ambulance went through the valley, my mother would run to the house. We could be milking cows in the barn, or out in the fields hauling hay, and she would go find a phone, and call the hospital to see if they needed help.”

Sometimes, we don’t realize we’re a mentor to someone else –?we’re just doing our best, and in the process, we model behavior for those around us. “It was her example that led me to really look at healthcare as a career. I look back at her commitment to people, and how she wanted to support her colleagues, her nurses – if they needed a hand, she would proactively be there.”

A couple of years later, as the young CFO of a hospital about two hours south of Star Valley, Rob was at a crossroads in his career. On the road to becoming a hospital administrator, how would he avoid the pitfall of getting “pigeonholed” in finance? Step in David Jeppson, one of the early founders of Intermountain Healthcare. When Rob found out David would be visiting his hospital, there was an opportunity to put the question to one of Rob’s self-professed idols.

“I was expecting this grand, philosophical response to my question. And Dave looked me in the eye and he said, ‘Rob, it's this simple. Do a great job. You do the very best job as CFO, and you'll have unlimited opportunities ahead of you. You do a poor job as CFO. You won't have any opportunities.”

“It was remarkably simple and yet profound.” That’s the other thing I learned from Rob about being a successful mentor. The most impactful lessons are also the simplest. If you need to couch your advice with complicated models and metaphors, then chances are, it’s not going to move the needle. Take another saying that Rob carries with him, this one from that family farm – “What must be done, can be done.” The simpler it is, the easier it is to carry in our hearts.

So today, how does Rob embody that mentorship his mother and professional role models provided to him? Or to hear him say it – “Am I that leader that I drew strength from early on?”

“I have folks who ask if I will be their mentor, and I'm very selective because I don't have a lot of time,” Allen said. That said, “I had a doctor who asked, and I got to know her journey. She immigrated as a child from Mexico, and now she's a medical student. We had a chance to celebrate that a little bit and talk about her journey. I took that time.”?

“How many others need that mentorship? And how can I fit a few more of those into my journey?”

Who has modeled impactful mentorship in your life – and how are you returning that favor to the folks who count on you?

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