Mentoring in Healthcare:
How to Build Effective Mentor-Mentee Relationships

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast, Episode 130: Mentoring in Healthcare: How to Build Effective Mentor-Mentee Relationships. Host Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP, in conversation with Ruth Gotian, EdD MS, co-author of Mentoring in Healthcare. Published October 12, 2026.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Here's the piece where mentees usually fall short. The mentor is giving you that advice, that guidance. They give you ideas that you should consider. Are you ever going to tell them what you chose, and why? That's the loop that mentees don't close, and that's a problem.

Lillian Liang Emlet: So our guest today didn't set out to become one of the most cited voices on mentorship in the world. She got there by asking astronauts, Nobel Prize winners, and Olympic champions the same question over and over: What actually separates people who sustain excellence from the people who just have talent? So that research took her deep into Weill Cornell Medicine, where she's spent more than two decades, first building its mentoring academy from scratch, and now serving as chief learning officer. And along the way, Thinkers50 named her the number one emerging management thinker in the world, and she's become a regular voice in Harvard Business Review and Forbes. And her newest work goes somewhere mentoring-- most mentoring conversations don't: naming what happens when mentoring goes wrong. She and her co-authors call it mentorship malpractice, and their new book, Mentoring in Healthcare, is already being called a definitive guide on the subject. And so, Dr. Ruth Gotian, thank you so much for being here on the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: So excited to get into this with you.

Lillian Liang Emlet: And so one question I have is, thinking through the initial beginnings of the book, what made you decide that this was the time? Like, now? Because the reality is most of us in healthcare recognize that you need to have a mentor. People are well aware of this, and most of us have networks either locally at our programs or our organizations to try to find the right mentors. But you saw that there was a problem, so what made you decide that this was the time to write this book?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: So it's actually my coauthors that approached me about it. I had been writing about mentoring for a very long time. In my previous books, prominent chapters were written on it. I even wrote a book on general mentoring for general audiences, The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring. And my coauthors, Doctors Vineet Chopra and Sanjay Saint, approached me about writing this book. They had previously written a book on mentoring already. And I reached out to a colleague of mine who was a publisher, and he said, "Don't write another mentoring book. You've already done it. It's saturated." He said, "But the voices that the three of you can bring is something that no one's done yet. You all three come from healthcare." We have Dr. Vineet Chopra, who is a department chair, Dr. Sanjay Saint is a division chief, I come from the education portion. What if we blended it together and specifically write it for the healthcare audience? And I did what any good academic does, is I did a quick search to see, surely there's a book on this. But I was wrong. There wasn't, and I couldn't believe it. We were just going through the motions of mentoring without a blueprint. It's, whatever way I was mentored is the way I'm mentoring now. But all the research shows that doesn't actually work, and there are more contemporary approaches backed by evidence. So we rolled up our sleeves and got into it, and that developed into the book Mentoring in Healthcare.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love it. I was actually really surprised when I started reading. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I totally agree with all of these things." And I also then started to realize you're right. For all of my talks, I've been having to hodgepodge, cobble together old papers, old perspective pieces from academic medicine, all kinds of little funny things, and then even going, like you said, outside of the healthcare sector to bring in that thought leadership and weave together some version of a talk. And it is really nice to have everything as a compendium. And so I think let's start off with a question. When someone's being asked to mentor for the very first time, because I'm just thinking of, like, all of our fellows have just graduated. They're all new junior faculty, and they're being asked to be a mentor. Where do they get stuck? What is getting started by being a mentor, especially early in career, what does it require when you're just trying to figure things out yourself?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: So I think you're never too old and never too young to both be a mentor and a mentee. And if I could just flip it for one second, I think the biggest mistake people make is that they ask someone to be their mentor, but that title has to be earned. And look, we're both really busy, and if someone who I barely know comes up to me and says, "Will you be my mentor?" all I'm thinking is, "Oh my God, now I've got yet another thing that I need to do, yet another thing that I need to consider, yet another thing I need to do." It sounds like an obligation, and that doesn't really work for anyone, doesn't feel pressured. So the mentees who are listening, and I don't care if you are a premed student or if you're the CEO of the hospital system, you should both be a mentor and have a mentor. And the mentee needs to approach this instead of saying, "Will you be my mentor?" Say, "I want to work on this," and give it some context. "Here's how far I've gotten on my own. I seem to be stuck in this area. Could I grab 20 minutes of your time? I know you have experience in this. I'd love to get your thoughts on this, about how I can get unstuck." Now, if you think about it, that's a better way to approach it, because I gave you context, not, "Will you help me with my career?" Cause I don't know where to start with that. "Here's what I have already done on my own." You want to show that you've gotten as far as you can on your own. You want to make it time-bound. "I'm not here for two hours of your day. 20 minutes, that's all I'm asking for, and this is a specific project that I want to work on, a specific challenge." Now that's great for the mentor, because they can understand exactly what they need. Now, people like to help those when they can see that you are willing to do the work. They can see a little bit of their excitement about it, a little bit of their work ethic. And if you have that spark as a mentee, the mentor will want to help you and want to mentor you. And if you're a young new attending and you're saying, "I don't know anything. How am I going to be a mentor?" That's not true. You have all of this experience that you have just gone through. The other thing that you can say, beyond sharing your experience, is, "This is where my knowledge on this ends, but I know someone who you should talk to. Can I make that introduction for you?" And that's a job of a mentor, is to open up their network to their mentees. You don't have to be the expert on everything. You need to share the knowledge that you have, and you need to be willing to open up your network to people who can broaden that knowledge sharing for the mentee.

Lillian Liang Emlet: And so it really is so much project bound or problem bound. People I think have mistaken guidance in terms of why and how. They just hear "Oh, mentoring's really important, so I need to go find one," and then some kind of way of working through it. And so what does a good mentor-mentee relationship actually look like? Does a mentor owe anything to a mentee, and what does the mentee owe back? Where does that exchange get a little wonky in terms of, like you said, the time limitation or how you manage up? How do you make the time most efficient, especially when you have a team of mentors that may be of different specialties and disciplines, especially for a project?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Right.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Can that be more explicit?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Well, I think communication is the biggest breakdown that happens. I think the mentee needs to be very clear about the type and amount of communication that they will need. Do they prefer it by texting, by email, by conversations? How do they communicate better? Do they want it at the beginning of the project? Do they want to touch base in the middle? Do they want to do it at the end, with an email in between? The clearer you are about the communication, the easier it becomes. Now, the mentor has to do the same. "I don't have two hours a week to sit with you, but what I can do is, why don't we have a scheduled meeting of 30 minutes every other week, and in between, you email or you text me with questions. Obviously, if it's an emergency, something very time-sensitive, obviously reach out to me, but not if you waited to the last minute with the deadline." Communication, the better it is, and then nobody feels like they owe anyone anything. Now, here's the piece where mentees usually fall short. The mentor is giving you that advice, that guidance. They're sharing their experience. They're sharing their knowledge. And you come to them with a challenge or an opportunity or a question, and let's say they give you three or four ideas that you should consider. That's fantastic. Well, are you ever going to tell them what you chose? Are you ever going to tell them why you didn't choose the other two to three options, and why? That's the loop that mentees don't close, and that's a problem. So if a mentor is giving you that guidance, you say, "Thank you so much for sitting with me and helping me think through this challenge. I ultimately went with your suggestion to do X," or, "I chose not to go with it because..." and then you explain your reasoning. If you're able to explain it, that shows that you have given it some serious thought. It wasn't just some impulsive reason. You actually gave it some thought, and any mentor can appreciate that. And the more information you can give them, so that they have the full picture, the better. But they want to know, if you are spending their time asking for guidance, you're going to use it. You're either going to use it because you agree with it, or you're going to use it as a launchpad for something, or you're going to not use it because of... and you have to give that reason. That's so critical. Now, the other piece you mentioned, about a mentoring team, that is the more contemporary approach to mentoring. Back in the day, our mentor was older and wiser, usually did not look like me, just because that's the way the hierarchy was. The more contemporary approach, and contemporary is over a quarter of a century at this point, means that you have a team of mentors where everyone can give you guidance on something else. But they should not all be from healthcare, because the problems you have in one challenge in healthcare might be... the solution might come from outside healthcare. Just look at the checklists that are in operating rooms. Those checklists, for a problem on medical errors, that solution of checklists came from the aviation industry. It's what pilots use. That's why it's important to hear from people who are outside of your industry. But here's the mistake people make. They often think you need to get all of your mentors together on a Zoom call or in a conference room. This is not a dissertation defense. You do not need to meet with all of them. You reach out to the mentor who is best suited to answer that question. And because you have the diverse team of mentors, each one will take on a different role, and that's what's so critical to remember.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Love that. And I think also the reality is, a lot of times, especially when we have formal and informal mentoring relationships, national, local, most people don't necessarily talk about the fact that they actually even go outside the industry. I think even for my education, learning theory and the ways I learned, I learned more from K through 12, and I watched others with different philosophies and EdDs think and talk about how learning and cognition and neuroscience is compared to what we have in the bubble of medical healthcare simulation, right? So even whether it's mentor for a project, but it's also what informs your perspectives. And I think we definitely do a disservice to ourselves if we don't actually try to expand those ideas.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: That's right. Absolutely.

Lillian Liang Emlet: You actually do bring up, pretty early on in the book, something I was surprised by: the dark side of mentorship. You called this mentorship malpractice. What is it, and what's it like before anyone realizes the harm is being done? 'Cause I think there were definitely a more passive and more active versions of what that looked like.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Absolutely. And I'm going to let you in on a little secret, but we always talk about the beautiful parts and all the benefits of mentoring. You earn more money, there's less burnout, you get promoted more often, you publish more often, and no one ever talks about the dark side. And long before I ever wrote any books on mentoring, there was this one JAMA article that I was fixated on, and it was called "Mentorship Malpractice." And it was written by three people, two of who are the coauthors on this book, Doctors Vineet Chopra and Sanjay Saint. I was mesmerized by that "Mentorship Malpractice" JAMA article, because they were putting words to what we were seeing but didn't quite know how to do. So what does that mentorship malpractice look like? And you're right, it could be active or passive. And most of these, the mentorship malpractice, and what I call in the Nature article I wrote on this, is when your mentor turns into a tormentor. That's the dark side. That's when you give them a manuscript to review and it's in their inbox for months, and they don't get back to you with any feedback. Or you need them to work through some conversation with a potential collaborator, but they don't want you collaborating with anyone, because they get jealous. They have some self-confidence issues. Or how about the one who's always traveling? Even during COVID, when all of us were home, or many of us were home, they were always too busy, right? They were back to back Zoom calls. Or how about the ones who not only do they not want to collaborate, they will not open up their network to you at all? Or how about, all of a sudden they start presenting some research at some national conference, but it's your research, and your name is nowhere to be found on that presentation? I think everyone has gone through that at some point. That's the mentorship malpractice, and that is actually worse than no mentoring at all, because those who were burned from the mentor who turned into a tormentor are less likely to dip their toe back into that mentoring. And we know the benefits: the higher salaries, the higher salary growth, the career advancement. But once you've been burned, you don't want to try it again, cause it leaves a deep, deep scar. Now this now continues to the next generation. How do you think someone who's been burned that badly wants to mentor? They're going to do one of two things. They're either going to mentor in the exact same way that they've been mentored. Well, that's not good, right? Or they're going to hover. They're going to give more mentoring than is necessary, to the point that it's almost micromanaging. It's smothering. It's a little too much. Finding that balance is so key. So yes, we talk quite a bit about mentorship malpractice in the book, and every book I ever write, we don't just talk about the science and the work behind it. We give actionable tools. So there're actually scripts on how to get out of that mentoring relationship, whether you are a student, a resident, an attending, et cetera.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I do find it sad and scary that those things are in existence. I guess to me these were things that happened to other people when I was younger, and it's amazing to me that some of the things really may not have changed, and I always am a bit shocked that this day and age, as much as we talk about mentoring and having a board of directors and having diversifications and mentoring across generations and mentoring across cultures, I think I'm in my own bubble, basically, is what I'm realizing. And so I appreciate the fact that in the book you do cover the other side, and also ways to recognize and know ways you can get out of the situation, and also ways that you can convert it into a situation where you can get what you need out of it and move on, and do something differently for yourself. So I do want to talk about mentoring across differences, generations, cultures, discipline, power. Relationships can get strained, they can get strengthened, they can feel like a club. What's a move towards bridging the difference instead of pretending it isn't there? I think a lot of times people get really awkward. I'm not sure, am I allowed to say anything, or how can I be truly authentic? How do I make you feel like you belong? I've had mentees of different, obviously, genders, ages, cultures, religions, and it's been fine, but it takes awareness, I think, on both sides, and a little bit of curiosity. So I'm curious from your perspective.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Absolutely. Look, you are never, ever going to find a mentor who is the copy of you, your twin, same gender, age, socioeconomic background, upbringing, political stance, whatever it is. Someone's going to be different, and there's beauty and strength in that, right? Because if you're only going to find someone who's like you, you're going to be in an echo chamber. So you want to diversify your mentoring team. But we're human, and we're different. And one of the things you need to first do is see how you're the same before you focus on how you're different. Because you're not going to go up to someone and say, "We're from two different cultures. What should I know about yours?" I'm like, where do I start? Right? Where do I even start with that? But when I get to know you as a person and see what we have in common, then that conversation naturally happens. And that's when you want to start asking people, and we actually talk about, make a list of your mentors and mentees, color-code it if you need it, see if everyone is the same. If everyone's the same, you need to diversify. Now, I was giving a talk once, and they asked me to meet with some of the deans at that institution, very well-known institution. And one of the deans, he said to... or maybe he was a chair, he said, "Once a month I go out with my division chiefs and senior attendings, and we go out golfing. And I don't understand why everyone who comes, they all look the same." And I said, "Well, do you know if everyone golfs? Do you know if, after work, they have time to golf? Do they have a family who they need to feed, help with homework, put to bed? Do they have parents that they need to take care of?" It's an assumption that at the end of the day on a Friday, people have time or desire to go golfing because that's what you want to do, and that's the culture in which you were raised. But that's a heavy assumption. So asking people, "I really want to get everyone together. Let's figure out..." And there are ways to do that, and I'm a big fan of design thinking, how we can do that in a way that's fun and more inclusive for everyone. Kudos to the guy who wanted to spend time with his team, but it didn't quite work out the way he expected, because there were some serious blinders on.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. It's hard. Whenever, as a leader, you want to be generous, and the only way you want to be generous is the way you are. And yet at the same time, talk about not being able to read the room, in terms of first query. It's like designing curriculum for the first time. You probably should ask the needs first before you design any talk, any lecture series, any anything. We first just need to understand, where are we even starting?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: That's 101 in curriculum design: ask the stakeholders. But most people skip that step.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. So even now, in this day and age, post-COVID, the reality is all of us now take advantage of virtual relationships. I went back to coaching school in the virtual era and am very close and developed new relationships with people across the country, across the world actually, right? Because coaching is an international sport. And so what's one practice that can help people really leverage and take advantage of virtual relationships as one of their mentors?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Yeah, look, I wrote a different mentoring book, The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, and I had not met my coauthor until after we submitted the book manuscript to the publisher. So it absolutely can be done. We wrote Mentoring in Healthcare, this book. While we had met in person to sit and actually work on the book, it was all done virtually. And again, this goes back to communication. What is my responsibility? What's your responsibility? What is our timeline? What are our milestones that we need to hit? And you constantly need to communicate. And if you're stuck, if things are going to be late, if you were asked to be on service, if you're taking a vacation, if you've had a loss in the family, you need to communicate that, not just disappear. And I think the more you're able to communicate, the better. And I think the virtual world has made our world so much smaller. We can now work with people, which in the past it was a flight, it was time away, where now it's a Calendly link: pick a time that works for you, I don't have to do time zone math, and we're on a Zoom, and that's really all it takes. And I think that has allowed for so many opportunities, so many collaborations. I used to be on the editorial board of one of the academic journals, and the editor-in-chief asked me to coauthor an article with someone who was in a parallel space, except she was in New Zealand and I was in the United States. And that actually made the work better, because I would work on it, I would send it to her, I would go home, I would go to sleep, and while I was sleeping, she was working on it. I came back in the morning, it's in my inbox. So we actually saved time in getting it done, right? So it's all about communication. It works. It really works.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love it. So for the leader who knows how important it is, in healthcare especially, that they want to mentor better, and then we were talking about managers, chiefs, chairs all leaders want to be a good mentor. What's the first concrete thing they can do before their next meeting? Especially 'cause maybe it's a little informal, maybe it's not, the communication hasn't been the best. What's the one or two things that a leader can do to be like, "Let's reset things to make it better, to be able to work together"?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: So I am not a very formal person, but I am a very type A person, and I don't like to waste time. So what we recommend is that you send in advance the topics you want to talk about. Now, obviously there will always be something else that comes up, but you want to make sure that you cover these three things, and there's a power in three. You don't want to have this long agenda. Just three things that you want to talk about, the three major things. And you want to send that in advance, because maybe the mentor needs to think about it a little bit, right? And you want to give them time to do that. Now, if you really want to get those bonus points, and say, "Here are the three things I want to discuss. Here's a background of where I stand on each one," all of that saves time. All of that saves time. And if you're able to do that, then the mentoring meeting becomes, it's all about action. What is the next step? You're not wasting time on what could have been an email, right? Because you literally sent it in an email. So the mentoring becomes much more about taking action and giving you the confidence to take that action. Because very often the mentees, they don't have the confidence. They know what they should do, but they don't do it, and then that session becomes, you borrow the mentor's confidence in you. And that is the time during that meeting. "This is why I believe you can do it. This is why I believe you should throw your hat in the ring for this role. This is who I think you should talk to. This is what I think you should do by Friday." It's all about action. Works every time.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Love that. So these are takeaways, I think, for the mentor to recommend actions and ways to work together. And I still remember my very first main mentor through the majority of my academic career here, Dr. Bob Arnold. He's like, "You fill out this little template. This is how you're going to communicate with me beforehand." And it really helps consolidate. Did I hit the big buckets, the big five of what I need to get done and to move projects forward or to move my career forward? Did things happen? Oh, wow, nothing happened. And then the whole session ends up becoming, "Great, you hit your targets that way. There's nothing for us to talk about there." But the bigger question is, like, why did you not hit the last target, right? You said you were going to do this, and so it does make it more efficient. And then you have that shameful book where you're like, "I don't know." But it is clearly where you need to do the work, make it much more efficient.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Putting your head in the sand is not going to make it go away. And that's what we did. In the book, we actually included a lot of templates, as you said, checklists, scripts, all of that, just to make it easier. And we did that because that was so necessary, and that was so missing from those conversations. And we can't have a conversation without talking about AI, and I think this in particular is where AI can really help, especially if you have one of those closed ones. Have it notate and take the transcript of your meeting and then summarize it, because then you can actually listen during your meeting instead of sitting there and taking notes. And then it'll summarize: "Okay, these are the three things I promised I was going to do. These are the two things you promised you were going to do." And you can send that summary. Big time saver.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I do think what everyone should take away is the fact there is so much about mentoring up, and also leading up, and how do you communicate, right? So even though someone may be more senior to you or may have more experience, it's still, we're always in the driver's seat. We have a lot more agency and autonomy for how we want that relationship and conversation to go with our board of directors than we realize. A lot of times people think, "Okay, I've assembled them, and then I don't know what to do and how to make this most effective." You're still in the driver's seat, and you can actually push someone off the island and put someone else onto the island too, whenever that's necessary.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Yes. Mentoring is not a life sentence. Who you are at 20 is not who you are at 40, and you don't need those same people. And we actually give you scripts for that as well, of how to exit that mentoring relationship. Because who you need when you are a resident or fellow is not who you need when you're an attending or you're getting a leadership role. You need different type of mentorship. Look, my dissertation advisor from my doctorate, I spoke to her every single day when I was deep in the throes of writing, because I needed certain pieces of guidance on a daily basis as I was going through the writing of different chapters. Now we talk maybe once a quarter. It's not that she's out of my life, now we're friends. And it's just, it's a very different relationship, and I think that's okay.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. I think that's probably my favorite. My mentees have become colleagues and peers, and then I can sponsor them and we can recommend them. It's really wonderful. I think my other question to close out, because, obviously, we're Transforming Healthcare Coaching. Mentoring and coaching often get very confused and muddled. Mentoring coaching, and advising, people don't understand the difference between the three, and I'm curious from your take because you've also seen the differences in how that works. Could you explain to the audience a little bit how, what your take is on how, as a leader, you might be a mentor sometimes, a coach sometimes and what that process might look like versus just a quick advisor?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: And I do both, right? So the mentoring is more of a long-term relationship, and it's usually with someone who has experience in what you're doing or want to be doing. So there's some sort of direct correlation with that person. There is something in common, and it is for a long term without a set end date. And in North America, at least, the mentors do not get paid. Now, coaching is very different. Coaching is very often more inquiry based. It is for a finite period of time. The coaching relationships I have are always in six-month cycles. You do not have to have the experience in the same field as the other person. I coach physicians and surgeons and lawyers and venture capitalists, so you can have a different experience, but you need to know how to ask those questions. Coaches do get paid, and the good ones get paid well. An advisor is someone to help on a specific project, and that is very context-driven and very time-bound.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I also would say the reality is we all need all of these in our lives, and different ones.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Absolutely.

Lillian Liang Emlet: The reality is, as you learn and grow, as you do different things, we will serve in different capacities, and you also will want them for yourself. You'll just get there faster. I mean, you definitely can live life without any of these things, but then you just might be doing a lot of DIY on your own, which is a little more scary when you think about, like, how busy life is as a healthcare professional, healthcare leader. You really deserve to get there a little bit faster.

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Well, look, having both a mentor and a coach, and I definitely think everyone should have both, it can save you a lot of time, because they will tell you what barriers are there, and it'll teach you how to overcome those barriers. And if you're not able to overcome them on your own, they will teach you how to get over it, and what to do, that, and how to use that feedback as fuel. It will not move those barriers for you, and I think that's what some people think, that the mentors and coaches will do. No. This is life. This is the world. There are going to be craters and barriers and all sorts of things in your way, and having a team who can help you and prepare you to navigate, that's what you need. And I tell people all the time, I do a lot of executive coaching for elite athletes, from the NBA, and Olympians, and I have yet to meet one who doesn't have a team of coaches. So if it's good enough for Olympians, why do the rest of us think that we don't need one?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Very good points. So Ruth, how can people work with you? How can people get the book? What are you hoping for that people take away and take action from after this podcast today?

Ruth Gotian, EdD MS: Sure. The book is called Mentoring in Healthcare, wherever you love ordering books, and my website is just my name, ruthgotian.com. Lots of information there about the speaking and coaching. And of course, if you follow on LinkedIn, it's just my name again, Ruth Gotian. I put in almost every day tips on moving forward and growing and going from overlooked to undeniable. And here's the big bonus: I have a lot of LinkedIn Learning courses, and I routinely put them on my LinkedIn profile, and if you press on it, you get access for free for 24 hours from the moment you press play. So always great to follow your favorite LinkedIn Learning instructors.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Oh, that's so wonderful. So thank you so much for listening, everyone. Thank you so much, Dr. Gotian, for being on our podcast today and really helping all of our leaders and program directors and educators. And from young to old, right? We all need both coaches and mentors and are in development all through our life cycle. For everyone listening, thank you so much for listening all the way to the nitty-gritty end. Please email us at podcast@transforminghealthcarecoaching.com so you can tell us what you want to hear about next and what problems you're facing. Thanks everyone for listening, and please subscribe, and share with a friend and colleague who needs to hear this message today. Thank you for listening.