Dr. Addie Reinhard joins Dr. Andy Roark on the podcast to delve into the pivotal topic of mentorship in the veterinary field. They explore the significance of crafting a personal board of mentors, offering insights on being an effective mentee and navigating the terrain of feedback. Tune in as they unravel strategies for identifying the ideal mentors and uncover best practices in fostering these invaluable professional relationships.
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LINKS
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ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Addie Reinhard is a veterinary wellbeing researcher. Her research focuses on developing and evaluating innovative interventions to support mental health and wellbeing within the veterinary profession. She is the Founder and CEO of MentorVet, an evidence-based mentorship and professional development program for recent veterinary graduates. She is on the research team for the next phase of the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study. In 2021, she completed a master’s degree in Community and Leadership Development and a Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning from the University of Kentucky and holds a certificate in Veterinary Human Support from the University of Tennessee. She is also a certified QPR instructor.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Andy Roark. I got a great one today. I am here with my good friend, Dr. Addie Reinhard. She is amazing. If you’re not familiar with her, her work with MentorVet, you’re in for a real treat. Addie and I have, we’ve become good friends in the last year. She’s just a absolutely wonderful person, one of my favorite people to spend time with. I got so much out of this conversation with her. She’s got so much insight into mentorship and into building relationships. And guys, I genuinely think that the interpersonal relationships we have are probably the most important thing when we decide whether or not we are happy with our life. I really think that those relationships, they matter more than anything as far as satisfaction. I can tell you from personal experience, I don’t think there’s anything that matters more in our careers and getting doors open for us to go and do things, to grow, to learn, to try new things than the people that we know who are willing to give us opportunities and to help us out and to give us advice, and to invest some time into us.
And I just believe that deeply. And so Addie is just such a wonderful person to talk to and she’s got so much information to share. So anyway, I hope you guys will enjoy this episode. I think it’s a great one. Let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Addie Reinhard. How are you?
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Hey, doing well. How are you?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Doing great. Thanks for being here. I always love to visit with you.
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Yeah, it’s always a good time. Lots of laughs usually.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, usually. For those who don’t know you, you are a veterinarian. You are the founder and CEO of MentorVet. And so MentorVet, actually I’ll let you take it. Why don’t you quickly lay down what MentorVet does?
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Yeah, so I practiced small animal for about four years, got burnt out a few times, had some great mentors to help me through that. And really recognized how powerful good mentorship and support is really at all stages of your career, but particularly for me in the transition to practice. And so really fell to calling to be able to want to give back to others through creating structures for mentorship. So founded MentorVet, the entity, after spending two years at University of Kentucky doing some research on veterinary wellbeing and more importantly, what can we do about it. So at MentorVet, we create evidence-based programming to support the individuals in the veterinary profession to give them the skills and tools and support structure that they need to help themselves and help others in the field with the ultimate goal of creating a healthier profession for everybody involved.
I love it. You are amazing. I love the work that you do. I really enjoy getting to hang out with you. You and I got to visit in Austin, Texas at the NAVC Hive event, and we basically spent three days together, just so fun talking about the world and eating a lot of brisket and tacos. We had a lot of brisket and tacos. Alright, I want to talk to you. So I want to talk to you. I have a mentorship sort of idea theme that I’m playing around with. I was talking to a very smart veterinarian just like a week or two ago, and she is high up in one of the big vet clinic hospital organizations. And so one of the corporate groups, and she was talking to me about what she thinks the key to success for doctor leaders is. And she said, you need to build your board and build your bench.
And so build your board and build your bench. And so building your board is what you call our, I mean how do you call it a reverse? It’s not reverse mentorship, but it’s basically seeking out mentors, your own professional development mentors. And then your bench is basically developing people around you and being the mentor for others. And I thought that that was really interesting. I just like that phrasing of build your board, build your bench. And so I wanted to talk to you a bit about the building your board part. I know I could talk to you all day about building your bench and you obviously have so much experience mentoring young doctors and things like that. But I want to talk more about this as a later career veterinarian, what mentorship looks like and why more people don’t seem to prioritize it. So lemme just pause here for a second and say, when I talk to you about later career veterinarians, people who have been a vet for at least five years, maybe 10 plus years, do you think those people have a focus on mentorship? Do you think that, I know we’re speaking in broad terms, do they seek out mentorship or is there a general consensus I’m kind of perceiving, which is I’m too old to be mentored. Mentorship is sort of for younger people. What do you think?
Yeah, I think there is a common belief that mentorship is usually reserved for early career individuals, but I think it should be for everyone. And it’s funny you say that because when I ask this question to groups and audiences when I ask who here has a mentor? And usually less than a quarter of people or maybe a third of people raise their hand. So I think we are not leveraging mentorship. We could be, and I think mentorship can be very powerful and it’s how I’ve gotten to where I am in what I’m doing with mentor ed. I wouldn’t be here without all the mentors along the way believing in me when I didn’t even believe in myself and opening doors for me and supporting the work that I do and making me think differently about the world and the things that we were doing and challenging my beliefs on things and getting me to expand my horizons on things. So I think that mentorship is appropriate for all career stages, especially mid-career vets. And I would agree that I don’t think it’s being used nearly as much as it could be.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Wait, so just to be clear, you’re saying a quarter to a third of veterinarians raise their hand saying they have a mentor like one and that’s all that there is really? That’s staggering to me.
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
It’s sad and I don’t know, I think
Dr. Andy Roark:
I’ve got five mentors, I have mentors, people have pairs of shoes, I’ve
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Got too many, maybe I’m going to have to get rid of one.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly right. I’m sorry Andy
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Going to have to get you as a mentor.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The tribe has spoken and you put my torch out and then I have to leave the Addie Reinhard mentor party.
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
But yeah, I mean it’s surprising to me because I do have, and I look at mentorship, so mentorship can be a few different things. It can be something where you’re getting support with medical decisions, but professional development has been such an important aspect of my own mentorship and being able to talk with people who both have walked the route you’re walking or are currently walking the route that you are walking can be so helpful to get through the day.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh no, no doubt. I mean you were one of my mentors, and I’ll just say this and people don’t think, but I mean people can’t see us. I am markedly older than you were one of my, I called you when I was laying face down trying to make a conference happen that refused to actually happen. And I was like, I don’t know where to go from here. And so I called you because I knew that you have experience in these types of things and the events and running teams and I was just like, I need someone who is not as emotionally invested in this as I am to just look at this for me please and tell me what I’m missing. And it is hugely helpful, but I think that whole, it goes one direction of the older to the younger, I think that that’s such a mistake.
It’s just it’s not true. So I don’t know, how did you get started? I don’t know if you want to tell a story of mentorship opening doors for you as said as you got going, how did this make a difference for you? How did you decide that this mentorship building, this personal board of directors was worth your time? Because I got to tell you, honestly, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to think of anybody that is as good as you are at making people want to support them. Well, but you draw people’s sweet, is it? I don’t know, it’s like, I dunno anyone who just tricks other people into,
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
I dunno, anyone who needs so much.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly. You suck resources from so many people. It’s amazing. How do you do it? How do you do
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
It? How do you do it? How do you get people to help you? So there’s a few things that I think as a mentee and having the mindset that there’s always something to learn from somebody, there’s always something to learn from anybody. And going through life with that mindset and being very curious about what you can learn opens a lot of doors for good connection. Because if you enter in with humility and knowing that I don’t know all the answers. I don’t know all the answers, and being willing to be taught, be teachable. And I think so many times if we’re stuck in, I think especially in my early career, I think about the way that I learned things in school. And if I had come into practice and said, Nope, I’m not going to do it that way. This is how I learned in school, then those people are going to have a harder time mentoring me versus if I’m willing to learn, okay, you’ve been in practice for 20, 30 years, tell me why are you doing it this way?
Oh, okay, well I learned it this way. I don’t know if this is better or worse or just different, but let’s compare notes and see and maybe I can learn a few things from you and maybe you can learn a few things from me. So I think being teachable is one. I would say being proactive is the other. So many people are not proactive about mentorship. So proactive about developing your connections, developing your taking time to chat with people, just making time in your day to reach out and say, Hey, I’ve got a question. Or Hey, can I bounce some things off of you? And the proactivity and actually taking the effort to set up intentional time to talk to somebody about challenges that you’re facing makes them want to help you because they see that you’re making an effort. So being teachable, being proactive and entering in with that mindset of always learning and growing. I’m trying to think of other things that I do. Awesome, but
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well no, I want to start to unpack some of this stuff, right, because I don’t know that people know necessarily what you mean when you say you need to be teachable. But I will tell you had a lot of people reach out to me over the years and ask me for advice, which I am, I’m happy to share, and then they tell me why I’m wrong and I’m like, you don’t have to do what I say, but you know what I mean. It’s amazing how many people, I don’t know if it’s insecurity of I don’t want to take advice from somebody. And again, I’m not saying I’m right, but it’s interesting how many people will ask you what you would do and then instead of saying, well why do you say that or Tell me more about that or help me understand why, that’s where you would go. They go, that won’t work because of this or it won’t work because of that. And I think it’s an interesting mentality, but I’ve seen it again and again over the years and I think it’s people who want to be mentored but that make it really hard to do it. Do you agree with that?
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Yeah, I do. And I think you have to come into a conversation being willing to listen. There’s a lot of things that my mentors tell me that are total crap that I’m not going to do.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Some of the advice that you’ve given me is just total crap. I believe it, but a lot of it is really good. And so maybe this is number three of being discerning about what you’re going to take with you and what you’re going to leave behind and being grateful for all of the knowledge that is given regardless because they don’t know what’s going to be appropriate to your situation, but you do. So listening, having an open mind and taking the nuggets that do apply to your situation and using those and then discarding the rest and still showing appreciation for all of it, I think is one of the ways that you can be really a good mentee or learner from other people. Because again, I’ve heard even today we had an advisory board meeting for MentorVet, so it’s like my 10 11 mentors that I’ve chosen to help me and MentorVet grow. And during the meeting some of our advisory board members say some stuff that I don’t really necessarily agree with and yet I will sit and I will listen to their point of view and their perspective, take notes and again, take what applies and then discard the rest. But they don’t need to know that they have a bad
Dr. Andy Roark:
Idea. Oh yeah, no, I am so proud to unveil the biggest project I have ever worked on. This is a partnership with NA VC’s, VetFolio and Uncharted, which is the veterinary conference that I started and run for 15 years. I have worked with people on being effective as communicators and making their practice better places to be. Now I am so thrilled to be launching the Leadership Essentials certificate with Uncharted and these are the seven courses that I believe really believe anyone who’s leading other people in vet medicine should have. This is vision and value setting. This is basic strategic planning. It is understanding different communication styles, and I have my friend Stephanie Goss helping teach that session. It is getting the team to buy in to new ideas and initiatives. It is how to coach and give feedback. It is how to set priorities. It is how to delegate effectively.
It is how to do time management. It is the talks and the stories that I am probably most well known for giving. My red.talk is in here and my GPA talk is in here. Everything about the North stars, everything that I lay out where I’m like, this is just so essential to managing people. It’s the trust game. It is everything about building and maintaining trust with your team. I think that this is something that I would recommend for anyone who is a practice owner, definitely who’s becoming a new practice owner. It’s for anybody who has especially gotten promoted up into management. It is huge for our team leads. We take people who are CSRs, we take people who are technicians and we make them lead techs or lead CSRs and we give them zero leadership or management training. There’s no excuse for that anymore. This is on demand whenever you want.
It’s broken up, it’s eight hours, it’s got race ce, it has the uncharted VetFolio certificate with it. It is there. It is accessible. I really hope that people will take this and put it to work. I went really hard on this. It has been years in the making and refining to get this content down. So it is really for everybody who is leading and managing other people in vet medicine. I hope you’ll check it out. I’m so proud of it. I’m so glad to be partnering with NABC on it. Anyway, guys, I’ll put links in this show note. I hope you’ll have a look. Let’s get back into this episode.
Well, I mean I really love that idea of being grateful for all of it and then taking the parts that you need in going on. I think that’s really insightful. I think the specificity is really important. I think one of the things in mentorship that is hard is when you look at someone and you say, I feel like I could learn from you, but I don’t really know what I need or I don’t really know how I think I have always struggled in approaching people that I just admire, but I’m like, I don’t know how you can help me. People that I admire who I know have insight on a specific headache that I’m wrestling with, that’s easy. I reached out to Justine Lee, Dr. Justine Lee, who’s the founder of Vet Girl yesterday, and I was like, Hey, I got this thing I’m kind of rolling around.
It was the online education stuff and I was like, I haven’t talked to Justine in a year since it’s before the pandemic, but she’s great. But I just said, Hey, this is basically what I’m looking for. Would you have 10 minutes to kick this around with me? And she made 10 minutes happen yesterday afternoon and we just kicked it back and forth real fast and that was that. But I wouldn’t feel comfortable reaching out Justin and being like, Hey, let’s just chat. You’re awesome. I’d like to just chat with you. It was having that problem that opened that door. Do you think that that’s true too, or do you feel like you can strike up those relationships without having a specific headache that you’re actually motivated to deal with?
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
I think there has to be a little bit of both. I think the relationship building piece, and I will say there’s a difference between that flash mentorship, the one time conversation with somebody versus the long-term mentoring relationship, which both can be used honestly, when I go to conferences, I’m having flash mentorship moments, the entire conference I’m sitting down for two, three hours talking to somebody about issues and their life and my life and learning things along the way. But I think for a long-term mentoring relationship, the aspects of building the relationship outside of just every time there’s a fire, I’m talking to you, but sometimes just talking to you when there’s not a fire and just catching up and saying hello and celebrating the wins too and the good things that happen. And I think that aspect of relationship building becomes important. And especially if we’re talking about mentors outside of the clinic and hospital setting too.
And I think that would be something that I would encourage everyone to consider. If you’re looking for mentorship, look for it both in your hospital or your clinic or your organization and look for another mentor outside of your hospital or clinic or organization because that’s going to be a little bit safer space to talk about some of the stuff that you’re facing. Then if you’re having a conflict with a coworker, maybe your boss Ash mentor is not the best person to be the first person to bring this up with. Maybe you need to process some of this stuff in a safe space outside of the workplace. So really thinking about that external mentor and the external mentors is one that that’s more important on the relationship building side of things. And honestly, a lot of my mentors, I would call friends as well. Oh
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I think it’s really hard to tease ’em apart. I kind of feel silly calling some of my friends mentors. You know what I mean? I was just going to say it could be
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Both. We can be friends and mentors,
Dr. Andy Roark:
Andy. We can be friends and mentors. I always going to say, one of my mentors, he runs a comedy theater, an improv comedy theater, and he’s my friend, he’s younger than me, I know him from comedy. But we have lunch once a month and just compare notes on how the comedy theater is going and how my business is going. And there’s actually a lot of weird similarities between getting people to come together and perform on a comedy stage and getting people to come together and perform on a veterinary CE stage. It’s kind of weird and kind of awesome. But I just say that one to sort of validate the idea of having people outside of vet medicine that you can learn from. I tell you, I had significant career epiphanies talking to that guy and been like, oh my God, I have been looking at this the wrong way. And just, I don’t know that I would even have those epiphanies if it was vet medicine. I think it would be too close to make it pop out. But it is sort of weird to think of those people as mentors. But I don’t know. I would definitely say he’s definitely on my board of directors. Like I said, we do our monthly lunch, we talk about life and what’s going on, and I have gotten a ton out of that relationship.
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
I love the finding somebody outside of the field because I was just thinking about some of my friends who have supported me in various things that I had no clue what was going on, tech stuff for it, kind of things that can be really beneficial. And like you said, getting that external framework, that was probably the most valuable thing I gained from my master’s program is just a lot of people from different disciplines coming together and I learned new frameworks, new ways to think about the world. So yeah, encourage anybody to look outside of the field too for mentors.
Dr. Andy Roark:
What does a mentor conversation sound like for you? And I know that’s a weird question to ask, but I think a lot of people, they don’t know how to get started with a relationship like this. They don’t know how to ask someone how to ask someone for guidance in a way that doesn’t feel weird or seem weird. No one’s taught most of us how to get insight out of other people without it feeling strange. There’s a lot of people I know who do podcasts, and the reason I think they do a podcast is because they’re too self-conscious to just talk to people without headphones and a microphone. So you just say to somebody, Hey, would you be on my podcast? And then you ask them the questions that you want to ask them, but you feel safe because you have a reason to ask them. And I’m like,
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Are you saying this from personal experience?
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, listen, I don’t listen. I can’t. Maybe
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Is this a,
Dr. Andy Roark:
I mean, there are definitely people out there that I’m like, this person is amazing and I don’t know how to be their friend. And so this is a gateway to me having a conversation with them that has absolutely happened. I can come up with a list of people in vet medicine I admire, who I have admired from afar, but I had no reason to talk to them except that they then published something or I read something and I was like, aha, this is my chance to be this person’s friend. And so I do it. But I don’t know, it’s weird, especially if there’s a significant difference in where you are in your career and things like that. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make with mentorship and sort of just full, the biggest mistake they make with mentorship is they think that the mentor is supposed to reach out or the mentor is supposed to make it happen.
I was like, the mentor has the least to gain in this relationship. I mean, I know that mentors get a lot out of it, but I’m not walking around looking for people to try to give advice to. And I don’t think other people are either. You know what I mean? I feel like it has to be driven by the person who wants to grow and develop and knows what they’re trying to do. But I feel like it’s often framed as mentors need to recruit mentees, and you hear, come to our hospital and we’ll mentor you. And it’s trying to plug them into that system as opposed to saying to the person, where are you trying to go? What are you trying to do? So yeah, I don’t know. I dunno if that resonates at all if you feel that way, but I think a lot of people just, I don’t know that they know what the conversation sounds like.
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Yeah, I think you make a lot of good points. And typically when I’m looking at a mentoring relationship, a lot of it kind of evolves naturally just because I’m genuinely interested in learning more about the individual and their career. So oftentimes a mentoring relationship might just start off with me learning more about where you’ve been in your career. What are some of the challenges that you faced along the way? How did you overcome those challenges? And I will typically, and it is something that we teach our mentees going through a lot of our mentee training and the MentorVet program is just be proactive. And like you said, set up those meetings, set your own goals for what you want the mentoring relationship to look like. And if you come at a situation with, and usually if I have a challenge, I will just lay it out on the table and say, Hey, here’s what I’m going through.
Have you experienced anything like this before? Make it a conversation. What would you suggest? How have you navigated similar things in the past? But I think a lot of times that initial and it’s scary, right? Reaching out to somebody that you think would be a good mentor for you and making that initial connection and contact, but just look at it as getting coffee with somebody, just learning about them, getting to know them a little bit more. And then maybe not on the first meeting disclosing all your challenges and stressors, but maybe on the second or third meeting after the trust is built a little bit and you kind of see that it’s a good fit because not every mentor mentee is going to be a good fit. So you might meet with this person one time and be like, we didn’t really connect. And I’ve met with quite a few people who I’m sure are phenomenal mentors to other people, but maybe we just didn’t really have that spark of connection that will create a successful relationship.
So it’s funny, there’s a lot of parallels to dating here. It’s kind of weird, but when you think about dating people, not every person that you go on a date with is going to be somebody that you want to marry for the rest of your life. And same thing with mentors. Not every mentor that you meet is somebody that you want to be your mentor forever, but being willing to meet people and trying to find people that fit your personality, that have similar shared experiences and some differing experiences as well to broaden your perspective. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
How often does that happen, do you think? I was having that thought as well as there are some people I reach out to who I know are brilliant and they’re super smart and they’ve been very successful. And I talk to them and after the conversation is over, I’m like, I don’t know that they know they saw me or that, you know what I mean? It was like, I hear what they’re saying. Or maybe just the fundamental way that they think is not in alignment with mine. I’ve seen that a lot with doctors where there are brilliant doctors out there and I will talk to them about a case and they’re like, oh, well I would just do this and this is why. And I’m like, I would never do that. I mean, I’m sure they’re right, but their thought process is absolutely not one that I would take. And so it’s hard for me to say, ah, I’m going to learn from this person and you and I are not wired closely enough alike to make this easy. I feel like good mentorship should be easy. Do you want to put a ballpark percentage on? What percentage of people are you like, no, I appreciate you, but this is not going to be a good fit.
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
So some statistics from our platform of how, and this is finding people who we think would be a good fit or people are self-selecting mentors, the proportion of relationships that are probably first time successful right off the bat, maybe a third of those relationships really spark and turn into something longer lasting. And I would say the same thing. So when we first started doing programming, I pretty much was the paired mentor for everyone going through our program. And I would say about a third of the people I reached out to as a mentor and said, Hey, I’m your mentor. Let’s meet. And they never contacted me. A third of them, we met one time and then they’re like, I’m fine. I don’t need any support. I’m like, cool. And then a third of them are people that I still sometimes chat with today. I met with one of my mentees who I mentored two years ago for monthly for about six months.
And she reached out to me and said, Hey, I need some support. Can I chat with you? And we met for an hour today and it was great. And it was like, oh, we just picked up where we left off. So I would say about a third of the time, and it’s funny because I was thinking as you were thinking about, or as you were saying, the thing about doctors and not agreeing, there was this relief that I would always ask for some support from in my early career. And every time I would ask her advice, she would give me what she would do in the situation. And I’d leave the conversation being like, I’m not going to do any of that. And then it got to the point where I was like, wait, why am I even asking her for her advice on this? Because we’re fundamentally different on how we practice. So again, I would say about a third at the time.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, that totally makes sense. That tracks. Addie, you are amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people learn more about MentorVet?
Dr. Addie Reinhard:
Yeah, so check us out on Instagram at MentorVet or on LinkedIn as well as Facebook. We are at MentorVet one on Facebook because turns out there is an old organization that was Mentorship for Veterans that currently is the at MentorVet on Facebook. But you can also follow me personally on LinkedIn. I post a lot of stuff around my journey through entrepreneurship and mentorship and all the things. And also at our website, MentorVet.net
Dr. Andy Roark:
Outstanding. I’ll put links in the show notes to that. And thanks for being here guys. Thanks for tuning in and listening. Take care of yourselves, everybody. And that is our episode, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Thanks to Addie for being here. So enjoy her. Check out MentorVet, if you’re not familiar with it. It’s a great organization. Addie’s doing really wonderful things over there. Guys. Take care of yourselves. Be well everybody. Talk to you later. Bye.