“I learned that it’s very important to your success as a woman and as a manager to surround yourself with the best people you can find.” Deborah Stebbins, former CEO Seton Medical Center 

It makes sense to hire the best and surround yourself with bright, energetic people, however some managers don’t. Sometimes it’s not because they are afraid someone else may outshine them, rather it is because they override doubts about the person they choose to hire. That said, keep in mind that good mentoring can make all the difference in the quality and success of your organization. 

Successful people have found out the hard way that caution in hiring and attention to gut feelings can make all the difference. Debi Stebbins says, “One mistake I made was hiring a senior management person I had some doubts about. In this case I picked up on a lot of strengths, which this person did demonstrate, but also some liabilities. I made the trade-off because I hoped that I could turn the liabilities around. In fact, I couldn’t, and ultimately had to terminate the person. Sometimes we wait too long to try and rehabilitate people.” Debi finds that keeping someone who isn’t working out well hinders the entire staff, but the issues go beyond that.

Debi adds, “From that experience I learned that it’s very important to your success as a woman and as a manager to surround yourself with the best people you can find. Some people don’t want to hire anybody who might be nipping at their heels, but in fact you want somebody who can step into your slot and keep the place running if you aren’t there tomorrow. You only do that by hiring the best you can find. Then you have to allow them to make mistakes, and you need to act as a mentor.”

Mentors have played an important part in Debi’s career, especially in helping her learn how to avoid potential mistakes. She lists the best information she learned from a particularly good mentor as the following:

1. You have to read your audience.
2. You have to listen.
3. Never personalize criticism. “That’s so hard to do, but so important,” Debi admits.
4. Try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
5. Get into the other person’s head about why they’re acting in the way they’re acting.
6. Try to understand what concerns them.

Debi says, “That advice has been helpful to me, especially in dealing with physicians who are acting as independent practitioners. You don’t have any official control over them, but they control 90 percent of the organization’s expenses by the way they manage the treatment of patients. So my working relationship with physicians is very important to me. The advice from that mentor has really served me well, though it’s harder to do at some times than at others.”