Linkletter: firing interns, mentees, groupthink, and more!
RWL #347
Greetings from the Last Homely House! I made some time to get my paddle board out yesterday afternoon because it was so lovely and decided to go down the Lamprey River out of Newmarket - one town south of Durham where we live. The Lamprey is always lovely because it is relatively narrow and it’s just woods and houses all the way down to Great Bay. Shot above is coming back into the town landing. I didn’t go as far as I wanted to because it was quite windy, and wind is hard to deal with on a paddle board - if you are standing up, you are basically a sail, and if the wind is against you (which it was on the way out), it is really hard to make progress. Still, any time on the water is good for the soul.
See you Sunday with a new essay. As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: Comstock’s Magazine, Dilemma of the Month: Can I Fire an Intern?
https://www.comstocksmag.com/article/dilemma-month-can-i-fire-intern
Why: As of this week, all of my interns have started their internships. I would say 80% of the time when I go to visit my interns during the summer, I get glowing reviews. My students know that they are doing a 10-week interview and to put their best foot forward. And most of the preceptors I work with really want to have their interns succeed, so they work hard to make it so. Occasionally I have to address issues, but they are rare.
No student has been fired since I have started overseeing our program, though a couple have come close. Usually it is a mutual failure. The preceptor might have been told s/he is taking an intern, and not volunteered for the task. They then don’t come up with a plan of work and experiences that will engage the student - instead the student feels like s/he is being sidelined and ignored, which usually leads to apathy on the part of the student - even an otherwise good student. I try to avoid using preceptors again who are not 100% supportive and excited about being a mentor for the summer, because I find it is the preceptor that makes the internship work or not most of the time.
On the student side, when things go poorly, it is usually that the student is just going through the motions. I usually know this is coming, because they are usually just going through the motions in class the year before they head out to their internship. Occasionally I get students who feel they are entitled, and don’t go in with a “why yes, I would be delighted to file those papers for you” attitude because they think they are ready for the C-suite now. I try to coach the students who are underperforming when I meet with them during the summer - at least to get them through the summer - and placate preceptors. The good news is an internship is a time-limited event. I can usually promise a good preceptor that I will work with them in the future to get a more engaged/humble student in the future.
If you are thinking about hosting an intern, I completely agree with Evil HR Lady’s advice:
Interns are new to the professional world, and some may have never held a job before. Set out expectations not just about the work but about behavior. The time they need to be there, how they address clients and senior staff, how long a lunch break should be, what the dress code is (focus on what they should wear rather than what they should not wear), how to sign emails, etc. Just go on the assumption that they know nothing.
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What: Axios, How to be a master mentee
https://www.axios.com/2023/06/09/how-to-be-a-master-mentee
Why: A lot of ink is spilled on how to be a good mentor, but much less on how to be a good mentee. This is a short piece, but offers a good perspective of how to be a good mentee if your mentor is a high-powered individual with little time. If you have a formal mentoring session scheduled, I think an important take-away is to come with a purpose to a mentoring session, and not treat it as a social call. Every mentoring relationship is different. Not all mentoring happens during designated mentoring sessions. But this is good insight.
(Thanks to master mentor DR for this link.)
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What: The Grumpy Economist, Stephens at Chicago; effective organizations
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2023/06/stephens-at-chicago-effective.html?m=1
Why: The Grumpy Economist is John Cochrane’s blog. A lot of what he writes is super technical, but I liked this summary of NYT columnist Brett Stephen’s commencement speech at U of Chicago. The topic was groupthink, and how it is present in our major institutions.
all of us like to think of ourselves as independent thinkers, even if comparatively few of us really are. There’s an institutional corollary. Nearly every American institution outside of certain religious orders claims to encourage open debate and — that awful cliché — thinking “outside the box.” Apple’s famous slogan, “Think Different,” was one of the most successful ad campaigns of my lifetime...
But, at least in my experience, very few institutions truly welcome it, at least when it exposes them to any sort of pressure or criticism, much less loss of social capital or potential revenue…
There are a couple of proposals in Cochrane’s analysis on how to fix this. But groupthink is really tough to overcome. I see that even in academic organizations, there is a lot of pressure to toe the party line or face career-harming consequences.
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Watch
What: US Healthcare Systems - Complete lectures
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7N8MpxkX1b3n27DfOUpvad2nwB4O5bY5
Why: I finished my last lecture for my summer course, US Healthcare Systems, yesterday. There are 14 lectures now available, with links to the slide decks in the notes to each lecture. The lectures were written with the assumption the audience is also reading the text, but for the most part I think these generally stand alone fairly well.
I think my personal favorite is Lecture 7 - Outpatient Care (
), because I get to use The Hobbit’s subtitle, “There and back again” as the theme, but I also like lecture 13, Health Policy, which I spend relatively little time on health policy and more on competitive federalism, which is an underappreciated but foundational aspect of US exceptionalism.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of these. I am always looking to improve.
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What: Peter Zeihan, The Ukrainian Counter-Offensive Is Upon Us (6 min)
Why: As usual, a useful, geographically-driven analysis of what is going on in Ukraine.
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Listen
What: Coaching Real Leaders, How Do I Set the Right Pace To Meet Our Strategic Goals? (57 min)
https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/06/how-do-i-set-the-right-pace-to-meet-our-strategic-goals
Why: This is a very interesting podcast in general. The host, Wilkins, is an executive coach. The podcast is a recording of her having a one-off coaching session with a leader who is stuck in some way. I like listening to how she asks questions and helps the client get to the real problem they are facing, which is usually not the problem they come with. In this pod, the client is a first time manager (managing supervisors for the first time).