When Conrey launched Minds Matter Philadelphia, she may have been bulking up her schedule,
but the net effect was to fill the impact vacuum that she experienced in her teaching job at Overbrook.
“With my mentoring program, there’s no doubt; I know that I have a more direct impact,” she says. By
mentoring low-income students who were high achievers, she felt able to make more of a difference
than in her Overbrook classroom, where each student presented specific challenges. When she
mentored high-achieving students, the positive feedback came more rapidly and validated her effort.
She watched one mentee, David, blossom from a shy, reserved loner into an outspoken young man
with a close group of friends. As with the fund-raising callers meeting a scholarship student who
benefited from their work, seeing the impact of her program had an energizing effect.
But that effect wasn’t limited to the mentoring program. Thanks to the energy boost, Conrey
developed renewed hope that she could have an impact in her job at Overbrook. Observing the
progress of her high-achieving mentees instilled confidence that she could help the students struggling
in her own classroom. “I know what I’ve started is really making a difference with these kids. What
I’ve seen in three months is a big change for them, and they make me realize how great kids can be.”
As she spent more time mentoring students at Minds Matter, she walked into her Overbrook
classroom with greater enthusiasm, fueled by a revitalized sense of purpose.
In research with two colleagues, I’ve discovered that the perception of impact serves as a buffer
against stress, enabling employees to avoid burnout and maintain their motivation and performance. In
one study, a student and I found that high school teachers who perceived their jobs as stressful and
demanding reported significantly greater burnout. But upon closer inspection, job stress was only
linked to higher burnout for teachers who felt they didn’t make a difference. A sense of lasting impact
protected against stress, preventing exhaustion.
In the classroom, it sometimes takes years for a teacher’s lesson to hit home with students. By that
time, many teachers have lost contact with their students. But at least for a while, teachers have the
opportunity to see their short-term impact as they interact face-to-face with their students. Many other
jobs provide no contact at all with the people who benefit from our work. In health care, for example,
many medical professionals provide critical diagnoses without ever meeting the patients on the other
end of their test results. In Israel, a group of radiologists evaluated nearly a hundred computed
tomography (CT) exams from patients. After three months passed, the radiologists had forgotten the
original CT exams, and they evaluated them again. Some of the radiologists got better, showing 53
percent improvement in detecting abnormalities unrelated to the primary reason for the exams. But
other radiologists got worse: their accuracy dropped by 28 percent—on the exact same CT exams, in
just three months. Why did some radiologists get better while others got worse?
Their patients had been photographed before their exams. Half of the radiologists completed their
first CT exams without a patient’s photo. When they did their second CT exams three months later,
they saw the photo. These were the radiologists who improved by 53 percent. The other half of the
radiologists saw the patient photo in their first CT exams, and then completed their second CT exams
three months later with no photo. These were the radiologists who deteriorated by 28 percent.
Attaching a single patient’s photo to a CT exam increased diagnostic accuracy by 46 percent. And
roughly 80 percent of the key diagnostic findings came only when the radiologists saw the patient’s
photo. The radiologists missed these important findings when the photo was absent—even if they
caught them three months earlier. When the radiologists saw the patient’s photo, they felt more
empathy. By encouraging empathy, the photos motivated the radiologists to conduct their diagnoses
michael s
(Michael S)
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