66. Mentor, Coach, or Community? How Physicians Can Find the Right Support

You have the vision. You know there is more God has called you to do. So why do you still feel stuck trying to figure it all out on your own?

Sometimes the problem isn’t that you need another strategy, book, or piece of advice.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that you need more information or another strategy. Perhaps you simply need the right people around you.

Do you need a mentor who has already walked the road? A coach who can help you uncover the blind spots and patterns keeping you stuck? Or a community of people who understand the unique road you’re walking?

In this episode  I unpack the very different roles of mentors, coaches, and community and how to recognize what you actually need in this season.

I share lessons from my own journey in academic medicine, leadership, coaching, and ministry, including why great mentors can be incredibly valuable but still have limitations, why more information often doesn’t solve the problem, and why isolation can quietly make everything harder.

Because you were never meant to navigate your career, leadership, faith, and calling alone.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, isolated, or unsure how to move from where you are to where you believe God is calling you, this episode will help you identify your next step.

Want support taking that next step?

If you’re looking for coaching, email me at inga@ingahoffmann.com or use the coaching application link below. I’d love to hear what you’re working toward and see if I can help.

And if you’re looking for community, come join us October 30–31 in Boston for the Heal the Healers Physician & Healthcare Conference: Healing & Miracles — Bridging Science and Faith.

This is an opportunity to get into the room with Christian physicians, healthcare professionals, scientists, and ministry leaders who are asking many of the same questions you are.

Register at healthehealersconference.com/boston2026

Are you a Christian physician or healthcare professional longing for a deeper walk with God and a supportive community that truly gets it?

📍 Mark your calendar: October 30–31, Boston, MA
The Heal the Healers Physician & Healthcare Conference on Healing & Miracles

This is more than a conference—it’s a space to encounter God, be restored, and be equipped to live out your calling in medicine.

This event is for physicians and healthcare professionals!

Registration is NOW open. Sign up today. https://healthehealersconference.com/boston2026

Join our growing Facebook Community.It's free and fun.

 
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Transcript

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Perhaps you have a big dream or vision or goals for your life, but you're not quite sure how to get there. You're super excited and have a lot of passion, but feel lonely on the journey. And I wanna let you know that you were not meant to navigate your calling, your leadership, or your career alone. But perhaps you're just not sure what kind of help you need and what kind of support you need. Do you need a mentor who has already walked the road? Do you need a coach to help you uncover what is keeping you stuck? Or perhaps you need a community who understand the unique intersection of faith and medicine, or just a community of support for your job. Today, I'm gonna help you understand the difference between these different support roles and how you can find the right support for this season Hello there and welcome back to another episode of The Christian Physician podcast. And this episode today is all about leadership principles, how you can find support for what you are trying to do, whether it's in your professional career, in integration of faith and medicine, or just in life in general. We all need support and don't want to do this journey alone, and you don't have to. And if you are a faith-based physician and you are looking for ways to integrate faith and medicine, then I want to invite you to the Heal the Healers Facebook community group. It's a growing community for Christian physicians who want to integrate faith and medicine, grow in their spiritual gifts and discernment and just knowledge of scripture, and connect with others asking similar questions about faith, medicine and just life. You can find the link to this community in the show notes below. I think one of the reasons people remain isolated is often that we don't really know what kind of support we need or what we're looking for. And I see this a lot just through even my coaching practice and being plugged in into various communities that people clearly need help. Everybody needs help in life, and that's how we are wired for community, for friendships, for other people. Even if you're an introvert we need each other to support each other, to have somebody lift you up when you're down, to somebody just lean on when you don't have the strength to walk out everything on your own. And so that's what community and support is for. And sometimes you just need a sounding board or wisdom of a wise counsel or leader. So I wanna share a little bit in this episode what different types of support will look like or can look like. And this episode is really applicable for anyone any physician in in leadership, whether it's primary care, academic physicians, wherever you find yourself on the intersection of faith and medicine. But also if you're not a faith-based physician, that's also cool because you will actually learn a lot from this episode too. So I don't want you to tune out. This is really gonna be helpful for you. Over the course of my career and my lifetime, I've benefited, just like you, from many different d-mentors and people that poured into my life, and hopefully have done the same for many other people. And I wanna share some quick stories about mentorship and coaching and communities, so you'll get the sense what we will be talking about. And then I will give you three concrete, distinct ways you can find support for yourself and what to be looking for so that you don't have to walk this journey alone. Because I want you to be fully equipped and resourced for what the Lord has for you, and He has already fully equipped and resourced you. And there's people already probably in your community or people ready to help you. All you need to do is just take the next first step. So over the years, I have had a lot of wonderful mentors, coaches, communities in my life. And mentorship is something that you're very familiar with. In my academic career as a pediatric oncologist, I had amazing mentors in my life, and I still honor them today. I'm still having, their words resonate in my mind and heart, advice they've given me many years ago, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. And I wanna highlight to you that different mentors do different things for you. So that is really important. I had mentors for my laboratory career. I had mentors when I trained in peds hem/onc just from a clinical side. I also had mentors when I then trained in hematopathology, and I'm grateful for every single one of them. And many of them are still part of my life today. Some of those mentors were there for career advice. Others I knew I could lean on for other questions like, "How do you do life and academic medicine? How do you juggle it all?" Those type of things. Others were very concrete and specific of, "Okay, how do I apply for this grant? How do I get this grant submitted?" So different mentors have different roles And then over the course of my career, especially when I was really starting to struggle as a young academic physician mom realizing that, wow, this is a whole different level of work when you're just juggling work by yourself. It's much easier, right? It's just you and maybe your husband or your wife, and you can figure things out. Once there are children in the mix, things become a lot more complex, and if you're a parent, you totally know what I'm talking about. And so at that stage, I again was looking for mentors who could help me, but quickly also find-- found that the academic physician world was very ill-equipped to find me help and support me where I was stuck. And so that's eventually how I found coaches in my life to pour into me, to help me figure out systems and strategies and foundations to be more productive, to not waste time, to increase my productivity and achieve my goals without sacrificing my personal life, to create that work-life balance or that work-life harmony best that I could. So these coaches were incredible helpful to really help me in my career trajectory, which would have otherwise ended in a very disastrous downward spiral. And these are things I mentioned on the last episode that I just invested in because it was important to me, and quite frankly, early on I was desperate. But then I saw the value, and I continued to invest in coaches and mentors pretty much over the last fifteen years or so. And then I had wonderful communities of people, whether it's friends or church community or communities I built where we were supporting each other. So I wanna give you three distinct points how you can find the right support and distinguish essentially between mentorship, coaching, and communities so that you can figure out, what's the support I need? Probably the answer is just to say upfront, we need a, a mix of all three. That's what I have found over the last decades and years. It's really important to have all three of those because they d- serve different function. So number one, you need a mentor when you need wisdom for someone who has walked the road. So mentorship, that's exactly that. A mentor is a person who has experience, who has perspective to offer and advice to offer based on their wisdom, on their experience of the path they have walked that maybe is similar to yours so that could be, for example very common in our academic or physician training environments, and that is a very common concept, right? We talk about mentors all the time. I need a mentor. I need to find a mentor. Or maybe you're at the stage of your career where you are a mentor to others, and you have mentees that you are encouraging and giving advice to. So you're very familiar with this model. That's why I'm starting here. It is basically what a mentor does is sharing their perspective of the road they have traveled from their experience, and that can be incredible valuable 'cause they have probably done what you wanted to do or at least something similar, and they can tell you, "Hey, I've tried this, and these are the things that worked for me, and these are the things that didn't work." And I wanna underline super helpful, but also I wanna underline the word worked for me or didn't work for me because that's an important distinction. A mentor is only able to impart into you based on their own experience, again, which can be very valuable. But your life is unique. Your gifts and callings are unique. And also your values, what is important to you might be different than that of your mentor. There's quite often a bit of a mismatch. That's not unusual. When I found mentors, maybe their values about not so much the values about family and priorities were different, but, they were in a different stage of life. And let me be honest, it's very easy to forget when your children are older how it was when they were little and basically there was no sleep. All those kind of things play into this. So a mentor is excellent to give you advice on their perspective, what worked for them. That can be very helpful, but doesn't always mean that it is the right advice for you because your life is unique Your goals, your characteristics, your gifts, your mission, and your purpose is unique. And sometimes I have seen this, I'm sure you have, too, a mentor actually can steer you away what you're really supposed to do. I've had a friend... Again, it's not about even Christian faith. I had a very good friend throughout my training. We were pretty close. Incredible, brilliant physician scientist. And she started out in a very basic science, C. elegans lab. We're talking worm research, if that's not your cup of tea. She's brilliant. I love her, and she is a wonderful person and an, an incredible doctor. But there are times when your mentors kind of wanna push you in the direction of their laboratory, of their research track. And if that aligns, that's great, but sometimes seasons shift, and eventually this person felt led to work in a little bit of a different area and field that she was passionate about and, quite frankly, super talented in as well. But might have gotten a little pushback. And mentors tend to want to mold you into their path and direction. Not all of them, but many of them. So just be mindful that a mentors has a unique role, but might not be always the right answer. In short, when you need information from somebody who has walked the path, a mentor is a great way. So, for example, reasons to seek a mentor You're entering a new specialty or a leadership role, or you're seeking advice on promotion, a research grant. You have an idea, okay, where do I submit this grant? Where can I apply? Where should I submit this manuscript? Fantastic ways to resource a mentor. You can learn from somebody's specific experiences. For example, your experiments are not working, yeah? You are stuck. Maybe you need to troubleshoot something. And a mentor can be helpful who has worked in this area. It can be obviously great for sponsorship, and mentors are incredible, powerful and wonderful, and honor them for that. They can even give you some leadership advice if you're new to an institution, and they might understand the institutional dynamics. Although I might wanna caution you that sometimes, everybody has their own history with a place and their own personal quirks about it positive or negative. So we... none of us come unbiased into environment. That's what I wanna say. But they can be incredible helpful in navigating some of those waters. But a limitation for a mentor is they cannot really tell you what to do in your life for your vision, for your purpose and goals, especially when it comes to personal and professional career type of decisions Mentors can tell you what worked for them again, but it doesn't mean it will work for you because it is your unique path you're walking, and some of the things we need to figure out ourselves. Mentors can sometimes f- see your blind spots if they are really a coaching wire mentor, but not always. And then let's face it, if you're a mentor, you know this, our time is limited. That means access can sometimes be a challenge, right? Because I had mentors that were very prominent in their fields, and they were traveling a lot. When they were there and I needed them, they were great. Don't get me wrong. Again, I love my mentors. But sometimes you're a little bit of a pickle, and you wish you could talk to somebody right then and there, and they're gone out of the country for three weeks and basically not reachable or difficult to reach. So just know that there is limitations to mentorship. And sometimes there might be even an internal conflict of interest, meaning if there was inter departmental, divisional challenges it can be hard in this academic environment, particularly to find a person that you can trust within your institution or even outside because suddenly our world in academic medicine, that's what I'm used to, become very small. But so mentorship can be incredible powerful. It has definitely its positive, but it also has its limitations. That's why it's not the exclusive answer for all that you need when it comes to support. And Proverbs 15:22 though highlights actually the positive parts of a mentor is plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed. So having good advisors, wise counsel can be really helpful so that you can bounce ideas off. So my encouragement for you is, find a mentor in your fields in medicine, and even spiritual mentors can be helpful for sure. Next, coach. Number two is the coach. So when do you need a coach? You need coaching when the obstacle is not simply a lack of information. That's probably a very simple way to put it. The mentor is basically leaning on information, whether it's information that they have gained, just knowledge, experience over the years, or lived experiences from their own journey. They're gonna pass that information on to you. But c- a coach is really coming in when information is not the only thing that you need. C- a coach creates a dedicated space for you and only you. It is the person that is in your corner, and it's a very unique relationship. It's different than a friend, counselor, or a mentor because their only objective is creating and helping and supporting you to create success for your life So through coaching relationships, you create a space or the coach creates a space for you that is dedicated to focus on your success And it does that so by reflective questioning. Less so telling you what to do, but believing that you're fully resourced and equipped to accomplish what you're passionate to do and to bring out of you the tools, the thought process, the awareness to be ways to get you to that next point. A coach helps to recognize your blind spots, your obstacles, maybe your internal dialogue that you have never really been aware of that is holding you back, negative belief systems that holding you back that would be a prime example what a coach can do for your life that mentors are typically not equipped in or even thinking about, because likely we all struggle with our own dialogue in our head and our thought process, right? A coach can also help you with accountability, of course. And the key part is really a coach is basically the person that helps you get from spot A to destination B in an accelerated way by translating your vision and your goals into action and helping you to remove any obstacle that is in the way. And that again, happens through an active reflective process of questions It's like a science experiment. You do an experiment, and you run your experiment with certain methods. You get a result. You evaluate that result, right? You assess the data, make an interpretation and conclusion, and then tweak the experiment if needed, or, run another experiment that gets you the next step to the answer. That's really how coaching works. It's a real live tuning, pivoting, and adjustment to improve your results over time So when do you need a coach? Perfect example is probably this. You know what to do, but you're not doing it. And you're like, "I know exactly what to do. I'm just not doing it." And a coach will help you. I do this all the time looking at, okay, why is this happening? A lot of times like, "I don't have time." Then let's look how you manage your time and where your time is spent and where it's going. Or is there maybe something internal going on? Which is often the case. Procrastination, fear fear of failure, just being overthinking, being an imposter, all those kind of things. coaching might be appropriate if you find yourself, you have a lot of information but you remain stuck, and you keep on repeating the same patterns. I know I needed to write this grant earlier, but yet I'm hustling the last minute and totally stressed out. Last time this happened to me, I told myself I'm never gonna do that again, and here I am again. So how can we overcome those patterns? Coaching can be incredibly helpful if you struggle with your identity and what you really want, to help you actually verbalize, what is my vision? What is my purpose? What are my goals? What do I see my life for? Why am I on this earth? What am I here to do? What has God assigned me to do? Finding your assignment can be key with the help of a coach. You can really accelerate that process. I'm not saying you could never find it out on your own. You will get clues from the Lord, and talking to the Holy Spirit's obviously key. But sometimes we are not sure, right? Is this me talking? Is this God talking? Who is talking? So a coach can be incredibly helpful to sort out this process with you and walk alongside you. If you are struggling with prioritizing, setting boundaries leading more confidently a coach can be incredibly helpful. And obviously, a coach is just irreplaceable in terms of finding support that is confidential, and again, the person in your corner outside of your institution. And a lot of people that struggle in their workplace, no matter what kind of job description you have, whether you're academic or private practice, maybe your own boss, but you might still have challenges within you, then you definitely need help, right? Because you're it. So it can be incredibly helpful to have a coach in your corner that is not part of the institution and has no biases or conflict of interest. And I see this a lot, and this is actually a quick word of caution. If you are looking for a coach and you're like, "Okay my institution offers coaches," great. I love that they're doing this now, but here's my big word of caution. When the institution offers coaches and pays for them A lot of times, number one, most of them are not physicians and have no clue what your life actually looks like. The majority of them are coming from the managerial style, and yes, they have done coaching courses and certifications probably, hopefully. But a lot of times they don't really understand. Now, is it needed? Do you have to have the same job to understand what a client is going through? You don't need it for the coaching itself because coaching does not rely on what you know, but rather who you are and that you can really that conversation that looks deeper into a person. However it does help a lot, right? It cuts time quite tremendously because as a physician, you don't have to explain to anybody, to your coach that has never worked in your environment, what it looks like to, let's say, juggle a lab and a research career and clinical responsibilities and all these admin things they're gonna dump on you and a family with maybe a neurodivergent kid. They will have no clue. They will just have empathy, hopefully, and compassion for you, but they don't have an understanding how that really looks like. And it takes a lot more conversation to paint that picture versus if you tell me that, I have been a hundred percent in all these places, and I can tell you I know exactly how that feels, for example. So that's one caution. They don't have typically the experience that you carry. And number two, because they're hired and they're paid for by the institution they work for the institution and not for you, and there is a bit of a conflict of interest. And I've seen this actually sometimes be a problem. And that can be even people get worried about confidentiality. I've seen this just recently. Somebody raised that question about, I have a coach, and I know my boss is also talking to that coach." And, we hope that people are treating confidentiality with integrity and actually sticking to it, and it would be totally like duh in a medical environment where we are used to HIPAA. But let's be real. People talk. People gossip, and they might not even intentionally trying to say something, but something might slip out, or they the way they phrase something can give you a clue. You want to be careful with that. And the last thing I wanna mention, if you're in a significant transition, I see this a lot with people in career transitions, a coach can be really helpful in, helping you make the decision of transitioning from, let's say, one job or to another or perhaps it's a relocation or it's leadership opportunities even within your department. Get a coach is my short answer. If you feel like, "Hey, I like what you're throwing down here, Inga. I would love to work with you," then please feel free to reach out. You can either email me at inga@ingahoffmann.com, or I put the link for a coaching application and to schedule a call with me to see if we're the right fit for each other in the show notes. And if it's not, I might also give you a recommendation for a coach that would work great for you. So important distinction, coaching is not simple, someone who is giving advice. It is a process that takes time to help you think more clearly, recognize what's underneath problems, recognize blind spots and obstacles, and take intentional action to go around them, overcome them, so you can get from A to B. And that's pretty much what I have done for the last ten years with physicians, mostly focused on physicians in academia. I also coach and mentor people in the spirit of faith-based, meaning the intersection of faith and medicine. So again, if that is something that really resonates with you and you wanna explore that further, please feel free to reach out by just going to the link below or sending me an email. Number three, last point, is community. You need community when isolation has become part of the problem. It's great to have a person to talk to one-on-one that can be incredibly supportive fulfilling, that can really encourage you and pull you out even of a hole that you dug yourself in for sure. I've been there a million times and I'm very grateful again for my coaches and mentors. But sometimes you want even more. You want to be part of a healthy community where you feel like you belong, where you have a shared language and experiences that you can share, like integrating faith and medicine, for example, where you can just get encouragement. You don't really look for advice. You just want somebody to nod and say, "Yeah, been there too. You're not alone." Maybe somebody who can pray for you or give you accountability so that you just see this walk is not mine alone to take and there are many people like me that struggle with the same thing and also celebrate each other's wins. And sometimes communities like that can even then foster collaboration for doing things together, projects or maybe just spending time together and do life together. I believe Christian physicians particularly need community because a lot of times we feel very isolated. We live in two separate worlds, right? A lot of you might feel like there's medicine over here and faith over here, and I know I should not compartmentalize, but naturally it happens, and you feel this tug of war all the time, and that's actually quite draining. And it might run subconsciously. You don't even realize it, but it's actually tugging at you you might feel it's really hard to talk anything spiritual or anything about your faith or even questions you have with your medical colleagues because, they have a very different values and belief systems, and that can be literally like two worlds colliding. But I don't want you to feel isolated, and we shouldn't. The body of Christ is there. As believers, we are here to support each other. So whether you're a believer and looking for community or even if you're not a believer and you're like, "I need community," find a community of people where you can encourage one another and pour into one another, and that's actually really important. Community is not there, I'm just gonna get something. Neither is mentorship, actually. It is where you also give back and pour yourself out. I know that's not a popular opinion, but that's actually how it works the best. I also believe that at least for Christian physicians who need community, that sometimes church of course, is a great place. You should be in a local church or in a local body of Christ, or maybe you have a house church, whatever it might be. You have to be plugged in a faith-based community. You cannot do this alone. That is, in my opinion, not very biblical. I know it's hard because you're busy and schedules are crazy. Just do your best. But don't just abandon community and church community. Having said that, as Christian physicians, it can be really hard be in a church community because others just don't understand our crazy lives and schedules to the same extent. They might not get that you couldn't volunteer in the nursery because this is your only weekend off. They might not understand that you cannot do whatever potluck dinners and bring another dish because you haven't eaten a proper meal in a week. All those kind of things can be sometimes difficult and actually lead to isolation And then when you're isolated, you question experiences, you question your calling, you question your convictions. And what does the devil do? He's trying to isolate you more. So the key part is do find community really work hard on that. It will be to your strength because the Bible says two are better than one, and if one falls down, the other one can help the other one up. That's in Ecclesiastes four nine and ten. So find a good community. Now, if you find yourself and you're like, "This is really great. I would love to have a community," I have a community, as I mentioned in the beginning, the Heal The Healers Facebook community that is free. If you're looking for more community with actually ongoing mentorship, even coaching and community, join the Heal The Healers mentorship program. It's a wonderful small community of physicians just like you that are basically trying to navigate the intersection of faith and medicine and grow in their faith as well as implementing that in their daily Christian life as a physician. So how do you know what you need? Here are a couple quick diagnostics before we wrap up. Seek a mentor when you feel like, I just need wisdom from somebody who has done this before, and I need some advice." Again, more information based. Seek a coach when you feel like, I need help understanding why I'm stuck and find myself in these patterns over and over again, and how can I move forward?" Or maybe you're seek a community when you feel like, "I need connection. I need encouragement. I need people around me that understand this journey." And to sum all, as I mentioned in the beginning, maybe you need all three. Chances are you do. I would not live without any of these three, to be honest. In different seasons in life, you might put more weight on one or the other, but I pretty much consistently have all three in my life But the caution is they are not gonna be necessarily from the same person or begin at the same time. So if you were like, "I have none of these," just pick one thing and start there And how you can figure this out is, okay, what is my primary challenge right now? What am I facing? Based on the diagnostic questions, it might steer you in a direction Look at who is currently supporting me. Where are there some gaps that you're missing? And go from there And the last thing I want to let you know, because this is really important, so thanks for sticking around this long. Asking for support is not a sign of weakness or that you're incapable. It's actually a real sign of strength, and that you're serious about stewarding your life, your leadership, and your calling well, and I just wanna commend you for that. So if you need connection and community, come join us inside the Heal The Healers Facebook group. And if you are looking for a coach or a mentor reach out to me either via email, I put that in the show notes, or just the links I've provided for the coaching application so that you can be equipped, and we just have a conversation what you need. And then lastly, sign up for the Heal The Healers Conference in Boston. This is another opportunity to find community, but you also might connect with people that become your mentors, either professionally or spiritually. And the key thing definitely you will be as enriched in that community, which will really support you. So go to healthehealersconference.com/boston2026. Registration is open. The conference is in October 30 and 31st. That's a Friday, Saturday. All right, so I hope this helped you. Have a wonderful day, and talk to you next week