» Mentee to Mentor: Pathway to Emerging Independence

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Mentee to Mentor: Pathway to Emerging Independence
L. Gabriel Navar, Ph.D.
Tulane University

This brief article summarizes my presentation at the Trainee Symposium during EB2009 in New Orleans. My charge was to discuss the issue of mentoring specifically as it applies to emerging independent investigators facing the challenges of becoming a mentor. Thus, I chose to discuss the process that occurs as a mentee evolves into a mentor and faces the challenges of developing a mentoring style.

It is important to point out that assuming responsibilities for mentoring your junior colleagues is a continuous process and you never lose your own personal need to look to others for advice and counsel. Nevertheless, assuming a greater responsibility in mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral fellows, is an indication of your emerging status as an independent investigator.

So, how do you achieve this recognition? There are many pitfalls along the way and no blueprints apply to all. Developing a mentoring style is a personal process and the mentoring style you develop must be natural and comfortable for you and be compatible with your personality.

Why Be a Mentor?

First, one must ask the question, “Why would anyone seek you out as a mentor?” After all, according to Greek Mythology, a mentor is a wise OLD friend who can serve as a trusted counselor, guardian, and teacher. However, it is important to recognize that many junior trainees feel much more comfortable with someone who is not quite so old and may look to someone just a bit more senior to provide advice on how to avoid pitfalls and take maximum advantage of their training along the way. Therefore, a mentor should be a trusted, respected and experienced role model who can serve as a guide and advisor to another usually younger person. The ability to serve as a mentor provides a clear indication that you are maturing and developing as an independent investigator capable of providing unique contributions to the research and educational environment.

The point about a “trusted, respected and experienced role model” deserves emphasis because a trainee will not approach someone for mentoring unless these criteria are met. Thus, emerging mentors must clearly establish their research foundation that reflects a successful program. This involves establishing your credentials, developing your research skills, and continuing the networking process with senior investigators who share your research interests. To serve as an effective role model, you must have a solid record of productivity and clear indications of a developing and well-focused research program that includes sustained independent research funding from NIH or other national agencies. The development of such a program is an essential part of becoming a respected mentor.

Developing Your Mentoring Style

As mentioned, developing a mentoring style is a personal process and your mentoring style must be compatible with your personality. On one hand, there is the formal style where the professor remains aloof and distant and attempts to treat all students alike in order to avoid being perceived as showing favoritism. Conferences are scheduled by appointment and the atmosphere of a formal student-professor relationship is maintained. This style helps avoid the dangers inherent in too much familiarity and works for some mentors, particularly those who have been accustomed to such interactions during their own training. However, my impression is that this style is giving way to a more informal and individualized approach.

I have generally favored the more relaxed approach and have always had an open door policy that encourages spontaneous visits by students, fellows, and faculty. I have also recognized each mentee as an individual and have modified my mentoring style in an effort to make the mentee most comfortable. This is particularly important now that we have such a diverse student population representing many different cultures from throughout the world. In particular, it is important to recognize the talents and potential of each student and match the challenges to their capabilities. Too much pressure leads to frustration and disappointment, while not enough challenge fails to develop and nurture their full potential.

In all circumstances, it is essential to focus on the positive aspects of a mentee’s performance and gently help to correct deficiencies in behavior and performance. Emphasizing and clearly articulating expectations without denigrating the individual is a subtle art that requires practice and concentration. The rewards are having grateful and loyal, rather than resentful, students and mentees.

Challenges in Being a Mentor

There are many challenges on the pathway to developing successful mentoring skills and I have learned a few cardinal guidelines. First, you must be a role model. Words that are not backed up by actions ring hollow and empty. Mentees will seek out mentors they wish to emulate. Every individual is different. A good mentor senses the way a student responds to input and consequently adjusts to provide the most appropriate and positive guidance. Importantly, guidance is not the same as directives.

Help the mentees make their decisions, but don’t make the decisions for them. This relates to everything ranging from career decisions to research projects and is particularly exemplified by the process of developing a research project. Helping the mentee develop the research project should involve a discussion of the issues involved and the alternative approaches to addressing the issues and questions. Mentees will pursue a project with much more enthusiasm and drive if they assimilate the project as their own by having made the intellectual investment required to arrive at the desired approach.

A successful mentor must recognize that each mentee has different qualities, capabilities and challenges. Working with those on an individual basis takes a great deal of patience and awareness. Furthermore, the process itself must be altered as the mentee develops. The mentor must be there when needed but must be willing to fade into the background when the mentee chooses to fly alone. In essence, be willing to cradle and nurture the bird when it needs support, but do not grasp the bird too tightly as it starts to flap its wings for you may injure it.

I was very fortunate to have Arthur C Guyton as mentor when I was a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow. He personified the outstanding mentoring characteristics I discussed and I have many fond memories of my years with Dr. Guyton. I benefitted greatly from his guidance and have followed many of the concepts that he advocated. Importantly, he was not only a good mentor, but he also trained his mentees to develop their mentoring skills. We were fortunate that students and fellows from many parts of the world joined his department. Dr. Guyton would share his students with junior faculty and help us develop our mentoring skills even as we continued to receive guidance from him. These leadership activities promoted a team mentoring spirit among the junior faculty, which improved the overall environment and provided opportunities for further growth and development.

The lessons learned during my years with Dr. Guyton served me well during my future endeavors. I learned the importance of supporting mentees in both personal and professional issues. I also learned the importance of establishing a culture of personal confidence and an environment that minimizes disruptive interactions that contribute to internal tensions and anxiety.

Finally, I cannot overemphasize the importance of communication. Frequent and open communication is extremely important to mentoring and contributes greatly to a collegial and nurturing environment.

Continuous Process of Mentoring

In closing, I again emphasize that mentoring and being mentored is a continuous process and does not end with your original mentor. Throughout my career and wherever I have gone, I have been able to find individuals whom I respected and who provided mentoring to me. There have been many individuals who have helped me get through new challenges and hurdles and I have learned a great deal along the way.

During my special fellowship year at Duke University, I was fortunate to receive mentoring from Ike Robinson and Jim Clapp at Duke and Carl Gottschalk at the University of North Carolina. When I went to University of Alabama at Birmingham, I received mentoring from Tom Andreoli and Warren Rehm. Even after becoming the Chair of the Department of Physiology at Tulane University, I was fortunate to receive mentoring from Jim Fisher and John Spitzer, who had served as chairs for many years and also Jack McGiff from New York, with whom I share mutual research interests.

Likewise, I have continued to mentor former students and fellows even after they have gone on to other positions as successful independent investigators. Throughout the process there is continued development of networks and trusting relationships that provide comfort in knowing that one is not alone. Knowing that there are those with whom we can confide allows one to be prepared to face challenging and stressful times while more completely enjoying happy times and special accomplishments.

Comments:

Dr. Navar's article on being a mentor is quite relevant to industry as well. I would like to further emphasize the importance of networking in the industrial setting, and the critical role that a good mentor can have in this task. Not only is networking critical for getting the first job or making a transition to a new one, but also continuous networking is necessary to achieve the goals and requirements of daily activities in an existing position. Most biotech and large pharmaceutical companies are "matrixed" organizations in which scientists (and in some cases non-scientists with legal or business expertise) work together in teams to advance projects through the arduous process of drug discovery and development. Increasingly, no one scientist is responsible for all aspects of a given project or task, and one must identify and establish good working relationships with other scientists in the organization to achieve the goals of the project in a timely manner. In this setting, a good mentor needs to help young scientists identify the key partners in the organization who will facilitate day-to-day research collaborations as well as those who may impact the longer term priorities and goals of a project or program as it progresses. Just as in the academic setting, a good mentor in the industrial setting will find ways to expose the mentee to leaders and decision-makers within the company. For example, the mentor may ask the mentee to present a data summary to a project management team composed of site-wide decision makers or by recommending the mentee to represent the team on site- or company-wide initiatives. The mentor will be mindful of the optimal timing and appropriateness of such exposure throughout the relationship. The ideal mentor for helping one "plug-into" a network does not have to be one's immediate supervisor; in some cases, a peer who has been at the company longer and/or is further along in her/his career track may be equally helpful in guiding the mentee towards the right relationships to develop a high-functioning network.
Michael F.A. Finley
Merck & Co.

I found Dr. Navar’s article on mentoring extremely helpful, given that I am a new Assistant Professor at a large, research-focused university.  Since beginning this position in 2008, I have been searching for resources to help me develop my mentoring skills.  In addition to the excellent advice from Dr. Navar, the following book has highly relevant information for new faculty and researchers, including a chapter on mentoring: Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty (published by Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund, 2004 and 2006).  This valuable resource is available for download, or you can order a free hardcopy, at the following website: http://www.hhmi.org/resources/labmanagement/moves.html.
Angela J. Grippo
Northern Illinois University

The article by Dr. Navar on transitioning from mentee to mentor was of great interest to me as an Assistant Professor who is making these kinds of transitions all the time. In addition, my faculty position is at an institution that is very different from those in which I was trained as a graduate student and postdoc. I appreciated the fact that Dr. Navar began by stating that there are no prescribed paths to take to becoming a good mentor, and that each person must find their own way to be successful. My mentoring style has been gleaned as much from experiences I have had with bad mentors as those I've had with good mentors. Like Dr. Navar, I prefer a more relaxed approach, but have occasionally run into problems with mentees coming to rely too heavily on my "open door". Being a good mentor is extremely important to me, but balancing these efforts with writing and other tasks I must complete along specific deadlines has been a challenge for me. Dr. Navar's suggestions about guiding students without making decisions for them, maintaining open communication, and providing quality leadership are terrific reminders that I will try to (continue to) employ in my own mentor-mentee relationships.
Kristin Gosselink
University of Texas, El Paso

Dr. Navar provides a concise, yet thorough, overview of several key fundamentals associated with mentorship.  Of particular interest was his support for training mentees to develop their own mentoring skills;  I completely agree.  Encouraging a culture of "peer mentoring" within a laboratory is every bit as important as the direct mentorship provided by the PI.  For this to be successful, the environment of "trust and respect" that Dr. Navar speaks of is essential. Such trust and respect seems to be optimally achieved if the mentor is hard working, engaged, approachable, sincere, and leads by example.  A mentor must set high expectations for not only his/her students, but also for him/herself.

This speaks to one of Dr. Navar's final points... even mentors need mentorship. This often exists in the form of council with trusted colleagues, and importantly, through the development of new contacts and colleagues. As Dr. Navar points out, mentorship is a "continuous process". Much like the science we conduct, there must be a continuous pursuit for excellence.
Jason R. Carter
Michigan Tech University

I really enjoyed this article by Dr. Navar. I like the emphasis he has placed on the delicate balance a successful mentor must strike: providing support, but not smothering the mentee. The bird analogy is perfect. One other thing I might add is that mentor does not have to be singular. I know Dr. Navar believes in this, because he has been a very helpful additional mentor to a former postdoctoral fellow in my laboratory. Just as we may all value more than one friend and appreciate the varying perspectives each one provides, we all need more than one mentor. One mentor may be particularly valuable in the research arena, another mentor may help us learn how to develop our own professional style, yet another may be a trusted resource for solving personal problems. As a mentor of a diverse group of students, I know that I may not be able to fully understand some of the issues faced by someone with a background different from mine. Sometimes it may be important to introduce my mentors to others who can fill these gaps.
Sue Duckles
University of California, Irvine

Dr. Navar’s article on mentoring has been extremely helpful for me as a young Assistant Professor in Physiology. I recently started my mentoring journey with two talented, but completely different, master students. It is definitively a delicate challenge to be able to successfully recognize the different talents as well as the deficiencies of each mentee. From this article I learned how essential is to adjust your mentoring style to increase the performance of each mentee while keeping a balance between constructive criticism and praise. In addition I got a great reminder about the importance of being a good role model by backing your words with actions.

I will like to further emphasize two aspects of mentorship that I learned from my exceptional graduate mentor and friend, Christopher D. Hardin. (1) A good mentor is an effective intermediary. Chris always created opportunities for my growth and opened doors for networking. He always made sure I got introduce to other potential mentors and important scientists in our field of study. As a young graduate student, you often do not know where to knock since you are not familiar with the opportunities out there and do not have the connections necessary or the means to develop good networks. (2) A good mentor wants you to become independent. Chris was not only successful himself, he also foster success in me. He was never in competition with me. Instead, he used his success as an establish investigator to train me and to give me a venue to improve my skills. For example, he will practice poster and oral presentations techniques and also provide venues for me to organize student symposia at international meetings; he will train me on the preparation and review of our manuscripts and grants, and also allow me to criticize other manuscripts and grants outside of our lab. Even after graduating from his lab, as I mature in my career, he had presented me with opportunities for co-authorships and research collaborations. All the training I received and the associations I build, often through my mentor, enable me to eventually function independently.
Finally I like to share a quote I once read which has lots on meaning for me as a formal mentee and now as a mentor: “A mentor is like a tattoo, it stays with you forever.” Whether you have a great relationship or a not-so-productive relationship with your mentor, it will definitively stay with you forever. I was blessed to have an outstanding relationship with my graduate mentor and I hope my mentoring style reflects such experience. I can not say the same about my post-doctoral mentor. However, this particular relationship will also stay with me forever as a living example of the challenges I must overcome in my path to successful mentorship.
Johana Vallejo-Elias
Midwestern University

Dr. Navar made several salient points in his discussion of the attributes of a mentor and the challenges to be surmounted in becoming an effective and valued mentor. Clearly, Dr. Navar has been, and continues to be, valued and revered as a mentor and his perspectives reflect this. In particular, I found Dr. Navar's insight that modern mentees need to be treated, guided, and "mentored" as individuals as very appropriate. Each mentee has strengths to be cultivated, and requires assessment of their growth areas for the mentee to be given opportunities for incremental success.

Michael Finley commented on the relevance of mentors in industry. As Michael aptly pointed out, industrial environments, especially Drug Discovery and Development, often involve large teams of individuals from multiple disciplines. Success in this highly dynamic environment with it's specialized nomenclature, as well as widely differing individual perspectives and areas of expertise, is predicated on understanding the organizational structure, flexibility, team-building and achieving consensus. To be viewed as mentor in this environment, one should a) consistently deliver scientifically rigorous data to enable project team decisions, b) be viewed as a cross-functionally networked, c) have successfully managed strategic and tactical changes, and d) have a track record of enabling advancement of junior employees at both the technical and scientific levels. To be a valuable mentor in this environment, one should continually evaluate the mentee's understanding of the complexities of drug discovery, the interdependencies between disciplines, and develop awareness of contingency planning. Finally, as Dr. Navar points out, it is extremely valuable for the developing mentor to seek out mentors and role models of their own as their career's develop and advance to enable one to successfully meet new and more demanding challenges.
Craig F. Plato
Chair, Physiologists in Industry Committee

Questions:

You mention that “frequent” communication is important in the mentoring relationship. Do you have a recommendation for how often a mentor should meet with his/her mentee?
Sarah Hoffmann Lindsey
Wake Forest University Health Sciences

Response:
There should be frequent communication on an informal basis during the course of daily activities. In addition, there should be weekly or biweekly scheduled one on one meetings where various issues ranging from the progress on the research project to career development can be discussed in greater detail. By having scheduled meetings there is some assurance that the mentor will keep up with the activities of the mentee even during very busy times.
L. Gabriel Navar