Best Practices for Effective Mentorship

Joanna Buscemi, PhD, Member Delegate

In the Winter 2022 edition of Outlook, members of the Palliative Care SIG shared helpful tips about finding and working with an academic mentor. Here, we focus on tips for being an effective mentor. Many mentors do not have formalized training in mentorship, and yet post-training, they find themselves becoming mentors almost immediately. The following tips may serve as a starting point for a new faculty member who is beginning their mentorship journey:

Set clear expectations. It can be helpful to speak in the beginning of the mentorship relationship to set expectations. It is important for you to do this collaboratively with your student or trainee, and to also have them develop expectations for you. This way, there are fewer surprises along the way and you can always refer back to the expectations if they are not being met on either end.

Be available. It is not a mentor/mentee relationship if you are not available for them when they have questions and concerns. Availability means regular meeting times and being as responsive as possible to emails. Setting a weekly meeting time might help protect the time and space to make sure your trainee knows you are there to support them and are not too busy for them.

Give timely feedback. It can be really demotivating for students when they send a draft of a paper or milestone and do not get timely feedback. The longer the paper sits with the mentor, the less reinforced they will be for meeting the agreed upon deadline. Try to stick to an agreed upon timeline for feedback (e.g., 2 weeks maximum) so that your student stays on track and you reinforce their timely work.

Follow through; be reliable. If you make a promise to the trainee, remember it and follow through. Did you promise you’d look something up for them or send them a paper that is relevant to their work? Make sure to follow up on these promises so that you can build a trusting mentor/mentee relationship.

Put time into relationship building. Make sure you spend some time each week asking questions about how the student is doing more broadly or learning more about who the student is as a person. While the mentor/mentee relationship is a professional one, trainees like to feel that they are cared about above and beyond the professional context.

Consider the best interest of your student. While some student tasks are more professionally rewarding than others, it is important to think about how your students will benefit from the tasks you give them. If you feel they are not personally benefiting from the task that you give, consider readjusting the balance so that you both get something meaningful out of the tasks. Think about balancing the research support you need with what they need for their professional development. Make sure they are getting experiences that will help them stand out as a future independent investigator.

Support the student in goal setting. Some students need more structure than others, but it can be helpful to make sure your students have goals and timelines for those goals. It is your job to help support the trainees in achieving these goals and their job to communicate when they are having challenges.

Be the mentor you wanted to have when you were in training. Think of the characteristics of your favorite mentor. Can you emulate those? Can you borrow from what you found most helpful from your best mentors and/or right the wrongs of ones that were less effective?

Above and beyond these tips, it is important to remember that as a mentor, you are best positioned to advocate for your students if needed. Use your position to help support them when they are in need of support to make sure you are always advocating what is best for them both professionally and personally.