Mentors
Responsibilities
As a mentor, you are providing a valuable and critical service to others in the research community. While mentees are responsible for determining their goals and plans, mentors have a responsibility to:
- Decide if you are the right mentor for the mentee. Be clear about what you can and cannot offer the trainee, including any limitations such as time, expertise, and work styles.
- Be honest, fair, and set clear expectations. State your expectations and allow mentees to share their expectations. Refine the shared expectations until you have an agreeable plan in writing.
It is also important for mentors to:
- Provide advice based on your experience and knowledge
- Listen actively to questions and concerns
- Encourage the mentee while providing constructive feedback
- Provide access to your professional network
- Foster independence by building confidence and acknowledging contributions
- Model ethical, professional behavior
- Meet regularly with mentees
- Be cognizant of mentee’s mental health and stress level (while monitoring your own mental health)
Unacceptable behavior
Mentors should never:
- Instruct mentees to engage in research or academic misconduct or other unethical practices
- Appropriate or misuse trainees’ papers or data
- Treat mentees as personal assistants
- Engage in personal attacks, boundary violations, harassment, or discrimination
Mentees
Responsibilities
It is your responsibility to make appropriate career choices and ensure that you are receiving mentoring that will help you achieve your goals.
Create an Individual Development Plan (IDP) outlining your goals and how the mentoring relationship can help you achieve them. Plans should include skill development goals, long term goals, specific steps to achieve these goals, and how you and your mentor will check in on progress.
IDP resources:
- Association of American Medical Colleges resources for postdocs and graduate students
- MyIDP (science careers)
- Imagine PhD (humanities and social sciences)
Maintain realistic expectations regarding your mentors’ abilities and the amount of help they can provide.
- Clearly communicate your goals – mentors are not mind readers.
- Good mentoring alone will not make you successful. Success requires knowledge, guidance, support, and the willingness to take on challenges.
- Mentors don’t have all the answers. Mentors provide advice based on their own experience and knowledge. It is your responsibility to listen carefully, evaluate the advice you are given, and choose the best path for you.
- One mentor will not fulfill every need; no one is an expert at everything. Be prepared to find multiple mentors throughout your career.
It is also important for mentees to:
- Value the time and experience of your mentor
- Listen and communicate effectively
- Take initiative and accept challenges willingly
- Be open to constructive criticism
- Seek advice if you experience problems
If your current mentors are not helping you achieve your goals, have an open conversation with the goal of determining a clear, agreeable path forward. Consider looking for a different mentor if your current mentor is not fulfilling agreed upon commitments.
Unacceptable behavior
At times, mentoring relationships may become more informal than other working relationships, however, you must always conduct yourself professionally. Mentees should not:
- Commit research or academic misconduct or other unethical behaviors, even if instructed to do so
- Appropriate or misuse mentors’ or peers’ ideas, data, or manuscripts
- Use mentor relationships to avoid work or consequences
- Engage in personal attacks, boundary violations, harassment, or discrimination