Good mentorship depends on a recipe with 3 basic ingredients: communication, goal setting, and guidance.
When graduate students walk across the stages of U.S. colleges and universities each May, they receive recognition, in the form of a diploma, for completing a rigorous set of academic requirements.
To be frank, there’s no way to be absolutely sure on graduation day that your investment in a master’s or doctoral degree will pay off in the long run. But there are 2 things of which I am certain.
The more field work a student can do outside the classroom during his or her academic career, the better prepared he or she will be for the future.
Furthermore, the student who is guided in that field work by an experienced mentor will be well positioned to leave his or her mark on the world. When the mentoring experience extends into the world of work, it can bring about even more positive outcomes.
The role of the mentor will differ from one program or organization to the next, which is why it is important to adopt a shared understanding of what mentorship is, and what it is not. I particularly like the definition of mentor presented in a recent guide published by the University of Michigan:
“The role of mentor is centered on a commitment to advancing the student’s career through an interpersonal engagement that facilitates sharing guidance, experience, and expertise.”
MY ROLE AS A MENTOR
I have served as a mentor to many students over the past decade. I’m not a faculty member. But as a researcher with a Ph.D. in psychology working in an applied research setting, I stayed affiliated with academia by mentoring many undergraduate and graduate students. These students came from a variety of backgrounds and schools and worked in my research program at The New Jewish Home in New York as part of their training or professional jobs.
I instructed these students in the theoretical frameworks guiding work focused on topics in the area of gerontology. I taught them essential research skills, such as conducting interviews, data management, and statistical analyses. I mentored students in their thesis development and writing. I guided doctoral-level junior staff in developing research studies and writing grant proposals and manuscripts.
DOING MENTORING RIGHT
Mentoring can be challenging, but when it’s done right, it can offer so many rewards.
What does it mean to do it right? My colleague, Dr. Debbie Heiser, offers some insightful suggestions that apply to anyone who is sharing their expertise and taking the time to guide someone just starting out in a career.
Whether you are mentoring a graduate student or a new employee, a manager or frontline caregiver in your organization, a teenager in your neighborhood, or a grandchild, you’ll find Heiser’s advice very useful. That advice has certainly helped to inform my work mentoring young researchers, as I’ll explain below.
Good mentorship in any setting depends on a recipe with 3 basic ingredients, writes Heiser in “What Makes a Good Mentor?” Those ingredients are communication, goal setting, and guidance.
COMMUNICATION
“In order to mentor others, you must be able to have a dialogue.”
This is so true. Once the dialogue ceases, it is hard to continue the collaborative work.
Maintaining a dialogue can pose a major challenge in a mentoring relationship. Often mentees don’t follow up with their mentor. I suspect it is because they may find the work difficult and/or may not trust themselves to complete the work. Once too much time has passed, however, we all tend to give up on the follow-up.
Mentors cannot give up. They need to continue reaching out to keep the dialogue going.
GOAL SETTING
“A mentor isn’t just lending an ear and providing advice.”
Not all of us can be successful mentors 100% of the time. When I find that I’m not living up to my potential as a mentor, it is usually because I did not work out a plan with the mentee on how to accomplish a project within the required timeframe.
It helps to have a list of goals that need to be accomplished each month and to have a weekly dialogue about the process and status of achieving these goals.
GUIDANCE
“It’s not about telling people what to do.”
A boss tells others what to do, writes Heiser. A mentor guides, teaches, and passes on knowledge, skills, values, and culture.
A mentor fails to guide when he or she is no longer teaching but, instead, is telling the mentee exactly what to do and planning out precisely the mentee’s work on a project.
This failure to guide probably stems from the lack of the 2 other successful mentoring ingredients: communication and planning. If there is no dialogue and discussion about the project, and no goal-setting, it may be hard for the student (and anyone for that matter) to see the overarching goals of a project. Without that “big-picture” view, it is hard for mentees to work independently and to ask questions, which can further enhance their learning.
A GRATIFYING ENDEAVOR
The role of training and supervising students and junior research staff has been one of the most gratifying and fulfilling aspects of my work life over the years.
I’ve enjoyed my ability to promote the intellectual and skill growth of my mentees. I feel grateful when former mentees credit me with playing a role in their successful career paths.
But one aspect of mentoring has been particularly gratifying: the fact that I’ve formed lasting relationships and strong friendships with mentees, based on what we are most passionate about in our professional lives: the potential of our work to enrich the lives of older adults.
Verena Cimarolli, Ph.D., is senior health services research associate in the Washington, DC, office of the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston. Her research focuses on the psychosocial challenges faced by older adults with chronic illness, and strategies for supporting those adults and their families.