From the Deputy Director for Intramural Research

Six Myths About Being a Mentor and a Mentee

BY NINA F. SCHOR, DDIR

Somehow, there are more myths about being a mentor or a mentee than about almost anything else in biomedical research. Perhaps this is because it is so hard to define either role in concrete terms. Some would say we all know a mentor when we see one. But it is likely the case that what we think we know as a mentor is different for each of us and may change over the course of each of our careers.

This issue of the NIH Catalyst features several articles that highlight our dedication to training the next generation of biomedical scientists and clinicians. Mastering mentoring and being mentored are among the most important developmental milestones in a trainee’s NIH experience and career. In keeping with this theme, I will attempt to dispel some of the more commonly held myths about mentoring and being mentored.

Myth #1: The mentor–mentee relationship is unidirectional.

There is a commonly held belief that, while being a mentor is hard work, being a mentee is passive, like being a sponge and soaking up everything your mentor dishes out. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The mentee must take an active role in engaging the mentor, deciding on the periodicity, format, and agenda of formal meetings and providing the mentor with updated information and feedback. As most mentees have several mentors for different aspects of their careers and academic activities, the mentee must collate and filter the collective advice and support obtained from his or her mentors. In addition, as careers and people evolve, the mentee must ask, over the long term, whether the current mentors are indeed the right mentors for the direction in which he or she is headed.

Literature on this subject lists characteristics that contribute to excellence in a mentee. They include being an active listener and learner; knowing how to mine the mentor’s font of wisdom; mirroring the mentor and taking the path he or she models; demonstrating respect, focus, empathy, and attentiveness; being worthy of the mentor’s trust; inspiring and motivating the mentor; cooperating with the mentor to solve problems; adapting ideas espoused by the mentor; and ensuring that the relationship with the mentor grows and evolves. This list is most interesting and informative in that it illustrates the notion that the mentee is sometimes following—mirroring, being attentive, listening, learning—and sometimes leading—inspiring, motivating, adapting, ensuring growth and evolution—the mentor in this relationship.

Myth #2: Only those with whom you have a formal, declared relationship are your mentors.

Just as Athena disguised herself as Mentor to best advise Telemachus, your mentors can take many forms and are people who accompany you on your journey. They teach you about consequences of actions by advising you or modeling behaviors, and they guide you in the things that are best learned through experience and relational storytelling.

As such, although the tendency is currently to set up formal mentoring committees and to schedule regular mentoring committee meetings, your need to run something by someone you trust, or your mentors’ coming across something that provides a teachable substrate or moment, or a request or blow that comes out of left field from someone you barely know, won’t often come on schedule. And, sometimes, the formal mentors with whom you already have relationships may not be the right people to engage around these unanticipated events.

Mentoring does happen under formal circumstances, and making time to build a long-term relationship and earning trust often requires a backdrop of formally scheduled and orchestrated interactions. But mentoring also happens in the context of unanticipated need, opportunity, and setbacks. The best mentors are always looking for something to share and someone with whom to share it. The best mentees are always alert to circumstances, people, and moments from which to learn.

Myth #3: Mentors are the kind of people who walk on water…always.

Have you ever learned from someone else’s mistakes? Have you ever felt just a bit better when someone said to you, “I know you are frightened to begin this new endeavor, but you could not possibly make a mistake I have not made already.” What about the people whose interactions with others you witness and then think, “I will never treat another human being like that.” In a way, all of those people are mentors. They relate or model behavior (some good and some not so good) that informs your behavior and understanding. Being a really good mentee means learning from whomever and wherever you can learn.

Myth #4: You should have one and only one mentor at a time.

It is likely that you are a multifaceted person who takes on issues and questions and tasks that are messy enough that they have many facets, too. If this is the case, you may well need several mentors, each of whom is the right person to help you through some, but not all, of those aspects. You will also need a variety of mentors for your professional life by itself, and in its interface with your personal life. As an NIH trainee, you also are likely to be tasked with mentoring others. Therefore, there is no reason to restrict mentorship to one individual upon whom you depend for all of the guidance and support you need. No mentor worth his or her salt would be insulted that he or she is not alone in being your mentor.

Myth #5: Mentors are forever. Choose wisely, because once you do, you are stuck with one another for your whole professional life.

For many reasons, it is healthy and good that your mentors may change over time. First, as your interests, talents, skills, and your professional activities change, so, too, will your needs for mentoring and the degree of concordance between your professional life and those of your mentors. Natural evolution during a career mandates that the complement of advocates, advisors, and supporters changes over that time. Second, try though you and your mentors might to match your needs to their abilities, the personalities may just not mesh. You each are human, after all. There is no reason to maintain a relationship that is simply not working. Third, the world of science, medicine, and scholarly pursuit changes at a fantastic rate. The skills you need to acquire, and the methods available to serve your objectives, may be very different tomorrow than today. You may need to add mentors to your team so that you can keep current with what skills and knowledge you need to advance.

The decision to phase out or change the nature of a mentor–mentee relationship should be arrived at mutually. Do not be afraid to approach a mentor to raise the question in the interest of sustaining productivity, collegiality, scholarship, and career development.

Myth #6: You will always be the student, and they will always be the mentor.

The very best mentor–mentee relationships evolve over time so that it becomes hard to tell who is the mentor and who is the mentee. If you both do your jobs right, eventually, your mentor will learn as much from you as you from him or her. What starts out as a mentor–mentee relationship optimally becomes a relationship between professional colleagues in which the identity of each as mentor or mentee switches back and forth from interaction to interaction. Nothing makes a mentor prouder than seeing a mentee progress to the point of being an equal!

At NIH, we are proud of the scientific network we continue to build and strengthen as each trainee takes our shared discoveries out into the world and continues to build upon their mentor–mentee relationships.