For researchers, mentoring sounds pervasively familiar — everyone is either playing the role of a mentor or receiving mentoring advice. Researchers often wonder how to be a good mentor or even how to be a better mentor. Interestingly, there are no set rules of this game; rather each mentor-mentee relationship is unique and leads to evolution of both the participants. Thus, mentorship is beyond the boundaries of a set definition — a word of advice for future researchers though, ‘You are a good mentor only if you are beneficial for your mentee.’
As a researcher, you may already be mentoring a student or a junior faculty or feeling nervous and excited about stepping into the shoes of a mentor for the first time. It you want to know how to be a good mentor, there is a process that mentors must follow to be the best confidante of their mentee.
- Get to know your mentee and build trust: Research is a gruelling profession, hence you just don’t get a mentee in singularity, but with a package of self-doubt, indecisiveness, occasional burnout, emotional clutter, and professional vulnerabilities. Thus, the first tip for how to be a good mentor is not assuming things about your mentee. Mentors must take the effort to know their mentees and understand who they are as people.
Mentors can then easily deconstruct the riddled narratives and identify threats that restrict the growth of their mentees. They can provide a clear perspective in situations where the mentee is perplexed. This allows the mentees to feel confident that their mentor identifies with who they are and the problems and attitudes that could potentially stifle their progress. This is the first step toward building trust and learning how to be a better mentor. - Be a patient listener: It is important for mentors to create a safe space to allow their mentees to share their concerns and challenges. The simplest (yet often the toughest) strategy and advice to future researchers is to get to know someone is to practice patience and be an active listener. Mentors, at times, give in to the expectation that mentees want to hear more of them. This creates a one-way traffic and locks the route to an active dialogue between the mentor and the mentee. Thus, if you’re wondering how to be a better mentor remember that a successful mentor listens more, talks less, and gives way to transparent, non-judgmental conversations with their mentees.
- Good mentoring is not simply giving right advice for future researchers: Often we receive right advice from people, but how often are we able to follow it to our advantage? This is where mentors differ from others; they know what and when to give advice for future researchers. Good mentors understand the difference between instant feedback and helpful feedback and refrain from giving instant advice. They wait for the right time and context, and may even seek help from other experts to provide the best guidance to their mentees. They provide tailor-made solutions to meet the specific needs of their mentees by identifying the mentee’s challenges, brainstorming solutions, setting action points, and support their mentees throughout the process which is how they become good mentors.
- Good mentors create future research leaders: Decision making is a quality that leaders possess, and this is a quality every researcher must develop when learning how to become a good mentor and lead in the future. However, this is a skill most researchers are apprehensive about because decision making comes with taking responsibility for the action and the risk associated with failure.
Reflecting back on my encounters with my mentors, I realize that they did not stop me from taking faulty decisions. This helped me embrace and own my failures, acquire wisdom free of biases and ambiguity, and understand strategic decision making. Thus, my advice for future researchers is to look for good mentors who avoid taking decisions for their mentees and rather enable them to own the responsibility of making choices. - Praise and critique go hand in hand: Good mentors use the tools of praise and criticism equally to build confidence and professional competence in their mentees. The nature of scientific inquiry is rooted in constructive criticism and questioning. Thus, a mentor must prepare their mentees to face disapproval and not get deterred by it. A tip on how to be a good mentor would be to challenge your mentees and inspire them to take action when they face failure. Such encounters helps to build both resilience and troubleshooting skills in the mentees, which are fundamental traits a researcher must possess.
On the other hand, a good mentor helps the mentee grow their outreach and network. Sometimes, they even create professional opportunities suited to the skills and expertise of their mentees. - Share your professional journey: Young researchers are apprehensive of making errors and often soak themselves in self-scepticism. It is very important for a mentor to address such issues by offering advice for future researchers; one way is to share their experience as a young researcher with the mentee. I still remember my mentor’s words, “Hey! You handled this problem much better than how I approached it when I was a student.” It was a simple statement, but it raised me to the level of my mentor and the confidence I felt in that moment was priceless and I learnt a little about how to be a good mentor.
Mentors can share the low points and roadblocks that they have faced as young researchers. This would assure the mentees that they are not alone with seemingly unique problems. Further, such discussions would instil confidence in the mentees and encourage them to seek solutions and address their pitfalls. - Start with clear objectives and set expectations early on: I have been mentoring young adults from marginalized communities and low income groups in India and women in STEM in Azerbaijan. My key learning and advice for future researchers has been to start by probing my mentees with the following questions so you know how to be a better mentor:
- What is their ask?
- What specific help or advice do they seek from a mentor?
- What are their expectations from the mentoring program?
- Where do they see themselves at the end of the mentoring program?
Getting clear answers on these questions have helped me devise specific mentoring strategies and set goals and expectations for a successful mentee-mentor relationship. Further, while figuring out how to be a better mentor, I set an agenda for every mentoring session. This helps in keeping the focus on the goals at hand and not losing time in deviated off-track conversations. In my experience, knowing how to be a good mentor comes fairly naturally when you are committed to sharing your expertise and building future generations rather than seeing it as merely offering advice for future researchers who we see as novices.
