How to avoid bad mentoring relationships

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today, I'm talking about seven ways to avoid ending up in a bad mentoring relationship. Yes, seven ways to avoid ending up in a bad mentoring relationship.

1:21 This episode was sparked by a recent conversation I had in the community that I belong to. It's a community of co-grant awardees, and we were talking about mentoring, and we had an amazing speaker come talk to us. Her name was Dr. Carla Corsullo, and she talked about the challenges in mentoring and differences between mentoring and sponsors. Many people in the conversation talked about how they never really understood this whole concept of mentoring and finding a mentor until they had come to, say, their early faculty career. And so I think that sometimes we take for granted that people understand what mentoring is, what it should look like, what is the norm in mentoring, and we don't necessarily appreciate that some people have not really even heard of the concept before or have never really engaged someone as a mentor.

2:14 And I think this is really interesting because, to be honest, you cannot succeed very much in life without a mentor. And so if, as physicians, you were able to, if, as a physician, you're able to complete medical school, complete residency, go on to fellowship or onto a career or a faculty position, you were able to do so because you had mentors. Some of those mentors were peer mentors. Some of those mentors were faculty mentors. Some were administrative staff that mentored you or supported you through medical school. At every stage of life, you've had mentors. You may not have necessarily recognized them as mentors, but you definitely, as a human being, have definitely engaged with mentors. For example, maybe the group that helped you study for your MCAT or those, that's a peer mentoring group, right?

3:02 It's a study group, but they're also perhaps educating you on a specific component of the curriculum that they already masters of and you're not. And so you've always been immersed in mentorship experiences, even when you haven't called them mentoring experiences. And so the reason I want to bring this particular aspect to light is that, you know, by the time you become faculty members, then that whole thing about mentoring becomes really explicit, really front and center. We're really talking about research mentors. We're like, I don't have a mentor. People are saying, I don't have someone to mentor me in this very specific way. They're not saying, I don't have mentors because, hey, you have mentors everywhere.

3:43 If you open your eyes and look, who are the people who have helped you achieve certain goals? Who are the people who have supported you, given your advice? You can always find that you have mentors in all of these scenarios. But when you start looking as a faculty member for a research mentor, sometimes there's this whole idea that there is a focus of, okay, I got to find the one mentor who's going to take me everywhere. And it can become distorted because in the rest of your life, when you haven't been very explicit about thinking about your mentoring journey, you had a diversity of mentors. And the moment you get to a place where you're like, oh my goodness, mentors are so important, all of a sudden you narrow your focus and you're like chasing the one person who tends to elude you because the single greatest mentor does not exist.

4:29 So in today's episode, I want to talk about avoiding a bad mentoring relationship. And my emphasis is on the fact that it is a relationship, right? A relationship is a two-way street. Yes, there are hierarchical relationships where one person seems to be given a lot more than the other, but it will always be two-way. So if you think about the parent-child relationship, which is a mentoring relationship of sorts, let's say you've had the experience of being the child in a parent-mentoring relationship, you know that many times your parents have done things for you that you can really possibly pay them back for, but they didn't necessarily need you to because it was their joy to do that for you. They just really liked you as a kid. And they're like, I'm doing this for you even though you're not giving me anything back.

5:12 So the relationship is always bidirectional. The benefits can be different to either party, but at the end of the day, both people receive something, even if one person may feel like what they're giving weighs more than what the other person is giving back to them. At the end of the day, it is a relationship. It's bidirectional and as in all relationships, you're going to want to avoid bad relationships. Okay. So we're talking about bad mentoring relationships. The first thing I want to share is you got to know yourself and your values. This is so important. This may be the most important thing I say I feel like in every episode. Who are you? What do you want? And that is so hard. It's the most important question, but it's also the hardest question, especially for those of us who've come through medical school training or any kind of medical training where you're always pretending to be someone that you're not.

6:03 Of course, you're not a surgeon. You don't even care about surgery, but you got to do the rotation for six weeks. Therefore, you show up as a surgeon and you do a great job because that's the kind of thing you do. And the challenge is that throughout your life, throughout your medical training, you're doing that a lot, showing up as someone that you don't necessarily identify with, but because it's required and there's a certain grade and you know where you're going, you show up and you do it. And so it can become difficult having experienced that for probably 10 or more years, depending on the duration of your training, to get to the point where you're like, okay, this is who I am because you haven't really been practicing being honest about who you are and what you like. You're able to put your head down and get through another four weeks of this rotation, put your head down and get through another six weeks.

6:46 You've been doing that. What you haven't been practicing is being in touch with who you are and what you want. And so yes, I'm starting out with number one, the most important thing that's also the hardest thing is know who you are and know your values. And why does that matter? It matters because mentors are people. I know you already knew that. You're like, I didn't think mentors were robots, but hear me out here. Mentors are people. That means for every person, there's what you would consider the good aspects and that's what you would consider the bad aspects. And mentors are not always ethical as you define ethical values, right? Some mentors may feel like the end justifies the means.

7:27 And so yeah, lie a little bit here or there because it gets you to the end and everybody's happy at the end and your values may clash with that. You may say, oh no, no, no, no, no. The means is important as you're trying to get to the end and therefore there can be no fudging to get to the end. So at the end of the day, it's important to understand who you are, be very clear about what you want because it also helps you figure out who cannot be in the mentoring seat. Now I don't want you to take on the scarcity mindset of like, what do you mean? Who can or cannot be with me in the mentoring seat? I'm just going to take the mentor. I have no choices here. I want you to pause and recognize that you always have choice.

8:09 You always have a choice. You always have a choice and you're choosing. Yes, there may be only one mentor in your division that fits, you know, meets the needs of what you're looking for in a research mentor, but they're certainly not the only mentor in the entire institution. You're like, no, but this is the one mentor who's also a hematologist like me doing the exact same research project as me. Great. They are the one mentor who's doing exactly what you're doing, but they're not your only mentor. There are other people in the institution who maybe don't have the whole package and they're not the hematologist, but they have the research background. They're not clinically trained. Okay. So go marry a clinically trained mentor with a research mentor.

8:54 Join them together and give what you need. It doesn't have to exist in one person. And so it's important for you to avoid the scarcity mindset and recognize that you are making choices as far as choosing who your mentor is and, or your research mentor, research mentors. I like to talk about mentors in the plural, but let's just talk about one mentor. And so if you find that you and a mentor do not align as far as ethical values or any other kind of values you hold sacred, for example, perhaps you really value spending time with your family on the weekend. And this mentor is like, no, no, no, no, no. If you're really dedicated, you come in every weekend. Okay. You want to know that upfront because you're leading to a clash. If you value taking time off every weekend, not responding to emails, and this mentor values spending your weekends working to demonstrate your commitment.

9:41 So you're going to want to know who you are and that's going to drive how you choose which mentors you follow or which mentors you allow to help you drive to the place you want to drive to with them in your career. So know yourself, know your values. That's number one. Number two is establish boundaries early. Okay. I hear maybe you might be having some palpitations like, are you kidding me? Establishment boundaries of my mentor? Like what? Yes, establish boundaries early. Now here's the thing about establishing boundaries. Your mentor needs boundaries established for you and you need boundaries established for your mentor. So it's bi-directional.

10:22 This whole establishment of boundaries is bi-directional. And this is helpful because you get to say, hey, I do believe that establishing boundaries is important. So I need to understand what are your boundaries. For example, one of my research mentors has a boundary. If I need feedback from her the next day, I need to give her two days. It's a boundary. And if I'm going to respect that boundary, I say, hey, I need you to look at the specific aims page. I'm sending it two days in advance. It's a boundary and that's an important boundary that she has. And so that mentor has boundary. I have boundaries too. If you send me an email on Saturday morning at 6 a.m., I will not respond even if I happen to be in my inbox and I see that there is an email that's marked urgent.

11:03 I just will not. I won't be in my email inbox at 6 a.m. on Saturday so that I won't see it and I will be able to honestly not respond truthfully. But if for whatever reason I happen to see it at 6 p.m. on a Sunday, I might template a response to be sent on Monday morning. But it's important that you're both establishing boundaries from the onset. Don't be like me where I started and I thought, okay, I'll be boundary-less because I really need help from this person. And then later on when I was like, this is not sustainable for me. I'm going to now start to establish boundaries. It now causes a little bit of a problem because you didn't establish the boundaries upfront. So from the very beginning of this relationship, establish clear boundaries, establish boundaries about respect, establish boundaries around communication, establish boundaries around timelines to projects being completed, establish boundaries so that you can both respect each other and whenever boundaries are crossed, bring it up against it.

12:01 I know that you may have forgotten, but we did talk about the fact that on Sundays I don't respond to email and you seemed a little bit upset when I didn't respond to the email you sent at 6 a.m. on Sunday. And I just wanted to just talk about that. You can do this. It can feel scary. It can feel uncomfortable, but you've got to enforce those boundaries. Otherwise, you're going to hate yourself and you're going to hate your mentor too. And it's important for you to establish those boundaries. Okay, so set boundaries early. A third thing is to pay attention to red flags. What do I mean by red flags? For example, a mentor belittling you or a mentor saying things that are harsh around you. It's important for you to recognize early. And why do you want to recognize it early?

12:43 Well, it's easier to walk away from a mentoring relationship where you haven't invested too much than to three years later say, you know what? This is, I can't take this anymore. I can't take the abuse. I'm leaving. But unfortunately, for many of us who feel like the weight of scarcity, like we're like, oh, goodness, this is the only one mentor who fits me. And if I can't work with this mentor, my career is just over. And it's not true. But you believe the lie, tolerate a couple of things. And then years later, you're like, I can't do this anymore. And it's a little bit harder because now you have so many projects intertwined. You have this grant that's under review. You have these projects that you still need their input on.

13:23 And it's hard to extract yourself from all of that. That's why it's important to early on recognize red flags. And as soon as you see them, address them. Now, what you can do to prevent having to be stuck in a red flag type situation is ask other people who've been mentored by them, hey, what are the concerns you had about this mentor? I've had people who have been advised that this mentor will take your ideas. And they're like, oh, no, this is like one of the best mentors in the institution. I don't mind that. And then later on, you write this paper that you feel is so important to your advancement. And the mentor says, oh, this is a really great paper. You're going to be second author on this. I'm going to be first. And somebody else will come to be senior. You can get really mad.

14:04 But you remember that, oh, someone had told me this was possible. It doesn't make it OK. But these are the kinds of things you want to pay attention to from the outset. And you want to actually take them seriously. If someone says this person did this to me, you want to know that if they've done it before, the chances are high that they could do it again. And you might be in the boat this time. And so recognize red flags. Try to get advanced notification about red flags. But as soon as you see them, address them and make a decision early on so that you're not struggling to untangle yourself or disentangle yourself from a red flag situation three years later. Now, I will say this. You can disentangle yourself at any time.

14:45 If your safety, emotional, mental safety, or otherwise is at risk, in danger, no matter the day you wake up and realize that it's not a tenable situation for you, you have every freedom to get up and figure out a way to get out. So this is not a it's ever too late. It's never, never, never too late. OK, it's never too late to get out or extricate yourself from a negative mentoring situation. But it's important to recognize red flags early so that you can have a contingency plan sooner rather than later. Number four is to make sure you're communicating openly and honestly. When I first started my mentoring journey, at least being mentored, I wasn't very honest.

15:28 I wanted to sweep things under the rug that bothered me so that the mentor could keep working with me. That was not honest. And some of that came from my perspective of like, well, this mentor gets mad. Maybe never worked with me, and then where would I be? And in reality, relationships are full of conflict. And part of the beauty of the relationship, any relationship, is that you work through the conflict, it improves the relationship. You work through the conflict, it improves the relationship. But communication is a key part of working through conflicts. And so it's OK that you have a conflict with your mentor. Learn to address it openly and honestly. And it may be that you need to spend some time with someone else practicing what this open and honest communication looks like, but definitely do it.

16:14 Definitely find someone to help you so that you can practice communicating openly and honestly. And maybe your starter conversation with the mentor starts like this. You know what? I'm intimidated by you. And that makes it hard for me to be open and honest. I want to invite you to help me in this conversation. Be honest, even though I may be intimidated. Doesn't that sound like, you know, open and friendly? And a well-meaning mentor will say, oh, I don't mean to intimidate you, but OK, I can help. Ah, there may be mentors who are like, oh, yeah, you better be intimidated by me. What's your problem? What do you need? And why are you having this conversation with me? And you just want to take whatever their response to be information.

16:56 Whatever the response is, just take it as information. Just say, ah, got it. Thank you so much. And then use that information to your advantage. But to the best of your ability, you want to communicate openly and honestly because good communication is key to understanding your expectations for each other for adjusting expectations, especially as circumstances in the mentoring relationship change over time. So communicate openly and honestly. Number five is to take your time. So do you ever rush into the mentoring relationship, committing your entire life to the same thing? This mentor have a couple of open dates. Hey, let's let's let's do this one thing together.

17:40 Let's just do one thing, right? Don't start the conversation saying I want you to be my mentor and I commit to you for the rest of my fellowship life. Don't do that. Start the beginning of your fellowship when you don't have to yet select the mentor to say, can I write a paper with you? See what that experience is like. See how easily it is easy it is to make an appointment. See how easily they respond to emails. See how quickly they give you feedback. You are evaluating the mentor as much as the mentor is evaluating you. You want to know that this is a mentor you can work with. You want to know that this is a mentor who can create an environment that is emotionally safe. You want to know that this is a mentor that treats you with respect.

18:23 And the way you do that is by easing into it. You want to take time to get to know the person well before committing. Now, there are two sides, actually there are many sides to every mentor, right? There are going to be things that you like and there are going to be things you don't like. And it's a great opportunity to observe, well, do I like more than I don't like? Or do I like a lot less compared to what I do like, right? So you have the opportunity to ease into things and to really get to know the mentor upfront before you really make a full hands and feet commitment. Okay. So number five, number six is to use your powers of observation to observe how they treat others. Okay.

19:03 This is part of the getting to know you stage where you're like, did that mentor just chew out that person who works in their life? You want to just pay attention. Like, okay, now don't do the thing that a lot of people do where they're like, oh, it must be because that's a really, yeah, that's a knuckleheaded person. Of course they yelled. I would yell too, don't do that. Because the reality of life is that if you ever see one person treat someone one way, that is a way that they are capable of treating other people. There is not like, oh yeah, they treat the postdoc this way, but they won't treat me because I'm the empty. I'm sorry. I'm laughing because it sounds ridiculous, but really watch how your mentor treats other people and recognize, especially, especially you want to watch how they treat people who are quote unquote low on the totem pole because no matter how high you think you are on the totem pole, one day you will be the recipient of said treatment.

20:03 And is it something that you can tolerate? Now if you looked at the mentor and they behave a certain way or they'd be great, a certain person in their group and you're like, oh, I can tolerate that easily. Okay, good. You're making a choice here. Do you want to observe how they treat others? Those are the clues to how you will be treated as well. You want to observe in different circumstances, in different scenarios so that you have that opportunity. You don't want to just go one day to their lab on their very best day and say, oh, this person is awesome. You want to make sure that you have opportunity to observe in multiple capacities. And this is part of what number five, taking your time to ease into the relationship can help you do to really observe how they treat others.

20:44 How do they handle stressful situations? And it really helps you understand who they are in any circumstance or situation. Number seven is to trust your judgment, trust your intuition, trust that inner voice that's telling you something is off, trust it. You can be like, wait, but on paper they look so awesome. Wait a minute, the last seven PhDs that got this amazing award came from this particular lab. This person is great. Trust your judgment. If you have any feeling in your gut that something is off, you want to really just pay attention to that. I want to just really emphasize that you really want to pay attention to trusting your gut whenever you feel like something is off.

21:25 You got to pay attention to that because one of the things about our training is that it disconnects us from our feelings. And so sometimes we're just not very in tune with how we're feeling and how it relates to our environment. And that's why for whatever reason, you just have a check and it's like, oh, something is off. You want to take that seriously. You want to take that really seriously because it could really be the difference between a wonderful experience and a negative experience. All right, those were the seven things I talked about, how to avoid ending up in a bad mentoring relationship. Number one, you got to know yourself, know your values. Number two, you got to set those boundaries early. Number three, you got to pay attention to the red flags. Number four, you got to communicate openly and honestly. Number five, you got to ease into the relationship, take your time.

22:09 Number six, you got to observe how they treat others. Number seven, you got to trust your intuition. All right, it's been a pleasure talking with you today. As always, if you're looking for coaching, please send me a DM on Instagram or you can send me a DM on LinkedIn, which is where you're most likely to find me and I'd be happy to help. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. Please share this episode with someone else who needs to make the mentoring decision and help as many people as you can. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher podcast. Thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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