How to find opportunities to mentor others

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 a pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you for tuning in. Today I'm going to be talking about how to find opportunities to mentor others. Now when I was maybe three to five years into my first faculty appointment, and I was struggling with mentoring experiences, and so I'd had a variety of experiences.

1:28 I'd had the mentor that I was afraid of. I'd had the mentor who I didn't feel like really gave me very much, and I kind of just felt like I was struggling, and I was like, where can I find a mentor? Where can I find the mentor who will help me? And so I had this whole sense of just lacking a mentor. And so whenever I would go places and people would ask, hey, so who's your mentor? Who's your primary mentor? It really was a question that caused me pain, because I was like, well, I don't have a mentor. Stop asking me that question. I mean, you always have mentors. You have lots of mentors. Just in the way in which I wanted to move forward in my research, I didn't have a mentor that was like the primary person that I could turn to, that I felt like I could trust to really direct me, lead me in the right direction.

2:14 Anyway, there I was just struggling over how I felt like I didn't have enough and I needed a mentor. And you know, my life, I feel like, was consumed by looking for the mentor. You know the one? The one who loves you, the one who thinks you're like a star, the one who sets up opportunities for you, the one who is always asking about your welfare, wants to know about your family, the one who is always giving you opportunities. You know, that mentor? The one that most of us have found does not exist. Yes, that mentor. Anyway, so I didn't find that mentor. And so I was always looking and clearly struggling to find the mentor. And finally, I had an opportunity where I had someone come up to me who was a medical student at the time.

2:59 And I was again, three, four years into my faculty position and they asked, hey, can I work with you? And I was like, well, me, I need a mentor. What do you mean? Can you work with me? But you know, they were sincere and earnest. And I was like, well, I do have some projects that I need someone to help me work on. And that is how our relationship started. And so many mentees beyond that first experience, what I realized is that being a mentor really helped me grow. And it would have been nice to feel like I had the mentor who supported me or was there for me in every way. And I don't feel like I have that.

3:39 But by becoming a mentor, I really had to grow. You know, it's one of those things where it's like, well, someone's down depending on me to help set their direction. Well, I better figure it out for myself. And so it was really a great opportunity. And I'm inviting you to step into that space to become a mentor. And I'm going to share with you five ways to find opportunities to become a mentor, sort of mentor others. And I think before I start, it's really important to know that you have something to teach others. You have something to show. No matter how far behind you think you are compared to your peers, there is always someone that could benefit from the information and the experience that you have.

4:22 And so it's important to stop thinking about yourself as someone who doesn't have enough and to start thinking about, well, what do I have to give? And as you think about it that way, it becomes more evident how you can support the careers of people who are younger than you, or even, I would argue, people at your career stage and really help them move forward because of the expertise and the experience that you have. So let's talk about how to find opportunities to mentor others. So I think the first thing that's most obvious is to look behind you. And in general, I do mean trainees because I am talking to a faculty audience, but it doesn't have to be a faculty member looking to trainees.

5:06 It could even be the trainees looking to the med students. So let's say you're a fellow. It's like, OK, well, you can support residents in their development. If you're a resident, you can support a medical student. So just looking behind you, who is the next step after you? And how could they benefit from your support? Who's the next person that you could help enhance their careers? And now the challenge sometimes with people who are, let's say, a step behind you, and I don't mean beneath you. I don't mean below you. It's really just behind, right? You're five years ahead. You came to the game five years earlier than the people behind you. And so they're behind you in terms of just the timeline. It doesn't mean they're inferior to you in any way.

5:46 It doesn't mean that you're superior to them in any way. It just means that you are, in a sense, fast-tracked forward because you came first in time. And so it's looking behind you at people who are just immediately in the place that you were two, three years ago and saying, well, how can I benefit them? Now, the thing about, and I was saying earlier, the thing about people who are a little bit behind you is that they really are looking to have a real big delta between where they are and the mentor that they have. And sometimes you recognize that, yeah, those senior mentors really have a lot to offer in a way that perhaps mentors who are earlier in their career may not necessarily be able to. But one thing that's different is the time that earlier mentors have to invest in someone who's coming along behind them compared to, say, a senior mentor who, yeah, has a lot of experience, has a lot of value, but may not have as much time.

6:42 And mentees may feel like they're lost in the system just trying to get an appointment, trying to get on the schedule, trying to get these weekly mentoring meetings that we're told is the Holy Grail, right? Anyway, so just saying that it is true that many people who are maybe a couple of years, a couple of steps behind you feel like, oh, no, I want someone who's more senior, more experienced. And they may not necessarily look to you to be their mentor. And that's OK. The reality, though, is that there are many people who look to you to be a mentor. And it's to those people that I want you to give your attention. Because, you know, we're seeking the people who don't care for us. And it's a lot of energy invested.

7:23 And they really don't want our help. And so it's important to just acknowledge those who don't want your help and let them go. But recognize that there are people who do. And find them. Seek them out. I mean, they might come seek you out. The opportunity would likely present itself. But just make sure that you recognize that there are people who value your expertise. There are people who value your stage of career. And those are the people to whom your experience is beneficial, your leadership is important. Those are the kind of people to whom your leadership is important. So definitely look behind you. Who's coming along? Who needs help?

8:04 Who actually wants your help? Right? So there's the place of you wanting to be a mentor. There's the place of the person actually wanting you to mentor them. And I would say that this is not something to take personally. People who want your expertise, who want your help, will benefit the most from you because they actually want what you have. As opposed to people about whom you think, well, you know, this person could use my help. But they're like, oh, I don't want you. They could use your help for sure. But if for whatever reason they decide that you're not the person to move them forward, then you're not. And it's okay. It's okay. But the first one is to look immediately behind you.

8:44 And that's usually if you're an early faculty member, that's, you know, a couple of years behind you. So someone's still in training, but it doesn't have to be like faculty to trainee. It could be trainee to trainee, medical student, being mentored by a resident or fellow mentoring a resident. There are many opportunities. So definitely look behind you because you have something to teach and there's someone who is it's going to benefit really from what you have, no matter how little you think it is. And what's interesting is that you don't know how much you know, you don't know how much experience you have until you actually start to share it. And that's one of the reasons that mentoring is so powerful and mentoring as early as possible is important. Okay. The second thing is to look around you, peers.

9:26 So one of the most valuable things I have come to understand is just the value of peer mentoring. And I think some people may use the term near peer mentoring, meaning there are peers that are absolutely your peers, you're all kind of in the same group. You've come on board at the same time. You've had the same number of years of experience in academia. Or it could be a near peer mentor, someone who's just a year ahead or just two years ahead. Like they're literally close to you. They're not that far ahead, but they've had a little bit of experience with some things that you may not have. For example, you're at an institution and you've been there maybe three months. The person who's been there a year has navigated some of the new faculty challenges that they could help you and they could have helped mentor you in.

10:14 And so yes, when I'm talking about the peers, I'm talking about your peer mentors and your near peer mentors. That's someone who's exactly at the same level as you in terms of time in the academy and also someone who is, well, maybe a year or two ahead of you. Those are your peer mentors. And I think the peer mentoring network is so valuable because your peers, first of all, they are less likely to have grandiose views of themselves and feel as if they must dispense to your advice that has to be taken no matter what. Sometimes mentors feel like, well, I gave you advice and you didn't take it.

10:55 How dare you? I'm the expert. And let's just say that with mentors who are at your level or near peer, they're less likely to have those kinds of attitudes. And so there's more safety around peer mentors. There's opportunities to talk about things that are really, really relevant because they've just passed through something or they're currently going through something that you're experiencing currently as opposed to sometimes the senior mentors where they did this thing you're doing right now 20 years ago and times have changed, experiences have changed. And they may not be able to mentor you in detail in that thing that matters more to you. For example, your mentor who's 20 years ahead may no longer have little ones at home.

11:39 And so even though they remember vaguely what it meant to have little ones at home, it's going to be a different kind of mentoring you get from someone who's like, oh yeah, my kids were three and four years old just last year. So it's a very, very powerful experience to be mentored by someone who's a peer and to provide mentoring. So it's two-way street, right? You are seeking mentoring among peers, but you're also mentoring them as well. And some of that can be very organic, but it's important also to be intentional about it. It's like, OK, we may not have a senior mentor that is the senior mentor that everybody recommends, but we have each other. How can we support each other? And you'll find that some peers have written certain grant applications that you have not yet had the opportunity to write, or some peer mentors have been successful in a certain thing that you have not yet been successful in.

12:30 And vice versa, right? You could be the person who's had experience with this particular grant. You can support your peer mentors to do that. So definitely look around you at your peer or near peer mentors and receive mentoring from them and then offer them the opportunity to be mentored by you too. So it's not the traditional hierarchical mentoring model, but still a mentoring model that's helping you to grow in your skills as a mentor. All right. So number three is to look in front of you. Now, this is interesting. Now, when I say look in front of you, it's like, who are those who've gone ahead of you? Yeah, the people we traditionally call mentors who are like 20, 30 years ahead of you.

13:16 And sometimes there's a sense that, well, what can I teach them? They know everything. And I would just say, hmm, you want to be careful there. I think senior mentors have a lot of experience, but there are a lot of things that are changing that they may not know. For example, now as an attending who rounds every couple of months in the hospital, it feels as if there's always a new scoring metric or a new probability weight or some new technique or some new tool that's being used to stratify patients, to make decisions about who gets what therapies. And if you are not, especially in internal medicine, if you're not keeping track of the literature, you could miss a lot.

14:00 And so some of your trainees are able to mentor you in some things that you thought, well, you have no idea about. It's like, oh, this is interesting. What is this new score? How is it applied? And so vice versa. So when you think about yourself and you think about yourself and the people who are 20, 30 years ahead of you, maybe some of them are not so well versed in the new technological things that are rising. OK, maybe it's about being on social media and it's becoming important for all faculty at your institution. And you're able to provide mentoring to people who are ahead of you. OK, so it's just seeing that there is value that you provide as well and there's value that you can provide to senior mentors as well.

14:42 I think in general, medicine is hierarchical and there's this sense of like, oh, no, I can mentor someone who's behind me a few years, but I'm not going to attempt to mentor somebody who's ahead. I think it's thinking differently about mentoring. It's not necessarily that you're taking this person, meeting with them, meeting with them weekly, asking them to do things specifically. But it's just seeing in every interaction, how can you serve in every interaction? How can you benefit them in every interaction? How can you support them as they need to? And mentors improve because their mentees support them to improve. So sometimes part of, you know, serving as a mentor to your mentors is helping them mentor you better.

15:26 It's finding the opportunity to say, you know what, when you said blah, it didn't really help me move forward in the way I thought it might have. And maybe next time if you had done X, Y, Z, that would have been more helpful. So it's really important to recognize and own your place as an individual who's worthy of respect and able really to manage how they are managed, right? How you want to be managed. Because the person who's the expert in how to treat you well and with respect is you. And sometimes people don't know how to treat you with respect. And it's your responsibility, your job, your obligation to help them do better.

16:11 And this may be with even peer or near peer mentors or even with mentees that you have, but even looking ahead to your mentors by helping them support you best, you are also helping them to become a better mentor. And so recognize that you also can look in front of you to people who are ahead of you and you can help mentor them. Again, not in the traditional sense of the word mentor, but help them advance in some way in a way or in a sphere in which you already have expertise, whatever that expertise is. Okay, we used the example of social media. That's quite believable. But even in the example of helping them to treat you respectfully or in a way that's meaningful to you, for you to be able to pause long enough to say, hey, when you call me by this name, it actually doesn't feel respectful.

17:04 What I would prefer is this name. You know, whatever you, I mean, I'm just throwing phrases out there, but really, you know what would be meaningful to you in terms of helping someone serve you better. And that's an important piece of mentoring as well. There we go. Number four is to consider, actually is to make sure that you are in a relationship of equals, and this is so important. Many times, again, medicine is hierarchical and there's a sense of like, well, the mentor is God and you are lucky to have, you know, an audience with this person. And I will say that mentors are busy, absolutely, and their time is valuable and so is your time.

17:49 And so it's important to recognize that it's a relationship of equals. Yes, they are ahead of you, maybe by three or four years or even five or 20 years, but you are worthy of being treated with respect as they are worthy of being treated with respect. And so you don't want to come into any of your relationships thinking, well, I'm superior. Let's say you're in the mentoring role or the more obvious mentoring role or I'm inferior when you're in the more obvious mentee role. It doesn't help. It's not helpful to have that kind of feeling of like, well, I'm not enough. I am in this role because it doesn't help you get what you need. And the purpose of any mentoring relationship is really to benefit the mentee.

18:32 I know, I know we talk about how well, you know, the mentor has to benefit. And yeah, the mentor always will. But the mentee is really the primary recipient of benefit in any mentoring relationship. And so it's important, though, that the mentee doesn't feel like they're not enough or that there's something wrong with them coming from a deficit mindset, because it affects the way you can extract benefit from your mentor to benefit you. And so recognizing that, yeah, you're a few years behind in terms of the timeline, but you are still worthy of respect, worthy of honor, worthy of being spoken to carefully. And if some mentors don't know that, you have the opportunity to help them grow that way.

19:16 And again, the same comes from you being a mentor of a mentee who's a more obvious mentee. You're not superior. You're not, you know, you're not all that. You are, you know, equally worthy of respect as they are worthy of respect. And so it's just important. I think we have a lot of examples where people don't treat people well, or they demand respect or they demand subservience, and it's not respectful. So we're surrounded by those kinds of examples all the time, and it doesn't mean we have to subscribe to them. And part of not subscribing, part of opting out of that is to treat the people who are your mentees well.

20:00 And you do that by recognizing that, hey, it's a relationship of equals. It's a relationship of equals. And we are all deserving and worthy of respect. And so we start by respecting them so that they can also respect us. But then even if they don't respect us, we also have the opportunity to continue to respect as well. OK, so make sure that you're in a relationship of equals, whether that is you as the mentor or you as the mentee. And then the last thing I want to share is to ensure that the mentoring situation is win-win. And this was something that I struggled with when I first started mentoring. It was just the sense of like, OK, what do you what does my mentee need? What does my mentee need? Let's make sure they get that.

20:40 And anything that your mentee is winning in that doesn't also help you move forward is just an opportunity squandered. For example, let's say you have manuscripts you want to move forward and you accept someone to become a mentee, then it's fair that they help you move the manuscripts forward and you both get authorship. You as senior, they as a primary or a first author. That's great. But for I mean, this is less likely to happen for you to be a mentor and they're the primary author and they're the second and they're the corresponding author. It is beneficial to the trainee or to the person who you're mentoring.

21:20 But perhaps that's a position you wanted for yourself. It's worth stepping up and saying, hey, this should be win-win for you. You can take the lead as the first author and I'll take the lead as a senior author and also be corresponding. So that's just an example. I'm not saying that's the way it has to be. What I am saying is that it is beneficial when your mentoring moves your mentee forward and moves you forward as well. And so you don't want to go out of your way to provide projects that the mentee benefits from but you don't benefit from. And to be honest, the same goes with when you are the mentee working with a senior mentor, like they win, you win, you win, they win. And so you always want to structure the relationship in such a way as to make sure that they win when you win and you win when they win.

22:10 So the win-win is so key. It's so critical. You absolutely want to win and you want your mentee to win as well. Okay, so the five things I said, look behind you at trainees or someone who's even just two, three years behind you. Look around you, your peers, both your peer mentors and your near peer mentors. Now look in front of your mentors. They look like they have no needs, but there's always a way that you can serve them in the things that they are not as comfortable with. And so you have the opportunity to mentor your mentors. Number four, you want to make sure that you're in a relationship of equals. You are not inferior. You are not superior. You are both worthy of respect and honor.

22:52 And so in making sure you're in a relationship of equals, you don't come from a deficit mindset, but you also don't encourage any feelings of inferiority around people around you at all. Okay. And then number six is ensuring that the mentoring is win-win. When you win, they win as well. Okay, so I am inviting you this week to look around and find someone to mentor today. Find someone to mentor today. Don't wait till tomorrow. You see the med student who keeps looking for someone who will support them in writing a manuscript and you know that you have a manuscript that needs to be written, step out, step out and be bold and confident and courageous and find someone to mentor today.

23:33 Because as you mentor, you definitely become a stronger mentor and you stop thinking of yourself as someone who is lacking things or has specific deficits because you are someone who has a lot that you can share with another generation of providers and it's important for you to step into your boldness and your confidence to do that. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. I look forward to talking with you again the next time. And remember, if you are looking for a coach, especially if you're a clinician who's trying to make the transition to becoming a researcher, please reach out to me by direct message or even on our voicemail on our website, clinicianresearcherpodcast.com.

24:17 Love to hear from you and hear about your successes and challenges as you navigate this amazing journey called academia. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you. I look forward to talking with you again the next time. 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. If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself. Someone else needs to hear it.

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