How to find opportunities to mentor others

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills

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to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.

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When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find

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that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research

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program.

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Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.

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However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

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For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians

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the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.

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I'm your host Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is a pleasure to be talking with you today.

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Thank you for tuning in.

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Today I'm going to be talking about how to find opportunities to mentor others.

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Now when I was maybe three to five years into my first faculty appointment, and I was struggling

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with mentoring experiences, and so I'd had a variety of experiences.

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I'd had the mentor that I was afraid of.

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I'd had the mentor who I didn't feel like really gave me very much, and I kind of just

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felt like I was struggling, and I was like, where can I find a mentor?

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Where can I find the mentor who will help me?

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And so I had this whole sense of just lacking a mentor.

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And so whenever I would go places and people would ask, hey, so who's your mentor?

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Who's your primary mentor?

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It really was a question that caused me pain, because I was like, well, I don't have a mentor.

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Stop asking me that question.

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I mean, you always have mentors.

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You have lots of mentors.

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Just in the way in which I wanted to move forward in my research, I didn't have a mentor

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that was like the primary person that I could turn to, that I felt like I could trust to

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really direct me, lead me in the right direction.

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Anyway, there I was just struggling over how I felt like I didn't have enough and I needed

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a mentor.

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And you know, my life, I feel like, was consumed by looking for the mentor.

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You know the one?

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The one who loves you, the one who thinks you're like a star, the one who sets up opportunities

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for you, the one who is always asking about your welfare, wants to know about your family,

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the one who is always giving you opportunities.

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You know, that mentor?

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The one that most of us have found does not exist.

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Yes, that mentor.

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Anyway, so I didn't find that mentor.

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And so I was always looking and clearly struggling to find the mentor.

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And finally, I had an opportunity where I had someone come up to me who was a medical

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student at the time.

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And I was again, three, four years into my faculty position and they asked, hey, can

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I work with you?

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And I was like, well, me, I need a mentor.

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What do you mean?

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Can you work with me?

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But you know, they were sincere and earnest.

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And I was like, well, I do have some projects that I need someone to help me work on.

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And that is how our relationship started.

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And so many mentees beyond that first experience, what I realized is that being a mentor really

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helped me grow.

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And it would have been nice to feel like I had the mentor who supported me or was there

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for me in every way.

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And I don't feel like I have that.

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But by becoming a mentor, I really had to grow.

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You know, it's one of those things where it's like, well, someone's down depending on me

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to help set their direction.

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Well, I better figure it out for myself.

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And so it was really a great opportunity.

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And I'm inviting you to step into that space to become a mentor.

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And I'm going to share with you five ways to find opportunities to become a mentor,

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sort of mentor others.

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And I think before I start, it's really important to know that you have something to teach others.

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You have something to show.

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No matter how far behind you think you are compared to your peers, there is always someone

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that could benefit from the information and the experience that you have.

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And so it's important to stop thinking about yourself as someone who doesn't have enough

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and to start thinking about, well, what do I have to give?

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And as you think about it that way, it becomes more evident how you can support the careers

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of people who are younger than you, or even, I would argue, people at your career stage

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and really help them move forward because of the expertise and the experience that you have.

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So let's talk about how to find opportunities to mentor others.

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So I think the first thing that's most obvious is to look behind you.

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And in general, I do mean trainees because I am talking to a faculty audience, but it

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doesn't have to be a faculty member looking to trainees.

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It could even be the trainees looking to the med students.

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So let's say you're a fellow.

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It's like, OK, well, you can support residents in their development.

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If you're a resident, you can support a medical student.

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So just looking behind you, who is the next step after you?

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And how could they benefit from your support?

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Who's the next person that you could help enhance their careers?

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And now the challenge sometimes with people who are, let's say, a step behind you, and

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I don't mean beneath you.

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I don't mean below you.

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It's really just behind, right?

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You're five years ahead.

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You came to the game five years earlier than the people behind you.

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And so they're behind you in terms of just the timeline.

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It doesn't mean they're inferior to you in any way.

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It doesn't mean that you're superior to them in any way.

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It just means that you are, in a sense, fast-tracked forward because you came first in time.

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And so it's looking behind you at people who are just immediately in the place that you

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were two, three years ago and saying, well, how can I benefit them?

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Now, the thing about, and I was saying earlier, the thing about people who are a little bit

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behind you is that they really are looking to have a real big delta between where they

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are and the mentor that they have.

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And sometimes you recognize that, yeah, those senior mentors really have a lot to offer

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in a way that perhaps mentors who are earlier in their career may not necessarily be able

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to.

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But one thing that's different is the time that earlier mentors have to invest in someone

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who's coming along behind them compared to, say, a senior mentor who, yeah, has a lot

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of experience, has a lot of value, but may not have as much time.

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And mentees may feel like they're lost in the system just trying to get an appointment,

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trying to get on the schedule, trying to get these weekly mentoring meetings that we're

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told is the Holy Grail, right?

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Anyway, so just saying that it is true that many people who are maybe a couple of years,

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a couple of steps behind you feel like, oh, no, I want someone who's more senior, more

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experienced.

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And they may not necessarily look to you to be their mentor.

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And that's OK.

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The reality, though, is that there are many people who look to you to be a mentor.

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And it's to those people that I want you to give your attention.

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Because, you know, we're seeking the people who don't care for us.

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And it's a lot of energy invested.

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And they really don't want our help.

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And so it's important to just acknowledge those who don't want your help and let them

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go.

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But recognize that there are people who do.

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And find them.

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Seek them out.

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I mean, they might come seek you out.

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The opportunity would likely present itself.

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But just make sure that you recognize that there are people who value your expertise.

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There are people who value your stage of career.

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And those are the people to whom your experience is beneficial, your leadership is important.

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Those are the kind of people to whom your leadership is important.

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So definitely look behind you.

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Who's coming along?

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Who needs help?

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Who actually wants your help?

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Right?

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So there's the place of you wanting to be a mentor.

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There's the place of the person actually wanting you to mentor them.

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And I would say that this is not something to take personally.

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People who want your expertise, who want your help, will benefit the most from you because

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they actually want what you have.

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As opposed to people about whom you think, well, you know, this person could use my help.

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But they're like, oh, I don't want you.

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They could use your help for sure.

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But if for whatever reason they decide that you're not the person to move them forward,

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then you're not.

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And it's okay.

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It's okay.

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But the first one is to look immediately behind you.

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And that's usually if you're an early faculty member, that's, you know, a couple of years

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behind you.

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So someone's still in training, but it doesn't have to be like faculty to trainee.

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It could be trainee to trainee, medical student, being mentored by a resident or fellow mentoring

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a resident.

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There are many opportunities.

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So definitely look behind you because you have something to teach and there's someone

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who is it's going to benefit really from what you have, no matter how little you think it

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is.

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And what's interesting is that you don't know how much you know, you don't know how much

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experience you have until you actually start to share it.

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And that's one of the reasons that mentoring is so powerful and mentoring as early as possible

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is important.

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Okay.

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The second thing is to look around you, peers.

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So one of the most valuable things I have come to understand is just the value of peer

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mentoring.

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And I think some people may use the term near peer mentoring, meaning there are peers that

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are absolutely your peers, you're all kind of in the same group.

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You've come on board at the same time.

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You've had the same number of years of experience in academia.

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Or it could be a near peer mentor, someone who's just a year ahead or just two years

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ahead.

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Like they're literally close to you.

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They're not that far ahead, but they've had a little bit of experience with some things

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that you may not have.

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For example, you're at an institution and you've been there maybe three months.

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The person who's been there a year has navigated some of the new faculty challenges that they

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could help you and they could have helped mentor you in.

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And so yes, when I'm talking about the peers, I'm talking about your peer mentors and your

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near peer mentors.

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That's someone who's exactly at the same level as you in terms of time in the academy and

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also someone who is, well, maybe a year or two ahead of you.

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Those are your peer mentors.

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And I think the peer mentoring network is so valuable because your peers, first of all,

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they are less likely to have grandiose views of themselves and feel as if they must dispense

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to your advice that has to be taken no matter what.

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Sometimes mentors feel like, well, I gave you advice and you didn't take it.

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How dare you?

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I'm the expert.

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And let's just say that with mentors who are at your level or near peer, they're less likely

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to have those kinds of attitudes.

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And so there's more safety around peer mentors.

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There's opportunities to talk about things that are really, really relevant because they've

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just passed through something or they're currently going through something that you're experiencing

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currently as opposed to sometimes the senior mentors where they did this thing you're doing

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right now 20 years ago and times have changed, experiences have changed.

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And they may not be able to mentor you in detail in that thing that matters more to

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you.

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For example, your mentor who's 20 years ahead may no longer have little ones at home.

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And so even though they remember vaguely what it meant to have little ones at home, it's

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going to be a different kind of mentoring you get from someone who's like, oh yeah,

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my kids were three and four years old just last year.

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So it's a very, very powerful experience to be mentored by someone who's a peer and to

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provide mentoring.

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So it's two-way street, right?

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You are seeking mentoring among peers, but you're also mentoring them as well.

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And some of that can be very organic, but it's important also to be intentional about

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it.

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It's like, OK, we may not have a senior mentor that is the senior mentor that everybody recommends,

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but we have each other.

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How can we support each other?

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And you'll find that some peers have written certain grant applications that you have not

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yet had the opportunity to write, or some peer mentors have been successful in a certain

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thing that you have not yet been successful in.

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And vice versa, right?

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You could be the person who's had experience with this particular grant.

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You can support your peer mentors to do that.

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So definitely look around you at your peer or near peer mentors and receive mentoring

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from them and then offer them the opportunity to be mentored by you too.

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So it's not the traditional hierarchical mentoring model, but still a mentoring model that's

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helping you to grow in your skills as a mentor.

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All right.

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So number three is to look in front of you.

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Now, this is interesting.

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Now, when I say look in front of you, it's like, who are those who've gone ahead of you?

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Yeah, the people we traditionally call mentors who are like 20, 30 years ahead of you.

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And sometimes there's a sense that, well, what can I teach them?

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They know everything.

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And I would just say, hmm, you want to be careful there.

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I think senior mentors have a lot of experience, but there are a lot of things that are changing

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that they may not know.

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For example, now as an attending who rounds every couple of months in the hospital, it

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feels as if there's always a new scoring metric or a new probability weight or some new

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technique or some new tool that's being used to stratify patients, to make decisions about

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who gets what therapies.

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And if you are not, especially in internal medicine, if you're not keeping track of the

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literature, you could miss a lot.

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And so some of your trainees are able to mentor you in some things that you thought, well,

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you have no idea about.

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It's like, oh, this is interesting.

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What is this new score?

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How is it applied?

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And so vice versa.

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So when you think about yourself and you think about yourself and the people who are 20,

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30 years ahead of you, maybe some of them are not so well versed in the new technological

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things that are rising.

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OK, maybe it's about being on social media and it's becoming important for all faculty

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at your institution.

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And you're able to provide mentoring to people who are ahead of you.

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OK, so it's just seeing that there is value that you provide as well and there's value

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that you can provide to senior mentors as well.

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I think in general, medicine is hierarchical and there's this sense of like, oh, no, I

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can mentor someone who's behind me a few years, but I'm not going to attempt to mentor somebody

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who's ahead.

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I think it's thinking differently about mentoring.

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It's not necessarily that you're taking this person, meeting with them, meeting with them

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weekly, asking them to do things specifically.

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But it's just seeing in every interaction, how can you serve in every interaction?

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How can you benefit them in every interaction?

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How can you support them as they need to?

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And mentors improve because their mentees support them to improve.

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So sometimes part of, you know, serving as a mentor to your mentors is helping them mentor

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you better.

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It's finding the opportunity to say, you know what, when you said blah, it didn't really

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help me move forward in the way I thought it might have.

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And maybe next time if you had done X, Y, Z, that would have been more helpful.

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So it's really important to recognize and own your place as an individual who's worthy

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of respect and able really to manage how they are managed, right?

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How you want to be managed.

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Because the person who's the expert in how to treat you well and with respect is you.

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And sometimes people don't know how to treat you with respect.

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And it's your responsibility, your job, your obligation to help them do better.

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And this may be with even peer or near peer mentors or even with mentees that you have,

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but even looking ahead to your mentors by helping them support you best, you are also

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helping them to become a better mentor.

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And so recognize that you also can look in front of you to people who are ahead of you

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and you can help mentor them.

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Again, not in the traditional sense of the word mentor, but help them advance in some

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way in a way or in a sphere in which you already have expertise, whatever that expertise is.

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Okay, we used the example of social media.

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That's quite believable.

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But even in the example of helping them to treat you respectfully or in a way that's

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meaningful to you, for you to be able to pause long enough to say, hey, when you call me

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by this name, it actually doesn't feel respectful.

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What I would prefer is this name.

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You know, whatever you, I mean, I'm just throwing phrases out there, but really, you know what

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would be meaningful to you in terms of helping someone serve you better.

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And that's an important piece of mentoring as well.

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There we go.

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Number four is to consider, actually is to make sure that you are in a relationship of

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equals, and this is so important.

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Many times, again, medicine is hierarchical and there's a sense of like, well, the mentor

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is God and you are lucky to have, you know, an audience with this person.

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And I will say that mentors are busy, absolutely, and their time is valuable and so is your

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time.

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And so it's important to recognize that it's a relationship of equals.

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Yes, they are ahead of you, maybe by three or four years or even five or 20 years, but

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you are worthy of being treated with respect as they are worthy of being treated with respect.

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And so you don't want to come into any of your relationships thinking, well, I'm superior.

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Let's say you're in the mentoring role or the more obvious mentoring role or I'm inferior

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when you're in the more obvious mentee role.

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It doesn't help.

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It's not helpful to have that kind of feeling of like, well, I'm not enough.

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I am in this role because it doesn't help you get what you need.

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And the purpose of any mentoring relationship is really to benefit the mentee.

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I know, I know we talk about how well, you know, the mentor has to benefit.

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And yeah, the mentor always will.

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But the mentee is really the primary recipient of benefit in any mentoring relationship.

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And so it's important, though, that the mentee doesn't feel like they're not enough or that

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there's something wrong with them coming from a deficit mindset, because it affects the

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way you can extract benefit from your mentor to benefit you.

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And so recognizing that, yeah, you're a few years behind in terms of the timeline, but

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you are still worthy of respect, worthy of honor, worthy of being spoken to carefully.

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And if some mentors don't know that, you have the opportunity to help them grow that way.

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And again, the same comes from you being a mentor of a mentee who's a more obvious mentee.

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You're not superior.

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You're not, you know, you're not all that.

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You are, you know, equally worthy of respect as they are worthy of respect.

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And so it's just important.

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I think we have a lot of examples where people don't treat people well, or they demand respect

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or they demand subservience, and it's not respectful.

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So we're surrounded by those kinds of examples all the time, and it doesn't mean we have

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to subscribe to them.

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And part of not subscribing, part of opting out of that is to treat the people who are

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your mentees well.

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And you do that by recognizing that, hey, it's a relationship of equals.

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It's a relationship of equals.

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And we are all deserving and worthy of respect.

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And so we start by respecting them so that they can also respect us.

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But then even if they don't respect us, we also have the opportunity to continue to respect

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as well.

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OK, so make sure that you're in a relationship of equals, whether that is you as the mentor

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or you as the mentee.

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And then the last thing I want to share is to ensure that the mentoring situation is

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win-win.

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And this was something that I struggled with when I first started mentoring.

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It was just the sense of like, OK, what do you what does my mentee need?

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What does my mentee need?

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Let's make sure they get that.

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And anything that your mentee is winning in that doesn't also help you move forward is

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just an opportunity squandered.

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For example, let's say you have manuscripts you want to move forward and you accept someone

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to become a mentee, then it's fair that they help you move the manuscripts forward and

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you both get authorship.

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You as senior, they as a primary or a first author.

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That's great.

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But for I mean, this is less likely to happen for you to be a mentor and they're the primary

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author and they're the second and they're the corresponding author.

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It is beneficial to the trainee or to the person who you're mentoring.

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But perhaps that's a position you wanted for yourself.

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It's worth stepping up and saying, hey, this should be win-win for you.

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You can take the lead as the first author and I'll take the lead as a senior author

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and also be corresponding.

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So that's just an example.

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I'm not saying that's the way it has to be.

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What I am saying is that it is beneficial when your mentoring moves your mentee forward

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and moves you forward as well.

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And so you don't want to go out of your way to provide projects that the mentee benefits

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from but you don't benefit from.

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And to be honest, the same goes with when you are the mentee working with a senior mentor,

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like they win, you win, you win, they win.

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And so you always want to structure the relationship in such a way as to make sure that they win

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when you win and you win when they win.

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So the win-win is so key.

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It's so critical.

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You absolutely want to win and you want your mentee to win as well.

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Okay, so the five things I said, look behind you at trainees or someone who's even just

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two, three years behind you.

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Look around you, your peers, both your peer mentors and your near peer mentors.

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Now look in front of your mentors.

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They look like they have no needs, but there's always a way that you can serve them in the

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things that they are not as comfortable with.

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And so you have the opportunity to mentor your mentors.

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Number four, you want to make sure that you're in a relationship of equals.

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You are not inferior.

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You are not superior.

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You are both worthy of respect and honor.

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And so in making sure you're in a relationship of equals, you don't come from a deficit

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mindset, but you also don't encourage any feelings of inferiority around people around

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you at all.

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Okay.

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And then number six is ensuring that the mentoring is win-win.

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When you win, they win as well.

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Okay, so I am inviting you this week to look around and find someone to mentor today.

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Find someone to mentor today.

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Don't wait till tomorrow.

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You see the med student who keeps looking for someone who will support them in writing

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a manuscript and you know that you have a manuscript that needs to be written, step

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out, step out and be bold and confident and courageous and find someone to mentor today.

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Because as you mentor, you definitely become a stronger mentor and you stop thinking of

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yourself as someone who is lacking things or has specific deficits because you are someone

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who has a lot that you can share with another generation of providers and it's important

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for you to step into your boldness and your confidence to do that.

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All right.

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It's been a pleasure talking with you today.

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I look forward to talking with you again the next time.

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And remember, if you are looking for a coach, especially if you're a clinician who's trying

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to make the transition to becoming a researcher, please reach out to me by direct message or

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even on our voicemail on our website, clinicianresearcherpodcast.com.

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Love to hear from you and hear about your successes and challenges as you navigate this

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amazing journey called academia.

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All right.

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It's been a pleasure talking with you.

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I look forward to talking with you again the next time.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast where academic

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clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they

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have a mentor.

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If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.

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Someone else needs to hear it.

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So take a minute right now and share it.

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As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation

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of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.