Key factors in selecting a research mentee

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's podcast episode is dedicated to a listener who submitted a question that I'm going to answer in this podcast. And it's a long question, so I'm not going to read it all, but this is really about the topic of mentorship.

1:26 So sometimes potential mentors can share an area of interest, but then they choose not to mentor you. They choose a different mentee. And so the question is really around how as a mentor do you choose a mentee to work with? And I think it's a great question, and I'm excited to answer it because honestly, I didn't have a process. At least I didn't think I had a process. But more recently, I've gotten really selective, and I'm pretty clear on what my process is right now. And so for that reason, I want to share this podcast episode. And I have seven things I'm going to talk about. And this is personal to me, what I think about when I'm choosing a research mentee. There are probably other things that other mentors think about, but you'll find that there's probably going to be some overlap.

2:10 So now we'll talk about seven things I think about when I'm choosing a research mentee. I'll tell you that this actually really became important for me really a couple of months ago when I was invited to write a paper in a topic area that I had been working on a different group of mentees with. I'd been working with them on a different particular paper, and this paper was related to the paper they've been working on. And I was like, well, I didn't want to take on the paper, but I said this would be a good opportunity for them. It would be an opportunity for them to publish. And they're already working on this, why not? That was what I was thinking at the beginning. Fast forward several months later, and I put in so much work into this particular manuscript that they were working on.

2:56 And this is not to say anything negative about them in any way, they did an outstanding job. But I realized I was like, I don't want to do this again. I do not want to make this kind of investment on this level, because now I just want people who are mature in my program. But I want to explain that in just a little bit. But I remember just thinking, okay, next time they're going to have to come through my regular team, I'm going to have one of the senior members of my team take them on rather than me taking them on individually. And maybe I'll give a little bit of background to say that mentoring is intense. So there are different levels of mentoring. And what I'm going to focus on right now is research mentoring. And it's important for me to make that distinction. It is very easy for me to sponsor somebody. I'm in a room, people are having a conversation, who would be a great person to do this, or somebody invites me to do something that I don't want to do, or I don't have the bandwidth to do.

3:45 I'll say, oh, I'm not available. And you should think of x, y, z. That's so easy. That's an email. Or someone reaches out to me and they say, hey, I would like for you to talk to me about my career. Oh, that's so easy. That's like a 30 minute conversation. Let's do it. Sometimes I invite people to my coaching meetings, which I do on Monday, Mondays at 6pm. And I'll say, come join us. And I can, we can, you can be part of a group. It's a coaching group, but to some extent, there's a little bit of mentoring that goes on there as well. And that's great. That's very easy. But when somebody says, I want you to be my research mentor. Okay, that's on a different level. That's not 30 minutes. That's literally 60 minutes every week consistently emails in between reviewing manuscripts in between.

4:30 It is intensive work. It is like having a child. I didn't used to think this way before, but it really is. And so once upon a time, especially when you're a newbie person, a newbie parent, you have no idea how intensive it is to take care of someone who is very, very not knowledgeable in the area in which you're going to mentor them. And so you're pretty wide open. You're like, yeah, I'll take anybody who wants to work with me. Because when you're starting out, most people don't want to work with you. They want to work with the established mentor who's been around for 25 years and has 300 publications to their name. And even if they may not have time to mentor you, those are the mentors a lot of people are going after. So when I started out, I was just like, if you want to work with me, just come on.

5:11 That was not very many people. So I only started with one mentee. And then it's grown over time. And so I likened my first mentee experience to the parent who did not know that a newborn baby was a big deal. Why was that parent? I read no books. I was just like, oh, baby's coming. I can do this. I've been doing this for generations. And then by the end of the second or third week of sleepless nights, I was crying all the time. And I was like, holy cow, what did I get myself into? OK, so I'm likening mentoring to that. Now I'm like, yeah, I know better. I know better than to pursue a newborn baby. I don't want that in my life right now. Not because newborn babies are not awesome, but because I now know what it takes, what kind of investment it takes to grow a newborn baby.

5:57 And so I know I'm talking about mentees, adults, not newborn babies. But that is the level of investment that is required because a research mentee, especially if it's an MD research mentee, doesn't have much research training. And so a lot of training is going to need to be done. And you're going to need to create an atmosphere that's warm and welcoming and friendly. So you want to be able to make that investment. OK, so let's talk about these seven items. Number one right now for me is bandwidth. It takes a lot to invest in mentoring somebody who has no research experience. It takes a lot.

6:38 And when I was starting out in research, I didn't know how much I needed. You know, you just don't know what you don't know. I mean, I needed mentoring in writing manuscripts. I mean, I'm a good writer. The scientific writing is different. And then scientific writing for publication is different. Then reviewing, revising, that's different. You literally need intense coaching, mentoring in each of these things. And this is just writing. We're just talking about writing manuscripts. OK, let's talk about grants. That's a whole nother level of grant writing, right, of mentoring and grant writing. And then let's talk about research mentoring. That's a whole nother level of investment. So it takes a lot to mentor someone, especially if they have no prior experience.

7:24 And so the first thing I think about is my bandwidth, right, and my bandwidth relative to the person. Now, if this is someone who's like, oh, I've been doing research with this mentor, I've done research here, I've done research there, then they're not really actually asking me to be their research mentor as much as they're already like adolescents. They're just needing a little bit more like, OK, I've experienced in these areas. I now want to gain experience in this area. Well, that's great. They've learned all the basic skills. And so the bandwidth to invest in somebody who has all the basic skills or has advanced skills and it's just like, I just need a little bit more here. That's different from the bandwidth to invest in mentoring someone who has no research skills to boot.

8:05 And most MDs coming into a fellowship program or coming into a faculty position, they've literally had very little to no research training. So my first question is, do I have the bandwidth to be able to do this? And that is meeting weekly, that is in mails in between, that is feedback appropriately. It's a lot of investment of time. And so the first question is, can I do it? And sometimes someone's a great mentee and I want to invest in them. And I just realized that, oh, I may not be able to do this right now because of other projects that I have going on because of the number of mentees I already have.

8:45 If you're really going to do the mentoring, especially of early career faculty who don't have much research training, you want to make sure you have time because the worst thing, and this happens to a lot of mentees who are looking at senior mentors who've been around for years and years and years, the reality is that they don't have the bandwidth, but they say, come on anyway. And then you have a newborn baby who really needs a lot of tender loving care and instead they're abandoned and then they start to have failure to thrive. And so this happened to me because, and in general, people are always looking at the big senior mentors who've been around a long time. And sometimes some of the best mentors are mentors who are just starting out because they have a lot of time and not very many people are subscribing to them.

9:29 They have potential, they're going to go far, but you're looking at the person who actually doesn't have time for you. Now we'll talk a little bit about how their team may be able to support you even if they are not. But if you're looking for the direct one-on-one mentoring, the more senior a person is, the less time they probably have to spend with you. So the first thing I ask is, do I have bandwidth? Should do the intense mentoring that this person needs to become what they want to become? Because it's not about what I want them to become, it's about what they want to become. So number one, do I have bandwidth? My bandwidth, yes, my bandwidth. Number two, and this is a little bit more recent for me, the bandwidth of my team.

10:11 Okay, so I've gotten to a place now where I don't want to take on a brand new mentee who has absolutely no research skills unless that person is going to come through members of my research team who have some skills that they can impart. So now what I will do is I'll say, you can come into my team and I have a senior mentor, a senior member of my research team, and I'll say, work with the senior member and that's all, and that's how you're getting the mentoring. So it's not that I'm not mentoring, it's just the intensity of the mentoring, the initial look at drafts and recommendations on how to structure writing, that's all happening outside of me right now.

10:53 And by the time work gets to me, it's mature enough so that I'm investing minimal amount of time to be able to move the work forward. Okay, so that's exactly what I mean by my team bandwidth because I have to look at the projects that my team is working on. I know it takes a lot of time to do this intense mentoring and I want to know what's the quality of your work you're going to be mentoring in. Because many times people come in and they're like, I want to do a case report. And to be honest, I'm not down in case reports. I've done a lot of them, I still do them. But case reports don't get you as far as say original research. And when I look at my team's bandwidth and I say you have four original research papers that we're trying to get out and this person wants to come in and do a case report, you, my teammates, my team members can do that mentoring on their own without my input, right, to be able to write a case report because they've done this enough times.

11:44 But now they're going to take away time for an original research from an original research manuscript which is higher in the hierarchy to spend time helping somebody write a case report. So that's why I think about, well, now if I find a newbie, a very early career person who doesn't have much, by the way, of research skills, I'm asking can my team support them in the things that I don't want to support them in or at least I don't have the bandwidth to support them in. And so you can see that number one is am I going to be the one to do it all or do I have a team that can help me to do it so I can do the higher level, the higher level mentoring. So that is why number two is really, will my team be able to support the little things that I may not be able to support.

12:26 For example, the senior member of my team is able to meet with other members of my team a little bit more frequently. I meet with everybody once a week. I don't meet more than once a week. Sometimes I'll meet, like the senior member of my team, I'll meet more than once a week because we have other things we want to talk about outside of our group meetings. But if more is needed, and sometimes when you're just starting out, you need a lot more than just a once a week mentoring meeting. And that's why I want to know, can my team support the questions that are needed that they can easily answer that I may not have bandwidth to answer except but once a week. So does my team have the bandwidth? That's number two. Number three, now number one and two, as you can see, I'm starting with me.

13:09 Can I support this new person? Can I support this child, this newborn, right? And this is not disrespecting the faculty member or the fellow. It's just saying you need a lot. Can I support what you need? The third thing now is the motives of the mentee. Okay. I will interview anybody who wants to be a mentee in my research program. And when I interview them, and I'm not telling them it's an interview, it's just a conversation, but I want to know why they want to get into research. And many times I find that people are not really interested in getting into research. They just need a publication with their name on it. It's like, hey, I'm going to be applying for a fellowship three months from now, and I need a publication with my name on it.

13:51 Okay. That is different. That's not I need a research mentor. That's I need a publication with my name on it like yesterday. There's a little bit of energy of desperation that comes with that. I tend to avoid that. Like as soon as I hear people talking about, I only have six months to work with you, and I need a paper right away, I just know I'm not going to be a research mentor because it takes time to birth research. It takes time to do the research. It takes time to write up the research. It takes time to work through revisions. If you're looking from start to finish of an original research manuscript, it could very well be a year, and it could be longer, depending on how long it takes to do the research, gather the data, analyze the data, then write it up, then do the submission, wait a couple of months, get the first set of revisions, wait a couple of weeks, resubmit it, maybe get another set of, I mean, it takes time.

14:44 So when someone shows up and they're like, I just need my name on a manuscript and I want to do it in three months, I know that I'm not going to be able to help them achieve that, and I'm not going to take them on. I'm not. So that's one group. That's one kind of motive where your motive doesn't align with my long-term strategy because I'm building a research program. I'm not just here to just churn out a couple of papers, and that's what I'm building. It's the long game. And if someone's here to play a very, very, very short game, I'm not able to support that. Okay. The other thing as far as motive is sometimes people are looking for a letter of recommendation and like, I want to be in your research program because I'm going to apply, and then I want your letter.

15:26 I am happy to write letters for people. If I know you enough, like if we've met a couple of times, you'll send me your CV and I will write you a letter. I usually will write you a letter. I can do that. That's not, you don't need to be in my research program for me to write you a letter. So in my discussion, I really want to understand what does the mentee want? What does the mentee want? It really, I want to be sure that whatever their goals are, it aligns with my goals, the goals of my research program. Otherwise, I'm scattered in too many different directions. I'm not able to be effective. Focus is important. And so making sure that the motives of the mentee align with the motives of my program or align with the long-term goals of my program is absolutely critical.

16:10 And so very early on, the minute it becomes clear that somebody is looking for short-term gain, I will say, I'm not the person for you. I won't say it so directly, but I'll say, I know another mentor who you should talk to because what they're looking for is a paper that's at the door or a paper that's already gone through revisions. And maybe the first author doesn't have time anymore to address it. That's what they're looking for. Because a three month turnaround is a paper that's about to be accepted. It's not a paper that's still being written. Right? All right. And that's why number four is their time horizon. So when people are like, I have six months, I just know that's not going to work out. It takes time. It really takes time to build skill.

16:51 So in my research program, the longest person who's been with me has probably been with me for five years. And there's still a lot that I'm teaching. There's still a lot that they're learning. I mean, this person is outstanding. And if you're listening to me, you know who I'm talking about. You are awesome. Thank you so much for the skill and the excellence you bring to the research program. And they're still learning, like we all are learning. Right? The more I'm advancing and looking at different strategies, different analytic techniques, I have new collaborators. There's a new level of learning. And so it really does take time to grow. And so when someone's like, I only have six months, I know that they're not going to have enough time to learn the skills that they need to, to be successful or to even contribute successfully to my research program.

17:38 So when someone says, I only have six months, that's already a no. If somebody has a year, hmm, I don't know. It depends on what they want out of the program. Right? Again, going back to what did they need? What are their goals? What's their motive? Because the thing is that if you're going to do original research, it really takes a long time from conception to doing the IRB and getting everything together, doing the research, collecting the data, it takes a long time. And so when someone only has a year, that's cutting it close. And maybe that they collect the data, but they're not going to be able to write it up or they write it up and then they're not going to be able to stay through the revisions process.

18:18 And I have to tell you that when somebody leaves your research program, it is very hard to reconnect with them. And when we're talking about MDs, they're leaving to go back to the clinical space, right? Maybe they're starting intern year or they're starting fellowship. They don't have time to respond to your email saying, hey, we need those revisions because the deadline is coming. And so even a year is a little bit stretching it. Two years, it's like, okay, that's enough time for me to teach you basic skills. That's enough time for you to be able to really contribute. That's enough time for you to do the work it takes to be a first author on a paper. So two years is about, I think, a minimum, I think. I mean, I will do shorter. It depends, right?

18:59 It depends on many things. All these factors come together. There's not one factor that necessarily drives everything. But I will say that anything less than a year is a no-go. It's not a research mentoring experience. It can just be a career mentoring, but it cannot be a research mentoring because there's really not enough time for you to grow in the skills like you need to. I mean, again, if you're an MD, clinician only, you've not really done much research. There's a lot of learning. If you think about your PhD colleagues who did six years for their PhD and then in between, they did graduate research assistantships and then they also did postdoc number one and postdoc number two. And then they're like, I still need training.

19:40 You recognize how anemic, relatively speaking, an MD's training is relative to the PhD researcher. So there's a lot to learn and it really does take time to build skill. And so when people have a time horizon that's too short to build skill and contribute meaningfully, I'm not going to consider them as a first pick for mentee. I would have done it a longer time ago, but now with the priorities of the program and with how busy we are, I would consider that very carefully. All right, so the time horizon, that's number four. Number five is their level of understanding of what it takes. Now this is a little bit of borrowing from a couple of the other points I've said. When somebody shows up to me and says, I have six months and I want to get a paper in six months and then I'll be done, I know they don't understand what it takes.

20:28 I know they don't have any idea of how much is involved in the investment in really growing in research. And so I want to get a sense of how much they understand. I want to get a sense of how much they understand how writing is important to the process. I want to get a sense of how much I understand that they know what's involved. They know the level of excellence that's needed. I mean, sometimes I've had people just throw words together and send me a document and I think, wait a minute, this is less than excellent. No way. So I want to know. And I don't know, I don't know them, but I'm evaluating.

21:10 I'm evaluating the emails that they send me, the completeness of their sentences, how well do they write? We might do a small project together just to start, just for me to test the waters to say, okay, well, can we do this? But again, I want to have a sense of how committed is this person? Do they understand the level of commitment it takes? I think people think sometimes that research is easy. It's like, oh, thank God it's not clinical work. It'll be easy. It's not easy. It's hard work. And it takes time. It takes commitment. It takes excellence. I want to know that people understand what kind of commitment is needed to advance research. If I don't have a sense that they have a sense, I'm not going to move forward with a mentoring relationship.

21:53 All right. Number seven is how much time they have to do the work. Oh, this is a big one. And this is one that has stumped me a couple of times. Clinical people are busy people. And I say that as someone who's fully, well, used to be fully clinical, but I totally understand how much it takes to take care of patients. So I can say with certainty that most MDs don't have time to do research, period. Now many MDs are trying to do research at nights or on weekends. And I want to say I salute you. I commend you. It is how I started. It's how many people start. But it can only be a starting place where you ultimately need to expand the time that you have for research beyond just your night and weekends hours, because in reality, you are only human.

22:41 Maybe you can pull an all-nighter this week. Maybe you can binge right through your weekend this weekend, but it's not sustainable. And research is about sustainability. It is about long-term sustainability. And if for whatever reason, it doesn't look as if you have time to do the research. It doesn't look as if there's any space for you in between your 300 clinics. I'm being facetious. In between three clinics that you're doing the week, if you're constantly kind of like in the cycle of, oh gosh, I haven't finished closing my charts. When I finish closing my charts, I'll be able to do the work. I know that you don't have time to do the work. I know I'm going to be chasing you down. Let me give you an example. I had a recent manuscript resubmission that needed to be done with mentees that I had worked with on this manuscript.

23:27 And at the time that the revisions came back, they didn't have time. So guess who ended up doing all the revisions? Me. And you know, I know how to write. I'm not afraid to write, but it takes a lot to do the work of revising. And part of being a mentee in my program is to learn to do that. Right? So it's a learning opportunity for you to a greater extent than it is for me. So I want you to do that work. If you don't even have time to do it, then I have to make the investment to do that work. This is a paper I only took on because I knew it would be a benefit to you. And now I'm doing all the work. I don't want to do that because what it means is that while I'm doing all the work of revising and, and you know, like going line by line through the reviewer comments, I'm not writing the grant that funds the rest of my research program.

24:20 Do you see the opportunity cost? It's not that I don't want to make the big investments. It's just that every time I have to pick up the slack for someone who didn't do the work that they were supposed to because they were too busy, it means that I leave the bigger things that other people can't do for me to do the things that people should be able to do as part of their work within the research program. Okay. So I've talked about seven things and now that I'm listening to myself, I'm like, is that tough? That sounds a little bit tough, but I tell you, it's the reality. It's the reality of over time, you start to figure out that, wow, time, time has boundaries. And if you're going to do the things you want to do well, you have to choose what are the things only I can do?

25:03 What are the things others can do for me? And so that's why the mentee mentoring relationship is a two-way relationship. It doesn't mean I'm asking my mentees to pay me back. It just means it's like, while you're growing, you're going to move the research program forward and you're going to free up my time so that I can do the things that continue to move the research program forward. That's how you are helping me. You're helping me because you're the person who first of all went through all the reviewer comments, you wrote comment one, okay, this is how we're going to respond. You did the first pass. So when I look at it, I'm not now saying, oh, wait a minute, what did the reviewer say again?

25:43 Where in the manuscript is it? You've done all that for me. That saves me time. And so I can help you grow in that way while, and while you're working on it, I'm doing something else. So there's that mutual benefit. It's not that I need you to do things for me. It's that in the process of your learning, you're taking work off my plate that I don't have to do because you're doing it. And in reality, it takes you longer probably than it takes me to do it, but that's part of your learning. And when you come back, then there's a back and forth of me helping you take it to the next level. But if I have to come in and step in and do the work that you're supposed to do, then it's no longer a benefit to me.

26:23 Now it's a drag. All right. So seven things, number one, my bandwidth, number two, the bandwidth of my team, number three, the motives of the mentee, number four, their time horizon, number five, their level of understanding of what it takes, number six, whether this relationship will help them or not, number seven, how much time they actually have to do the work. All right. I hope this has been helpful to you. I'd love to hear about you as you start to mentor or you probably are a seasoned mentor. What are some things you consider as you're thinking about whether you take on a mentee or not? And I want to say that if somebody doesn't ask, invite you to be a mentee in their research program, don't lose heart over it, but think about what you really, really need, what your goals are and whether this is the research team that will serve you and be explicit about what you want, because then it's important if your goals do not align with the goals of the would be mentor, you want to not be in that relationship.

27:20 And so it can be a benefit to you if a mentor says, no, thank you, because already it just cuts out a lot of the pain and suffering that could happen with not having alignment. And so alignment is important for you. And so don't feel bad if a mentor doesn't choose you. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It just means that the mentor does not see alignment in one way or the other. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you again. I'm always in the market to coach if you're looking for a coach. And if not, I invite you to please share this episode with someone who's going to benefit from it. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast. Have a great evening.

28:01 Have a great day. 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. So take a minute right now and share it. As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.