Why mentoring matters

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 what an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today. Today I'm especially excited to talk about why mentoring matters. Why mentoring matters. And this topic comes to me kind of in the midst of actually at the end of our annual meeting where one of my mentees gave a presentation.

1:24 And I will tell you that I was the mentor in the audience listening to his every word, literally hanging on his every word and so proud, so proud of the words that were coming out of his mouth, of the things that he said. I was so, so proud. And I mean, he did an outstanding job. He did a fantastic job. And at the end, I was so happy to be able to tell him, you did awesome. And why did he do awesome? Well, he did awesome because honestly, he's an awesome person. But he also did awesome because I helped him do awesome. I helped him do awesome. And I want to own my role in helping him do awesome.

2:07 But I mean, it's my responsibility as a mentor. And also what a privilege it is to watch him just take the feedback and just be better. I mean, so awesome. Anyway, so I'm really writing about why mentoring matters from the perspective of a mentor, of a mentee, but also to some extent from the other perspective of a mentee who needs a mentor. And the reason I am sharing this story from two perspectives is because you know what? I didn't feel like I had that kind of mentoring. I didn't feel like I had mentors who really valued me or really thought I was going to amount to much. I mean, I had mentors who helped me and I want to acknowledge all the help that I received and I want to celebrate my mentors and thank them for it.

2:52 But I don't know that I ever got to a point in my life where I feel like I had a mentor who actually believed in me, who believed I was going to succeed and who I felt like, you know, gave me everything. And again, now that I'm a mentor, I recognize how hard it is to give of anything to anybody, let alone so much to somebody who you don't even know. You don't know their mother, you don't know their father. You're like, I don't know who you are, where you're from. But it's a lot. It's a lot to be a mentor. But mentoring matters. And even though it's a sacrifice, even though it costs so much to be a mentor, it absolutely matters. And it's absolutely the way that we must all go. We must all be great mentors, even if we were never mentored well, or even if we were mentored to a place that we hope that we could have gotten more.

3:36 So anything that anybody gives you, just be thankful, but also recognize that no matter how great a mentor you had, you can do better. So if you had a great mentor to some extent, it's kind of like your, I don't want to say moral obligation, like you got to do this. But if you had excellent mentor mentoring, then wow, what an opportunity to pay it forward and then expand on that mentoring, make it so much better. But if you didn't have great mentoring, it's not an excuse to say, well, I didn't have a great mentor, therefore I don't owe you anything. But to say, hey, if I didn't have this, how can I give it to somebody? Okay. So I want to talk about why mentoring matters. And I want to talk again from the perspective of the mentee looking to the mentor, but also looking at it from my perspective as a mentor, really at enhancing the experience of my mentee.

4:26 Now here's the thing. The mentee could give you a different story and say, oh my gosh, she sucks. Did you see the way she yelled at me? Did you see the way that she didn't prepare me to succeed? He may say that because to be honest, value is in the eye of the beholder. I was proud of him. He did such a great job. And I hope he recognizes that I'm proud of him. And I hope he recognizes that all the feedback I gave him was loving and to help him grow and expand. But it is possible. Sometimes people are looking at the world through wounded lenses. I know I had that issue when I was coming up as a faculty member. And sometimes even the best meaning mentors may not come across that well. So I'm saying that to say that I'm not judging myself, but I'm using this example, the story to talk about why mentoring matters.

5:13 Well the first reason mentoring matters is because, wow, you've got a long way to go. You got a long way to go. The journey ahead is far and it's hard to get there. So I want to pause and say that this journey of academic medicine is hard. And in reality, there's nothing in life that's really easy, especially if it's worthwhile, especially if it's really full of purpose, especially if people are going to be helped. It's going to be a hard journey. No one should ever, ever take the journey by themselves. I mean, there are many people who make it even though they don't have the resources or the help that they need, but it's a hard and lonely journey. And to be honest, many people who don't have the support they need, they don't make it.

5:55 Or they don't make it well. They don't make it in a way that's healthy. Some people make it across the finish line and they're made, like they're missing an arm and a leg. Their heart has turned to cold stone. I'm just saying the journey is hard. And if you're going to get far, you're going to want people to come alongside you and help you make it and not just make it, but help you live on the way to getting there. And so why does mentoring matter? Mentoring matters because you've got to finish this journey and at the end of it, be whole. At the end of it, be one. At the end of it, be aligned. At the end of it, still be recognizable as the beautiful, wonderful, enthusiastic and joyful you that started the journey.

6:41 And if you look at yourself right now and instead of joy, you find pessimism and bitterness and anger, then I would say that something is not going well. And you may be like, oh no, I have a great mentor. I have three New England Journal of Medicine manuscripts. I'm saying that that's not the goal of mentoring to get you into the biggest and baddest journals. I mean, that's great when that happens, but the goal of mentoring is to help you grow in support while still maintaining your authenticity and your joy in the process. And if you're being broken to shreds just to create a product that you can't even recognize, I don't think it's worth it. But again, you have to be the judge of that.

7:22 You have to be the judge of that. For some people, getting the nature paper matters more than being intact and whole. And to be honest, you may believe that to be true now, but the day is coming when you may not believe that to be true and where you may regret those choices. But that being said, the journey is hard and mentoring matters because it helps you survive. And not just to survive, it helps you survive. It leaves you better than where you started. It leaves you more fulfilled than when you began the journey. It allows you to enjoy the journey because the journey is better when more than one person make the journey, right? A lonely journey is a rough journey, a journey that's partnered so much more beautiful.

8:07 And so mentoring matters because it's a tough, tough road and you need help along the way. Okay. The second thing, the second reason that mentoring matters is that it shortens the distance traveled. You know, you can make it. So here's the thing about especially physicians in medicine, but just the human persons in general, human beings in general is that we're so resilient, we will make it. It's like, is it desert? Is it desert like conditions where there's like a sandstorm and there's sand in my eyes? Like if you are resilient, if you are determined, you will make it. No question asked, but it will be a long journey.

8:48 Yes. At the end, you may be able to beat your chest and say, they almost destroyed me, but I made it. Yeah. I know that, but the reality is if you have a mentor, you're able to get where you're going further faster, right? It's like, okay, great. There's a sandstorm mentor. Like, oh, the mentor is like, I came with a Jeep. I have a four wheeler. Let's go. Right. I mean, your mentor has more resources than you, even if they don't have as much like financial resources, they have more resources in terms of experience, in terms of opportunities. And so they will get you further faster. So mentoring matters because it shortens the distance traveled.

9:28 Why do we want to shorten the distance traveled? Because hey, you've got further to go. If at the end of your career, all you have to show for your life is exactly what your mentor has. Wow. You haven't really benefited. If you've had great mentoring at the end of your mentoring experience, you should be better than your mentor. Can I say that again? If you have had the benefit of great mentoring at the end of your mentoring experience, you should be better than your mentor. And I say that because mentoring is supposed to enhance you as a person. If all that you get at the end is becoming a shadow of somebody else, you haven't really been mentored.

10:12 You've kind of, I'm not even sure what to call that journey. I'm just not sure what to call it. I'm not sure. Like follow the shadow. I'm just not sure. But in reality, what happens is your amazingness comes together with your mentor's amazingness and it results in triple quadruple amazingness. I was going to say badassery and that's really how I feel. It's like, whoa, who is this person? Because what you've done is you've taken everything that's awesome about you and you've collected everything that's awesome about your mentor and you've made it into something unrecognizable and out of this world. And so your mentor should always accelerate you beyond where they are.

10:54 Absolutely. Every one of your mentees, for those of you who are mentors, should absolutely be poised to outstrip you, outclass you at the end of the day because you're pulling into them yourself, but they came with themselves. So there's so much more. What happens is when mentors tear down their mentees and then pour themselves into their mentees, like you're first of all stripping them of everything that is them and then saying, well, now you can take me on because I'm amazing. All you've given them is you. And to be honest, it's not that you is not okay. It's just that you already happened. And if something amazing is going to happen, it takes you and what the other person brings to make it amazing.

11:41 It's just like it's a new combination. It's a different chemistry. And so mentoring gets you further and it gets you faster. And if it doesn't do that, then it may not be mentoring. Okay. Number three is that it opens doors that are otherwise hard to get through. So here's the thing about mentors. Mentors tend to be further along than you are. Right. And again, I'm talking about more senior mentors rather than I am talking about like peer mentors. But to be honest, the same principles apply. Right. If somebody is only three feet ahead of you, connecting with them gets you three feet further faster. Right.

12:21 If somebody is seven years ahead of you, connecting with them can get you seven years faster. Right. You're just able to get further faster. Right. You're able to get through doors that otherwise are closed because this person has just been more places. They know more people. They've got a couple of networks. They've got people. They know people that you don't know. Right. And so pairing with them allows you to go through the doors that they're going through. So it's not even really a magical process. It's just that they've just been passing through doors that you haven't been through because you just haven't gotten to that level. And when you partner up with this mentor, you just get to walk through the door with them. You just do. I mean, they're not even thinking, oh, wait a minute, let's check you at the door. They're just walking.

13:02 And you by virtual walking with them, you end up walking through amazing opportunities. For example, I had the opportunity this year to write a paper for our manuscript for our our, gosh, it's our education journal that we publish as part of the animal meeting. At first I was like, I don't have time for this. Like this is not what I want to write. But then I was like, wait a minute, I have mentees who've been working with me in this area. What if I ask them and they write this manuscript for me? So this is a manuscript that as long as it's well written, it's going to be peer reviewed. It's going to get published. It's like a certain publication. And to be honest, I could do with or without it. Like at this point, I'm not like, oh, my gosh, I need that manuscript because I've got a lot of other manuscripts in process.

13:45 But by virtue of working with of these mentees working with me, I'm like, hey, I'm walking through this door of a guaranteed publication. If well written, if well written and handed in on time, will you walk with me? And they say yes. And we walk through the door together. Honestly, these are doors they couldn't walk through, except that the opportunity comes to them because I'm walking through those doors. And so what does mentoring, what should mentoring do for you? It should get you through doors that otherwise you might not be able to get through. And so if you're with your mentor and they have opportunity after opportunity after opportunity and somehow you don't seem to be included in any of those opportunities, you may not have mentoring going on.

14:28 You may just be kind of hanging out as like a fan in like, you know, you know, fans, they get so excited because they're there in the midst of the performance and maybe they get an autograph, but that's about it. Good feelings and an autograph. But if you are a mentee and you're actually benefiting from your mentor by virtue of hanging out with them, you get opportunities that ordinarily you wouldn't get by yourself. And that's why mentoring matters because it gets you through doors that you otherwise might not get through. OK, that's number three. Number four is that it connects you to new networks. Here's the thing. If you hang out with people who look like you, walk like you, talk like you, you get what looks like you, walks like you and talks like you.

15:12 But the moment you connect with somebody else, then what happens is that you are able to take advantage of networks that they already have access to. And when you think about somebody who's been building a network for 20, 30 years, it's different from the network you've been building, but maybe you've only built for seven or eight, built for seven or eight years. Now don't get me wrong. Some people are super network builders so that it's like, yeah, I've only been in this game for three years, but look at the network I have. So I'm not disdaining the fact that people build networks and have a great, are able to do that really well. What I'm saying is that you get access to different networks. OK, and so if you are experiencing great mentoring, what you are doing, what you are, you have the opportunity to do is be introduced to people that you ordinarily would not be introduced to.

15:59 For example, I'm at the annual meeting. I'm talking with one of my mentors, somebody else walks up to talk to them and they're like, hey, wait a minute, do you know Toyosi? I'm like, oh, Toyosi, meet this person, this person, meet Toyosi. And by virtue of the fact that that person is a part of their network, I now know them. OK, am I best friends with them yet? No, but now they know me. Now we're going to show up to the meeting next year and guess what? I don't need my mentor to be in the room to say, hey, remember me? I met you last year. And they're like, oh, yeah, I remember. You see what I'm saying? Like, just the fact that you know other people, your mentor knows other people already by virtue of that connection, you are able to participate with them in their networks. And so it opens the door to networks beyond your own.

16:43 OK, number five is it helps you grow. This is so important. You know, I have to say that I'm going to go back to the story of my mentee presenting at the annual meeting this year. And he just did so I mean, he was just so finessed, so polished, and he was so smooth. Now I will tell you, it took us like two or three reviews of the slides. It took a lot of changes. It took a lot of practice for him to show up with that level of polish. But I have to tell you that tomorrow when he creates another presentation for another meeting and I'm not there, everything I've taught, he's going to be able to use to create an amazing presentation. And so his level of presenting has grown.

17:25 It's expanded from where he started from before I mentored him in that way. And so, you know, maybe I've taught him all the tricks I know, and now he can move on to someone else who can teach him more tricks. But there's a growth that happens between when you start out where you're going. Now, here's the thing that's important. There are many mentoring situations where it's not like you're not growing, but sometimes it's like you're being torn down more than you're actually growing. It's like you're being pulled back more than you're actually moving forward. And it's important to pay attention to this because mentoring shouldn't tear you down. It shouldn't pull you down. It should leave you better than when you first started. And so mentoring matters because it helps you grow.

18:08 It helps you expand as a person without breaking you. If you're in a situation where you're like, yeah, I'm growing and getting access to all these opportunities, but my I don't recognize who I am. I'm a shadow of the person I used to be. I want you to be aware that may not be a mentoring situation. It may be a actually I won't even say it. It sounds like a bad word in my head, even though it's not necessarily. But I'm just saying that mentoring matters because it leaves you better than when it first met you. It allows you to grow in a way that you ordinarily might not grow just by yourself. OK, number six, it gives you tools you didn't have before. So you're you're getting mentored.

18:49 You're learning new things. It's like, OK, this is the way I do. I do slides. Great. Here you have a new set of tools that you can use. We're writing a paper together. Here's the way I write the introduction. Now you have a set of tools that you may not have had before or you are going to write a review article. Here's the way I write an outline before I do the review article. Now you have a new set of tools that you didn't have before. So in your mentoring experience, mentoring matters because it gives you tools that you never had before. And so you know what? My mentee is now going to mentor somebody else in giving a talk. He's got strategies to show them that maybe they ordinarily didn't have for themselves before.

19:32 And so mentoring matters because it gives you tools that you may not have had before and not just tools that you can use for yourself over and over again, but tools that you can take, modify, make them yours, and then pass them on to another generation of mentees. And that leads me to number seven. Mentoring matters because it prepares you to be a great mentor. Why is this important? Because there are many people who are not in great mentoring situations. In fact, people are in what we call tour mentor type situations where instead of being mentored, they're actually being stripped of their dignity, they're being stripped of their respect, they're being stripped of who they are and being made to fit a mold that doesn't fit them.

20:18 But what happens when you get great mentoring, you learn the right way to mentor. You're able to mentor another generation into health. And so unfortunately for some of us who've been abused in the course of mentoring, all we're able to give out is abuse, right? It's like, this is how I learned. So sucks for you. Suck it up. And for many of us, that's the way it happened. And we're like, well, this is the way my mentor treated me and it worked for me. Look at how I turned out. And it's not okay. Just because you didn't get great mentoring doesn't mean you get to dish out dirt to another generation and perpetrate the ugliness and move it forward. Please don't do that.

21:00 Even if you did not get great mentoring, you have the opportunity to recognize what it means to be a great mentor, to heal from all your wounds of poor mentoring and to give a gift to the next generation that you didn't have. The gift of mentoring well is that that person now knows how to mentor in a way that's healthy and respectful and can pass it on to the next generation. The reason mentoring matters, good mentoring matters, is so that we can mentor another generation that then mentors another generation in health and in happiness and peace. There are so many people who are so successful and so broken, so successful and full of bitterness and poison, and they're spewing it out all over the place and calling it mentoring.

21:47 And I'm just saying that it's time for us to break that mold. Even if we didn't get good mentoring, it's time for us to break the mold of poor mentoring and begin to do things a little bit differently. All right. I just want to summarize again the seven things I talked about, about mentoring. Number one, it expands your vision, at least you're better off than you were before. Number two, it shortens the distance traveled. Number three, it opens doors that are otherwise hard to get through before it connects you to new networks. It helps you grow. It gives you new tools you didn't have before and can now pass on to another generation. It prepares you to be a great mentor, to pass on the legacy of great mentoring.

22:31 Thank you so much for listening to me today. Somebody else needs to hear this, please. Please share it with someone who's struggling with mentorship or struggling to be a mentee, struggling to be a mentor, because they need to hear this. They need to be encouraged to do the best that they can to create a new generation of mentors, a new generation of mentees that passes on great mentoring to the next generation. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. I look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast. 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.

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