Mentorship in Clinical and Translational Research
Welcome
Mentorship is critical for career and skills development in clinical and translational research, but locating practical resources on how to initiate, build, maintain, and assess these relationships is often challenging. In this comprehensive guide, we aim to support these relationships by sharing popular mentoring resources adapted from our courses and programs. This guide is designed to benefit both mentees and mentors at all career stages.
How to Use This Guide
The guide includes five sections of content, outlined below. Each section centers on one mentoring theme and offers worksheets, exercises, videos, and resources to guide both your own self-reflection as well as your interactions with your mentoring team. If you are new to mentoring, we recommend moving through each of the sections in order. If you are looking for resources to support a particular aspect of your mentoring relationship(s), use the outline provided below to navigate to applicable content.
Goals
- Understand that mentoring relationships are valuable at every phase of a clinical and translational research career.
- Recognize that mentoring needs and expectations evolve throughout career stages.
- Understand that knowing yourself (e.g. your goals, values, work styles, and definition of success) facilitates effective mentoring.
- Appreciate the need for a dynamic mentoring network.
- Understand that mentoring relationships have mutual responsibilities and benefits for both the mentee and mentor.
- Recognize that productive mentoring relationships have structure and follow a lifecycle.
- Recognize how to assess mentoring relationships.
Outline and Learning Outcomes
After navigating the Understand Mentoring Needs section of the guide, you will be able to:
- Recognize that mentoring supports career and life success.
- Describe how mentoring needs evolve throughout a career.
After navigating the Know Yourself section of the guide, you will be able to:
- Craft your personal definition of success.
- Leverage tools to guide your self-reflection on who you are, what you value, and how you work best.
- Prepare for career development conversations with your mentor.
- Articulate the value you bring to a mentoring relationship.
- Advocate for the expertise and support you need to excel.
After navigating the Build a Mentoring Network section of the guide, you will be able to:
- Define the roles typically represented in a dynamic mentoring network.
- Map out your developmental mentoring network.
- Recognize best practices for preparing for, engaging in, and locating networking opportunities.
- Describe how to identify and reach out to a new potential mentor.
After navigating the Cultivate Mentoring Relationships section of the guide, you will be able to:
- Describe the typical phases of a mentoring relationship.
- Leverage mentoring agreement documents to establish mutual expectations at the start of a mentoring relationship.
- Recognize the value of effective communication in maintaining mentoring relationships.
- Access resources for avoiding and resolving conflict within mentoring relationships.
- List strategies mentees and mentors can use to advocate and foster independence.
- Describe methods to assess progress in mentoring relationships.
- Recognize that productive mentoring relationships have defined end-points.
After navigating the Assess Mentoring Relationships section of the guide, you will be able to:
- Appreciate that assessment, both of the mentor and the mentee, is a critical tool that can help mentoring relationships thrive.
- Recognize that assessment in mentoring relationships may take many forms including self-reflection, ongoing conversation, and formal evaluation.
- Define characteristics and actions that foster effective mentee-mentor relationships.
- Explore published survey instruments used to evaluate mentorship.
- Identify strategies to create your own assessments that align with your mentoring audience and goals.
About Us
For more than 15 years, Harvard Catalyst has provided training and support to thousands of physician-scientists and researchers. Our extensive and impactful portfolio has included our award-winning, 10-month longitudinal mentoring program, a two-day, in-depth course on mentee empowerment, a series of webinars on mentoring topics, and more. Explore our mentorship programs and trainings.
In addition to the courses and programs that cover mentoring topics, mentorship is a critical boundary-crossing skill that is integrated into all of our offerings. Curriculum development has been guided by a partnership between expert faculty from across Harvard-affiliated healthcare centers and professional educators/instructional designers. Our mentoring program model has been adopted by several Harvard Catalyst affiliates and collaborators.