Mentorship in Clinical and Translational Research

• Mentorship supports career and life success at every career stage. 
• Mentoring networks are critical, and no one mentor can support all of a mentee’s needs.
• Knowing yourself (e.g., your goals, values, work style, and definition of success) facilitates effective mentoring.
• Mentoring relationships have mutual responsibilities and benefits for both the mentee and mentor.

• The Understand Mentoring Needs page outlines how mentorship is important for career and life success, and how mentoring needs evolve throughout a career. A handout and video reinforce this content:
  • Handout: Evolving Mentoring Needs (PDF) 
  • Video: Making the Most of Your Mentoring Relationships by Frederick Schoen, MD, PhD 
• The Characteristics and Actions that Foster Effective Mentee-Mentor Relationships (PDF) found on the Assess Mentoring Relationships page is a comprehensive framework that outlines qualities, attributes, and actions that strong mentors and empowered mentees demonstrate in practice. 
• The goals for the Mentorship in Clinical and Translational Research guide are an example of how to incorporate your mentoring philosophy into a program. 

• Reviewing the resources and using them to personally reflect and document their mentoring philosophy.
• Incorporating their mentoring philosophy into a list of goals/objectives for their mentoring program that will be shared publicly.
• Including their mentoring philosophy in mentor job/role descriptions or other mentor recruitment documents that are used for their program. 
• Creating and sharing a mentor training session that incorporates their mentoring philosophy.
• Referencing the resources listed above during an introductory talk or session for their program.
• Assigning the resources as pre-reading within a program.
• Linking to the resources and/or summarizing their ideas on their program’s website.
• Sharing the resources directly with mentees/mentors via email.
• Adding their mentoring philosophy to their biography or professional website.

• Conduct a needs assessment for your mentees. For a group, a needs assessment could take the form of surveys or focus groups. For individuals, you could invite an  intentional conversation about their developmental goals. 
• Use the results of the needs assessment to develop programmatic goals and/or a structure for mentoring meetings. 
• Clearly communicate the goals of their mentoring relationship or program. For example, if the focus of the relationship/program is big-picture developmental mentoring, be clear that mentees will not receive technical guidance in their scientific field. 
• Tailor their mentoring strategy to their specific needs. 
• Help mentees grow their networks and locate additional guidance and support for needs outside of the scope of your mentoring relationship or program. 

• Understand Mentoring Needs outlines how mentorship is important for career and life success, and how mentoring needs evolve throughout a career. A handout and video reinforce this content:
  • Handout: Evolving Mentoring Needs (PDF) 
  • Video: Making the Most of Your Mentoring Relationships by Frederick Schoen, MD, PhD 

• Build a Mentoring Network outlines the roles of individuals typically found in a mentoring network and provides guidance on building a dynamic mentoring network. 

Within the Assess Mentoring Relationships section of this guide, we offer best practices and examples of assessment tools. 

Review the Case Study: Career Catalyst Mentee Self-Assessment for an example of how to create a pre-assessment survey. 

Review the Clinical Research Appraisal Inventory (CRAI) for an example of how to assess a baseline of understanding of clinical research. Read the “Create Your Own Custom Assessment” section of  Assess Mentoring Relationships for advice on how to utilize existing survey instruments and frameworks to customize a survey for your specific context.

• Cultivate Mentoring Relationships page
• Mentee-Mentor Agreement Template
• Group Mentoring Agreement Template
• Prepare for Career Development Conversations Worksheet (found on Know Yourself) 

• Download and customize the agreement templates above. 
• Fill the document in together with their mentee(s) during an early mentoring meeting.
• Sign the agreement document and save a copy so that they can both reference it in future meetings. 

• Download and customize the agreement templates above and use them to create a standard template for their program. 
• Require all pairs/groups to complete the agreement template at the beginning of the program. Consider asking pairs/groups to submit them so that they know that all groups completed the exercise. 
• (If applicable) Include these templates as an activity at a program launch event or introduce the template at the launch event and assign it for the first pair/small group meeting. 
• Remind pairs/groups to sign their agreements and save them for reference in future meetings.

Craft Your Personal Definition of Success

Our Craft Your Personal Definition of Success exercise guides learners in writing their own definition of success and reflecting on how that definition aligns with their personal goals and career trajectory. 

• Exercise: Craft Your Personal Definition of Success
• Facilitation Guide: Definition of Success 

Assess Your Strengths and Values

Our Assess Your Strengths and Values exercise uses assessments to uncover personal strengths, personality preferences and cognitive styles, personal values, and implicit biases. 

• Facilitation Guide: Assess Your Strengths and Values (PDF)

• Carve out time in the first few months with their mentee(s) to complete these two self-reflection exercises. 
• The exercises can be completed as a pair, but they may benefit from including additional voices. If mentors have multiple mentees, or if other colleagues in the department are interested, consider joining together as a small group to complete the exercises. 
• The mentor can act as the facilitator and follow along with the facilitation guide. 
• Mentors should be prepared to complete the exercises alongside their mentees and actively participate in a mutual discussion.

• Review their current program schedule and aim to incorporate these two structured self-reflection exercises early in the program. 
• Assign the two self-reflection exercises to pairs/small groups to complete during their mentoring meetings. 
• Assign a timeline for completing the exercises. For example, everyone completes the Craft Your Personal Definition of Success exercise in the same month, or allow groups to choose when they do the exercises, but recommend  that they complete both exercises within a designated time frame. 
• When appropriate in the timeline, share the pre-work assignment with all participants. 
• When appropriate in the timeline, assign a facilitator for each pair/small group (or ask each group to nominate one) and share the facilitation guide with them. The facilitator could be the mentor or a mentee. 
• Remind mentors that they should complete the exercises alongside their mentees and actively participate in a mutual discussion.
• Create opportunities for pairs/small groups from across the program to share their reflections on these exercises. 

Structured Exercise: Map and Analyze Your Mentoring Network

The Developmental Network Exercise is a hands-on exercise to visualize, explore, and analyze your mentoring network. 

• Build a Mentoring Network  
• Exercise: Map Your Developmental Network 
• Facilitation Guide: Mentoring Networks Exercise 

Additional Resources: Grow Your Network and Build Skills in Scientific Communication  

During this later phase of a mentoring relationship, focus on building professional skills. Our Writing and Communication Center offers self-guided content on a number of topics that support professional development. Cultivate Mentoring Relationships breaks down how to apply these resources within mentoring meetings. 

Resources on our Writing and Communication Center can help you to build skills and learn how to:

• Craft Your Elevator Pitch and Your Brief Biography 
• Grow Your Network
• Publish Your Manuscript
• Write Using Plain Language
• Prepare for Oral Presentations
• Design Slides
• Design and Present Posters
• Prepare for Interviews
• Prepare to Write a Grant 
• View Guidance for Users

• Carve out time with their mentee(s), once their relationship is established, to intentionally complete the exercise and explore the resources listed above. 
• The Map Your Developmental Network exercise can be completed as a pair, but the exercise can be more impactful with additional voices. If mentors have multiple mentees, or if other colleagues in the department are interested, consider joining together as a small group to complete this exercise. 
• For the Map Your Developmental Network exercise, the mentor can act as the facilitator and follow along with the facilitation guide. 
• Mentors should work with their mentee(s) to learn which professional development topics they need more support in and use the resource list above to guide and supplement your discussions. 
• Mentors should be prepared to complete the exercises alongside their mentees and actively participate in a mutual discussion.
• Mentors should periodically review their initial mentoring agreements and goal-setting exercises with their mentee(s) to reassess expectations and check in on progress towards milestones. They should also offer consistent methods for mentees to voice concerns and share feedback. 

• Review their current program schedule and aim to incorporate the structured exercise and allow for time to explore the resources listed above. This exercise and resources are best to complete once a mentoring relationship has been established. 
• Plan to assign the Map Your Developmental Network exercise to pairs/small groups to complete during their mentoring meetings. 
• Encourage groups to explore all available  resources and dedicate mentoring meeting time to review and discuss them. Choose some resources that are most relevant to the program (e.g. elevator pitches or oral presentations) and assign those specific resources, or leave it up to the pairs/groups to choose their own topics.  
• Assign a timeline for completing the exercise (e.g., everyone completes the Map Your Developmental Network exercise in the same month, or allow groups to choose when they do the exercises but recommend  they complete the exercise within a certain time window) 
• When appropriate in the timeline, share the pre-work assignment with all participants. 
• When appropriate in the timeline, assign a facilitator for each pair/small group (or ask each group to nominate one) and share the facilitation guide with them. The facilitator could be the mentor or a mentee. 
• Remind mentors that they should complete the exercises alongside their mentees and actively participate in a mutual discussion.
• Consider ways for pairs/small groups from across the program to share their reflections on these exercises. 
• Recommend that all pairs/small groups periodically review their initial mentoring agreements and goal-setting exercises together to reassess expectations and check in on progress towards milestones. As a program, offer consistent methods for mentees and mentors to voice concerns and share feedback.

Review the Case Study: Career Catalyst Mentor Evaluation for an example of how to create a mentor evaluation survey. Explore “Tools for Assessing Mentoring Relationships”  in Assess Mentoring Relationships for advice on utilizing existing survey instruments and frameworks to customize a survey for your specific context.