10 Tips on Providing Feedback to Students

Mentoring / Teaching

This post is inspired by a tweet by @HaPhDsupervisor where she asked, “In your view, what is good supervisor feedback?”

The following 10 tips are based on responses to that tweet and my own experience as a supervisor (and former PhD student).

  1. Ask questions and listen. Ask the student what they want feedback on. For example, if a student sends me a paper, I ask what stage the paper is at and what they want feedback on. The overall structure or the storyline? The presentation of data in the Results section? If the feedback relates to progress in their PhD, I ask first whether they think they are on track, what they think is going well and where they are struggling.
  2. Keep the bigger picture in mind. In my opinion, part of my role as supervisor is to keep the bigger picture in mind and put things into perspective. It is easy for a student to get bogged down in details and think all is lost because that one experiment does not work (I know I felt like that many times during my PhD and I now have my mentor to remind me of that in my own career development). Remind the student how the current experiment or papers fit into their overall PhD.
  3. Suggest tailored actions for the student to implement. Ask the student what they think will help them progress. Suggest actions they can implement and provide a reasonable time frame. Ask them whether they want you to ‘check in’ or leave them for a while. Some students need fixed deadlines and regular reminders (i.e. a bit of pressure). Others feel anxious about that and would like to be left alone until the next meeting or until they seek additional input.
  4. Don’t compare students. People are different, and we all have our strengths and challenges to deal with. Assess progress, or lack thereof, by referring to the student’s milestones or goals and not by comparing them to others.
  5. Keep it balanced and be honest. Acknowledge the student’s effort, tell them where they are going well, and be honest about where they need to improve. Our job as a supervisor is to empower the student. That does not mean you have to make them feel good all the time. Supervision and feedback are about helping the student finish their PhD and develop skills for their future career. In my experience, it helps if you tell the students why you are suggesting certain actions. Use your ‘emotional radar’ when talking about areas they need to improve in. If you feel a student struggles and needs encouragement, maybe wait until the next meeting to talk about difficult issues.
  6. Remind the student they are in charge of their project, but they are not alone. Which part you emphasize depends on the student and their current state of mind. Sometimes students need to be gently reminded that their project is their responsibility and that they need to take actions. At other times, students are committed and focused and need a reminder that it’s ok to not feel on top of things all the time. Tell them that you are here to share the load.
  7. Help them to help themselves. Provide resources and refer them to external help if needed. For example, if a student struggles with writing, provide them with resources on writing skills or suggest they join a local writing group. If they struggle with time management, offer daily planners. I am a fan of the resources from I think well, but there are plenty of other resources out there.
  8. Tell them that struggling is ok. A PhD is not easy, and it is normal to feel overwhelmed, lost, frustrated or stuck. Use examples from your PhD to remind them that what they are experiencing is not unusual.
  9. Adjust your feedback as they progress. At the start of a PhD students usually need more guidance. I try to develop my students into independent researchers that ‘think for themselves’. When they are towards the end of their PhD, I less and less tell them what to do but ask them, ‘what do you think you should do next?’
  10. Be accountable. I try to provide feedback on drafts within a week, 2 weeks maximum. I don’t always succeed, but I communicate it honestly if I know I can’t do it in the usual time frame. If possible, I deliver something the student can work on.

More Resources

Microaffirmations

Triggering Shame vs. Stimulating Curiosity

Teaching Tips Roundup

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Mentoring Roundup: What to Consider When Selecting a Research Mentor

Mentoring

New trainees are often advised to find a “good mentor.” But what makes a “good mentor” and how do you determine if someone fulfills those qualities? Are the characteristics of a “good mentor” the same for each trainee? What expectations should a mentee have of their mentor and vice versa?

Whether you’re trying to select a research mentor, looking to tune up a mentee-mentor relationship, or looking for tips on how to be a successful mentor, check out these posts we’ve rounded up for guidance on the mentee-mentor relationship.

How to Choose a Lab and Mentor According to #AcademicTwitter
Aimee Edgeworth

Tips on how to choose a research mentor from those who have been there before. Hint: talk to those no longer on the research team (former trainees or rotation students who didn’t select the lab).

All About My Mentor
Cristina Espinosa-Diez, PhD

Cristina Espinosa-Diez defines what a mentor is and how you can find the right one.

The Crosswalk Model: Mentoring and Diversity
Edge for Scholars

JP Arroyo Ornelas, MD, PhD, shares his crosswalk theory on successful mentoring relationships for diverse trainees.

What You Should Expect From Mentors
Edge for Scholars

Advice from four senior investigators with long track records of mentoring on what trainees and mentor should expect form one another beyond research training.

 

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Navigating Academic Relationships

Communication / Faculty Life / Mentoring

The bedrock of any good relationship – whether academic or otherwise – is clear communication and aligning expectations. When clear communication is not established, it can lead to isolation, stalemates, and even conflict, but in all instances, it negatively impacts productivity.  When relationships appear strained or are just beginning, we must go back to the basics, which, while not easy, will set up a solid foundation.

Clear Communication

“Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.  Stop, stop avoiding the tough conversations because you think you’re being polite or kind to people – that’s not kind.”  Brené Brown, PhD

This quote helped me to frame all my work in the arena of Navigating Academic Relationships.  Think of all the times you ran into trouble from assuming intent from vague language or misled someone else because you were afraid to be direct, specific, clear in your language – or assumed somehow someone could mindread precisely what you want.  How much time would be saved if we were able to state professionally and clearly what we mean?

Aligning Expectations

It is essential to set clear expectations anytime we begin a new working relationship. Whether these relationships are between supervisor and supervisee, faculty and student/staff/postdoc, or collaborators, these expectations must be mutually set and revisited throughout the working relationship. For graduate students and faculty who work with them, there are new expectations every year as they progress and develop more skills and independence. The academic progression makes it essential to update expectations throughout.  Expectations do not just go one way – from mentor to mentee; supervisor to supervisee – the student or supervisee should be sharing their own expectations and the support they need to meet the expectations others have of them.  The CIMER group has produced an excellent “Aligning Expectations” exercise for faculty and graduate students working together to complete it – I highly recommend it as a template for these discussions.

Resources that can be helpful in these areas:

Stacey Satchell, Senior Academic Life Coach & RC Stabile, Academic Life Coach
The Graduate School @ Vanderbilt University

More Resources

Tools for Making Progress in Academic Life

Overheard at Ground Level: Fresh Brewed Mentoring

Staying Mentally Well in Academia is a Balancing Act

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Overheard at Ground Level: Fresh Brewed Mentoring

Mentoring

Vanderbilt’s Edge for Scholars hosts weekly Zoom office hours, called Ground Level, with senior mentors and leadership. Discussions range from advice for grant writing and publishing, study design, tenure/promotion, managing a lab, and more. We collected pearls from these discussions.

Hosts for Ground Level cross the basic-translational-clinical-population spectrum and, and while their science is unique, most of their insights are applicable to everyone.

Leadership

  • Be open to a leadership position – an administrative role does not have to be all paperwork and people managing drudgery – it could be an opportunity to affect huge systemic changes.
  • And, when it’s time, consider moving up and out so your spot can be available for new voices and new people – this is called crop rotation.
  • Trust your gut – in order to guard yourself against the very human tendency to get overwhelmed by anxiety, trust your hard-won strength, knowledge, and instincts.  Your inner voice is saying, “you got this.”  Listen.

Hiring and Management

  • A kanban board (sometimes known as a kaizen board) can work wonders for managing a lab. One PI uses the board to show every team members’ priorities for the week, metrics related to those priorities, and which other team members folks need help from. (This particularly helps the PI to see who they need to meet with in a given week.) The board gives the team clarity on how they fit together.
  • When interviewing a potential hire, don’t just ask what’s on their CV. Ask them to describe a problem they had to solve on a team, or ask about their role at a previous position: What did they create or contribute that they liked the most?

Publishing

  • Just because you do a pilot study, you don’t have to publish it.
  • When doing a randomized controlled trial, especially one where data will be years in the making, publish a study design paper before your outcomes paper. This also avoids the problem of a single paper on design and outcomes being too long for most journals.
  • When receiving reviews of a paper or grant, read them, put them away for 2-3 days to let your emotions settle, then go back and re-read.
  • By the time you’re on faculty, you should be the corresponding author, not your mentor.
  • When responding to reviewers, highlight discrepancies between their reviews without picking a side.
  • You’re ready to publish on a topic/problem/experiment(s) when you have 4-5 figures.

Grants

  • Take advantage of the Early Career Reviewer program and other opportunities to get on study sections before you land big grants. See how the sausage is made.
  • When collaborating with someone at another institution (or even your own, if in another lab), use the collaboration as both a training opportunity for mentees and a way to get Rigor, Reproducibility, and Transparency points in your next grant. Send folks from your lab to the other (or vice versa) to learn how to do a technique or experiment. Have the visitor repeat one of the experiments your collaboration has been responsible for, displaying that yes, the methods you wrote can be followed and results can be reproduced. Write this into your grant.
  • In grant applications, use only one figure per page.
  • In an aim, don’t just test, but measure. Your first sentence is that you will determine or measure how A influences B; you’ll quantify or assess. In the second sentence, state that you will test the working hypothesis that [insert specifics here]. This way, even if you’re wrong, you still have data from this aim.
  • Always try to pull language from NIH websites to prop up your impact (how does what you’re doing work toward their goals?).

Time Management/Efficiency

  • Keep a best practices list with your team so you don’t reinvent the wheel. For a new problem or project, you can enter your “pantry of possibilities” and gather ingredients to cook the recipe for the solution.
  • You can do everything! Just not at the same time.
  • For physician-scientists, especially those on Ks: Rather than doing clinic a half day per week, be in clinic all day twice a month. A half day of clinic often consumes the whole day anyway, so this reduces that day to twice a month rather than every week.
  • Develop a strategy to say no – it’s too easy to get wrapped up in collaborations, committees, and requests for service.  If the return on investment is slim, graciously decline.  Consider weaponizing your mentor (with their permission) by saying, “I’m sorry but I don’t have the bandwidth right now because my PI is keeping me busy!” Also, consider passing this opportunity along to another colleague who might benefit more or be a better fit.
  • Have strict control over your calendar – carve out and build strong barriers around blocks of time for mentoring, reading, writing, researching, family, etc.  Create a set list for the week.  Create a rhythm for the week and stick to it.

Networking

  • If someone senior or important asks you, in passing, how you are, saying “busy” or “tired” can be a missed opportunity to tell your story.
  • You have 7-14 seconds to tell your story.
  • Finding your passion = what do you do on your best days.
  • Introduce yourself to NIH officials at national meetings. Before the meeting, contact your PO, see if he or she will be there, and ask for fifteen minutes face to face. Or have your PO recommend other POs or PIs working in similar areas you could meet with.

Financial

  • Ask your administrative officer who is the best budgeter in your department and meet with that person to learn their wisdom.
  • Capital equipment: Purchase what your lab needs on a daily or very regular basis, but otherwise look to share equipment or use cores.
  • To gain access to expensive equipment owned by other PIs, offer to contribute to the annual service fee.
  • At the early career stage, your capital is not money. It’s the ability to give co-authorships to others with resources or skills who help you.

Negotiation

  • When negotiating your own job offer, ask for the goal you want to reach rather than specific items or salary. For example, “I want to be the go-to person for X. To do that, I think I’ll need access to devices a, b, and c. How can we make this happen? I can envision either owning these devices, sharing ownership with someone else, or being able to have time on them via a core.”

Doing Research

  • Explaining biomarkers by analogy:
    • The fuel gauge on your dashboard is a biomarker.
    • The fuel gauge + how many miles to the gallon your car gets + how many gallons of gas you have left is a prognostic biomarker.
    • The fuel gauge measurement + how many miles to the gallon your car gets + how many gallons of gas you have left + the current headwind + current traffic + other relevant variables is a predictive biomarker.

More Resources

Avoiding Barriers Between Your Work and Your Reviewer
Negotiating for Your First Academic Position
Paper-Writing Checklists To Prevent Headaches Down the Road

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Mentoring for Grief & Growth at the End of a Dissertation

Mentoring

Just yesterday one of my Ph.D. students whose dissertation is due to the committee next week asked me “Please tell me the truth. Am I okay?” I assured the student that they were indeed okay, and not just okay but that they had completed an impressive body of work, that they had amassed so many new skills, and that they were now a leading expert in the subject of their research. All of that is completely true, but honestly, I don’t think they believed me.

They were consumed by self-doubt. But the final chapter is not yet framed as powerfully as the resulting manuscript will be. But there is yet another analysis that probably should be added. But the text of the two chapters that are not yet published could certainly be further refined. They were also clearly reckoning with the realization that the large experiment we designed at the outset of their dissertation would be designed much differently and better today given what we now know.

And that’s the problem with the end of a dissertation. You will produce no other work in your career in which your understanding of what you are doing changes so profoundly while you are in the process of producing it. It is not a flaw; it is an essential outcome of the PhD that by the end of your dissertation you will fully understand how much more impressive your dissertation would be if you could start the work again knowing all that you have learned. No person in the world is better poised to see the flaws and imperfections in a dissertation than the person who became an expert while they were creating it. There is real grief in coming to the end of this enormous undertaking. You grieve for the ideal dissertation you dreamed up years ago while everyone is pushing you to just finish the less than perfect dissertation you actually produced.

I was never more unhappy than in the last few months of my dissertation. I felt like a failure as I forced myself to write up the work I now saw as immature and uninteresting. I had already learned so much from doing that work, and I did not see much value in sharing that knowledge gained with others through my publications. I did not value that knowledge gained. Instead, I regretted the knowledge I did not have earlier.

We do not do enough as mentors to prepare students for this fundamental disappointment at the end of their degree. Yet we should expect it because it is an inevitable outcome of a challenging graduate program. We do not do enough to recognize and value the expansion of the scholar’s understanding, skills, and experience that is the true measure of a successful PhD. It is okay–indeed, it is necessary–that you are dissatisfied with your dissertation. It is this dissatisfaction that is the catalyst for the next exciting question, technique, or experiment.

And it is critical to find opportunities to remind students how far they have come. Senior grad students should try to see themselves through the eyes of their junior labmates. How often are they asked for advice and assistance? They should consider how many times they have had to explain something complicated to their PI. They should give a guest lecture or talk in which they tell the story about something they did that they now realize was naive and how their understanding grew. They should go back and read their early drafts and proposals.

As mentors, we should help our students focus on their intellectual growth, and help them find pleasure in moving from a position of no knowledge towards expertise. I am trying to consistently point out the growth I see in each of my students as a counterweight to the work I also must do in critiquing and refining their research products.

More Resources

What To Know While You Do Your PhD

How to PhD: 10 Tips from Hindsight

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Designing Your Career

Faculty Life / Mentoring / Trainees

This post condenses a talk by Mark Denison, MD, at a Vanderbilt Translational Bridge meeting.

For many trainees, and occasionally even the senior faculty who mentor them, career development is a black box: You put in papers, grants, teaching, research, and other career-helping things, and out comes a postdoc, a faculty position, research independence, a deanship, or whatever you’re aiming for.  You’re not quite sure which conferences you should plan to attend, or when you want to have that paper submitted, but it’ll probably all work out somehow.  Right?

Wrong.  A bunch of random experiments do not a Nature paper make (unless you’re really lucky).  Similarly, a bunch of loosely related posters, papers, and grant proposals do not equal a career development plan.  Much as you start an experiment or grant proposal with what you want to test, you should start your career plan with where you want to end up.

Knowing your desired goal (a great fellowship? faculty position? R01?) lets you decide what you need to achieve that goal.  If most K awardees in your field have X publications when they submit their grant, you know how many papers you need to get out.  If you know you need to submit your first R01 no later than the third year of your K to avoid a gap in funding, you realize which application cycles you have to target.

Plotting all the steps on a career timeline, ideally about nine years out, makes them concrete and demonstrates exactly how much time each is going to take.  (Rather like another timeline process…)  Dr. Denison calls this “positive disillusionment,” as timelines often put into vivid relief exactly how long it takes to write a paper, dissertation, or grant.

Timelines benefit you also as a tool for mentor committee meetings.  Once mentors know your career goal and what you think will get you there, they can reel optimistic timelines back to reality or suggest specific conferences to attend or colleagues to meet to advance your career.

Finally, if you’re at that stage, timelines make a great addition to a career development award.

Example timelines:

A possible postdoctoral career timeline. Make full size.

Another potential career timeline for a postdoc. Make full size.

Download the template to make your own and share it with your mentors.

More Resources

Grant Funding Strategy: Which Grants to Apply For?

Tales of Career Development Awards

Tales of Developing a National Reputation

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Using Timelines to Diagnose Problems in Career Planning

Doing Research / Mentoring

This post builds on a presentation at the 2019 CTSA Annual Meeting of Training Program Directors.

Reviewing intended career progression is a cornerstone of mentorship. Goals for milestones such as manuscript and grant submissions typically dominate discussion. Often goals are described in documents for mentor panel meetings, individual career development plans, or alluded to in career documents like the scholar’s CV or biosketch.

In our early career faculty development programs, we’ve become convinced that looking at something is better than talking (or reading) about it. We find translating intended goals into a single simple image as a timeline is a powerful tool. Preparing the timeline requires a scholar to more deeply examine feasibility of plans by requiring they take into account timing of built in delays such as those:

  • Between grant submission, review, resubmission, review, and funding.
  • Typical in the review-to-publication cycle for journals to which they intend to submit.
  • Allowing for submissions of manuscripts to multiple journals.
  • Caused by small grants and awards pulling attention away from building their core scientific mission and research team if not perfectly aligned.

Our program’s use of timelines began with a basic retrospective examination of outcomes. We saw more timelines like the one below than we hoped. [Note R01 is an oversimplified label in our examples for all large awards including VA Merit, U01, CDC contracts, and other funding at a value of ≥$250K direct for a minimum of three years.]

The majority of our scholars are tenure track when they start their career development award. Most awards were five years long (culminating at the yellow line). At our institution, fairly firm decisions are made about remaining tenure track or changing tracks at the seven-year mark (dark orange warning line).

This is an uncomfortable, risky and potentially costly small lag in funding:

  • The scholar has forfeited the benefits of being allowed up to two years of overlap of their K and first large-scale grant.
  • They have fallen off the K-cliff from 75%+ protected time to PI-level effort for a single grant which creates additional funding needs.
  • At the end of the K the individual does not know the score on their resubmission.
  • They need bridge funding at the end of the K to continue their work.
  • Delays in federal start dates, now common, can compound the pressure.
  • Bridge funding at the end of a K, when work is underway and related staff may have been hired, is costlier than “pre-bridging” by allowing time for pilot work to progress further before starting a K award.
  • Time to launch a new round of submissions is insufficient within the pre-tenure review window.
  • The faculty member’s posture with the department can change from achiever to “needs watching.”
  • If they were tenure track before receiving the K award, they are in a more profound bind.

To best advise mentees and mentors about ideal pace, we then asked what pace was implemented by K and other career development awardees who successfully transitioned from their CDA to R01 or comparable funding. We restricted to individuals who made this transition and then compared the timelines of those who made the transition within five years – the typical period of a career-development award – and those who achieved funding as an independent investigator but did so after more than five years had elapsed.

For simplicity in this aggregate analysis, we included scientific publications related to the content areas or methods of continued research and timing of submission and funding of proposals of varied types. The image below reflects the average timing of publications and R01 submissions within the two groups:

During comparison several elements of mentoring surfaced that required myth busting. Among those who took more than five years to transition many had been told:

  • Earlier than the third year was too early to submit. (Not all mentors were aware of allowance for overlap of K and R.)
  • Explicitly that the fourth year was fine for initial submission and some had been advised to pursue R03 or R21s first, delaying their receipt of funding sufficient to support a research team.
  • They needed more or higher impact publications before submitting.

Some had attempted to submit earlier and found they:

  • Received worse internal reviews than expected and needed to delay to fix flaws.
  • Underestimated the overall complexity of the process.
  • Did not have ideal data about feasibility and proof of concept, having focused on narrow bands of pilot data.
  • Underestimated power and needed to add sites or collaborators.
  • Underestimated costs, discovered this too close to intended submission and needed to re-scope their project.

Combined, these mentor and process factors were most related to delayed success. Very few faculty attributed delays to parenting or challenges outside of work. In aggregate most felt they had been naïve about the need to start earlier.

In response, we initiated grant pacing workshops to break down all the component parts of large grants and develop timelines for completion simultaneous with recommending (or requiring for some groups) that faculty scholars complete, review, and revise a timeline a minimum of twice a year for each mentor panel.

In reviewing these intended timelines (purple line marks when prepared), we have found them key for rapid diagnosis of concerns that are more difficult to detect in formal academic documents, bulleted lists of accomplishments, or text description of goals.

As an example, the faculty member below was rightly perceived by division chief and chair as highly successful,­ producing seven meaningful publications in solid journals, presenting at multiple national meetings including plenary sessions, and receiving a prestigious professional organization scientific award for $125K a year for two years. Everyone was happy, until they thought about the implications of this timeline submitted as part of an annual report. The individual had 18 months on tenure track prior to CDA. In this picture that means Year 5 is actually Year 7 on the tenure clock and Year 7 is Year 9, at which time they face an up-or-out promotion review without knowing until the final hour if they may qualify.

Ideally this would have been prevented by discussing the timeline in Year 1 or 2. Even as late as Year 3 of the CDA, we were able to dispel the idea that the individual could spend a year focusing predominantly on the professional association award. Mentors promoted tight integration of that award with preparation for an R that moved somewhat away from the K. This allowed earlier submission of the R, with less time elapsed before resubmission and, by very good fortune and good science, earlier receipt of funding by almost a full year.

Timelines for evaluations reveal key patterns that mentors and career development leadership can identify and disrupt to be sure timelines reflect the pace at which funding is needed and the milestones implied.

We see these as themes:

  • Distracted mentors losing track of time or providing poor advice that did not emphasize necessary pace for achieving first major grant. These scholars need a real timeline!
  • Over-alignment of K aims to R when some portion has not panned out or findings have proven unenticing. They need encouragement to deploy talents in related, higher value pursuits.
  • Distracted scholars chasing small shiny objects. Among those who submit 7 to 11 smaller value awards during their CDA, none achieved prompt transition to independent funding. Lower numbers are also concerning. They need an ultimatum as time gets short to keep the main thing the main thing.
  • Idea hamsters who submit multiple proposals with a wide range of different methods and hypotheses, and/or those who prepare publications on multiple topics that do not build to an acknowledged area of mastery. Same intervention as distracted scholars.
  • Trust fund recipients who were aggressively wooed and provided robust start-up funds. They are at risk of misperceiving this as a safety net that can help support future salary needs. They often under use the funds in launching the appropriate scale of hiring and research investments. They need coaching on using their resources to accelerate the work and produce a large scale grant sooner.
  • Comfort in poverty shows up as individuals who lack confidence in or do not have a personal vision for their career. They behave as if they are earlier in their careers and fail to exercise agency in decision making. They typically don’t prepare a timeline until pressed or they project too much time will elapse and ruminate on failure. They allow mentors and others to dictate what is needed rather than determining from their own goals. They need consistent encouragement to differentiate from mentors and clarify their passion for research.
  • Time management fails among individuals who do life with their “hair on fire” and have multiple explanations for why key pieces of scientific endeavors or grant preparation derail without acknowledging the lack of sufficient lead time and lack of use for resources like expert review of aims and internal study section that are associated with higher levels of success. These individuals push back their timeline each time they draw it. They need accountability.

The rarest are:

  • Failed scientific ideas when methods cannot be replicated or results of experiments derail intended direction.
  • Mentor departures that disrupt the progress of the early career faculty member by following the mentor or needing new mentoring contacts.

The latter two are unavoidable, even with timelines, and are worthy of other forms of consideration.

The good news is the majority of scholars who start to prepare realistic timelines around the time they decide to seek a K award can march out that plan. They find it helpful and anxiety reducing. Being oriented to what one needs to do and demystifying the steps is empowering.

Download career development timeline template.

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National Mentor Month: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Mentoring

“We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.”

I thought of this quote, and my own primary mentor, when I heard that January is National Mentoring Month. Initially begun to promote youth mentoring in 2002, the month-long focus on mentoring applies to individuals at all levels and career types. For early career researchers, one of the most important things a mentor can do is help his or her trainees create a career roadmap.

Chief among the initial steps of that path is to correctly initiate a mentee-mentor relationship with an agreement upon the “rules of engagement,” often called a Mentee-Mentor Agreement or Mentee-Mentor Action Plan. These agreements are designed to help a mentee and mentor agree upon, and directly articulate, the foundations of their relationship, and lay out key components and responsibilities for each party.

We are finalizing both a Flight Tracker based and public use version of this agreement, which will exist on a REDCap-supported platform. If you would like information on utilizing this tool, please let us know by reaching out to Melissa.krasnove@vanderbilt.edu.

Recently, the Early Career Committee of the Cardiopulmonary, Critical Care, and Resuscitation Council of the American Heart Association (AHA) outlined several key features, including but not limited to mentorship, of a successful career roadmap.1 Let’s take a closer look at several key components.

The Mentee-Mentor Relationship

  • Robust mentorship is universally accepted as crucial.
  • Multiple mentors, or mentor-like individuals, are often necessary over the course of a career. At times, teams of mentors serve multifaceted roles for mentees.
  • A Mentee-Mentor “agreement” or “plan of action” supports a healthy relationship from the start by clearly outlining expectations. It describes a path to conflict resolution if needed.
  • Mentees should actively participate in the relationship, including but not limited to crafting meeting agendas, pursuing new scientific ideas, and seeking guidance across an array of domains as needed related to their career development timelines.

Characteristics for the Mentor to Foster in the Investigator

  • Resiliency and persistence.
  • Receptiveness to feedback on one’s writing and career plans.
  • A carefully crafted plan for grants and manuscripts with one’s mentor(s), and follow-through on the plan.
  • Knowledge and access to all of one’s resources (intellectual, funding, departmental, etc.).
  • Careful focus on and time reserved for writing.

Pursuit of Diverse Funding and Writing Opportunities

  • Map of 1, 3, and 5 year submission plans with Mentor(s).
  • Engagement in grant writing and manuscript resources (e.g., manuscript sprints).
  • Communication with to Program Officers when appropriate.
  • The ability to start early, seek feedback, revise often, and avoid last-minute stress.

Work-Life Balance and Related Issues

  • Division Chief and/or Center Leader(s) can be excellent advocates for you when needed, in concert with your Mentor.
  • Develop a mechanism to manage your time effectively.
  • Learn to say no, but sometimes say yes.
  • Support family and personal wellness.

This is one take on a roadmap to success. Notable to me is that while the initial component specifically addresses mentoring, most, if not all, of these components rely on strong mentorship—at least they did, and still do, for me.  For example, early in my junior faculty time, I had the opportunity to assume leadership of a clinical program directly related to a line of my translational research; however, my mentor wisely steered me to work closely with my division chief (with input as well from my department chair) to carefully determine the right timeline for this transition, which helped protect me from my own exuberance. The resulting delay in transition ultimately resulted in more success for our clinical program as well as my research and career development.

So as January begins, take a moment to think about your mentorship milieu and overall plan for career development. And if able, give a shout out to your mentor(s) this week—they are easy to see if you just look down as you stand on their shoulders.

1 Agarwal S, Spiekerkoetter E, Austin ED, de Jesus Perez V, Dezfulian C, Maron BA, Ryan JJ, Starks MA, Yu PB, Bonnet S and Perman SM. Career Development of Young Physician-Scientists in the Cardiovascular Sciences: Perspective and Advice from the Early Career Committee of the Cardiopulmonary, Critical Care, and Resuscitation Council of the American Heart Association. Circ Res. 2018;122:1330-1333.

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Not that Kind of Boss: Tales of Team Management and Mentorship

Management & Leadership / Mentoring

One of the more challenging aspects of being a principal investigator (PI) and running a research lab is people management. Labs are complex environments comprising hourly technicians, salaried research scientists, undergraduates in their first lab, graduate students in training, and postdoctoral fellows working to launch independent careers, all performing different tasks, with different expectations, and regulated by different offices (Student Affairs, Graduate Affairs, Postdoctoral Affairs, and Human Resources). Complicating the matter further, as PIs, we are also responsible for providing career guidance, career development, and scientific training (in all its forms) for our lab members, which I broadly define as mentorship. Rectifying management and mentorship is not trivial, especially for the new PI. Here is how I, a junior faculty member, am approaching management and mentorship. As always these days, n=me.

The disclaimers: I am a newer assistant professor and a management novice. My career path has been a straight shot through undergrad, grad school, and a postdoc. I therefore find myself closer in age to most postdocs rather than other PIs. I believe myself to be a reasonable manager and mentor, but I have attended enough “how to be a good mentor” talks and known enough self-proclaimed “good mentors” to know there can be a large disconnect between appearance, perception from trainees, and reality. Over the years, I have also realized that the PI behaviors I thought were “cool” as a graduate student are not necessarily reflective of good mentorship and managerial practices, and in some instances, have been predatory. These are my attempts at balancing a supportive environment with professional boundaries.

Staff and trainees are not friends: For many of us, the biggest struggle is advocating and supporting our staff and trainees without wandering into the minefield of treating lab members like friends. As humans, we like to belong and generally want people to like us or think we are fun. Being a new PI without a large number of other young faculty around can also make it oh-so-easy to go into the lab and cultivate friendships with your subordinates. Yes, subordinates. If you sign their hours, control when they graduate, serve as a sponsor on their grants, or control their career outcome in any way, they are your subordinates. Yes, this word also bothers me. I consider myself a career guide and a trainer of scientists, not a manager. But a manager I am, and making important decisions that impact the well-being of the lab (such as firing, changing projects, deciding conference attendance, etc.), are much easier when I am seen by myself and my team as a boss and not a friend.

The lab is not a family: It can also be easy to fall into the “lab as family” trap. From the PI perspective, investment in trainee development and happiness while maintaining authority can feel like parenting. Again, I am a mentor and a manager, and not a parent. My authority is granted by the institution and my staff and trainees are adults. On a lab member level, the lab as a family mentality can give rise to some strongly gendered expectations (for example, “lab mom”) and complex dynamics that are much better left out of a work environment and research program.

Set expectations: On the advice of many wise new and established PIs, I have developed a fairly exhaustive lab manual that discusses what my roles and responsibilities are, as well as the roles of staff and trainees. Spelling out what my role is helps define what my staff and trainees can expect from me, both as a manager and a mentor. I am also of the scientific generation that used the Individual Development Plans (IDPs) throughout their postdoc, and although irritating to fill out, they are very useful for tracking progress. We review these annually to evaluate performance for every single lab member. These provide actual data for progress and are not reliant on my recollection of lab members’ accomplishments, struggles, and goals.

Meet regularly: This is an obvious point. Meet with your lab members. We do a weekly lab meeting where we cover data and papers and address any lab business. This is a mandatory meeting (excluding lab members out of town), during business hours, scheduled to accommodate all schedules, and attended by all lab members. I also meet with every lab member one-on-one once per week to discuss progress, evaluate concerns, and address any mentorship and managerial issues.

Promote inclusive lab events: Lab events are non-work focused events with the goal of fun, team-building activities. I am still learning to navigate these successfully, but ideal lab events should appeal to all lab members and avoid activities that are objectionable or unpleasant. These events should also not put undue burden on your staff and trainees. If you have parents in the group, appreciate that after-hours events might not be possible or might require a child-friendly environment. These events should cater to everyone and not just the lab members who share your interests. Finally, although everyone’s financial reality is different, it is likely that you as a PI have more disposable income than your trainees. Pay for the pizza or laser tag.

Support lab events independent of yourself, the PI: It is also important for your lab members to do fun things independent of you. If that means a 4pm coffee break for the lab or trivia night, these are all great. I buy coffee and occasional cookies for the break room, and I love to see lab members sitting around and discussing science and life.

Encourage outside interests for your lab members: Although we do have lab activities, I also strongly encourage interests outside of the lab and independent of other lab members as well. It is much easier to weather the ups and downs of research if the lab is not your only interest and lab members are not your only friends. This is true at all levels, and especially for PIs.

Promote growth: One of our biggest responsibilities as managers is promoting growth in our trainees and staff. This can include broadening the skill set of your technicians, working with trainees to write fellowship applications, or facilitating new collaborations between your postdocs and neighboring labs. I know my staff and trainees all have goals beyond my lab, and it is important for me, as a mentor, to facilitate their development. The IDPs are particularly useful in tracking progress towards these goals.

Accept that mentorship and management are challenging: Effective training and mentoring, along with personnel management, are one of the most challenging aspects of being a new PI, and it is also something in which we have the least experience. You will make mistakes. I certainly have. Read the management books, talk to your mentors, and be patient developing these skills.

After running a lab for two years, these are my thoughts on management and mentorship. Obviously, it is too early to assess outcomes. Whether my staff and trainees would agree I am avoiding the friends or lab as family traps, I cannot say. But I do know I am working towards keeping a professional distance while being invested in their happiness and success. Stay tuned for more tales!

Did I miss an important point? Do you have questions or concerns about the post? Or perhaps an anecdote to contribute! Feel free to send some electrons my way in the comments, via Twitter @PipetteProtag, or through traditional electronic mail pipette.protagonist@gmail.com

More Resources

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All About My Mentor

Mentoring

For the past three years, every time I heard someone talking about their path to success – understanding success as something utopic and unachievable – they always shared a magic recipe: hard work, perseverance, resilience, don’t be afraid of failure, a little bit of luck here and there, and their MENTORS. Most of these successful people even dared to comment that both good and bad mentors had an incredible influence on their careers, letting them grow in several inexplicable ways.

What is a mentor and why is one so relevant?

We can blame Homer for this (the Greek one, I mean). In Homer’s Odyssey, Mentor was Odysseus’ best friend, who taught and instructed his son Telemachus, while Odysseus was away fighting against cool mythological creatures. But, don’t get me wrong, a mentor is not a teacher, not a coach or a counselor, not a friend, and not even an oracle. However, any of them can be your mentor. Easy, isn’t it?

A mentor is someone who helps you advance in your career, someone who gives you advice from the knowledge of a more senior position or a higher expertise in a matter. A good mentor gives you free will to take his/her advice into consideration, leading you but not imposing on you. A mentor-mentee relationship grows with dedication and trust, and it is founded in communication and in a deep knowledge of both side’s expectations.

How can you find the right mentor?

Sometimes the mentor will find you or he/she will come with the job position, sometimes not. You have to be adventurous  and proactive, seek for advice and get outside your comfort zone. Grab your map, your binnacle, your compass and get ready to sail. As Homer wrote, “When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.” Define your short-term and long-term goals, break them down into the steps and skills you need to take, ét voila, you have your mentorship wish-list. For example, if you are following an academic career and are willing to switch gears and explore other scientific fields, find a mentor in that field who can help you navigate those new and inscrutable waters.

To get the right mentor you cannot stay in a safe harbor waiting for them to find you. Get out there and explore, do your homework and take advantage of networking opportunities in your institution, conferences, or any other kind of meetups. Be aware that time is precious for mentors, but they would happily share it with you if you are clear in your expectations and show commitment. You may want to design a working plan together and set up some rules to define your relationship: frequency of your meetings, type of meetings (online, in person, email), and how to measure accountability of your progress.

Remember, before you start your next odyssey, wherever the trip takes you, ensure you have the right mentors, enjoy your sail and make it to port safe and sound.

Godspeed!

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

-Plutarch

More resources

Captain Your Own Ship

Mentees and Mentors Must-Read Book Lists

Build Mentor/Mentee Connections with MyNRMN

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