Mentoring in the Sciences

by Melitta Rorty, AWG San Francisco Bay Area Chapter

The word mentor dates back to ancient Greece and Homer's Odysseys. Mentor was the teacher of Telemachus, Odysseus' son. Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines mentor as "a close, trusted, and experienced counselor or guide." A mentor is someone who has the power to help you reach your dreams. According to Linda Marsa ("Mentoring: A Time- Honored Tradition Changes Over Time", The Scientist, 28 October 1991), mentoring is a long-standing tradition in science, and in fact one of the unwritten rules of the profession is that senior scientists have an obligation to offer a helping hand to their junior colleagues so they can take up their mantles, ensuring the continuity of the highest standards within the field. It is the best way for a promising newcomer to advance within the profession, and for the seasoned veteran to leave a legacy. To take that idea one step further, it is my belief that because women are under represented in the sciences, senior women scientists have an obligation to share their experience and knowledge with junior women scientists.

A mentor is your own personal teacher, counselor, and guide in your career. Usually it is someone in your field with more experience, who recognizes your potential and is willing to help you achieve it. Some women never have a mentor, and some have many mentors in the course of their career. However, mentoring is especially important for women, to help deal with the good ol' boy network or residual prejudice in the workplace. Women can benefit from a mentoring relationship because a mentor can provide feedback on what kind of impression a woman makes on other members of the organization or profession. This is particularly important in the sciences where women are perceived as being outside of the traditional network. Particularly in the early stages of your career, a good mentor is one of the most valuable partners you can have. A mentor can protect you from making the mistakes that he or she made, see that you get the things that he or she never had, and provide constructive criticism.

It is important to realize that your supervisor usually cannot be your mentor. Your supervisor's responsibility is to teach you your job tasks around your current goal, but a mentor assesses your future potential and helps you realize that. As a subordinate to your supervisor, you try to please your boss. Typically, you hide weaknesses, cover up or minimize mistakes, and are less likely to take risks with your boss. With your mentor, you expose your weaknesses when you ask for counsel. Mentorship is the one professional partnership that breaks most of the rules of business, because the partnership is primarily an emotional one.

A good mentor will increase your competence and performance, build your confidence, and showcase your ability and talents. A good mentor can expose the mentee to the politics of the profession, advise the mentee what professional societies are best to join, what journals are best to publish in, and identify priorities to advance in their profession. According to Susan Fowler Woodring (Mentoring: How to Foster Your Career's Most Crucial Relationships, CareerTrack Publications Audio Seminar, 1992), ten benefits of having a mentor include:

a greater pleasure in work and a greater sense of mission,
a clear career plan,
greater knowledge of the technical aspects of your business,
greater knowledge of the organizational aspects of your business,
higher visibility,
higher productivity,
higher performance ratings,
probability of reaching higher levels in the organization in a shorter amount of time,
higher pay, and
greater career satisfaction.

A great teacher provides you with certain intangibles and insights, including humility, patience, acceptance of your strengths and weaknesses, respect for other perspectives, adaptability, a sense of balance between your personal life and your career, and a more humane approach to dealing with people. The mentor/mentee relationship is one of mutual benefit - I have already described the benefits to the mentee, but the benefits to the mentor include leaving a legacy, possibly having someone to fill your shoes when you move on, and becoming conscious of the wisdom and experience you have accumulated over the years. Ideally, the mentor/mentee relationship is a mutually beneficial and symbiotic one, where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

To find or attract a mentor, you must understand what mentors look for in mentees. According to Susan Fowler Woodring, the principal characteristic is intelligence. Other characteristics mentors look for in mentees include common values, loyalty to the organization, basic political savvy, ambition, leadership qualities, potential, reputation as an up-and-comer. good interpersonal skills, and trustworthiness. A mentor does not look for similarity but looks for compatibility. "Mentor magnets" include the following: be competent (be an expert), demonstrate competence (do things in a timely and professional manner), be visible (teach classes, be an officer in a professional organization), be accessible, get a key assignment, be an eager learner, be opportunistic (have social skills, be knowledgeable), be useful (help a potential mentor meet his or her goals), take the initiative, and finally, be passionate and enthusiastic.

There are different kinds of mentors, and the kind of mentor you need depends on your goals and where you are in your career. Susan Fowler Woodring describes the five-stage mentor model. In the first stage, you are a novice mentee, and need a mentor as teacher. In the second stage, you are an apprentice mentee, and need a mentor as coach (someone who can teach and motivate). In the third stage, you are a journeyman mentee - you are skilled but need a mentor as a champion for your cause. In the fourth stage, you are a master mentee, and need a sponsor who will promote you, either within your organization or outside of your organization. Finally, in the fifth stage, you are ready to be a mentor, to give back, to contribute the benefit of your wisdom. Being a mentor requires that you possess the generosity of spirit to be willing to take the time to share your knowledge with someone else.

There are ways to evaluate prospective mentors. Most important is to determine whether he or she is someone who can assist you. Many people feel the need to nurture someone who is up-and-coming, but unfortunately, their desire for a protégé may not necessarily be proportional to their ability to assist. Some questions to ask may be: has this person accomplished what you want to accomplish? Do you respect him or her? Would you be proud to be associated with him or her? is there chemistry or a connection between the two of you? In the mentor/protégé relationship, it is important that you be selective, not only about the mentors and role models you choose, but also about the characteristics you choose to emulate. You want a mentor who is truly competent, who has influence, is supported within the organization, is respected and powerful, and has the ability to impart knowledge. Do not buy everything from anybody, and do not become a groupie of someone you admire. You are the one who is responsible for your actions, and accountable for their consequences. Therefore, do not trust everything your mentor says, but balance the advice and counsel with your own judgment as well.

There are some potential pitfalls in mentorship. The "toxic mentor" is someone who portrays himself or herself as a role model, takes you under his or her wing, but in fact is a negative influence or is harmful to your career. This person could be technically incompetent or not respected within the organization or field. Because being a mentor provides ego gratification, a toxic person is particularly drawn to that role. "Toxic mentors" most frequently prey on new employees, who are in vulnerable situations precisely because of their newness. If someone seems too eager to be your mentor when you are in a new situation, use healthy skepticism. Another pitfall that is unique to women is that if a woman has a male mentor, in many cases people will assume the woman is having an affair with her mentor. The best course of action in such a situation is to ignore the gossip.

To start and maintain the mentor relationship, you should contact the mentor by telephone, letter, or face- to-face. Be persistent and persuasive. Once you have established a relationship, learn by observation, ask questions, be open to criticism, and seek counsel. Nurture the relationship and have realistic expectations of the relationship. From time to time, evaluate the relationship to see if it is still valuable. At some point it may be necessary for a mentor/protégé relationship to end. There can be many reasons for the end: it may be that you have learned all you can from your mentor, or you pass up your mentor.

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