Research Mentor Training Core Competencies

Good communication is a key element of any relationship, and a mentoring relationship is no exception. As research mentors, it is not enough to say that we know good communication when we see it. Rather, it is critical that mentors reflect upon and identify characteristics of effective communication and take time to practice communication skills.

Learning Objectives
Mentors will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Provide constructive feedback
2. Communicate effectively across diverse dimensions including various backgrounds, disciplines, generations, ethnicities, positions of power, etc.
3. Identify different communication styles
4. Engage in active listening
5. Use multiple strategies for improving communication (in person, at a distance, across multiple mentors, and within proper personal boundaries)

One critical element of an effective mentor-mentee relationship is a shared understanding of what each person expects from the relationship. Problems between mentors and mentees often arise from misunderstandings about expectations. Importantly, expectations change over time so frequent reflection and clear communication is needed to maintain a collaborative relationship.

Learning Objectives
Mentors will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Effectively establish mutual expectations for the mentoring relationship
2. Clearly communicate expectations for the mentoring relationship
3. Align mentee and mentor expectations
4. Consider how personal and professional differences may impact expectations, including differences across disciplines when working in multidisciplinary teams

Gauging someone’s knowledge about science and research is not easy, yet critical in a productive mentoring relationship. Developing strategies to assess understanding, especially of core research concepts, is an important part of becoming an effective mentor. Moreover, it is important for mentors to be able to identify the causes for a lack of understanding and strategies to address such misunderstandings.

Learning Objectives
Mentors will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Assess their mentees’ understanding of core concepts and processes
2. Identify various reasons for a lack of understanding, including expert/novice differences
3. Use diverse strategies to enhance mentee understanding across diverse disciplinary perspectives

Diversity, along a range of dimensions, offers both opportunities and challenges to any relationship. Learning to identify, reflect upon, learn from, and engage with diverse perspectives is critical to forming and maintaining both an effective mentoring relationship as well as a vibrant learning environment. In this session, mentors will think about how to foster an inclusive environment where everyone can do their best learning and create the highest quality of research, both because of and in spite of their diverse perspectives.

Learning Objectives
Mentors will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Improve and expand understanding of equity and inclusion, and how diversity influences mentor-mentee interactions
2. Recognize the potential impact that conscious and unconscious assumptions, preconceptions, biases, and prejudices bring to the mentor-mentee relationship and reflect on how to manage them
3. Identify concrete strategies for learning about, recognizing, and addressing issues of equity and inclusion, in order to engage in conversations about diversity with mentees and foster a sense of belonging

An important goal in any mentoring relationship is helping the mentee become independent; yet defining what an independent mentee knows and can do is often not articulated by the mentor or the mentee. Defining what independence looks like across career paths and stages, and developing skills to foster independence is important to becoming an effective mentor. Defining independence becomes increasingly complex in the context of collaborative research.

Learning Objectives
Mentors will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Define independence, its core elements, and how those elements change over the course of a mentoring relationship
2. Employ various strategies to build mentee confidence, establish trust, and foster independence
3. Identify the benefits and challenges of fostering independence, including the sometimes conflicting goals of fostering independence and achieving grant-funded research objectives

The ultimate goal of most mentoring situations is to enable the mentee to identify and achieve some academic and professional outcomes after the training period. Non-research professional development activities are sometimes seen as secondary to the core business of doing research, but are often critically important to identifying and successfully meeting the mentee’s long-term career objectives, as well as to the research itself.

Learning Objectives
Mentors will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Identify the roles mentors play in the overall professional development of their mentees
2. Develop a strategy for guiding professional development using a written format
3. Initiate and sustain periodic conversations with mentees on professional goals and career development objectives and strategies
4. Engage in open dialogue on balancing the competing demands, needs, and interests of mentors and mentees e.g., research productivity, grant funding, creativity and independence, career preference decisions, non-research activities, personal development, work-family balance.