The Science of Mentorship

Bethany Brookshire (00:10):
Trust. It can be a sensitive topic, especially when it comes to mentoring relationships. In my conversations with students, I asked them, "Were you able to fully trust your mentors?" I got mixed responses. What I learned is that trust is necessary for a positive mentoring experience, but sometimes trust is never fully established. So I had to find out, why is establishing trust so important for effective mentoring? This is The Science of Mentorship, a podcast from the National Academy's of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that explores the mentoring skills that can and should be learned to unleash everyone's potential in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine. I'm your host, Bethany Brookshire.
For Anthony Keyes, who we heard from in a previous episode, trust was something his mentor had to earn. Anthony found one of his mentors while part of the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation program, or LSAMP. As part of the program, historically underrepresented and excluded students from the United States participate in research in France. Anthony got a lot of questions about why this program was in place from his French colleagues. Questions that could have been a lot to handle on his own, but he found that his mentor was there to support him through this experience.
Anthony Keyes (01:33):
So Dr. Olivier Sandra, when I joined his group, this is me as a black student, a part of the LSAMP program coming to France. And a lot of the students I talked to there had no idea on why is this program for black students or minorities? It seemed strange. It was a very foreign concept in France at least that America was sending mostly minority students abroad to get training. And Olivier was always there and he was always helping answer those questions. So normally I'm used to just jumping in and answering those questions and telling people about the history and why this exists and why we find it important to create a more diverse group of either students or even professors in America. And Olivier understood that. He had been a part of this program for so long.
Bethany Brookshire (02:25):
Anthony then realized that this was someone he could get to know beyond the lab and maybe even come to trust.
Anthony Keyes (02:31):
He's worked with multiple students. And with me, I just felt like this is someone who was a white man who felt comfortable saying, "I don't know how it feels for you to be a student right now, but I know that I can help you. And I'm going to be there and I'm going to help make sure that you can achieve things that maybe you yourself didn't even think of." And I think I really became more vulnerable with him because when you want to be like that person, that's really where that idea of mentor, a healthy mentor, mentee relationship comes from. And I think that's kind of when I knew I could be completely vulnerable with him because I wanted to be like him when I grew up. I wanted to be that kind of mentor who could look at someone who they didn't have the same background as and really be all in, fully listening and just anticipating what the student might need or giving them a chance to grow.
From the moment I stepped off the plane, he always was someone I could contact in case I needed anything, so he definitely saw me as a full person. And when I told him stories, I remember he was shocked. And I told him one of the things I loved about France is I could go running at night and I could wear a hoodie and I felt comfortable and safe. And he was like, "Okay, but what do you mean?" And I told him kind of I would not do that in America. And kind of just that experience that I had there. And I mean, he was engaged and he wasn't just like, "Oh, well I don't care," or anything. That's a story that when I talk to him today, he still tells me, he'll tell other students that when they come to France. He's like, "Oh, well I had a student, they felt comfortable here."
And he'll understand the level of policing that's different in American and France now. And that's a conversation that didn't need to happen and probably wouldn't happen unless I felt comfortable just sharing exactly how I felt when he asked me, "What's different about France?" I could have just said, "Oh the food, it's so nice." But having those real conversations with a mentor, I think is only when they see you as an entire person and not just as a student or whatever the role might require of them.
Bethany Brookshire (04:41):
After Anthony told me this, it became clear to me that trust doesn't just allow a student to be vulnerable about one particular issue. It can also allow the mentor and mentee to view the mentoring relationship with a more holistic approach, where they see each other fully as people and not just as researchers.
Some students can quickly trust their mentors, others are a little hesitant to be vulnerable with them. And unfortunately for other students, there are barriers that show them that maybe they can't trust their mentor after all. For many students, the barrier that gets in the way of trust is a misuse of the power dynamics in the relationship, where faculty members hold power over students in a way that isn't beneficial. When this happens, many students feel like they have to hold back from trusting the person in power. Dr. Jeremy Waisome experienced this in one of her early mentoring relationships.
Dr. Jeremy Waisome (05:38):
I think that was part of the friction that developed in our relationship. He wanted me to look at him as the source of all knowledge, right? Like I'm the advisor, I hold all of the power, I'm the person in charge. Everything needs to go through me. And I think that that is fundamentally wrong. Like I'm the holder of all knowledge, I think that's something that we need to deconstruct and just completely get rid of in academia as a whole, right? Your students come in with knowledge, we aren't empty vessels to be filled. And so that construct of this deficit model to mentoring is wrong. And for me, I could feel that energy coming from my advisor, that I know everything, you know nothing. And if you don't come to me, you still know nothing.
Bethany Brookshire (06:39):
I also spoke with Isaiah Sypher, a graduate student in clinical psychology. Like Dr. Waisome, Isaiah had also seen faculty members use their power in negative ways and he never understood why.
Isaiah Sypher (06:51):
You come into these institutions and there can be this very internalized sense of hierarchy. It can feel very paternalistic in some ways. And you feel like, oh, I have to do this for this person. I came to the University of Michigan graduate school with this idea. I'm like, y'all, I'm an adult, right? I'm a full on adult. And I have parents, I have people who raise me, this is not what this is. This is of course it's really important to do a good job and to maintain this relationship.
Bethany Brookshire (07:39):
Even if a faculty member has good intentions in acting like a powerful paternal being to their students and postdocs, Isaiah wants them to recognize that students also hold power.
Isaiah Sypher (07:50):
What I want them to know is that we as graduate students do have a lot of power because attrition looks really bad. And once they have you, they have to kind of put up with you for a little bit, because they're investing a lot of time and a lot of resources into you. And so I always saw the relationship as this is someone who I respect, make no mistake about it. And this is someone who I can learn from, and yes, this is someone who has institutional power, but I'm also powerful, right? I also have my own knowledge and my own viewpoints. So yeah, I kind of rejected that sort of internalized sense of hierarchy.
Bethany Brookshire (08:45):
In season one, we talked with Dr. Kate Clancy. Dr. Clancy made the point that all faculty hold power, and that power must be acknowledged, even if it's uncomfortable. Mentors can't pretend as though their power doesn't exist, but power itself isn't always a negative thing. Mentors can acknowledge their power and use it to benefit the mentee. Dr. Andrew Sabelhaus from our previous episodes saw what happens when a mentor uses their powers for good.
Dr. Andrew Sabelhaus (09:11):
Well, I should say in my experience on both sides of the power structure of the mentor mentee relationship, I have learned a lot about responsibility, and mostly the responsibility of someone who has more knowledge and more power to be looking out for the person who does not. And I say that partially through a lot of really good opportunities that I had, where someone would come and look out for me and say, "Hey, you really need to do this." Or maybe stand up for me in some sort of maybe formal kind of way, everything from a mentor saying, "We're going to pay you this summer," right? So that I could go and afford to continue to live in my apartment, for example. Or something along the lines of my advisor, for example, really brainstorming with me when I failed my qualifying exam the first time and coming up with a solution together to make sure that I could go and graduate and stay in my PhD program.
Bethany Brookshire (10:09):
Dr. Sabelhaus's mentors didn't use their power as a tool to manipulate him, rather they used their power to push him further in his career, in the direction he wanted to be pushed in. If an institution has a deeply embedded hierarchy with powerful faculty on top and students at the bottom, it's difficult for students to receive mentoring that is mutually beneficial and co-collaborative. If the culture at an institution encourages faculty to value their power over their mentoring relationships, students may want to find others who approach mentoring relationships more holistically, even if they're outside their home institution. Anthony Keyes saw another potential solution to this problem in France, where the institution's culture encouraged the power to be spread out.
Anthony Keyes (10:51):
So in France, a lot of teams are run with multiple professors running the team basically. So not one student just has one advisor, normally they might have two major advisors and maybe even a tertiary one. So I think in those environments, it's more likely that you can talk to another mentor because you have so many available to you. So a lot of times, if you have a problem with one person, you might be saying, "They're asking me to do these ungodly hours to collect experimental data, but you know I'm also at home working on this side of the project. So can you talk to them or really let them know this isn't really feasible?"
I guess in America, normally you just have one PI. So when power is concentrated like that, it allows for more immediate action, which can be positive and negative. If a professor just sees themself as the boss, they have to be a positive boss if they want to see positive change. So if they say things to students or make promises, they just need to follow through with that. And whenever professors might go back on their word, they have to anticipate that there's going to be conflict. And of course, all conflict, even if it's not a positive interaction, you can still grow from it and understand where both people are coming from. Maybe the PI lost funding and you didn't know about that and then you had to go on TA.
So having those conversations beforehand really can help prevent that. And maybe the professor forgot to tell you, maybe now you're on TA and you're like, "What? I thought I was going to be on RA. What happened?" And then sometimes it could be misunderstandings. So I think as long as professors have open, clear communication, if you're constantly communicating your intentions, I think that's where mentoring seems to be the best, even if you have to encounter those difficult situations.
Bethany Brookshire (12:44):
Students and postdocs often notice if their mentor has hidden or self-serving intentions. Mentors should be honest and transparent about what their intentions are and why. When they do this, mentees can begin to trust them a bit more. For many students, the senior scientists who would become their mentors didn't earn their trust. Sometimes situations came up where the student needed to be vulnerable about an issue. They had to bring it to their mentor and hope that they were trustworthy enough to support them through it. This was the case for Nicole Benely, the PhD student in forestry we heard from in our last episode. At first, Nicole's relationship with her mentor focused more on practical steps to advance her career.
Nicole Benely (13:32):
What my advisor did too was we would meet frequently, so even if it was for 15 minutes a week, we met weekly or biweekly, and that was very helpful. So I would just kind of update her of like, "Oh, this person contacted me to do this." Or, "Hey, I'm thinking about this conference and it's totally not related to my research, but I really want to go." So she understood all these opportunities, but she was also hesitant to where she'd be like, "Okay, well how long are you going to be?" Or like, "I don't know about this person." Or, "You should maybe look into it a little bit more."
Bethany Brookshire (14:06):
Then something happened and Nicole realized she needed to address it, but she didn't know how her mentor would respond or if she could even trust her.
Nicole Benely (14:14):
And then I don't remember really having a lot of one-to-one conversations except this one time where I think I was in that phase of between being invisible to being recognized and then trying to balance both. So I asked her, I was like, "Can we sit down and talk for a little bit?" And we went to a separate room and we had a conversation to where I was like, "I'm really struggling," basically related to culture shock. And I was like, "I feel like when I go out to these communities to sample at our farmer sites, people are always looking at me and I feel uncomfortable and I don't feel safe."
She did just help me kind of walk through it. And I don't think anybody is really prepared to have those conversations just right on the spot, but having her aware of how I was feeling I think was very helpful for our relationship. So I think after that point, she was a little bit more attentative to what I was getting involved with or where we were going.
Bethany Brookshire (15:16):
Nicole's mentor couldn't fix the situation, but she could still provide something really valuable.
Nicole Benely (15:23):
I don't even know what the right things she could have said that could have made me feel better. But I think it was she made it a safe space for me to not be vulnerable, but to be able or comfortable to turn to her to have these conversations. And it wasn't like, "Oh, you're just overreacting," and then left it as that. It was I think she sincerely did understand what I was going through and then that helped our future work, I guess, or she was maybe just more aware of it too. But I think it is just a learning curve for everybody.
Bethany Brookshire (16:06):
A mentor can earn their mentees' trust simply by creating a safe space for them. Even if the conversations haven't gone beyond academics, a safe space can allow the mentee to feel that if they needed to be vulnerable, they could do so with their mentor without repercussions. In our previous episodes, I talked with Dr. Michael Green. Dr. Green's mentors were especially intentional about creating safe spaces for their mentees.
Dr. Michael Green (16:31):
During my PhD experience, I worked with Dr. Gilda Barabino. She too, just like Dr. Browner are both black women and there's this common thing that black women have been known to almost carry in the black community. And I kind of see that as something that has been recapitulated in my career, where sometimes they are the ones who are a little more nurturing and can help talk to you at a personal level.
Bethany Brookshire (17:07):
This actually surprised Dr. Green. He didn't realize mentoring could take on such a holistic approach.
Dr. Michael Green (17:13):
I expected mentoring relationships to be a monkey see, monkey do type of environment where I do this, and now you do this. And what I actually got was, "I'm going to show you once. I'm going to watch you do it, and then you're going to do it on your own. And then I'm going to have you run with it." I was given the freedom once I mastered the skill, be it just pipetting or cell culturing, I was given the ability to think on my own and create projects and gain independence, which gave me the confidence to be a scientist.
One thing I commonly see, especially with minorities, is imposter syndrome. And I don't know if it's because my mentors have always looked like me for the most part that my imposter syndrome I feel like is almost nonexistent, because I was raised in an environment where I knew I could succeed. Dr. Barabino told me once that her style, she tailors her mentoring towards the student. So there are other people in the lab who would not get the same type of pushes that I would get. And I think that's the one thing that she had actually told me before, is that you need to tailor your mentoring to the person, to the individual.
Bethany Brookshire (18:39):
When Dr. Green told me how his mentors tailored their mentoring to the individual, I realized that this was another way trust could be established. When mentors tailor their relationship to the student, it shows that they listen and work to understand their mentees' needs, rather than assuming that all students have the same needs and desires. As Dr. Barabino tailored her mentoring skills for Dr. Green, a moment came where Dr. Green really knew he could trust her.
Dr. Michael Green (19:04):
So the pivotal moment in our relationship as mentor mentee was when she took us out to eat again, but this time she made the announcement that she was moving from Georgia Tech to City College of New York, which I feel like for a lot of grad students, your lab moving is one of your biggest fears. And the funny thing is she made the announcement and I think maybe later that evening, I sent her an email and told her, "I'm coming. When are we moving?" And that was a big step for us because I was the first person in our lab to say it. And she was very happy to know that I was coming along. I knew I couldn't leave her and she's the woman who's going to help me get to where I need to be and where I want to be.
Bethany Brookshire (19:55):
For some mentees, moments like this happen, where the mentee and mentor have established a trusting relationship. And because of this, the mentee is then empowered to take the next steps for their career or personal life. For a lot of mentors, this is what makes it worth it.
Isaiah Sypher (20:10):
That's why people mentor, right? Because they really love seeing people that they have worked with grow and thrive and do well. And I want to give them an opportunity to share in that, because when you open yourself up to that, you get back more than what you put in, right? Just sending that email and then just letting someone know, it could really make their day.
Bethany Brookshire (20:41):
Mentors must be willing to acknowledge that they do hold power over their mentees, and they must work to use that power for good. When they make their intentions clear to their mentees, the mentee can better recognize what they can trust their mentor with. But not every mentoring relationship is able to establish trust. Like what we heard earlier from Dr. Waisome, sometimes trust can never be built because barriers are in the way.
In our next episode, we're going to hear from students about what happens when a mentoring relationship goes sour and even becomes damaging. Because unfortunately, this is something many students experience. Until then, you can learn more about the science of effective mentoring in STEM at nas.edu/mentoring. If you're enjoying The Science of Mentorship, please tell your friends, colleagues, students, teachers, and of course your mentors and mentees about our podcast, and help others discover it by giving us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Thanks for listening.

SOM-Mentee Mentor-Final Transcript

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