Becoming a mentor
Becoming a mentor involves deciding what to offer, making time for the relationship and developing the skills to support another person's growth. It requires attention to the individual rather than assuming that one person's experience supplies every answer.
Motivation and capacity
Prospective mentors should clarify their goals, available time, expectations of the mentee and definition of a successful relationship. Goals may include passing skills to junior colleagues or supporting professionals from minority groups. Relationships can develop through conference networking or professional societies' structured programmes, which periodically recruit mentors.
Mentoring can offer a way to help others develop without pursuing people management. In one company programme in 2020, a medical writer wanted to repay earlier mentoring and develop her ability to listen, recognise people's potential and inspire them. Deliberately practising different mentor roles can make their use more conscious and transferable beyond a formal programme.
A mentor need not know every answer or have followed the mentee's path. Sharing experience openly, including difficulties, and understanding the mentee's situation can help the mentee find their own answers. A mentor may undervalue an imperfect career journey that others still find useful, because the mentor remembers near-failures while others see outcomes.
Paid and unpaid mentoring are both possible: one freelance writer in 2018 mentored serious candidates as a professional courtesy and also offered a paid service, including to experienced writers entering pharmaceutical and biotechnology work. The writer described modest earnings from paid mentoring. An editor's experience was that mentoring need not consume excessive billable time when clear boundaries allow questions to wait during deadlines. A busy writer unable to accept everyone can still help through explanations of the field, reading, links and other resources.
Mentor competencies
A mentor should be a confident professional with interpersonal, organisational and communication skills, enough time to commit, and the ability to advise, guide, support, direct, challenge, encourage and motivate through reflective learning. The role can extend beyond writing competencies to emotional support, career guidance and advocacy through public recognition of the mentee's achievements. Ten suggested competencies describe the role.
- Interest in developing others: an altruistic interest in helping others recognise and reach their potential.
- Managing emotions: emotional intelligence and self-awareness to recognise and manage personal behaviour in the relationship.
- Behavioural awareness: observation and reflection on individuals' behaviour and interactions with groups.
- Listening and congruence: attention to what the mentee hears and understands, including non-verbal signals; adaptation of tone, voice, volume, pace and language; and genuine ownership of feelings and opinions.
- Communication: questions that help the mentee find possible answers, and summaries that clarify key thoughts.
- Feedback: honesty expressed in a form the mentee can understand, process and apply.
- Challenge and confrontation: appropriate challenges to restrictions or avoidance that block learning, helping the mentee reframe the situation.
- Proportion and good humour: comfort with oneself and one's organisational role, using humour to build relationships, ease tension and open other perspectives.
- Goal clarity: recognising developmental strengths and limitations and helping set clear, achievable goals.
- Business or professional savvy: critical reflection on experience to develop shareable judgement, guide through difficult situations, warn of pitfalls and protect against harsh interactions.
Mentors are typically more experienced than mentees, but can come from a different organisation or industry. An outside perspective can reduce bias and make it easier for a mentee to discuss concerns. Confidence can encourage the mentee and model self-assurance, while reliability means keeping regular meetings and completing agreed actions promptly.
Deep listening identifies the actual need: after negative client feedback, for example, the mentor should explore its reasons, root causes and possible solutions for a better draft and restored client confidence in the writer. Advice based only on the mentor's own experience may not fit, so mentors should guide mentees towards their own paths. When mentor and mentee share an organisation, the mentor should know its departmental expertise, information sources, applications and relevant policies. Mentors should also encourage contact with people better placed to answer particular questions.
Learning to mentor individuals
Mentees' needs and circumstances differ, so repeating the same account for everyone can miss what each person needs. The mentor's human responsibilities include being a consultant, counsellor and cheerleader, as well as sharing knowledge. Mentoring can be learned rather than treated as an innate gift, particularly when the role is added to existing work. Actions can convey reluctance or inconvenience even when spoken advice is helpful, and advice is often framed negatively as things not to do.
Mentor training can provide practical guidance on learner personalities and difficult situations. In 2021, the EMWA workshop The Art of Mentoring had run for three years, using examples from business to help new and experienced mentors develop their practice and self-understanding.
The commitment of formal tutoring
Formal academic tutoring can demand substantial time alongside a main job. A bioinformatics master's tutor who began in October 2020 had more than 110 students in his first term, with demand varying between enrolment and teaching periods. He relied on systematic work, suitable tools and prioritising important cases, but several urgent cases on one day could still overwhelm him; tutoring required evenings, nights and weekends.
That post required active work in the field, substantial experience and a PhD, though not necessarily in the same research area. Selection included brief introductory mentor training, which the tutor found useful but insufficiently specific in some respects. He regarded the role as both work and an opportunity to gain teaching experience.