These slides and materials were used for providing a workshop for CalTech's postdoctoral association. The workshop provided training as the postdocs began a formal mentoring experience for undergrad summer research students.
Entering Mentoring Part 1 Communication at CalTech
1. Steve Lee, PhD
Graduate Diversity Officer
for the STEM Disciplines
University of California, Davis
Training the next
generation
#1: Communicating
effectively
Caltech Postdoctoral
Association
May 30, 2014
Entering Mentoring:
2. Core Principles of
Mentoring Relationships
2
The BIG Picture:
Communication
Aligning expectations
Assessing
understanding
Addressing diversity
Fostering
independence
Promoting professional
development
Ethics
3. Our workshops will address:
Communicating Effectively: Assessing
and applying your communication strengths
Design a Project for your Mentee:
Aligning goals and expectations
Addressing Diversity
Fostering Independence
3
Resources from the University of Wisconsin’s
Entering Mentoring
Parts 1-2
Today
Part 3
Part 4
4. Group Discussion
Introduce yourselves to each other, then discuss:
1. When you began research, what was a
particular challenge that you faced?
2. How did a particular mentor (broadly
defined) help you as you began research?
4
5. Challenges in starting research
not getting feedback in timely
not getting positive feedback
left alone
lack of role model
imposter syndrome
lack of big picture
lack of resources, funding, equipment,
exploitation
unknown expectations
5
Group responses:
6. Guidance from mentors
side mentor
positive encouragement
great expert; helped to move beyond their expertise
treated whole person; remembering personal life
asked about family regularly; caring for family
fatherly chats; not being afraid of failures
hands on; learned by example
enouraged networking; introducing colleagues
cared about next steps
helped priorities
realized they’re introverts
free networking opportunities
listening to progress
6
Group responses:
7. Why do we have trouble
communicating effectively?
Communication can be challenging when: (Group responses)
providing feedback or advice
addressing cross-disciplinary topics
resolving conflicts
when mentor is busy
cultural differences; language barriers
“noise”; lack of eye contact
difficulties from email
preoccupied with supervisor’s impressions
assumptions
approachability; cold or aloof
we bring your own experiences and interpretations and projections
difficulty assessing mood
expectations on different levels or unclear expectations
lack of feedback from mentee
7
9. A key difficulty is realizing our own
strengths and weaknesses
Much research indicates that we don’t assess
ourselves accurately
Kruger and Dunning (1999): Unskilled and
Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing
One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-
Assessments
Gallup survey: 97% said their leadership skills
are at or above average(!)
9
10. A key communication skill is to
develop self-awareness
Critical to develop metacognitive skills
Self-assessments can significantly improve
self-awareness
Myers-Briggs type indicators
StrengthsFinder
myIDP
Seven success stories
Forty-year vision
journaling
10
11. Take the Myers-Briggs test
Online free version:
www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
Android or iPhone apps
11
Spend ~10-15 minutes
Obtain your 4-letter result and scale
Refer to MB tables in handout
We’ll discuss your results
12. Four dichotomies of the MBTI
12
How do you prefer:
to relate to people?
to gather information?
to make decisions?
to relate to the outside
world?
Extroverts or E-types
Introverts or I-types
Sensors or S-types
Intuitors or N-types
Thinkers or T-types
Feelers or F-types
Judgers or J-types
Perceivers or P-types
13. Common Misconceptions of MBTI
“I can’t function as my opposite type”
preference ≠ ability
“If I know someone’s types, I can predict (or
manipulate) their behavior.”
knowing their MB types only gives a framework
to understand them
“I need to find people with the same types to
be productive”
complementary strengths can help your
weaknesses and avoid blind spots
13
14. Myers-Briggs types - Discussion
14
Do the MB results seem to accurately
describe yourself?
Let’s revisit the case studies
Apply your understanding of the Myers-
Briggs types to these case studies
15. Take-Home Message
Assess yourself
and your mentee
accurately
Adopt a learning stance to
understand yourself and your
mentee
Discuss with your mentee
how to strategically apply
your assessments to move
towards a mutually beneficial
relationship.
15
Apply your
assessments
strategically
See Summary Sheet for more.
17. 1
Entering Mentoring:
Training the next generation
#1: Communicating Effectively
Steve Lee, PhD
Graduate Diversity Officer for the STEM Disciplines
UC Davis
stnlee@ucdavis.edu
Caltech Postdoctoral Association
May 30, 2014
Core Principles in Mentoring Relationships
1. Maintaining Effective Communication: Good communication is a key element of any relationship and
a mentoring relationship is no exception. It is critical that mentors and mentees seek to understand
their own and the other’s communication styles, and take time to practice communication skills.
2. Aligning Expectations: Another key element of effective mentor-mentee relationships is a shared
understanding of what each person expects from the relationship. Problems and disappointment
between mentors and mentees often arise from misunderstandings about expectations. Importantly,
expectations change over time, so reflection, clear communication and realignment of expectations
are needed on a regular basis.
3. Assessing Understanding: Determining what you understand as well as if someone truly understands
you is not easy, yet is critical to a productive mentor-mentee relationship. Developing strategies to
self-assess and assess others’ understanding is an important part of being an effective mentor and
mentee.
4. Addressing Equity and Inclusion: Diversity, along a range of dimensions, offers both challenges and
opportunities to any relationship. Learning to identify, reflect upon, learn from, and engage with
diverse perspectives is critical to forming and maintaining an effective mentoring relationship.
5. Fostering Independence: An important goal in any mentoring relationship is helping the mentee
become independent; yet defining what an independent mentee knows and can do is not often
articulated by either the mentor or the mentee. Identifying milestones toward independence and
setting goals are key strategies to fostering independence in a mentoring relationship.
6. Promoting Professional Development: 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.
It is the responsibility of both the mentor and mentee to identify and articulate these goals and to
strive towards them together.
7. Ethics: Mentors and mentees must engage in and model ethical behavior, while openly discussing
issues dealing with grey areas. Moreover, it can be important to acknowledge when a mentoring
relationship includes an unequal power dynamic and any additional ethical considerations it raises.
18. 2
Group Discussion
Please think back and reflect on your time as you began conducting research, and discuss these two
questions within your groups.
1. When you began conducting research, what was a particular challenge that you faced? The
challenge could be from academic coursework, a technical skill in the lab, a working relationship,
or anything related to your first research experience.
2. As you began conducting research, how did a particular mentor help you address a difficulty?
Feel free to consider a broad range of mentors, from your research professor or PI, an informal
mentor, a peer, or anyone who helped you significantly as you began conducting research.
(These two questions do not need to deal with the same challenge, but they may.)
The purpose of this exercise is to help us remember and reflect about your first experiences in research,
and how mentors can impact (positively or negatively) our experiences. This exercise should also help
place ourselves in the shoes of a typical undergraduate student who is learning how to navigate their
summer research experience, and how a research mentor can help, or hinder, their progress.
Group Discussion: Case Studies
1. (from Entering Mentoring, p 32)
An experienced undergraduate researcher was constantly seeking input from the mentor on
minor details regarding his project. Though he had regular meetings scheduled with the mentor, he
would bombard her with several e-mails daily or seek her out anytime she was around, even if it meant
interrupting her work or a meeting that was in progress. It was often the case that he was revisiting topics
that had already been discussed. This was becoming increasingly frustrating for the mentor, since she
knew the student was capable of independent work (having demonstrated this during times she was less
available). The mentor vented her frustration to at least one other lab member and wondered what to
do.
• What might you do if you were the mentor in this situation?
• What do you think may be occurring from the undergraduate students’ perspective? What might
explain his behavior?
2. (from Entering Mentoring, p 22)
I mentored an undergraduate student who came from another university for the summer. I
explained the project to him and taught him how to make media and grow bacteria. Because my
professor and I did not think he had sufficient genetics background for a molecular project, we gave him
a microbiology project.
He was very quiet for the first ten days of the project and then he went to my adviser and
complained about the project. He said he wanted a project “like Mark’s.” Mark was a student with a
strong genetics background and his project was to clone and sequence a gene. My adviser insisted that
my mentee keep the project I had designed for him, but the student became sulky. As the summer went
on and he didn’t get any of his experiments to work, I began to wonder if he understood what we were
doing or even cared about it.
• How would you respond to this situation?
• What might you do to avoid this type of scenario?
19. 3
3. (from Entering Mentoring, p 33)
A postdoc mentor was frustrated because her student was not running successful experiments.
While the undergraduate had great enthusiasm for the project, each experiment failed because of some
sloppy error—forgetting to pH the gel buffer, forgetting to add a reagent to a reaction, or forgetting to
turn down the voltage on a gel box.
After a month of discussions, and careful attempts to teach the student habits that would
compensate for his forgetfulness, the postdoc was ready to give up. She spoke with her adviser and
asked for advice, hoping that she could fix the problem and start getting useful data from her
undergraduate. The adviser offered to work with the undergraduate mentee. When the undergraduate
walked into his office, the faculty member said, “I hear you’re a slob in the lab. You gotta clean up your
act if we’re going to get any data out of you.” Seeing the crushed and humiliated look on the
undergraduate’s face, he quickly added, “I’m a slob too—that’s why I’m in here pushing papers around
and not in the lab doing the hard stuff like you guys!”
• What might you do if you were the postdoc mentor in this situation?
• How might you provide effective feedback for the undergrad student, so that he improves?
4. (from Entering Mentoring, p 69)
“The biggest challenge I’ve encountered so far as a mentor was learning to work closely with
someone whose personality and mannerisms are very different from my own. In my first interview with
her, my student described herself as very laid-back and mentioned that she frustrates her parents with
her “everything will take care of itself” attitude. This is a stark contrast to my personality and I find myself
at times frustrated with her different work ethic.”
• Do you resonate with this type of statement? Why or why not?
• Have you encountered people with this type of perspective?
5. (from Entering Mentoring, p 57)
“I had an undergraduate student in my lab who didn’t seem very bright and I doubted that he
would make it as a scientist. I encouraged him to move on. The next time I saw him, he was receiving an
award for outstanding undergraduate research that he did in another lab. I was surprised. The next time I
encountered him was when I opened a top-notch journal and saw a paper with him as first author. I was
impressed. Next I heard, he had received his PhD and was considered to be a hot prospect on the job
market.
A couple of years later, I had a graduate student who was incredible bright and a wonderful
person, but wasn’t getting anything done. I had tried all of my mentoring tricks, and then borrowed some
methods from others. In a fit of frustration, I encouraged the student to take a break from the lab and
think about what to do next. While she was taking her break, she received an offer to complete her PhD
in another lab. She did, published a number of highly regarded papers, landed a great postdoc, and is
now a well-funded faculty member at a major research university.
These experiences have made me realize the power of the “match.” The student, the lab, and the
advisor have to be well matched, and all fit has to come together at the right time in the student’s life. I
can’t be a good advisor to all students, and where I fail, someone else may succeed. It reminds me to be
humble about mentoring, not to judge students, and never predict what they can’t do. Happily, they will
surprise you!”
• Do you resonate with this type of statement? Why or why not?
20. 4
Summary of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI)
How do you prefer to:
relate to people? Extroverts gain energy from others.
Introverts gain energy from within themselves.
gather information? Sensors gather info from their physical senses.
Intuitors gather info from abstract ideas.
make decisions? Thinkers decide based upon logic.
Feelers decide based upon people and values.
relate to the outside world? Judgers see structure.
Perceivers see possibilities.
WHAT THE TYPES CAN OFFER EACH OTHER
Extraverts
• Provide the outwardly directed energy needed
to move into action
• Offer responsiveness to what is going on in the
environment
• Have a natural inclination to converse and to
network
Introverts
• Provide the inwardly directed energy needed
for focused reflection
• Offer stability from attending to enduring ideas
• Have a natural tendency to think and work
alone
Sensing Types
• Have a mastery of the facts and attention to
details
• Bring a knowledge of what materials and
resources are available
• Appreciate knowing and doing what works
Intuitive Types
• Know by way of insight and attention to
meanings
• Bring a grasp of what is possible and what the
trends are
• Appreciate doing what hasn’t been tried
before
Thinking Types
• Take a hard look at the pros and cons of
situations, even when they have a personal
stake
• Able to analyze and solve problems with logic
and reason
• Want to discover the “truth” and they naturally
notice logical inconsistencies
Feeling Types
• Know what is important to and for people, and
adhere to that in the face of opposition
• Have an ability to build relationships and to be
persuasive
• Want to uncover the greatest “good” in a
situation and they notice when people may be
harmed
Judging Types
• Can organize, plan, and follow through on
projects
• Push to get things settled and decided
• Appreciate well-oiled efficiency at work
Perceiving Types
• Can respond quickly and flexibly to the needs
of the moment; spontaneous
• Strive to keep things open so new information
may be gathered
• Appreciate the need for spontaneity and
exploration at work
21. 5
Well-developed type skills
and positive perceptions
Underdeveloped type skills
and negative perceptions
Extraversion
Active approach
Bring breadth
Introversion
Reflective approach
Bring depth
Extraversion
Hyperactive
Superficial
Introversion
Withdrawn & secretive
Overly serious
Sensing
Practical
Brings data
Intuition
Imaginative
Brings perspective
Sensing
Slow & dull
Narrow focus
Intuition
Careless
Impractical & dreamy
Thinking
Analyze situations
Bring consistency
Feeling
Affiliate people
Bring harmony
Thinking
Cold & uncaring
Overly competitive
Feeling
Easily hurt
Overly sentimental
Judging
Decisive
Bring a plan
Perceiving
Inquisitive
Bring options
Judging
Overly opinionated
Controlling
Perceiving
Indecisive
Procrastinating
22. 1
Entering Mentoring:
Training the next generation
Summary Sheet
Steve Lee, PhD
Graduate Diversity Officer for the STEM Disciplines
UC Davis
stnlee@ucdavis.edu
Caltech Postdoctoral Association
May 30, 2014
Core Skills in Entering Mentoring
Assess Apply
1. Communicating
Effectively
• Develop metacognitive skills to
assess your own communication
style and preferences, using for
example, the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicators, StrengthsFinder, etc.
• Suggest your mentee to take a self-
assessment test and share results.
o Discuss potential challenges,
blind spots, etc
• Identify similarities and challenges
to communicating with your
mentee.
• Determine your main preferred
mode of communication (face-to-
face, phone, or email), and how
you might communicate during
emergencies.
• Determine how often you will
meet or check in with your mentee.
• Request your mentee’s input, as
you face communication
difficulties.
• Prepare for meetings by
articulating specifically what you
want to get out of the meeting.
• Determine how you will follow up
after meetings with your mentee
(e.g. by email, Google docs, etc)
2. Aligning Goals
and
Expectations
• Determine your own goals and
expectations for:
o the research project, and
o the mentoring relationship.
• Ask your mentee for his/her goals
and expectations.
• Ask your mentee about their past
experiences in research and
mentoring relationships.
• Learn about SMART goals, and
how to develop them with your
mentee.
• Share your own expectations with
your mentee regarding:
o the research project, and
o the mentoring relationship.
• Write down the shared goals and
expectations and revisit them.
• If possible, use a mentor-mentee
contract to formalize these
expectations.
• Work with your mentee to
develop SMART goals and to
check their progress.
23. 2
Resources:
● Branchaw, Janet; Pfund, Christine; and Rediske, Raelyn. Entering Research: A Facilitator's Manual. New
York, NY: W. H. Freeman and Company, 2010.
○ A valuable resource for undergrads beginning in research
● Handelsman, Jo; Pfund, Christine; Lauffer, Sarah; and Pribbenow, Christine. Entering Mentoring: A
Seminar to Train a New Generation of Scientists. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
○ A source for many of the concepts and case studies for these workshops.
○ A free pdf of this is available online.
○ A new edition is coming out in summer 2014
● Lee, Steve; McGee, Rick; Pfund, Christine; Branchaw, Janet. “Mentoring Up”: Learning to Manage Your
Mentoring Relationships. Book chapter has been accepted for The Mentoring Continuum: From
Graduate School Through Tenure, Wright, Glenn, ed. Syracuse University Press.
● Myers-Briggs Resources:
○ Success Types in Medical Education by John Pelley
─ http://www.ttuhsc.edu/SOM/success/
○ Jennifer Rousseau Sedlock
─ www.jenniferspeaks.com
○ David Keirsey’s Please Understand Me II (1998)
● Rath and Conchie, Strengths Based Leadership (2009)
○ contains the StrengthsFinder test, which is another good self-assessment tool
● The slides and handouts from this workshop are available in my account in Slideshare.net.