The Kardia Group

There are many reasons that faculty may prefer not to talk about mentoring - time is scarce, individuals may already have their own answer to what mentoring is or is not, variations in styles and comfort level can make the topic feel too individualistic or private, and a group discussion can too easily focus on policy in a manner that fails to illuminate what motivates the policy in the first place.

Faculty discussions that contribute to better mentoring tend to have these characteristics:

• they define mentoring broadly, serving to encompass the full range of formal and informal activities that contribute to professional investment in one's colleagues
• they generate clear and shared agreements about common mentoring activities and approaches, reinforced by the perspectives of both junior and senior faculty
• they provide an opportunity to vent concerns about how mentoring might go awry, such as bad advice; "hand holding;" and intractable or confusing differences in scholarship, style, or identity
• they empower the voices and experiences of junior faculty, and validate the significance of mentoring in the experience of an academic career
• they both highlight and normalize that generational differences, social identities, and other factors need to (and can) be taken into account in the mentoring process
• they provide resources (see mentoring resources link for examples) and connect both junior and senior faculty to mentoring activities outside the department
• they treat mentoring as a work in progress, signalling that this conversation is and should be on-going

What this looks like in a specific department depends on many factors: the norms already in place for faculty discussions, the familiarity and past history with the topic, the timing and context of the discussion. By combining consideration of these factors with the qualities above, mentoring becomes easier, more accessible, and more likely to make a positive difference in the careers of junior and senior faculty and in the department as a whole.