Mentoring up for early career investigators: Empowering mentees to proactively engage in their mentoring relationships

Abstract

Introduction: Effective mentorship is recognized as critical for the professional development of clinical and translational investigators. Evidence-based mentorship training prompted the development of training for mentees at early career stages who are navigating both mentor and mentee roles. The curriculum titled, Mentoring Up for Early Career Investigators, recognizes the importance of building mentee self-efficacy across proactive mentorship skills and competencies.

Methods: Mentoring Up for Early Career Investigators curriculum is based on the research mentor training approach in Entering Mentoring. Pilot implementations of Mentoring Up at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Pennsylvania had positive training outcomes for KL2 Scholars. Subsequently, Mentoring Up was implemented and evaluated at several other institutions. For 26 implementations longer than 4 hours, data were collected on trainee demographics, satisfaction with training, skill gains across mentorship competencies, and the intent to change mentoring behaviors following training.

Results: 88% of participants rated the mentee training as valuable. Significant skill gains were reported across all mentorship competencies following training. 77% reported specific plans to change or augment their mentoring behaviors because of the training. The majority aligned with mentorship skill competencies (aligning expectations, effective communications) or mentoring up strategies (voicing needs, setting boundaries, communicating proactively).

Conclusion: Mentoring Up training is effective in advancing mentee skills and promoting strategies to be more proactive in getting their mentoring needs met. Mentoring Up offers an expansion to the suite of mentorship education and resources to support the career advancement of all in the translational science workforce.

Keywords: Curricular development; mentee training; mentoring up; mentorship education; professional development.

Figure 1.

Description of workshops. a. Geographical location or institution at which workshops were held, with frequencies for the number of workshops held at each site. b. Distribution of participants that attended the training, with participant numbers on the × axis and frequency of the workshops with that many participants on the y axis. A total of 354 participants attended the workshops. c. Training dosage for workshop in hours, with workshop hours on the × axis and frequency of workshops on the y axis. Note: Workshops less than 4 hours long were excluded from our analysis. d. Distribution of modules taught at each workshop. Each column across the X axis represents an individual workshop. Red boxes represent the modules covered in a workshop. Gray boxes represent 5 workshops for which the mentorship competencies covered are unknown. Workshops varied in the modules that were implemented given time restrictions and/or specific site needs.

Figure 2.

Mentor competency assessment (MCA) and building self-efficacy skills. Immediately following workshop participation, participants were asked to rate their skill level across various mentorship competencies, including competencies related to building self-efficacy. They were prompted to consider their skill both BEFORE taking the training and AFTER taking the training. Boxplots for the distribution of competency mean scale scores are provided. Wilcoxon rank sum test for paired non-parametric samples showed significant changes in the reported competency levels before and after training. Sample size is reported below each competency. p < 0.001 for all competency subscale comparisons.