How can I be a good mentor?

I mentored a Medical Writer for the first time back in 2008.

I was a Senior Medical Writer working in an agency, and she was a new starter, fresh out of her PhD. Since then, I’ve lost count of the number of people that I have either mentored or line managed, but it’s something that never gets tired.

I’m Eleanor Steele and I’m the MedComms Mentor.

For the last few years, I’ve built my career around training and mentoring Medical Writers, but I’m very happy to give away all of my secrets.

I want to make MedComms careers better for everyone, and I can’t mentor everyone who needs it. There just aren’t enough hours in the day!

This is the final video in a series around support and mentoring for freelancers that I’ve been making inspired by the article that I wrote for the EMWA journal ‘Medical Writing’, about how coaching and mentoring can help you craft a sustainable freelance career.

But this one is definitely not just for freelancers.

It might be particularly useful for freelancers because we don’t tend to get much support, particularly on soft skills, whereas some agencies actually offer training and guidance on mentoring, as well as having mentoring programmes. And I should know – I have actually delivered some of that training on how to be a good mentor and how to get the most out of mentoring for different agencies.

Now, in conversations about mentoring, we’re often very focused on what a mentor can impart onto a mentee, but I think that’s quite short-sighted.

What can you learn from your mentee?

Different perspectives, different opinions, different experiences are always useful no matter where they’re coming from. And mentoring someone else will always teach you something new.

But how can you approach mentoring so that you will both have an effective mentoring relationship and both get the most out of it?

1. Check you’re the right person

Before we agree to mentor someone, we need to know what challenge they need support with. That is going to be one of the key things that will help us figure out if we are the right person to help them.

So understand what they want from you, why they think you are the right mentor, and how that fits in with the specific challenge that they’re facing.

It’s also good to know what they’re actually hoping to achieve from the mentoring relationship with you, and why they want mentoring rather than another form of support like training or maybe coaching.

You also need to think about this from your perspective, not just theirs. Do you have the right experience? Do you actually have capacity?

It is OK to say no if you don’t think it’s something that you can commit to. It’s better to say no straight away than end up saying yes because you feel you ought to, and then never really being able to give the kind of support that this person needs. It’s better in those situations to actually not start the mentoring relationship and let them find somebody else who will be able to help.

Mentoring also isn’t right for everything, and you might find that there’s actually a different approach that would be better suited to the challenge that they’re facing.

Sometimes they will say something like, “I really need some support with writing ad board reports.” And if you know that you’ve never actually been to an ad board, then it’s probably quite clear that you are not going to be the best person to actually talk to about this, in which case it is fine to say, “Maybe talk to Emma?” or whoever, and they will then be able to go and find the best mentor for them.

Sometimes though we feel like we are not the right person to mentor someone because there’s more of a kind of confidence issue. We feel like we don’t know enough to be able to help somebody else through something. And if you feel that kind of confidence angst when somebody approaches you about mentoring, then I would say that’s a really good reason to say yes.

It will build your confidence. It will help you see what you do know.

Sometimes it’s really difficult to see how much progress we’ve made until we can see it in comparison with someone who hasn’t had the same level of experience, or hasn’t been exposed to the same range of projects as we have.

Also, even if you don’t actually know a huge amount more than the other person, sometimes peer mentoring is a fantastic way for you both to kind of muddle through together and actually build skills and experience because you’ve got that sounding board to help you figure things out.

It is also often a confidence issue because Medical Writers are, well, often the last person to acknowledge the skills and experience and competence that we really have. We tend to need to feel 150% certain about anything before we express an opinion – it’s one of the things that makes us good Medical Writers.

But that means that we often say no to opportunities where we actually would shine if we let ourselves have the chance to do it. And mentoring is a really good way of building that confidence and helping someone else achieve something and progress and feel good.

It’s that kind of ‘see one, do one, teach one’ mentality.

It will consolidate your skills and really highlight where you have progressed, and where you do have real expertise that can be shared and be useful to someone else.

Also, mentoring someone will often lead you to learn just as much, even if it’s about different things.

It will help you hone your thoughts on a complex topic. It will remind you how far you’ve come, but you’ll also understand someone else’s perspective on it, and the questions they might ask might open up areas that you haven’t considered before, and help you improve your own approach when you next do that project or when you approach whatever it is that they are currently struggling with.

It’s about really looking at the different ways that you could do something so that you don’t always default to the same old process. So in the end, you are both getting as much out of it as each other.

2. Clarify boundaries

Before you embark on a mentoring relationship, it’s really important to think about how you are actually going to work together and agree some boundaries together before you get started.

Now, mentoring could just be a single conversation. Maybe that’s all the person needs. It could be an ongoing long-term commitment or anything in between.

It could be in person, meeting for coffee or lunch. It could be on Zoom. It could even be asynchronous and text based, maybe on WhatsApp, over email, maybe Teams or Slack.

Really, whatever works for the two of you. There aren’t any hard and fast rules as long as it’s right for what you are doing and how your brains work. You really need to consider what your mentee needs and what you are able to give to be able to frame things in the right way so that it’s going to be effective and functional.

You also need to think about the time commitment involved. Now, this isn’t just about the session itself. You need to have some time to think things through Before the session. Maybe find some resources that you want to suggest or remember specific projects you want to talk through. That way you can give them your best support.

You also need to give yourself time to get into the right headspace before the session. If you’ve just come out of another meeting and your mind is really busy, you’re not going to be able to focus and really take in what they’re saying and reflect on it in an open and supportive way. You need to be able to think about what they’re saying, but also how they’re saying it, and if you’ve got your mind full of 101 other things, that’s going to be really hard.

It’s also a good idea to take some time after the session to recharge because it can be quite intense, especially if you’re sharing things that are personal or vulnerable experiences, and that is sometimes the best mentoring.

So do make sure that you factor in that time to recharge afterwards.

Now everybody will have occasions when something unexpected crops up, but it’s a really, really good idea not to cancel mentoring sessions unless it is an absolute emergency. Always try to rearrange them if you have to and you really can’t make that session, rather than just cancelling and dropping things.

Mentoring is a commitment and you do need to make sure that you can actually rise to that commitment. That way you can give things the time that they really need rather than rushing somebody through to a solution that maybe they’re not ready for or maybe just isn’t right for them.

Mentoring sessions need to be confidential. It needs to be a safe space for you to be open and honest and vulnerable, and that’s a two-way thing.

When you are mentoring someone, a huge part of that is sharing your experiences, and that isn’t just the good stuff. We need to feel that we can be open and honest about things that include maybe times that you’ve failed or things haven’t worked, because often that’s where we really learn the good stuff.

It can be uncomfortable, but mentoring works best if it includes real honesty and also people respond really well to stories of failure. It builds connection and it’s important for learning and acknowledging that being perfect and getting everything right from day one is just completely unrealistic.

And knowing that other people have struggled with something and had to try different things and think through what went wrong and what you can learn from it, that’s a huge part of learning and is really, really valuable.

We also need to think, when we are mentoring somebody, about how we’re actually going to structure the sessions and who’s going to take responsibility for different things. Like who is going to set the priorities for what you’re going to talk about during a particular session, who’s going to send round a summary, or any thoughts about what to do next?

It might be that you want to do that to kind of help your mentee and drive things forward. It might be that your mentee wants to take control of that and make sure that things are moving on the right track for them.

There’s no set process. There’s no rule about this, and it could be that it’s a bit ad hoc. You each do different things, different times, but as long as you know what the expectations are from each side, it will be a much smoother process.

When you’re considering these kind of process things, it might be useful to refer to the resources from the Academy of Medical Sciences. They have a mentoring programme, but the resources are open to anybody and they’re incredibly useful.

There’s a link in the video description below, and I also mentioned that in my previous video on getting the most from mentoring. These resources include a guide to using the OSCAR model for mentoring, to help you structure sessions. So this model takes you through the outcome your mentee is aiming for, the situation they’re currently in, the choices and consequences that they need to consider, actions they may need to take, and how to review progress to keep on track.

This isn’t the only model available. And another great one is the ‘Coach Approach’ from Amazing If. They have an episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast, all about this, and there’s a link to that below as well.

Whichever you use, or if you use a different model or tool or create something between you that is going to work, it is good to have a bit of a structure. You don’t have to stick to it rigidly, but if you have something that you have thought through and can use, it will help you keep on track and make sure that you’re making progress together. And that brings me onto my next microtip.

3. Be a sounding-board not a sign-post

When we’re acting as a mentor, we have to remember that we don’t have to have all the answers. We need to help guide our mentee to their own solutions, and there’s a bit of overlap here with coaching techniques because it’s up to them to do the work, not you as the mentor.

They need to take responsibility for their own progress rather than expecting you to lead the way, and sometimes people do expect sort of a list of instructions to follow, but that’s not the best way to mentor somebody.

We need to offer our experience as a starting point rather than a list of instructions to follow. So act as a sounding-board, not a sign-post pointing the way.

A big part of this is not being too rigid. We need to remember that our mentee is a different person from us and also things may have changed or moved on since you had your experience of whatever the challenge that they are currently struggling with is.

Also everyone is winging it, and what worked for one person may not work for another person, even if the circumstances are very similar.

Something that can really help with this is active listening. It can be tricky. It’s a skill we have to learn and practice and really consciously use, and I’ve linked to another couple of videos about being a good listener and using active listening skills in the description below, but I’ve got a couple of pointers to help now.

Asking really open questions is a fantastic starting point. So encouraging your mentee to reflect on what’s underlying their challenges, and make them feel heard and understood by listening to the answers.

And that is broader than just kind of hearing the words. It’s about how they are giving you those answers, their body language, their broader context, maybe even the specific word choices that they use.

Bringing all of these, these things together will mean that you have more kind of intuitive and empathic perspectives on what they’re saying and why they’re saying it, and that can be incredibly powerful.

You can also reflect back to them what you are hearing. Part of that might be taking notes and noticing patterns of what’s coming up, how they’re talking about things, maybe the words they’re using.

There’s another episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast about how to be a meaningful mentor, and one of the tips from that that I really love is when you’re making notes, if the same word choices or topic or issue comes up, you just add a little star to where you’ve first written it down rather than having the same thing multiple times in different places because that way you’ve got a really clear visual indication that this is a big thing for that person.

They might not even have noticed that, but when you can bring it out and say “You’re talking an awful lot here about not feeling confident in meetings.” That can be a starting point to really open up the conversation and make it incredibly useful.

That could be that they are stuck in a particular way of thinking or focused on a really specific area, even if they haven’t noticed it. So you can be looking at what’s going on in the broader conversation and the kind of things that they’re struggling with, and think about what else could be useful.

That might be obviously sharing relevant experience in response, so thinking about things that helped you in that situation, things that you did, things that you learned, and the challenges that you experienced as well.

I mentioned failure earlier and being open about the fact that it isn’t always plain sailing can be so powerful and so encouraging. It means that your mentee can see that it’s worth persevering, even if it’s hard, because they know someone who has overcome that challenge and come out the other side.

You can give them options to try with pros and cons, factors to consider, and maybe discuss other support that they might need. But again, don’t make assumptions here. Give the picture of how things look from your perspective, but listen to what they’re saying and think about how they are responding to those things.

Basically, let your mentee lead the way because they need to know what feels right for them so that they can find the right way to proceed.

You could also think about whether there are other people that they could talk to about this, because again, you don’t have to have all the answers as a mentor. You could maybe introduce them to someone or suggest how they could make contact with a few people if they need broader support.

But it may also be best to let them do it in their own way rather than taking them by the hand and forcing them down a particular path.

When we’re acting as a mentor, we want to help our mentees as much as possible, but it is important to remember that we can’t do everything for them.

4. Let your mentee go

We need to make it easy for our mentee to step away.

They need to be in control of when the process has achieved what they need it to, or when they feel it’s not actually giving them what they’re hoping for anymore, and not feel too precious about that.

My approach is to discuss what my mentees need from me, and then figure out how many sessions I think that’s going to take, and then we agree on that number. There’s always the possibility of extending that if they want to, but I’m not going to dictate that to them.

It might work to decide that you are going to have maybe a session every week for a certain amount of time, or to really focus on a specific goal so that once it’s been achieved, you have the option to continue if they want to, and it’s going to be useful, but you can just go your separate ways.

If you do reach the end of a mentoring relationship, think about who else you can potentially connect them with or what other opportunities or resources you can suggest. If you’re working in an agency and this is a mentee who is a team member, maybe think about other projects that they might get involved with or other teams they could work with.

If you’re a freelancer mentoring another freelancer, then maybe there are some podcasts you would suggest that they listen to or articles that they could read and you just keep in touch, maybe checking in occasionally rather than continuing with whatever format of session that you were having.

It’s OK for a relationship like this to shift and for the official sort of ‘mentor’/’mentee’ titles to dissipate once you have worked through a particular challenge.

And maybe next time you’ll be the one who needs a sounding-board, and this person could be the perfect person because they’ve got the background about whatever it is you now need to talk about.

But it is OK for a mentoring relationship to end, especially if that’s because your mentee has made the progress that they were hoping for.

Download the PDF summary

While mentoring is incredibly rewarding for people on both sides of the relationship, it can be a bit of a daunting thing to step into. But if you:

1. Check you are the right person to help with the right experience, but also the capacity to commit
2. Clarify boundaries that you’re both comfortable with so you can
3. Act as a sounding-board, sharing your experience and listening to what your mentee needs rather than as a sign-post pointing the way with strict and rigid instructions. That way your mentee can get the most from your experience while still taking responsibility for their progress
4. When they have made that progress, you are able to let them go

…then you’ll have a productive and effective relationship.

In case they haven’t seen it, you might want to share my previous video on how to get the most out of mentoring with your mentee, and it might be useful for you to watch it and think about things from their perspective before you get started.

For both videos, there’s a free PDF summary that you can download from a link in the video description, and there’s also a link to my article from the EMWA journal ‘Medical Writing’ about how coaching and mentoring can help you craft a sustainable freelance career.

If you’ve got any questions, please do leave them in the comments, or add any suggestions that you have for other topics I could explore in a future video. I’d love to hear from you.

And please do like this video and maybe share it with anyone who is also involved in mentoring.