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Everyone should have a mentor when trying to achieve something difficult in life. In science, mentors are unavoidable.
They play an essential role. You need research experience to become a scientist, and mentorship is a central part of that research experience. In fact, in graduate school, your training and research is really built off of your advisor (AKA your mentor) and not courses or classes.
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Therefore, choosing a good mentor is crucial for your success as a scientist. And to be honest, being a scientist myself and having worked with many other scientists, finding a good one can be hard – it’s not the default. It’s also hard to tell if someone is going to be a good mentor before you start working with them.
In this episode of the Fancy Scientist podcast, I offer you six key factors that I’ve found to make a great mentor. I reminisced on all of my past mentors – good and bad – and pulled out the characteristics that they had that helped me grow as a scientist the most. I also talk about what you can do to be a good mentor if you have students or oversee employees.
Even if you aren’t in science, you can still benefit from this episode. Finding a good mentor has been critical to my own health and career as an entrepreneur.
Specifically, I’ll talk about:
- Why having a good mentor is crucial to your success and you can’t do it alone (or at least as fast)
- The six things that are most important in a mentor – even if they are hard to take or you may not like them at first
- My experiences dealing with mentors who were very honest with me
- What you can do to be a good mentor yourself
- and MORE!
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