Mentoring: How to support your team without losing yourself

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

When I first started my job, one of my senior colleagues said to me, “Don’t take a graduate student right away. Wait a couple of years.” This advice was the complete opposite of what I had been hearing from other colleagues. The general consensus went like this: when you start your lab, write a bunch of grants and get graduate students right away so you can hit the ground running. Faced with this counter-advice by my new senior colleague, I asked them to explain a bit more. They shook their head, waved their hand dismissively, and said, “They’ll suck the life out of you.”

Now, this colleague is an excellent scientist and an even better mentor. In fact, they are proactive and intentional in their mentorship. So, what was this advice all about?

What my colleague recognized was that supervising and mentoring students—while deeply fulfilling and valuable—is also a huge commitment that consumes a lot of your mental and emotional resources. If you’re not careful, pouring too much of your energy into someone else’s education and development may come at the expense of your own career momentum and overall well-being. It can be challenging to find the right balance, especially when you’re in the early stages of your career and you need to chart your own path forward to establish your own identity and reputation.

The first lesson in becoming a great mentor is understanding that mentorship isn’t about self-sacrifice or doing all of the work for your team. Instead, it’s about empowerment: building your team’s confidence, supporting their learning, and giving them the tools and space to iterate, fail, and grow. But how do you build a mentorship practice that supports your team without losing yourself in the process?

Here are 5 practical strategies to help you build a sustainable and meaningful mentorship practice:

1. Protect your time and theirs. Be explicit about when you and your team members are available for meetings. For instance, my team knows that I don’t do meetings on Fridays so I can get deep work done. Importantly, modelling healthy work boundaries gives my trainees permission to do the same. I know that some of my team members prefer early morning meetings, whereas others have family responsibilities at those times. We are clear with each other about our availability and find times to connect that work with each of our schedules. In doing so, we have created an environment of mutual respect for our boundaries.

2. Establish preferred lines of communication. Would you prefer to talk with your team members face-to-face, on Zoom, over email, or on a messaging app like Slack? Does it depend on the topic of conversation? Decide which channels should be used for what purpose, and, as above, the time boundaries associated with each channel. To continue the example from above, although I don’t do meetings on Fridays, my team knows that they can send me a message on Slack if they are absolutely stuck on something that is hindering their progress and I will answer their messages when I take a break.

3. Provide consistent—yet dynamic—structure. Set up regular systems to keep your team aligned and on track. Creating and maintaining informative onboarding documents and lab wikis can help new team members get oriented quickly. Weekly meetings—whether it’s a 15-minute group check-in or an in-depth 1-on-1—can provide consistent moments for accountability, discussion, and feedback. That said, mentorship also requires flexibility. There will be times when a team member needs more from you. Maybe they’re prepping for their first committee meeting, working on a fellowship application, or putting together their first job talk. When that happens, assess whether you can shift your schedule to provide more focused support. If your time is limited, communicate clearly about what help you can offer, and be explicit about what you need from them to make the time most productive—like asking them to send a draft of their fellowship application in advance that has the sections highlighted where help is needed the most. Structure gives your team predictability, but flexibility encourages ongoing trust in your support.

4. Look for the gaps and creatively fill them. To really push your team to the next level, do a needs assessment. Figure out, for each of your team members, where they shine and where they need support. Where are the gaps? And more importantly, what’s the best way to fill them? Does one of your team members need support learning how to code for data analysis? Does one of your students need help with writing? The additional instruction or teaching can come from you, but maybe it would be more efficient and powerful for all involved if you send your trainee to a workshop, have them take an online course, or seek out university supports as a first step.

5. Delegate and empower. Relatedly, maybe the resources to fill the gaps are already in your lab. Encourage peer mentorship within your team. For instance, if someone has a coding question, there’s probably someone else in the group who can provide the answer. If a new graduate student has a fellowship application due soon, maybe a postdoc or senior graduate student who has previously received that same award can do a first pass at providing editing and feedback. Empowering your team to help one another will, in turn, build their networks of peers and allies, and help each of them hone their supervision and mentorship skills.

You don’t have to choose between supporting your team and protecting your time. Let’s build a mentorship strategy that helps your trainees grow—without burning you out. Book a free discovery call—I’d love to support you.

*NEW!* If you’re a postdoctoral fellow who is looking to develop or polish your job application materials, check out my new coaching package here and let’s make sure you stand out!

Next week: Mentoring isn’t ‘extra’. It’s the work.