On Mentors
and
Their Messages
Edward J. Benz, Jr., M.D.
President
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
PREMISE:
ACHIEVING OUR MISSION
DEPENDS PRIMARILY ON
THE MESSAGES WE SEND
TO OUR PROGENY AND
THE ENVIRONMENTS WE
CREATE FOR THEM
LIFE IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE –
IT’
S A GOOD THING
BE CAREFUL –SOMEONE YOUNGER
MAY TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY
IT TAKES A KARASS
WHAT WERE WE SAYING
ABOUT OUR LIVES IN 1992?
What I hear everyday 15 years later……
1. Academic medicine is doomed
2. It’
s not doomed but it’
s just big business
3. The NIH budget is flattening
4. The (*) is dead, dying, becoming extinct,
threatened, undervalued, unappreciated,
harassed, overworked, can’
t get tenure
5. (**) are better off than we are.
* Physician scientist, clinical investigator, triple threat,
translational scientist,
whatever I do
** Surgeons, PhD’
s, private practitioners, trial lawyers, bureaucrats, all other
living creatures
The Doom Channel “Bad things are happening. Real bad.”
“Worse to come. Much worse.”
We are responsible for the
survival of own species
We are driving people away
from our field
We are our own worst enemy
“
To harness the power of the scientific
method for the purpose of relieving human
suffering from disease is among the highest
achievements to which one can strive.”
1. Barry Coller , Testimony before House Appropriations Subcommittee, 30 April 1992
PART II:
BE CAREFUL SOMEONE MAY BE TAKING
YOU SERIOUSLY
“
You’
ll never be able to
do molecular biology in
man”
HMS Professor X 1969
“Oh yes you can”
David G. Nathan
The Ideal and Only Protein for
Human Molecular Biology, ca 1969
•Thalassemias: Inherited
anemias due to selective
failure to synthesize a
globin chain:
•Alpha Thalassemia –
defectove alpha globin
synthesis
•Beta Thalassemia –
defective beta globin
synthesis
WHAT DO YOU TELL
YOUR STUDENT WHEN
NOTHING WORKS?
Bernard G. Forget
My mentors and their messages
•We like and respect you, care about you
•We have faith in your abilities
•We have a personal stake in your future
•We’
ll trust you with things that affect our
success
•You can do it –we’
ll show you how
•If you’
re messing up we’
ll tell you and help you
fix it
•We are there when you need us
•You deserve the credit for what you do
•We’
ll manage your expectations
•What you are attempting is important –worth it
•We love what we do –and so can you.
men·tor (mèn´tôr´, -ter) noun
1. A wise and trusted
counselor or teacher.
Homer
2. Mentor. Greek Mythology.
Odysseus's trusted counselor,
under whose disguise Athena
became the guardian and
teacher of Telemachus.
Word History: The word mentor is an example of the way in which the great works
of literature live on without our knowing it. The word has recently gained currency
in the professional world, where it is thought to be a good idea to have a mentor, a
wise and trusted counselor, guiding one's career, preferably in the upper reaches of
the organization. We owe this word to the more heroic age of Homer, in whose
Odyssey Mentor is the trusted friend of Odysseus left in charge of the household
during Odysseus's absence. More important for our usage of the word mentor,
Athena disguised as Mentor guides Odysseus's son Telemachus in his search for his
father. Fénelon in his romance Télémaque (1699) emphasized Mentor as a character,
and so it was that in French (1749) and English (1750) mentor, going back through
Latin to a Greek name, became a common noun meaning “
wise counselor,”first
recorded in 1750. Mentor is an appropriate name for such a person because it
probably meant “
adviser”in Greek and comes from the Indo-European root men-1,
meaning “
to think.”
Definition and word history from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from
INSO Corporation. All rights reserved.
Copyright 1999–
2002 Center for Excellence in Academic Advising
Division of Undergraduate Studies
The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved.
To this day a mentor is a guide,
someone with wisdom and
foresight who helps another find
the path. A mentor is generally a
more experienced person, passing
on their knowledge and skills to
less experienced person.
Mentoring is different to friendship.
Mentoring has a specific purpose,
and the relationship should be
entirely focused on the mentee.
Mentors should maintain
objectively and distance from the
mentee, whilst being empathic at
the same time. It is important to
realize that mentors and mentees
have different levels of power.
A mentor should should have:
•a clear understanding of the goals of his or her
mentees and their reason for committing to those
goals
•the ability to create warmth between themselves
and the mentee.
•the ability to give constructive feedback to mentees
and to help them facilitate their problem solving
process by fostering their sense of independence
•the ability to manage themselves –to be aware of
their own needs, goals and support structures
•a willingness to learn from their own experiences,
the program, other mentors and the new students
Qualities of a Good Academic Mentor
1. Having something to offer:
•
•
•
•
•
Relevant experience
Respective
Contacts, connections
Resources –material and otherwise
Road map
2. Ability to listen and to communicate
3. Ability to align goals and gratifications
• Can your ego be fed by the successes of your
mentor
• Are your “wins”and his/her “
wins”compatible
4. Ability to trust
5. Ability to let go while staying connected
Karasses
•Karrass: ''team of people that does God's
Will without ever discovering what they
are doing.''
(Kurt Vonnegut, A Cat’
s Cradle, 1963)
•Spontaneously forming groups joined by
unpredictable links that actually get stuff
done
•Our finest hours occur when we make
karasses happen
Academic Medicine Is a Noble Calling.
Despite the problems, it can be the most fulfilling and rewarding of
professions, if taken with a sharp eye for reality, a dash of
iconoclasm, and a ready sense of humor. These jobs are difficult and
certainly not rewarding 24 h a day; sometimes we are lucky to get 24
h a month. But we in academic medicine are blessed in many ways
compared with those in most jobs. We have the privilege of working
in a profession that helps the sick and dying while we are engaged in
intellectual inquiry. Our profession is still highly respected by
society, and we are paid quite well for doing something most of us
love to do. So despite all the travails of human frailty that we must
deal with every day, we should count our blessings. I am grateful
that fate and early training led me into academic medicine and would
do it again in a New York minute.
Joseph V. Simon
Understanding Academic Medical Centers: Simone’
s Maxims
Clinical Cancer Research: Vol. 5, 2281-2285, September 1999
My anti-mentors and their messages
•You are stupid, naïve, impertinent,
“amusing”, trivial
•You are not interesting to me
•You are not worth anymore of my time
•You are on your own
•Figure it out for yourself
•What you want to do is too hard
•...and not worth the trouble
•I’
m not too excited by what I do
•This business isn’
t much fun
•QED: You won’
t like it either
•i.e., DON’
T DO IT
“Hey, you’
ve still got a job and I still get my can of
food every night–what’
s all the whining about?”
Identify a Faculty Mentor
•Mutual agreement to mentoring, personal and
professional “
fit”to the relationship
•A mentor should be a senior faculty in your area
of scholarship to provide you:
–Experience
–Sponsorship
–Guidance
–Socialization/Introduction into a field
–Critical feedback on scholarship
Mentee Guidelines
•Identify goals and address the needs your mentor
can address
•Actively seek feedback from your mentor and use
it for your development
•Keep an accurate record of your development and
progress
•Stay open to new ideas and suggestions
•Take responsibility for your own development
Mentoring II
•One can have more than one mentor.
Additional mentors can provide different
experiences and advantages.
•Avoid “
toxic”mentors, mentors who use
your work for their development (the
“
user”
),doesn’
t have enough time (the
“
avoider”
), believes mentoring is a license
to point out mistakes (the “
criticizer”
).
Every person is the architect
of his own fortune.
Lucky Numbers 5, 11, 12, 21, 29, 44
THANKS