Hi Professors,
For those of you who are at the midpoint of your academic careers: who are your mentors right now? Have you mostly stayed connected with your mentors or advisor from earlier on in your academic career? Or have you had to continually seek out mentors throughout job transitions and different stages of your career?
I raise these questions because lately I’ve heard from a few mid-career women faculty that it has been challenging to find good mentors in the academy. And this isn’t for their lack of trying. I also know from personal experience that as one rises in the ranks in higher education, it can sometimes become harder to identify new mentors.
In this 52st episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast I want to reflect on what mentorship at the mid-career level may look like for you, and offer you some questions that can help you to clarify what kind of support you need, and who you may be able to ask.
In episodes 38 and 39 of this podcast, I spoke about the work of mentoring graduate students, and how this may have been a new experience for you when you first began teaching on the tenure track. After all, very few of us receive specific training in our graduate programs on how to become good mentors.
In those 2 episodes (which had the titles: Supporting PhDs in Non-Academic Career Explorations and Mentor PhDs in Non-Academic Job Explorations using GROW), I wanted to bring up the situation of graduate students deciding to choose a career pathway that is different than your own.
I suggest that you can be supportive of your graduate students in non-academic job explorations (even if you don’t know very much about it) and brainstorm alongside them using something called the GROW model, which I discuss in Episode 39.
But now I want to turn this around a little bit and ask what you may need or desire in a meaningful mentoring relationship, especially if you are at the mid-career level.
Networks of Mentorship Thin Out at the Mid-Career Level
You may have already noticed that the networks of mentorship that you relied on earlier on in your career start to thin out due to a number of natural reasons.
First, if your university has a formal mentoring program, you are now in a position to be asked to serve as mentors for early career faculty.
Second, some of your mentors move into administrative leadership positions that keep them extremely busy. It can be difficult to stay connected.
Third, there are other scenarios where your mentors are impacted by health issues or caregiving duties and they have less time to engage with their mentees.
Lastly (and I don’t mean to be overly grim here), but some of your mentors will retire and also pass away.
On that last note, if you’ve ever lost a very close mentor that you’ve had for a long time, it can be a very sad, painful, and disorienting experience. This entails its own kind of grieving process.
Moreover, it can be difficult to think through the possibilities of cultivating new mentoring relationships.
But if you plan on advancing within higher education, you will need mentors or at least supportive guides at different steps along the way.
And unless your institution actively encourages developing formal mentoring programs for associate and full professors, it is probably on you to seek out your own mentors—most likely in an informal capacity.
So, how do you do this?
And let’s admit that it’s not easy or comfortable to write a cold e-mail to someone and pop the question: “Hi. Can you be my mentor?”
As Dr. Kerry Ann Rockquemore, the founder of the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD), has said on numerous occasions, it’s probably best to start by figuring out what exactly it is that you need, and who might be best able to help you out. And she says this in a very insightful podcast interview with Keneisha Grayson that you don’t lead with the word “mentor” in the initial ask.
For Kerry Ann, this is a useful reframing of mentorship and mentoring relationships. And I think that this can help you out to: 1) be as specific and clear as possible about what kind of help and support you need at a given time, and 2) compel the person you’re asking for help to respond to you.
So we all know that many senior faculty are stretched thin and may not feel like they have the space in their schedule to commit to a new mentoring relationship.
And faculty women of color at senior ranks are probably informally mentoring several minoritized faculty members, and may already be at capacity.
Rockquemore suggests that by being really specific with your ask, as well as letting go of the idea that you are seeking a long-term, lifelong academic mentor, that you’re probably going to have more luck with identifying and getting the support that you need.
Along these same lines, I wanted to offer you 10 questions that can help you in your quest to find mentorship or support at later stages of your academic career. If you’re going through this reflective exercise, then answer each question honestly, and then come up with 2-3 individuals that you might be able to turn to. They can be at your institution or at another one.
10 Reflective Questions to Help You Find Mentorship and Support at Mid-Career
1. Do you want to seek advice from someone who has walked your exact path before?
2. Do you want to seek advice from someone who shares a similar identity category to you?
3. Do you want someone who can mention your name in the room when it matters?
4. Do you want someone who can facilitate introductions or networking opportunities for you?
5. Do you want to speak with someone who you trust who has deep knowledge of how your institution works?
6. Do you need someone who can offer specific feedback on your research or your teaching and help you to grow?
7. Do you want to learn from someone who has made a similar pivot into a leadership position that you are considering down the road?
8. Do you want emotional support from someone who has navigated similar challenges to you?
9. Do you want to speak with someone who can be a sounding board, but who also is well aware of the dynamics at play (or even the certain individuals at play) in a given situation?
10. Do you want to develop a relationship with someone who can advocate for you and who wants to see you grow and develop?
It is very likely that a single person or one single mentor is not going to be able to fit this bill and address all of your needs. And that’s perfectly okay. Perhaps it’s more pragmatic to accept that there are going to be a range of peer or senior colleagues that you reach out to for help on certain matters in addition to seeking out professional support outside of the university.
This could be in the form of editors, professionals in the publishing industry, therapists, higher ed coaches, and/or leadership coaches.
In my next podcast episode, I’m going to be speaking about some of the differences and also the similarities between mentoring and professional coaching…so please stay tuned for that.
But I wanted to leave you with one final question, which I think is very much connected to the blossoming of a healthy, trusting mentoring relationship.
As a mentee, what is something special or valuable that you can offer to your mentor or someone who has agreed to help you out?
I know that many institutions are rethinking how mentorship can be more intentionally integrated into faculty life, so I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Feel free to write to me anytime at Katherine at RisewithClarity.com.