What makes a good mentor

In summary, the 3 A’s of mentorship are fundamental to any form of mentorship. Your mentor should be available, analytical, and an active listener. Without these fundamentals, your mentor won’t be able to understand your needs or help in solving your problems.

An effective mentor is someone who can challenge and support a mentee and not judge them. … Their role is to ask good questions, to listen, to challenge their mentee’s thinking, to clarify and support their short-term goals and longer-term aspirations, to play Devil’s advocate and to encourage their development.

The physician-researcher as mentor has at least seven roles to fill: teacher, sponsor, advisor, agent, role model, coach, and confidante (1, 6, 7). The mentor needs to customize each role to match the characteristics of the fellow. The following description is an ideal after which mentors strive.

Mentors will facilitate your thinking. They won’t tell you what to do. You should expect a mentoring relationships based on trust, confidentiality, mutual respect and sensitivity. Mentoring requires clear boundaries between the mentor and mentee which you should be involved in agreeing.