Identifying the Right Mentor.

Abstract

The etymology of mentorship is rooted in Homer’s Odyssey where the character Mentor is entrusted with the teaching and oversight of Odysseus’ son during the Trojan War. The concept of mentorship has since evolved to represent the unique relationship where a more experienced person guides the personal and professional growth of a lesser one. Whereas effective mentorship can boost research productivity and directly impact career satisfaction, poor mentorship has the potential to significantly delay academic success or lead to the abandonment of an academic pathway altogether.1 Therefore, identifying the right mentor is of utmost importance throughout one’s training, particularly for junior faculty, and generally one of the first tasks recently appointed faculty members embark on. A standardized and structured mentoring system is provided at some institutions, whereas others lack such organization, delegating the full responsibility of the partnership to the mentor and mentee. In this article, a summary of the requisite qualities of excellent mentorship and relevant strategies for success is provided, based on the limited available scientific evidence,1–3 structured mentorship programs available online,4,5 and an informal survey among 10 established researchers at various levels within their career, in the fields of neurology and neuroradiology. We list 6 strategies that can be used by junior faculty when seeking the right mentor. For practical purposes, we have combined career and research mentors to encompass the potential scope of mentorship in academic development. The mentor should be an established investigator with a track record for personal success and success of previous/current mentees. Choosing an accomplished mentor within the department will not only ensure that the person knows the nuts and bolts of the task that the mentee is about to embark on and how to navigate through the nuances of a specific department but also …