Online Mastermind Groups: A Non-hierarchical Mentorship Model for Professional Development.

Glenn Paetow,Fareen Zaver,Michelle Lin,Michael A Gisondi,Teresa M Chan,Michael Gottlieb

doi:10.7759/cureus.3013

Abstract

Mentorship is an important driver of professional development and scholarship in academic medicine. Several mentorship models have been described in the medical education literature, with the majority featuring a hierarchical relationship between senior and junior members of an institution. ‘Mastermind Groups’, popularized in the business world, offer an alternative model of group mentorship that benefits from the combined intelligence and accumulated experience of the participants involved. We describe an online application of the Mastermind model, used as an opportunity for faculty development by a globally distributed team of health professions educators. The majority of our participants rated their experiences over two online Mastermind group mentoring sessions as ‘very valuable’, resulting in recommendations of specific developmental resources, professional referrals, and identifiable immediate ‘next steps’ for their careers. Our experience suggests that online Mastermind groups are an effective, feasible, zero-cost model for group mentorship and professional development in medicine.

Highlights

Mentorship is an essential component of professional development and its benefits are well described in the medical, business, and education literature [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
Described by Napoleon Hill [21], the Mastermind group is composed of multiple colleagues, including near-peers and those at different stages of their academic careers, who provide mentorship and career advice for each other through regularly scheduled meetings
Traditional barriers in mentorship have been previously reported in the literature as: time required for mentorship, lack of academic recognition, lack of financial incentives, “authoritative boss-employee relationship”, lack of availability, and a lack of a good selection of mentors [25]

Summary

Introduction

Mentorship is an essential component of professional development and its benefits are well described in the medical, business, and education literature [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. A collaborative, network-based model for mentorship has gained popularity in the business world: the Mastermind group [17,18,19,20]. Described by Napoleon Hill [21], the Mastermind group is composed of multiple colleagues, including near-peers and those at different stages of their academic careers, who provide mentorship and career advice for each other through regularly scheduled meetings. The group benefits from the combined intelligence and accumulated experience of the participants

Methods

Results

Conclusion