Optimizing Your Mentoring Relationship: A Toolkit for Mentors and Mentees

INTRODUCTION: Mentorship is a vital component of academic and professional development. Mentees report positive impacts from mentorship programs, yet institutions and societies may struggle to meet their mentees’ needs due to factors such as mentor fatigue and lack of mentor training. To address this in our own professional society, the Association of Pediatric Program Directors, we developed a mentor toolkit in order to utilize a variety of mentoring models, provide faculty development for midlevel mentors, and offer guidance to mentees. METHODS: Most of these tools were designed to be administered in an interactive format such as a workshop or seminar with think-pair-share opportunities. The toolkit begins by providing a definition of mentoring and reinforcing the benefits and the characteristics of effective mentoring relationships. Next, we discuss the important role that mentees have in creating and maintaining effective mentoring relationships (i.e., mentee-driven mentoring). We then introduce a mentoring mosaic activity designed to help mentees examine their professional network and think about how they might expand it to fulfill the spectrum of their mentoring needs. Next, we present guidelines for the implementation of four mentoring models that can be used within one's institution: traditional dyadic mentoring, peer group mentoring, meet the professor mentoring, and speed mentoring. We then provide tools that can be used to help facilitate effective mentoring development. RESULTS: This toolkit has successfully served as a self-guided resource at national meetings for many years, garnering positive feedback from mentors and mentees alike. DISCUSSION: The principles and methods are easily generalizable and may be used to guide mentorship programs within institutional and professional societies, as well as to assist mentors and mentees in optimizing their individual mentoring relationships.