NINDS's Building Up the Nerve

S3E3: How to work with a mentor

• NINDS • Season 3 • Episode 3

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The third Season of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Building Up the Nerve podcast helps you strengthen your mentoring relationships with tools and advice from both trainees and faculty. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help—it's our job!

In the third episode of the season, we are talking with mentor mentee pairs about how they develop productive relationships, including aligning their expectations and working through challenges. 

Featuring Avital Rodal, PhD - Associate Professor of Biology, Brandeis University; Matthew Pescosolido, PhD – Postdoctoral Fellow, Brandeis University; Kay Tye, PhD – Professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies; and Austin Coley, PhD - Postdoctoral Associate, Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Resources

Transcript available at http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/.

Lauren Ullrich:

[intro music] Welcome to Season Three of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's Building Up the Nerve where we help you strengthen your mentoring relationships with tools and advice from both trainees and faculty. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help. It's our job.[music fades]

Marguerite Matthews:

Hello, I'm Marguerite Matthews, a program director at NINDS.

Lauren Ullrich:

And I'm Lauren Ullrich, a program director at NINDS and we're your hosts today.

Marguerite Matthews:

In the last episode, we discussed finding mentors and building a mentoring team. In this episode, we are talking with mentor- mentee pairs about how they develop productive relationships, including aligning their expectations and working through challenges.[musical interlude]

Lauren Ullrich:

Our guests today are Dr. Avi Rodal, Dr. Matthew Pescosolido, Dr. Kay Tye, and Dr. Austin Coley. So let's get started with our introductions.

Avi Rodal:

My name is Avi Rodal, and I'm an Associate Professor of Biology at Brandeis University. I've been here running my independent lab since 2010. My research lab here at Brandeis studies how, um, intracellular membrane traffic machinery is specially deployed in the nervous system to do all the specialized things that neurons need to do, including rapidly recycling neurotransmitters, moving growth factors and signaling molecules for long distances, including between cells. So lately we've been working a lot on extracellular vesicles, and we're mostly using the fruit fly nervous system as our experimental model because it's amenable to genetics and also a lot of really fun live imaging using all the latest developments in microscopy. Three words that describe my mentoring philosophy are invested, uh, supportive, and honest.

Matthew Pescosolido:

I'm Matthew Pescosolido and I'm a post-doctoral fellow in the Rodal lab at Brandeis University. And I'm interested in understanding how a particular form of cell to cell communication known as extracellular vesicles, or EVs, are harnessed by the nervous system for central processes, as well as their role in neurological disease. Now, although EVs have been found to mediate synaptic plasticity in an activity dependent manner, we don't fully understand the underlying mechanisms and that's what I'm currently investigating. And through this work in Drosophila, we found an interesting relationship in which a key synaptic protein associated with synaptic plasticity regulates EV cargoes to form new synapses in an activity dependent manner. Ultimately, I hope to uncover how EVs support, fundamental neurological processes, how EV dysfunction can bleed to disease and whether EVs can be used as an effective treatment strategy for neurological diseases. And I would describe, uh, my mentoring style or philosophy as anchor, empowering, and guiding.

Kay Tye:

My name is Kay Tye. I'm the Wylie Vale Chair at the Salk Institute and an HHMI investigator. And I'm interested in understanding the neural circuit underpinnings of emotion and social processes. Essentially my lab is focused on dissecting and providing quantitative biological mechanistic level understanding of psychological concepts, things like anxiety states or depression or substance use disorders and states that are relevant to psychiatric disease. If I were to describe my mentoring style or philosophy in three words, um, they would be authentic, transparent, and fun.

Lauren Ullrich:

Fun. I like fun!

Kay Tye:

At least that's what I aspire to.

Marguerite Matthews:

I hope it's heavy on the fun![laughs]

Austin Coley:

I am Austin Coley. I'm a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Kay Tye's laboratory at the Salk Institute. I've been a postdoc for about two and a half years. And the purpose of my project is to investigate the prefrontal cortex, neuronal populations and circuits that are involved in Anhedonia um, so Anhedonia is the inability to experience pleasure, and it's a core feature in major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. And what I'm doing is I'm using in vivo two photon calcium imaging techniques, as well as behavioral analysis to detect the neuronal populations that are affected within this, uh, anhedonic condition. And, um, I guess three words to describe my mentoring philosophy. I would say communication, um, I would say creativity, as well as I would say, also like hard work.[musical interlude]

Marguerite Matthews:

How did each of you approach establishing expectations and shared goals, um, and would love to hear about your current mentoring relationship now, but perhaps also in other types of mentoring relationships, maybe noticing when you didn't set up, um, certain expectations and shared goals, how that sort of impacted the way in which you were able to do your work.

Kay Tye:

Um, so I think this is a really important topic. And a lot of the times expectations are assumed that you should obviously know these expectations, but we're not mind readers. And so when I was a post-doc and I had just gotten this job, I had no space yet, no people. And I was like, okay, I got to create the website. What is the content I'm going to put on this website? Because I don't have anything to take pictures of. So I, um, you know, obviously you have some papers. And then I wrote out a lab philosophy. That was just, you know, random musings as a postdoc of things I thought about a lot as a trainee and, you know, it's 10 years later and the text is like minor, minor edits. And so on the website, I have some general expectations for lab members. And so it really just serves to filter out who would even apply, you know. If anything I wrote turns you off then you're probably just not even going to apply, we don't even have to, you know, there's no awkward conversations needed. In the current state, after doing it for a decade, the upfront expectations and talking about everything really early has worked for me. And with Austin it's been very transparent. I met Austin at a meeting and, it was very effortless, so...

Austin Coley:

Yeah. I think it was established very, very early on when I was looking into, to postdoc positions and, uh, looking into Kay's lab. During my PhD, I met Kay at a optogenetics Gordon Research conference. I actually, uh, immediately walked up to her and told her, like my sort of aspirations, goals, and, um, and from there I told her my projected timeline for not only graduating with my PhD, but also even afterwards, becoming a postdoc and even transitioning into a faculty position. So, we had these conversations during the interview process. And I wasn't having this communication actually with the other PIs that I was interviewing with. So this was what sort of, like, separated Kay from a lot of the potential post-doc, uh, places that I was looking at. So we had those initial expectations as it relates to like career goals, but then we started to discuss potential projects that I could run within her laboratory. And what was huge was, um, going through the interview process and proposing this potential project that I was interested in. And then she was also equally interested in, um, and that was established like during the interview process, which was huge. It was a major reason on why I wanted to, to join her lab was we had similar interests in this project proposal.

Kay Tye:

I didn't know that!

Austin Coley:

Yeah. Um, I think that if I didn't have those conversations, like one, I wouldn't know your mentoring style. And two, I wouldn't know like what I was capable of doing also at the next level. So I had a different, uh, background. For my PhD, it's a very heavy molecular and synaptic background. I did ex vivo electrophysiology and, um, Kay has also ex vivo uh, electrophysiology background. So she was able to like, see both sides of it. I can only see one side. Um, she actually, even before the interview process, she was telling me it's definitely a doable technique for me to transition into doing in vivo work. And she also informed me that it was beneficial for my career in the end anyway to like learn these new techniques. So that was all talked about even before the interview process which was extremely helpful regardless of how the interview went anyway.[laughs] I was, I was like, oh, thanks, thanks for telling me all this info, Kay![laughs]

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah. I think having shared goals and interests expressed very early on helps develop that relationship and allows there to be trust to say, um, what it is that you want and need out of this beyond just the, I want to get a postdoc, I need a postdoc to get a faculty position, or I need a place to work [laughs] because I need to be able to support myself. Um, but also knowing what, what you can expect from someone in terms of their philosophy or that they even like, even hearing someone say they want to work with you can really change how you approach your next steps and career development.

Matthew Pescosolido:

I think one of the keys is that there needs to be a foundation built on both mutual respect and trust and like any type of relationship, that foundation needs to be solid. And a lot of these things that we'll talk about today, I don't think are achievable without that foundation. And as a mentee, a few things that are really important, and are related to that, is this sense that you feel valued by your mentor, and that your opinions, your time is important, not just to yourself, but also to the mentor. And I think another piece that really elevates a mentor in my eye is that they have a vested interest in my training, and in my, uh, development and in my future career, whatever that, that may be.

Avi Rodal:

So maybe I'll follow up by saying like, you know, what are some ways that you can formally actualize that? It's helpful to have some of these things down in writing. Um, and so we have a lab manual that everybody reads when they join the lab. And it has some like very general principles of like, what are our lab values? Everybody has to treat each other with kindness in every interaction, no matter what career stage you're at. Um, and then I do have in the lab manual our, uh, diversity equity and inclusion policy practices. I have an explicit statement in there that says, this is a formal and official part of our job to make sure that our environment has those really important features. So having that stuff in writing is really important. And then I also have sections that say sort of what my expectations are for what my job is in the lab, providing funding, giving advice, being available, that sort of thing. Um, and then what people at different career stages, what I'm expecting them to get out of the lab. and I found it super helpful to look at other people's similar lab manuals or norms and policy statements.'Cause sometimes I'm like, oh, that was so well said and between me and my colleagues, where , you could see a lot of shared language [laughs] between our lab manuals, because it really helps you think about like what kind of lab environment do you want to set up? Just what Matt was talking about. But then there also has to be something in writing individually, right?'Cause I, I feel like it's not, um, so much of a contract as much as when you put something in writing, um, you can both agree on the language in a way that's very difficult to do with verbal communication. So we have our annual individual development plan. And the way I like to do that is we have a meeting that's dedicated towards what are the person's career goals? Short-term development goals, long-term goals. And they'll fill out a whole questionnaire beforehand and then we'll go through it and I will type what I think what they're saying about what we should do for the next year. And then I like to have the person look at what I've written and I'm asking is what came out on paper really what you're thinking too. So I think paper, well, it's a Google doc, but same thing [laughs], um, is a really good way to make sure we have a shared language and shared goals. Um, and then that maybe, we had a really great experience writing Matt's F32 fellowship last year that I think, um, maybe he can talk about, about that.

Matthew Pescosolido:

Yes. So the F32 process, um, I was really fortunate to work kind of hand in hand with Avi with this, um, in the past, I was fortunate enough to be funded for a pre-doctoral F31 with my, uh, graduate school mentor who was wonderful. And now that, uh, I worked on my F32, taking more of a, uh, leadership active role, and also seeing how there, there might be different styles, both, uh, incredibly valuable, both incredibly productive, but, but seeing that there's no say, "right way" to write a grant or different grant styles. And so, um, with this F32, it allowed us the ability to really outline what activities I am really responsible for during my postdoctoral fellowship, and, uh, likewise what responsibilities Avi has to me and also what are our responsibilities for professional development and making sure that I'm, I'm giving clear presentations, I'm able to kind of write clearly with my manuscripts and then also what are some of the, uh, mentoring or teaching opportunities that I have to hopefully pass down to a younger generation.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, I think that, um, you know, that your experience with the F32 really dovetails with a lot of what we heard in Season Two, where we actually went through and talk to applicants about the different parts of the grant application, where even just the act of writing and putting the application together really help them formalize their relationships and their plans and the expectations and all that stuff. So it's good to hear that echoed here too. So in terms of like the nitty gritty, um, how often do you two meet together? Um, has that sort of changed over time? What kinds of things do you talk about in your meetings? So I know, Avi, you had mentioned an annual IDP review, but do you review the goals and expectations and, and your alignment, um, in other ways, or at other times?

Avi Rodal:

So I have a set meeting time weekly with everybody in my lab and it can be a long meeting. It can be a short meeting. It's just kind of a, a check-in. And what we do is we have like a living Google doc that exists all the time. And every time I'm thinking about Matt and this project, I'll just sort of jot that in the document. And when Matt has something to update on or some question, he can jot it in there. And sometimes we just communicate back and forth through that Google doc, and other times we'll use that weekly meeting to kind of go through it. Um, and the Google doc is sort of continuous. You just sort of add on your new meeting to the top. And I found that to be, uh, like a super helpful mentoring tool to keep open the lines of communication. And it's also searchable, which is not true of conversations.[laughs] Um, I started my lab 12 years ago and I definitely tried all kinds of different management tools, Gantt charts, you name it, um, to try to keep on top of people's, um, project so that I can offer as much as, as possible. And many of those things like quickly dropped. Nobody liked them. Um, but this particular strategy with the weekly meetings in the Google doc, as a way to keep open lines of communication has been awesome.

Matthew Pescosolido:

Yes, Avi's very responsive to the Google doc, uh, sometimes I'll be putting data up and I'm still kind of working through my interpretations and [laughs] Avi will already be, be kind of typing away. So, I think with maybe some of these other, say, mentoring techniques as a mentee you feel that grinding of someone's trying to mentor you and it just doesn't feel as natural, um, as opposed to, say we can have regular communications offline with our Google doc, Avi's made it very clear I can email her really at any time. And as a mentee, I want to be respectful of that so that I'm not sending the panicked emails every few minutes about something. But that when we do meet it's productive for both of us.

Lauren Ullrich:

And, um, I don't know, maybe this is a challenging question, but were there any surprises or things that you hadn't discussed that uh kind of came up after you started working together that you've had to work through?

Austin Coley:

There weren't many challenges with Kay's mentoring or any surprises. I knew what I was getting into before I went there. There were challenges just during like technical aspects of it because of the, uh, the pandemic going on. So I was sort of out of the lab for a good amount of time, um, which was challenging to learn this new technique, that's not the best way to do it, but that had nothing to do with mentoring. And like, Kay, was completely different opposite personality from myself, but even though it was like completely opposite it was very, very easy to communicate with her with pretty much everything. So science career-wise, it was like very, very easy, transparent communications.

Kay Tye:

I think the thing that makes Austin really easy to work with is that he's very communicative and, um, emotionally regulated and stable. Like I've had a lot of trainees and sometimes there are surprises, I'll tell you. There definitely have been surprises. And at this point, you know, I used to really beat myself up when something would go wrong with a trainee and feel really horrible. Like I failed, I'm like a bad person. Like, you know, like I would just really take it to heart at the beginning of my, you know, when I was assistant professor and then not that I don't still take it to heart, but I sort of just recognize, if you have X number of people in your lab, there's going to be X number of people that have this problem and X number of people that have this problem, like, it's just, you're going to see all the problems that you hear about like, you know, on occasion. And it's never pleasant to have to deal with any of those things. And only recently, have I been able to recognize that, um, to be a really good mentor, sometimes I have to, you know, tell people bad news. And those are really difficult conversations to have, or even just something like, you know, "I'm not gonna make you an offer for this position" can be really challenging at the beginning, but I think I've really found this one, um, literature helpful, which is called situational leadership. Situational leadership really helps me just to think about at every stage, everyone's going to start out bright eyed and bushy tailed and super excited. And then everyone's going to get bored and frustrated and their desire to be able to do stuff, uh, outpaces their ability to do stuff. And then, you know, everybody's going to go through that developmental stage until they eventually reach competence and like autonomy and independence, and just feeling like they have mastery over their craft. And there's no shortcut for that. For me, I've definitely experienced challenges and a lot of really fun successes, mostly like really enjoyable relationships, but definitely there have been some challenges and sometimes those challenges make the relationship better. And sometimes those challenges help us realize what we're supposed to be doing in life might not be this, you know?

Lauren Ullrich:

We have a later episode in the season that sort of talks about transitioning out of a mentoring relationship, and you know how to know when something's salvageable versus when it's time to sort of cut your losses and move on. So I think it's good to foreshadow that, uh, conversation. So one of the things we wanted to tackle in sort of the second half of this episode was a few common mentor- mentee challenges or frictions that can happen and kind of get your, your thoughts or your advice on navigating these situations. So I think first, just to set the stage is how do each of you really identify when there even is a problem in the relationship? Like, are there any, um, red flags that you see from either the mentor or the mentee side, if like something's not right here. We gotta, we got to work this out.

Avi Rodal:

I think maybe that gets to, um, Matt's point about being valued. And I totally agree with him. That's the foundation of everything. Every person in the lab is here because they're valued and they have something to bring to the table. And I think if people start feeling like they're not valuing themselves, right? So they're not meeting their own expectations or that other people aren't valuing them or respecting them, um, then everything falls apart.[laughs] So I think addressing why you feel that way. Is it something where your actions aren't matching what your actual goals are? Right. So I think that can be a very common mismatch where the way you spend your time isn't matching sort of what you want to achieve. Um, and then you can not be valuing how you're spending your own time. I certainly go through that as a mid career faculty member.[laughs] Um, and then the issue of respect, right? If someone is feeling disrespected, that just needs to be addressed right away.

Matthew Pescosolido:

I mean, just in terms of any relationship, I found that if there is a problem kind of early on, sitting on it for too long and letting it build up, there's a lot of stress and all of these interactions are kind of funneled through that. And, and you just kind of take on more and more of that stress and it really can build so that it's clouding all of your, kind of, day to day lab work productivity. Um, but then I've found that when you do have those moments where you're talking to someone about the problem, feeling that connection, that both you understand the problem and they understand the problem and you're both working to solve it, it really is able to lift that tightness and that feeling. So, hopefully a mentee can identify some of these problems earlier and feels comfortable bringing it to their mentor, again early. And if that's not the case where they feel comfortable bringing it to a mentor, hopefully there are other social supports, whether that's directly in the lab, um, or other colleagues either within that institution, department, or outside it, which is another key part is having a strong, scientific network, which Avi's uh, encouraged and has been a part of my professional development. We've talked about quite a bit of really having key mentors who are able to provide various support, guidance, insight that say, I need, and Avi may not have the expertise in something. And I think having a mentor who's very clear about where their strengths are and where they, they may not have that expertise in, and to seek that expertise out is key in any mentor.

Avi Rodal:

I think another thing to think about is like, when things aren't going swimmingly, which happens often in a professional career in science, um, just really taking some time together to think about how much of this is the normal struggle, right? You know, if we start from the premise that we're out here to answer questions that nobody knows the answer to, and maybe we don't even know exactly how to answer. We're venturing into the unknown and we know it's going to be hard, right? And so when we have a particular challenge, if we can sit down together and agree that we've decided to do something hard together, that goes a really long way to helping the person not struggle alone. But then on the other hand, if you're trying to do something and everybody around you is like, hmm this seems like not a sensible risk. I don't think that you're spending your time in a way that you've told me what outcomes you want to achieve, I think you're not going to get there. Then you sit down together and you decide maybe this isn't the best way to spend your time. So like, either being in the white water rafting together versus deciding together to pull the boat into less dangerous waters. So move away from the actual problem you're tackling a little bit and decide is that actually something that we've agreed to work on together? And I think many conflicts can be resolved that way. There are other things that are sort of more interpersonal. And those don't benefit from that kind of solution, but what Matt said is definitely the best way to address those.

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah. Can we talk a little bit more about those interpersonal struggles of how do you get around when maybe your mentoring style is not matching up with, um, what the mentee needs, perhaps, maybe you're really hands-on because you think they need help, but they feel micromanaged or you think they've got it all figured out and so you're very hands-off and they feel like, "Ah! You just let me out here to drown! You're my life vest, I need you." Have either of you been able to navigate that? Um, whether it's with each other or even perhaps, um, other folks in the lab and how can you sort of address some of those interpersonal conflicts, if it seems like it can be resolved.

Avi Rodal:

I think this gets to a particular challenge in the way that biomedical research academic environments are set up where the mentor and mentee are also often an employer and employee, and also someone who's developing their career, and their sponsor who will help them in their future career. So I think the answer to your question in terms of those conflicts of independence versus, um, micromanaging, all that kind of thing, um, if we were just in a pure mentor- mentee relationship, then I might say, oh, if a person wants me to be hands-off, I should absolutely be hands-off and give the mentee exactly what they need at all times. But then at the same time, um, we're a lab generously funded by NINDS to hopefully push forward the frontiers of knowledge and that's our goal as well to do that in an efficient way. And then on the other hand, my mentees also might want to impress me so that I sponsor them in the future for their future careers. And they might not be willing to show weakness. And so there, there are some tensions between those different roles that don't exist in other fields. In other fields, you would have a separate person in each one of those roles. And I think that, at the beginning of the relationship, talking about that and establishing sort of how the mentor deals with those tensions in roles, is really important.

Matthew Pescosolido:

Yeah, I think it was really important when I first started in Avi's lab as, you know, a new postdoc you clearly want to impress upon your mentor, that you care deeply about the science, you love these questions, and you're going to really tease them apart in a high level, in a high quality. I'm remembering one of my earliest experiments were I was trying to get this, this one type of stimulation to work. And it just, it just wasn't working, and it stretched on for maybe a few weeks, and Avi and I had one of our meetings and she was like, this probably took longer than it needed to for us to make this decision not to pursue it further. And I thought, okay, this sets the tone for how I'm going to spend my time in the lab. And we can be nimble in determining whether or not some of these projects may be fruitful, may be productive, or it's just not worth the amount of time, which as a postdoc, is in short supply. So now in the future, if I'm starting to have those same feelings, if it feels like I'm going down that same road, maybe have this discussion with Avi, that it isn't probably the best use of my time, or there are other projects that are a higher priority.

Avi Rodal:

I think that I've done something in the past that has been helpful to me. So I probably people have heard about these different quadrants of management or mentorship where, you know, one axis is how directive you are and another axis is how supportive you are. And so you can be very supportive and not very directive, and then you're just kind of leaving someone to their own devices, but supporting them. You can be very directive and very unsupportive and that's, you know, the shame management strategy. And there are certain quadrants that I personally would never go to.[laughs] Um, I couldn't based on my personality. And I also think some of those quadrants are wrong. So like very directive and very unsupportive or very unsupportive and very undirective. So those I wouldn't go to, but I'm willing to move around in those quadrants. And I've had experiences where, like I had an idea for something I wanted to say to a mentee, but I actually asked, I drew the little graph and I said, is it okay if I go here, I see an opportunity to go here and I would listen if the mentee said, no, I want to make my own choice here, or, um, I want to hear some tough words, right? I'm willing to, to go there with the permission of my mentee.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah. And communication has been such a theme throughout this whole podcast. So, you know, that's just another great, uh, theme to be highlighting.

Marguerite Matthews:

I think, Kay, you talk a little bit about situational leadership, but what does that actually look like? Like how do you go about trying to figure out, do I need to be more hands-on? Do I need to be less hands-on? Anything like, like that.

Kay Tye:

So, yeah, I mean, wow, it's a really good question. And I, as you're asking me this question, I'm just like, literally my mind is just going through the archives of like every situation and like, what did I do? And was it a good decision? Should I have done that or not? And what ends up being a breaking point for me when I decide like, okay, I got to drop the hammer, so to speak? A lot of the decision-making I do for both hiring and firing is very transparent in the lab. I run my lab and it's sort of evolved. It's its own little culture. Um, but you know, everyone who comes into the lab, we need to vote unanimously. We have a discussion. Everybody has a veto power and you know, there's different grades of enthusiasm, but everybody has veto power and we need to unanimously decide to give someone an offer. And I think that has been a really effective process for me for filtering and understanding their problems. It's always harder when it emerges when someone's already in the lab, they already are friends with a lot of people. And, you know, they've made a lot of contributions for which I'm grateful. Um, so I think those challenges have been trickier. And I think for me, the line is if someone is not doing well in the lab, it doesn't necessarily mean that they couldn't begin to do well in the lab later. However, if someone is not doing well in the lab and they are harming or making a toxic environment or making other people feel uncomfortable or otherwise burdening other people in a way that is not relevant to any professional responsibilities. I need to do something. And it's irresponsible for me to not act. So, as soon as that becomes apparent, I act pretty swiftly. What do you think, Austin?

Austin Coley:

Um, I definitely do empathize with like the things that you have to deal with, um, because I don't think they're easy decisions to make. I feel like as a mentee, we have to be more conscious of and to like, try to put ourselves in your position the best way we can to just like, see like, all right, your job is not easy, managing all these different personalities at different career stages, I mean, that's like a tough task. So yeah, I don't know where you are coming from because I'm not in your position.

Kay Tye:

Yeah. You know, I appreciate that very much. I think that if you're ever curious, you should ask. In the anonymous lab survey that we recently did, a lot of people complain there's too many meetings and like, there's like too much discussing all these like transparency things. And then some people love it. They're like, this is super useful. This is like going to teach me how to run my lab. Like all this stuff is like behind the curtain. Like this is basically going to be my job. And I just never thought about it before. So it's mixed bag. Some people like it, some people dislike it.

Lauren Ullrich:

Oh. Will you talk more about this, this survey? Like is this something you've done regularly or sort of a new thing and what kinds of questions do you ask?

Kay Tye:

Yeah. So I, um, originally did my very first anonymous lab survey. That was at, I dunno, maybe five or six years ago, but as Aruta and then Leslie Vosshall popularized this anonymous lab survey, this just is a Google form. And so we kind of use that template and added a lot more stuff so it's pretty extensive. People say a lot and give me a lot of perspective about how they're feeling that like, I definitely wasn't aware of all of it, you know? And then have a lab meeting to discuss issues and give people a chance to air things and also I'm just responding to everyone. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe that might be a little bit burdensome for my lab and it's been a burst of a lot of this type of thing. But on the plus side, the majority of the lab feels empowered to say what they really think and feels that, you know, they're able to say what they think that their voice will be heard. So I guess that's the plus side. I don't know. Austin you tell me what he thinks? If it's too much, it's a lot.[laughs]

Austin Coley:

Yeah. Uh, I mean, I'm actually not a fan of the anonymous feedback. I am a fan of feedback, um, and prefer, you know, one-on-one feedback. I typically can handle critical feedback, so, I'm like not averse to it. Um, but I also understand, like from the other side that people are not sort of comfortable saying things to other people's faces in a one-on-one meeting. It's just like not my particular style that I would want.

Kay Tye:

It is hard to receive anonymous feedback when it's everyone giving you feedback at once.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah.

Kay Tye:

But I will say that, you know, like in, in our survey, Austin knows like, you know, I could see how a lot of people would feel uncomfortable saying, Kay, you talk too much. You need to talk less. Can you please [laughs] stop talking so that other people can talk.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, but I hear you, Austin. I mean, I've had to give the anonymous feedback. And sometimes I feel like the things that I have to say feel, they feel almost harsher when they're anonymous than if I came to a person and was like, Hey, like here's my personal feedback and take it or leave it um, and here's the context around it. But I also, you know, obviously like the flip side of the power dynamics and the not everyone feels comfortable giving that kind of feedback. Yeah. It definitely cuts both ways.

Austin Coley:

Yeah.

Avi Rodal:

One point to make that we didn't really touch on yet, is that, when you're mentoring in this sort of responsive and flexible way, one thing to be on the lookout for is burnout. Uh, and I think that's one of my main jobs as, as a mentor is to sort of, um, sense and respond to when people have entered into a time in their weeks or their months or their years where there's too much on their plates. And it's ending up having a negative feedback. And so I personally try to talk to people about that and obviously to set a tone in the lab where, um, people learn how to sense that for themselves, if they don't already know how. And then, you know, take things off their plate, take a vacation. In the long-term, it's much more important to reduce sometimes. Um, and it's not going to make a difference in terms of long-term productivity or reaching your goals. Or it is going to make a difference, but a positive one.[laughs]

Marguerite Matthews:

Absolutely. Emotional intelligence is not something we discuss or even promote a lot of times in the sciences. And it's almost as if it's combating, you know, this idea of being reasonable and logical is if those two things can't coexist. And so I think that's a really great point to, to mention is being able to recognize it in yourself as the mentor, because you probably need a break too. But especially in your trainees, because sometimes they won't ask for help. They'll just be dangling out there thinking that it's normal, it's normal to feel this way because getting a PhD is hard or, or, you know, being on the job market to get a faculty position is hard. Yeah, I think having that mental wellness really is important.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah. And I think that point about, um, that this will be better in the long run. I think sometimes trainees, they might feel shame that they can't get it all done or feel like,"no, I can do it, I can do it." And it's like, you don't have to,[laughs] you don't have to do it. You don't have to push yourself in this way. Like it's, it's going to be better in the long run. It's a really good message.

Avi Rodal:

And as a mentor, I can really help like redistribute load, um, in addition to encouraging people to take breaks.

Matthew Pescosolido:

And to Avi's point, I think of a mentor as a role model, not just for, uh, scientific reasons, but as uh lab management. And, uh, I remember there was one time during kind of the peak of the pandemic where I think we all were experiencing burnout and Avi did something very, I think simple for her as a mentor, of just saying, this week we don't need to have our one-on-one meetings, but you know, I've got a lot of things on my plate. I'm sure you will have a lot of things on your plate and by Avi doing that very simple thing of just saying we don't need to meet, it made it okay for all of us to then say something like that as well to one another. And that it wasn't as though, well, Avi's doing all of these things and I need to do all of these things, too. It gave us that permission.

Avi Rodal:

Well, we all need to be kind to each other, but we also need to be kind to ourselves.[laughs] [musical interlude]

Marguerite Matthews:

Can I ask each of you for one last piece of parting advice for our audience?

Avi Rodal:

I think I would say that the interpersonal relationships that you develop in a research environment are, um, as important to your satisfaction in this career as your scientific results. And so you have to do them as you do for your scientific work, you have to conduct your interpersonal relationships in a way that matches your values. And that makes you feel satisfied and good. So if you find yourself doing something that goes against that in your interpersonal relationships, to try to, you know, do some more science or something, it's not going to make you happy in the long run. So really working on those interpersonal relationships, particularly the mentor- mentee relationship, I think it's really important for long-term satisfaction in this career.

Matthew Pescosolido:

I guess I'd say that being in science, we're fortunate to have a lot of incredible mentors. And that there isn't necessarily one or a few mentors that one needs for particular area of, of science that you can find really good mentors all over. Uh, whether that's your particular, say, PI that you're working with, your colleagues, whether they're a post-doctoral fellows, senior scientists, graduate students, or undergraduate students who will more than likely change the world in incredible ways in the future, and you'll look up to them. And I guess I'd also say we're incredibly fortunate to be in these positions to ask questions, work on science, and I guess we're all responsible for one another and building each other up when that's necessary and being critical when it's necessary as well, but that, uh, as scientists, we're all part of this larger group that, that needs to support one another.

Austin Coley:

Yeah. So I think as it relates to advice, if you're looking for a mentor, start to, one, look early and, two, I would see what this mentor can do for you as it relates to, like, your career. I think you should have these conversations, um, very, very early on. Candid conversations. And so you're not like running into any surprises, during your PhD or your post-doc . So I think my advice is have those candid talks, and be as honest as you can. I understand this could be a little bit fearful, um, especially if you're talking to, um, a famous PI then you probably like, want to put up a front, but that's probably not the best. It's not going to help you out in the end, anyway. So, um, have those conversations and then yeah, start to like figure, figure it out.

Kay Tye:

I think that's really good advice. Um, I think my advice is to integrate over your emotional response to a complicated situation over time. So I think that a lot of times we're just like making, you know, trying to make decisions about, um, you know, choosing a mentor or what to do. And I think a lot of the times, actually, your emotional abstraction of the whole situation is taking into account many different inputs that you are weighting in and then, you know, you're coming up with an amalgam. And so if you can't necessarily articulate what the problem is, but you just have a, not a great feeling. I would say, trust that feeling and like, you know, try to investigate more before you make a final decision, but this is effectively your chosen science family. And so it is a very important decision and both when things are really good and when things are really bad, I think trust that, trust that feeling. If you feel drawn to someone, you really want to talk to them, you want to work with them. Like you should do that, you know? And don't hold back. I think Austin's point is really good. When you are trying to find a mentor and, um, you know, presenting yourself to a mentor or mentee just to present yourself authentically, because so much of the success of a mentor- mentee relationship comes down to fit. And if you are presenting and trying to be someone else that you're not like to impress someone, which everyone kind of does, but like, if you can make the version of yourself as close to that actual reality as possible, that would be most helpful for, you know, knowing if it's going to be a good fit. Um, so I think that's, that's kind of obvious, but yet everybody sort of does it.

Marguerite Matthews:

So no mentoring cat fishing going on.[laughs]

Kay Tye:

Right.

Marguerite Matthews:

I like that advice. That's good advice. All right, Lauren, what's your advice?

Lauren Ullrich:

I think I want to return to the theme of communication, because I-I- really, like as Avi was saying like, we really are, in academia, navigating a lot of, um, sometimes conflicting roles where you're a student and you're a researcher and you're, you know, an employee and a mentee and it's really hard to do that or to have any of these relationships without communication. And I think the advice part of that is that it's never too late. Even if you think you, you know, maybe you started off on the wrong foot with someone or you feel like things are kind of veering off, or I haven't ever brought this up before, so how do I even start the conversation? Um, I think people are more open to these kinds of conversations. They might not even know that you want to talk about this thing or they feel like they're, you know, they don't know how to have the conversation either, even if they're the mentor. So, um, bringing in your support community, figuring out the best way to broach the subject and then just floating some test balloons I think is a great way to start there. And then on the mentor side, it's the same, right? Like, you can still start having these conversations or set up the lab, um, expectations, the lab book now, and you can work on it and develop it as a lab and make it a group exercise. And so never too late to open the lines of communication. What about you, Marguerite?

Marguerite Matthews:

I think I'm going to sort of combine everything that has been said, even just recently, um, I love this idea Avi specifically you mentioning about incorporating the lab in various ways, both in terms of your shared values, shared expectations, um, and everyone investing in what's happening in the lab. I think so often we look to one person who is called our mentor to do everything, uh, to be the best mentor ever and have all of the expertise, the emotional intelligence, the ability to read minds and all of the things. And sometimes, you may not get everything from that person. I don't even think the expectation should be to have that, but when you have other people around, other people to lean on in the lab, being able to say, Hey, I'm really struggling with this. And I don't know how to tell Avi. I don't know how to tell my mentor that I'm having this problem, can you kind of help me, you know, figure out the best way to approach this? Or I'm really struggling in maintaining my, um, work-life balance. And I think creating a lab environment is so important where everyone can help each other. So yeah, so I really like the idea of having an environment where everyone is mentoring each other or providing, um, the support that is needed to get work done, but also to be well and to be a whole human being, since those are people you probably spend most of your time with,[laughs] um, you probably don't even spend as much time in your own house in solitude as you do with your lab mates, so..[outro music]

Lauren Ullrich:

That's all we have time for today on Building Up the Nerve. And this season, we're ending every episode with a reflection question. So this episode we invite you to reflect on, what are the most important expectations for you to set in your mentoring relationships and how do you go about doing that? Thank you to our guests this week for sharing their expertise and thank you to NINDS program director, Dr. Bob Riddle, who composed our theme song and music. We'll see you next time for episode four, where we discuss developing an adaptive mentoring style.

Marguerite Matthews:

You can find past episodes of this podcast and many more grant application resources on the web at NINDS.NIH.Gov. Be sure to follow us on Twitter@NINDSDiversity and @NINDSFunding. You can email us with questions at NINDSNervePod@nih.gov. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. We'll see you next time.