General Manual — Document 06

Mentorship and Career Development

How mentorship works in this lab, what you can expect from the PI, what you can give to each other, and how to build the network that will carry you forward.

01 The PI as Mentor

The PI's job is to help trainees develop into the people they want to be. Ideally, we find a way to do this that is in alignment with the lab's overarching priorities. This means that it is important for PI and trainee to get to know each other well, so that projects can be tailored to the trainee's interests, and pivots can be taken if needed.

Identifying challenges and conflicts early is helpful, because it allows changes to be made before problems occur. The PI's role is not to manage every step of a trainee's path, but to stay close enough to the work and the person to notice when something needs attention, and to act on that before it becomes a crisis.

The work in the lab should enrich each person's life goals. If the two are in conflict, people get miserable and the lab suffers. Always stay in touch with who you want to be. The PI will work with you to sculpt the projects, rhythm of work, and focus to meet this.

02 Mentorship Beyond the PI

One of the major tasks of a scientist, and a fundamental part of science as practice, is the continual, longitudinal development of a scientific network. At the level of trainees, this means forming, maintaining, and constantly assessing and updating a mentorship network and a formal mentorship committee, which often overlap though need not necessarily. Everyone should seek out additional mentorship, regardless of level.

Additional mentorship helps to buffer the PI's perspective, provide tailored advice and counsel, and will often provide valuable and inspiring scientific perspective. It will make the work, the trainee, and the lab stronger.

You should be driving this. Trainees have enormous agency in building their mentorship network, and they are the ones who should be pushing it forward. Seek out people you trust, want to learn from, and that your PI approves of. This can be in any discipline, school, or institution. Think broadly. Meet with people to learn about them and see if you like talking with them before promising or committing to anything. Take your time, build your network, and decide who you want as your teachers for this period of your life. Revise as you enter new roles.

Check with the PI first. For formal collaborations or formal additions to a committee, check with the PI before offering anything or asking to join. The PI needs to verify that an affiliation makes sense for the lab, and this is one of the main ways the PI can protect a trainee from unseen political complexities or potential long-term difficulties. Trainees should not act unilaterally to establish formal mentorship arrangements.

03 Mentorship Within the Lab

A well-functioning lab has a tiered, non-competitive mentorship structure, where more experienced hands and minds train the less experienced, generously and thoughtfully. This does not mean that everyone's time should be spent training others. Everyone needs to set their own boundaries and make sure that training of others is not disruptive to their own work.

But passing on skills, developing methods collaboratively with less experienced members, and sharing knowledge and ideas is a rich experience in a lab, and is one of the main ways that we all grow into new intellectual and scientific places. Look for opportunities to teach others, both because it will help everyone to grow, and because explaining something to someone often forces you to find the simplest essence or most pure principles of what you have been doing. Teaching is one of the most powerful ways to hone your own thinking.

04 Career Development

The lab spans many intended trajectories: academic research, medicine, industry, and others. The lab's role is the same across all of them. The goal is to have people's work enrich their life goals, whatever those are. There is no preferred track.

Identifying your career goals and communicating them to the PI is your responsibility. The earlier that conversation happens, the more the lab can be shaped to serve it. Revisit it as your understanding of yourself and your options develops. The PI will work with you on this, but cannot do it for you.

The goal is for each trainee to be able to look back on the decisions they made, know why they made them, and feel that their choices were their own and were supported by good counsel. Build a mentorship committee, stay in contact with your network, and make decisions that are true to who you are.

05 When Things Are Hard

The PI's job includes identifying problems before they arise, even when that includes conflict between the PI and a trainee. But everyone is human. The PI may make mistakes, give bad advice, fail to notice something, or forget key pieces of information. When that happens, say so.

Be your own best advocate. Tell the PI, your mentorship committee, your colleagues, and anyone else you trust what you need for success. Figure out how to get it. Ask for it directly. Trust, but verify. Make your own decisions, with counsel, but in a way that is true to you.

The goal is to allow each trainee to forge their own path with pride: to be able to look back on the decisions they made, know why they made them, and feel that their choices were their own and were supported by fine counsel. This is what a rich, respectful, and nurturing community looks like.