A Mentor's Journey Under the Microscope - How Failures Led Me to the Heart of My Work

Scott was a PhD student who mentored me when I was studying my bachelor’s degree. He showed me that gold particles could be purple. Cool!

He demonstrated what it was like to love your work so much that you would show up at any hour to do it. Not all hours, just any hour something needed to be done.

He was proactive and he accepted mistakes easily, like that time he lost a few days because his mentee spilled water all over his laptop. (It was ME.)

Stephan, my PhD advisor, showed me that gold particles could be all colors of the rainbow (cool!). Most importantly, I learned from him how to communicate the value of that in science, the value of that to humanity, and why it’s worth studying. With this blend of fascination and purpose, I thrived during the PhD long haul.

Finally, Paul, my postdoc advisor, a successful, seasoned professor, was eager to highlight my contributions and promise as a career academic. Whenever I came to HK, which I did annually to visit family, he connected me with somebody, and often that connection led to an invited talk or a conference presentation.

These three mentors shared:
1) Genuine love and sense of purpose with what they were doing
2) A track record of success in their respective fields
3) Desire to support promising individuals

So I had a fabulous foundation for a successful academic career. I could see myself being a fantastic mentor.

Let me tell you about what actually happened when I began mentoring…

Phase 1: First, graduate school. My first mentee has ingenuity, fascination, and he’s into theater. I’m a singer, so I’m excited.

He is intelligent, but easily distracted. One day we’re working at the microscope preparing a sample to go inside and we’re using this special kind of electrically conducting tape. He gets fascinated by the day and asks me “What’s this tape made of? Can we look at it with our microscope too?”

This like trying to bake a cake together and one of us wants to study the spatula first.

This is my first shot at mentoring, and I remember the feeling of freedom I had when I was doing research as an undergrad, and I want to give the same feeling to my mentee.

So I accommodate: “OK, since we’re already here, let’s look at the tape.”

Then the accommodations gradually become too much too often.

Eventually, he disappears for two weeks without warning and when he comes back, I say,

“Nice to see you back,” I say, “you know, you didn’t let us know.”

“Oh, my girlfriend is going on internship in Denmark and I wanted to spend more time with her.”

“Ok, but you didn’t tell us,” I admonish him weakly.

Him: “I’m sorry, I’ll let you know next time.”

Me: “I’m just glad you’re OK.”

Him: “By the way, I’m a lead actor in The Taming of the Shrew this weekend. Will you come?”

Me: “Absolutely, I’ll be there.”

This becomes a not very productive dysfunctional mentoring relationship masked by friendliness.

It’s not a complete failure, because a piece of custom equipment he designs gets used in our lab for another 3 years.

I do not feel like a fantastic mentor though. But his project was a ‘nice to have’ more than a ‘must have’ (which turns out to be another problem in hindsight because I’m not so invested in it), so thankfully it doesn’t stop me from earning my PhD. I graduate on time and I’m happy enough.

Who's Liane?! I’m Dr Slaughter now!

I walk into my new research group as a postdoc, 28 years old, younger than some of the students. I have scored a golden opportunity. My postdoc advisor is famous in his field, founder and Editor in chief of a popular scientific journal, and all around the country…no, all around the world, graduate students are getting in line, dreaming to work with someone like him, I have scoorreed!!

So I arrive, ego bigger than the building.

One month in, I receive my first mentoring assignment, a first year Ph.D. student.

I walk up to her. “Hi – Paul asked me to mentor you. He asked me to teach you about gold particles. Let’s sit down together and fix everything wrong with your presentation yesterday.”

We do that, and I say, “Hey, would you like to join my project? Ok great, so these are the experiments we should do. Let’s start with this one.”

Then, she questions me. “Why not do it this way instead?” they ask, “And I don’t understand this part.”

“Try this one first,” I say, “Trust me, I know gold.”

They try my idea and come back to me, “Liane, this didn’t work.”

Me: “Ok, try again.”

“Liane, it didn’t work again.”

Me: “Try again.”

“I don’t have time this week. I have exams next week and I need to lead a review session on Saturday.”

Me: “Saturday? Ok, no problem about Saturday. What about Sunday? Can you come on Sunday? I’ll be here. Let’s try it then.”

If in my first shot at mentoring I was too friendly, in my second trial I’ve now shot the opposite direction. I’m trying to squeeze everything I can out of the people I work with and out of myself.

I don’t completely blame myself for acting this way. A postdoc is a phase in an academic career when you further upgrade yourself as a researcher, your leadership, and your network. It’s often the last stepping stone to a tenure-track faculty position.

I was told things by my mentors like, “You need to be as productive as you were in grad school if not more in half the time if not less.” And “if you want to apply for a tenure-track role, you need to have three first-author publications by this time next year.”

I internalize this pressure and it bleeds all over the people around me.

Good news for them, they can fend for themselves. Our famous professor advisor is traveling the world, giving invited talks, advising government committees, et cetera. At home in the lab, he’s a bit absentee. That means that if they find themselves in an alliance that doesn’t work for them, they team up with someone else.

That’s what happens. By the end of my second year of Postdoc I find myself alone, publishing nothing.

Alone and now painfully self-aware that no matter how awesome my project was, people will not choose to work with me if I am being a terrible person to work with.

But I want to do this work, and I need help to do it. So I have to change my ways.

First, I take a look around at what other people are doing. What makes these other collaborations work?

I used to see people talk a lot, especially at the beginning, and I wondered what are they talking about, how is that useful?

I start to get the idea and when a new student comes, I ask them questions like “What are you interested in? What are you good at? What would you like to learn and why is that important to you?”

I invite them rather than assign them to the project, and we think together instead of me directing completely. Things start to feel a little easier.

Second, at this time, when I feel like I haven’t been able to do what my fabulous mentors did, I take a closer look at their lives.

One resigns from a leadership role citing interdepartmental conflict, another divorces - 10 hours a week is not enough time at home for their former spouse, and another one suffers a spontaneous collapse during a busy time of year and the doctor finds no explanation other than overwork.

This is not to say that my mentors are bad at leadership, relationships, or health; they just struggle with the same things in career and life that I do. That all of us do. And the academic career path has a real toll at every level.

Third, mentoring can come from anyone anywhere.

During this era, I attend a workshop about team science – why can teams do more than the sum of the parts, what makes that work?

After the workshop, I meet with the guest speaker privately. She’s a senior researcher at the National Institutes of Health in the US and has decades of experience in research around the country. I confess to her my crimes in mentoring and my feelings of shame and loneliness, things I’m not able to confess to the people I see everyday.

After listening to me for a while, she says to me, “You know Liane, you’re actually pretty self-aware.”

Given her experience, I imagine she’s seen a lot, so I take her comment to mean, “It’s not just me who has fudged up mentoring in academia,” and “there’s hope for me because I’m aware.”

This one conversation shows me 1) I have work to do 2) I can do it and 3) I learn a tool that can help me. It’s a Welcome Letter that I can customize for each mentee. In writing we can align on strategy, goals, and what to expect of each other.

This ONE, 30-minute conversation changes the way I approach mentoring for good. I have not interacted with this person again.

And that teaches me that mentoring can come from anyone, whether they are officially your mentor or not. As a mentor, my mentees can seek help from anyone. I better not inflate my importance to them.

I go back to the lab and apply these three lessons as soon as possible. Things move more smoothly, like there’s less sand stuck in the gears.

My three years as a postdoc in Los Angeles end on a high note, and I secure the role in Hong Kong.

My first summer in Hong Kong, I get a chance to mentor an undergraduate. I’m excited!

But before it even starts, the anguish of the past comes back to haunt me. I feel unsteady, and I cannot mess up mentoring again. I need help. I need to talk to someone.

I remember that when I was in high school, I accompanied my dad to graduation parties and BBQs hosted by his summer interns. He worked at a pharmaceutical company and each summer he hosted one or two students from the local universities. They seemed happy with him.

I call him up, ask him, “Dad, what did you do right? How do I start on the right foot?”

I expect tips, maybe another tool or strategy, maybe he can break down mentoring into its prime factors for me. You know what he says to me instead? In his typical plain, gentle way, he says with a shrug:

“Well, remember, you’re connecting with another person.”

Stunned silence. I think... really? I’m cycling through realization, curiosity, and a little bit of anger.

“Of course I’m connecting with another person! Who am I mentoring?! I am not mentoring a rat!” How could he say something so obvious?

But under this hubris, I know that he’s right to suggest that perhaps previously I had overlooked something essential a bit too often.

“You’re connecting with another person.” In 5 words he has just summed up what I just explained to you over the past 5 minutes.

The student comes.

I learn that her favorite animal is the sheep, she loves to swim, and there are specific research techniques she wants to learn from us to support her career aspiration. That’s great to know!

I figure out effective ways to communicate with her and she learns some new communications skills too, like how to use a landline phone.

We pitch ideas to each other, and instead of being defensive to her questions or confusion, I appreciate the fact that her mind isn’t bogged down with the same baggage that occupies mine. We take time for dialogue to align our goals and strategies, and once we’re moving on the project, we balance dialogue with independent time to figure things out for ourselves.

If we really get stuck, we leave the lab and talk it out over cheesecake.

This interpersonal leg – I truly believe it saves us weeks over the course of our year-long collaboration. Neither of us deviates too far off course, which can happen in research. Sometimes there’s misunderstanding, or there’s discomfort or avoidance in asking for help and communicating things we think the other doesn’t want to hear. That doesn’t happen to us.

And the results surprise both of us.

See, before she arrived, I heard from her previous mentor, and they told me, “This is an obedient student. She’ll do whatever you say, but don’t expect too much from her.”

Instead, because we created the container of connection, our problem solving abilities and creativity flowed into it, and mixed, our project takes on a much more feasible and meaningful direction than if she had done whatever I said.

She presents her research at the undergraduate research symposium and earns accolades for it. Other professors compliment us. It’s wonderful.

Finally, I got something right - I was more connected and committed, and as a result, we both stretched our capabilities and grew.

All together, it takes me 7 years just to get on the right track with mentoring. That’s as long as a Ph.D. And like a Ph.D., there was trying, failing, learning, failing, trying, learning, succeeding, learning, learning, and learning.

And you know how I really know I did something right?

Fast forward to 2020, I’ve left the lab, and 2020 is happening. My team has a manuscript that is under review for publication in a scientific journal. That means that people in our field are evaluating it to decide whether it will be published in a scientific journal. Actually, it’s already been rejected by 4 journals and we’re on the 5^th one and they say “Yes, we’ll publish it but first you have to revise it like this.”

So I need help from my team. And it’s not just me who has left the lab. All of my former mentees have moved on – they’re in grad school or jobs in the US, Europe, and HK.

What could happen is that someone in my position could end up doing all of the work. People have moved on to their Ph.D.’s or jobs and understandably they other priorities. There’s no financial payoff for them to finish this project either.

But that doesn’t happen. I ask for their help, we’re busy communicating across 12 time zones, and we get it done by the deadline, minimal headache.

We were aligned, we were motivated, and the work flowed beautifully.

It might sound simple now – a mentor is a human who supports another human. A mentor listens, understands the mentee, and most importantly helps the mentee understand themselves.

That might sound simple… but if you find yourself struggling with it in practice, know that you’re not alone. And I hope you try anyway…

Because when I finally figured out effective ways to view mentoring through the lens of connection and service rather than achievement, it became the most gratifying thing I do for others and for myself.

Epilogue:
At the end of 2019, I jumped the academic ship. I am now a one-woman business offering mentoring, coaching, and science writing. The story you have just read is the origin story, and I still learn something new every day.

Thank you.

Deep thanks for the photos in this blog by Teressa Siu and R. Cresswell.

Finally, deep gratitude for Rachel Smith, Mark Swinkels, our hosts Soho House, and the entire CreativeMornings team for making this possible.