Influencing to change the course of your mentees

Being a good communicator as a mentor, and believing that the scientific world needs to be continued in a better fashion then it is high time to build that conviction. When mentors operate at the optimal/maximal potential and are egoistic, the science they do revolves around then, starts with them, persists with them and ends with them. On the other hand, visionary and legendary mentors always think, believe and perpetuate with them the legacy building strategy. For example, there is a scenario where there is this person ‘A’ who has passed with excellent grades in school, graduation, post graduation, Ph.D., postdoctoral and has published excellent papers and becomes a mentor. ‘A’ then starts mentoring Ph.D. students who are brilliant and excellent. Only brilliant/intelligent and excellent students who have secured great grades get attracted to the mentor ‘A’ for having a great track record. However, the person ‘A’ remains in his bubble of ego starts getting terrified with the performance of his students. Hence, in the long run, both the mentor and the mentee fail to perform well in science. The performance of this high achiever and his/her group gets compromised not because of their lack of intelligence, but because of lack of transparency, trust and a sense of professional insecurity.

 Now, there is another scenario. There is this person ‘B’ who got good grades throughout the career (school, graduation, Ph.D., postdoctoral), but did not do excellent. ‘B’ goes on to mentor Ph.D. students and gets good, average, and some below average students. The focus of ‘B’ is continued progress with a little winning strategy each day. ‘B’ believes in team-building as 1+1, just not two but eleven. ‘B’ works harder in a disciplined manner every day, trusts his group members, and coaches them to do good science. As a result, the team of ‘B’ focuses on developing science, is more relaxed, confident, energetic with small daily improvements. Long run brings more success to the team of the mentor ‘B’ and not ‘A.’

The bottom line: You might be brilliant with exceptional analytical skills. However, most of the times, if you (whether a mentor or a mentee) do not work to strip off the respective egos, then, the brain gets hijacked, and the performance goes down.

Situations governing good performance in Science