Dr. Greg N.: Why don't we go ahead and get started on today's workshop on ethical issues in mentoring relationships. Delighted to have on board with us today Dr. Brad Johnson.

Couple of housekeeping things before we get going. I'm Dr. Greg Niemeyer. I direct the Center for [inaudible 00:00:16] Career Development here at the American Psychological Association. On behalf of the Center, on behalf of the Education Director, and on behalf of the Center for Learning and Career Development, welcome aboard to today's webcast.

We strongly encourage you to ask questions throughout the webcast at any time you'd like. If you're joining us live online, you can do that simply by looking in the bottom left hand side of your screen and you'll see a tab marked "Questions." Click that and you can email your questions in to us at any time. We will forward those onto the presenter to respond to them. Just be aware that if you ask questions, your question is going to be presented and it's going to be recorded so you, too, will have made a contribution to this recording in perpetuity. Thanks in advance.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to today's presenter, Dr. Brad Johnson. He is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, and also a faculty associate in the graduate school of education at Johns Hopkins University. A clinical psychologist, Dr. Johnson is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and he's the recipient of the Johns Hopkins University Teaching Excellence Award.

He is also the author of numerous publications and 13 books in the areas of mentoring, professional ethics and counseling. His most recent book is Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women.

Today, he's going to talk with us about ethical issues in mentoring relationships. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Brad Johnson.

Dr. Brad J.: All right. Glad to be back with you again for Part Two of this focus on mentoring. If you missed it, you can check out the earlier webinar on becoming an excellent master mentor.

For Part Two here that we're kicking off right now, this is going to be an exclusive focus on the ethical issues, intentions, and considerations that great mentors have to consider when doing this important work of mentoring. I'm going to cover the whole landscape of things that mentors wrestle with.

I encourage you at any moment in this hour we have together to go ahead and send in questions. I'll go ahead and pause any time your questions will be read out loud, and I'll respond to those for everybody, so feel free to do that. If you

forget, I'm going to remind you a few different times to go ahead and send in questions.

I'm going to include a number of vignettes in my comments today, and I'll read those with you. Have you think about those. I want you to know these are amalgams of different cases I've been familiar with, so none of them is based on an actual case in and of itself.

Let's go ahead and start with this. I think I want to be thinking about the ingredients of being an excellent mentor, and one of the key ingredients is undergirding virtues as somebody brings to this task. I love this quote by Norman Schwarzkopf that mentorship "is a combination of character and strategy. If you've got to be without one, be without strategy." He actually said this about leadership, so I've swiped his quote and modified it. I hope he doesn't mind. I really think this is accurate.

We want to begin with fundamental character virtues and commitment to certain ethical principles when we're mentoring. The skills are great, but I think if we don't have the virtues, we can get into trouble.

One of the earliest people in our discipline to look at mentoring relationships, Daniel Levinson, in his studies of adult development claimed that these relationships were some of the very most important that a young adult can have, and especially important that a mentor is helping you unearth a dream. Steven Duck, who has really researched interpersonal relationships more generally says, "Yeah, but remember, relationships of any kind can be messy and difficult. They can be full of tensions that can be problematic," and that is certainly true with mentorship.

In this hour together, I want to highlight some of the key tensions that we're likely to face when we're having a mentoring relationship, either with a trainee or somebody junior in our profession. I'm going to really begin by just talking about some of the qualities of mentorship that maybe heighten the probability for ethical issues.

These relationships are somewhat unusual in that there's very little training for these relationships. We take it for granted that they're going okay, but they have some qualities that might breed tensions that have an ethical quality down the road.

Number one, these relationships when they're at their very best are often long in duration. Some of them go on in perpetuity. These are relationships that may last until the death of the mentor, and even after death the mentor may continue to influence the mentee. As time goes by, these relationships become more reciprocal naturally. More bonded, more mutual, and so there is a deeper connection as these relationships go on. I think that can create certain kinds of ethical dynamics.

Another interesting thing about many mentoring relationships is they are informally formed, meaning they don't come from a formal mentoring program. They come not from a formal match, but they begin organically. You'll hear words used like chemistry and shared interests and other kinds of relational terms, and we shouldn't be surprised when people do find chemistry might create feelings of attraction at times. I think that is another issue.

There is always a power dynamic. In most relationships, there is a formally assigned role, maybe an advising or a supervisory relationship. At the very least, there is a power dynamic in terms of years of experience and the mentor always holds some power over the mentee, at least early in the relationship. We've got to be aware of that.

There are naturally multiple roles involved, and so if you happen to be a faculty member, for example, engaging in mentorship, you're also going to be teaching. You're going to be doing advising. You're going to be writing letters of recommendation. There are going to be a number of roles involved for the mentor, so we've got to be aware of that. They're always changing. They're fluid, they're evolving.

In the earlier webinar, I talked about a way of understanding mentorship as a quality of relationship, and I would just reiterate on this mentoring relationship continuum, as you move along any relationship continuum and you get to that really connected, a bit more intimate and committed relational end of the continuum, you increase the probability of certain kinds of ethical tensions. I think we've just got to be aware of that, and I think good mentors are aware that some of their very best mentorships may come with some ethical dynamics we've got to be conscious of.

I want to address this issue. The more you hear about mentoring and the more we talk about mentorship, there can be almost an implied message that faculty and other psychologists might be getting that everybody should be mentored. Everyone is entitled to a mentorship. I just want to suggest to you that that may not be true. You may have trainees and you may have junior folks working in your area that are not particularly receptive, not interested in mentoring for different reasons. I want to suggest maybe placing a stake in the ground early that we shouldn't be forcing these relationships on folks, nor should it be an indication of pathology if somebody is not particularly receptive to mentoring. There can be different personality reasons for that. Someone mentioned in the earlier webinar, I could be a second career student and I just may not feel the need for all the guidance and support that somebody junior might require.

Let me just get you, wherever you are, to do a little bit of reflection on mentorships that you've had and particularly times maybe when you've been in a mentoring role what have been the major ethical tensions that you've faced. Have there been any? What are the tensions? Have there been any ethical quandaries specifically related to mentoring that you've done? Most of us can

think maybe about an uncomfortable moment or a difficult conflict that occurred in some relationship with someone who may have been in a mentoring role. These are not atypical. I will tell you that academic leaders sometimes get embroiled in issues that really relate to a mentor relationship when things are not going well.

We are going to see these cases. I'm going to share with you a few cases that have been changed in various ways that really came directly from those kinds of settings. Let's start with the first. I've got a top ten, in my view, of primary ethical tensions that mentors may face. Let's just start going through these. I'll pause with a couple of vignettes as we're going along, and again, if any of these issues jog particular questions or thoughts or experiences you want to offer or ask, feel free to send along your questions.

Number one, the level of relationship formality, I think, creates some ethical issues we have to be thoughtful about. If you are formally paired in a mentoring program, or if you're formally assigned to a student to mentor, there's a certain level of formality that creates some contours and creates some boundaries on the relationship that we don't have with the relationship is organic or informal, and we want to simply be thoughtful about that.

Formal relationships, those in which somebody is matched or paired, come with certain characteristics. Number one, they're high visibility. Everyone knows that you're paired. Everyone knows that you're mentor and mentee. Everyone is aware that there is a specific focus to that relationship. Maybe it's getting you through to graduation. Maybe it's helping you through a first year of work. There's a particular focus usually. We also have some boundaries on the duration. We know how long the relationship is going to go. If it's a formal program, usually there is some expectations.

Let me just say in informal relationships, those things are not true. There may not be any deadline or expiration date on the relationship. There may not be a particular focus, and there may not be any particular starting date or matching that occurs. These relationships occur largely under the radar. Nobody is watching. It really is up to me, the mentor, to make sure that the relationship is professional and appropriate, but it lacks the formal scrutiny that goes with formal relationships.

The other piece of a formal matching program is some process of discussing mutual expectations, and sometimes that is spelled out. There is a contract. We agree on a plan for development for the mentee. When it's informal, there really isn't that moment for what I describe as informed consent. We never really discuss, as a mentorship is beginning very gradually and organically, where the relationship is going, who expects what from the other, what the best outcomes might be of the relationship. So I think those relationships that are organic, and I think that encompasses more relationships than those that are formally matched ... I think they require more thoughtful deliberation on the

part of the mentor. I've got to really be thinking about expectations the mentee may have. If there are some things the mentee should know early, I probably need to talk about that.

I don't know how you feel about this issue, but the competence matter. I've been having some conversations with folks here at APA today about the fact that we really, in psychology and I think in other fields, don't talk much about competence. We don't do much training for mentors. We don't teach mentors how to do this work. There is no assessment or evaluation of mentor competence along the way. We're pretty good at competence in clinical areas and other areas of practice. Not so much in mentorship.

So, here is the classic definition of competence that we see applied in various areas: "The habitual and judicious use of communication, knowledge, technical skills, clinical reasoning, emotions, values, and reflection in daily practice for the benefit of the individual and communities served." That sounds so easy when you look at it here. My question is, when you translate that to mentoring work, what does competence look like? I've got some thoughts for you, but I can tell you just based on my experience in training mentors that we really don't have a nice approach to evaluating mentorship competency. We don't do that. We don't do it in academe very well. We don't do it in psychology particularly, so we're often hoping that people that we assign to mentor roles or that take on mentoring duties have some competence. I think we've got to be thoughtful about what the implications of that may be.

Here is a first vignette, and I'd like to ... You've got it on the screen before you, but I'm going to go ahead and just read it with you, and then let's just think out loud together about what some of the ethical issues might be. This is based loosely on a case that came before an ethics body, and so let's just look at this together.

A graduate student in her fifth year of doctoral training files an ethics complaint with a university ethics committee claiming that her dissertation chair and adviser, [Dr. [Porus 00:15:03], abandoned her, leaving her emotionally distressed. It appears the two developed an unusual level of attachment due to frequent socializing and development of a personal relationship that many at the university described as intense. The student had several life crises and emotional problems during her training, and Dr. Porus would frequently provide what amounted to psychotherapy sessions that were as frequent as three to four times a week. He encouraged her to contact him by phone after hours, and often invited her along to events with his family. The student became quite distressed when, on her graduation, Dr. Porus attempted to terminate the relationship.

You're not all here, I wish you were, in the room. We could have a robust discussion about this case. But as you imagine what the main ethical issues may be in this case, and I think there may be a few, one of those that rises to the top,

of course, might be the competence level of Dr. Porus. We may have several concerns about the doc here in terms of things like boundaries and multiple roles with somebody that she was mentoring or he was mentoring. Maybe concerns about not doing appropriate referral for emotional help at some point for this mentee. And then the whole issue of how the relationship ended, or didn't end very well, and what the mentee's expectations of this relationship may have been moving forward.

A number of ethical issues here in this case. The one that maybe most concerns me at this moment might be the competence of the mentor and what the mentor may have been thinking along the way about best interests of the mentee. If nothing else, and I'm not getting any questions yet so far ... Feel free to chime in on any of these vignettes and we can all process them out loud if you send in a question.

In terms of competence, you know that APA says we just don't engage in behaviors for which we haven't had appropriate training and supervision and experience. That would apply certainly to mentoring, although I think mentoring is a much more diffused sort of relationship. It has not been formalized in the sense of training programs for competency. I think very few mentors have ever had any training in mentoring at all. This is something that is by life experience and trial by fire. We figure it out with some of the very first mentees we have as we become teachers or supervisors. Some of us may lack some ingredients when it comes to what makes a great mentor. I'll show you a model here about some of the ingredients for becoming a competent mentor, but not everybody may have these.

Here is a triangular model you may think about when it comes. If you've ever asked yourself what goes into great mentoring, here is one model. It begins on the bottom with some character virtues. Is the person caring? Do they have good judgment and prudence? Then on the other side, we might ask about abilities. Do you have the basic EQ and communications skills? I think most of us who would be mentoring are fine in terms of intellectual capacity, cognitive ability, but how about those EQ factors? I think not everybody is at the same place there.

Of course, there are the micro-competencies. All the things you may want to be thinking about in terms of relationships and how to manage those with students and junior professionals. Many of these things we can teach. We can make you more competent when it comes to these micro-competencies. We probably can't do much for virtues and abilities by the time you're a psychologist. I think that may be more difficult for us.

Then we talk a lot about competence and diminished competence, and I think the same risk may be an issue for psychologists who are doing mentoring work. I may be more or less competent at different times based on what's going on for me in terms of my own life and practice and other kinds of things. We know that

psychologists are likely to experience burn out and get exhausted, maybe have some empathy failure at one point or another. May have issues with their own relationships or substances, and I don't think that we're often asking one another "How are you doing with your mentoring relationships?" Or "How are those mentees fairing when you're experiencing distress?" This may be one of the last things we think about, and I think we've go to be vigilant to this.

I will also just tell you that the evidence is really quite clear on self-assessment, that we're not very good at self-assessing competence. That is certainly true in clinical areas. It's certainly true with medical school students and psychology trainees. There's a very low correlation between self-assessment of competence and external assessment of competence. Gotta be thinking about this.

There's a case to illustrate this. Again, I'll let you read the case and I'd like to read it with you. Just be asking yourself as we go through this case what could be going on with this supervisor who may be in a mentoring role, and we'll think through what's happening here.

A clinical supervisor for a generation of interns, [Dr. Midlife 00:20:57] began to notice a concerning trend in his relationships with trainees. Specifically, he noted that during the past year, two female supervisees had switched to other supervisors. Dr. Midlife was concerned, both by the trend and by the fact that neither supervisee had spoken to him about any problems. Dr. Midlife had gone through a divorce two years prior, had lost interest in his own scholarship and clinical work, had begun to abuse alcohol and spend less time at work, and, truth be told, had begun to rely on his female supervisees to meet some powerful needs for affirmation. Although he had not noticed the incremental decline in his professionalism with trainees, he now admitted that he was both lonely and depressed. Excruciatingly aware of the signs of his own aging, he was desperate not to be regarded as a has-been, either personally or professionally.

In this case, we have a psychologist who maybe at one point was really doing quite well in terms of competence, both clinically and maybe in mentor relationships, clinical supervision. Now, not so much, and you can see the drift here is not egregious but maybe rather subtle. He's got mentees that are feeling uncomfortable, perhaps feeling a little exploited in terms of emotional requirements for appeasing the supervisor in this case. And the supervisor is not aware how much he is putting off and making female mentees, in particular, feel uncomfortable. Getting his own needs met and not even aware that he is doing that through the mentorship relationship.

Here is somebody who probably has had some diminished competence when it comes to mentoring. May not be particularly aware of that. Is going to need maybe a boost in self-awareness, but also some collegial support, we hope, along the way.

We've got a question.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Dr. Brad J.: Yeah.

Speaker 3: A question.

What are some approaches you would recommend for assessing mentors' competency?

Dr. Brad J.: This is a great question.

There are several books on the topic that would be ... I'm guessing that most of us have not had a course in mentoring, and so there are a number of books on the topic. I've got a couple, but a number of other authors have got other books related to mentoring. I may begin there, so the Elements of Mentoring, or On Being a Mentor can be very helpful, just for reading.

The other thing I would really encourage you to think about doing is to form some sort of peer mentoring group. We don't do this enough in academe, often because we're too busy, but it would be really terrific if, in the context of an ongoing peer supervision group or a faculty group in a university setting, to go ahead and have some sort of peer conversation about mentorship. How those relationships are going, seek any consultation with relationships that are getting off the rails, or especially difficult to manage. I think that could be really useful and it would build a bit of community around mentorship, which you may find very helpful.

It would also be great if you would be willing to reach out to other folks that you thought were terrific mentors and perhaps get some consultation. Don't be afraid to get some supervision or consultation around this topic.

Good. Excellent question.

Let's go ahead and look at a couple other areas of ethical tension. This one comes up an awful lot, and I am guessing that almost everybody involved in this webinar have had some level of tension in this regard. It's the whole issue of finding that as you move across that mentoring relationship continuum, as you get more bonded to a mentee, as you have more water under the bridge and years of experience with that person, you naturally become more of an advocate. You become a champion for their career. You become more committed to them doing well. The relationship becomes more friendly and collegial. I find myself more and more in this person's corner. I want them to do well. I am an advocate.

At the same time, I may find that, because of my academic role or my supervisory role, I have an obligation to the profession ... In our case, APA psychology ... To be an honest broker when it comes to assessing and evaluating

that person. Those two may sometimes feel like they are in conflict, or at the very least, intentioned, and I may struggle with how to give an honest assessment of somebody that I have become an advocate for.

Again, I've got a case, and keep the questions coming. If you have questions or comments, I'll certainly be interested in those. Here's another case. I've changed the details, but it is based on an actual problem.

A much admired advocate for her students, [Dr. Avoid 00:26:09] had a strong track record of getting her graduate students through to graduation and on to good jobs in the field. Unflinching when called on to protect and promote her mentees, she had garnered a reputation as a formidable champion for those she mentored. When one of her students, Allison, began to show signs of both serious personality disturbance and unethical behavior, Dr. Avoid downplayed concerns expressed by colleagues and even some external clinical supervisors. Although she mentioned the concerns to Allison, she colluded with her student in construing the complaints as misunderstanding and hostility. Dr. Avoid successfully fought efforts by the clinical training director to have Allison placed on probation, and wrote her stellar letters of recommendation for internships, entirely neglecting mention of the complaints made about her behavior in past years.

I don't know if this case feels somewhat familiar to you or not, but you may have witnesses cases where a faculty member or another mentor becomes such an advocate for a mentee that he or she is not willing to look at obvious signs of impairment or unprofessional behavior or lack of competence. Then, to make matters worse, plays a hot potato game and passes this person down the chain of training without saying anything.

You know that the tension boils down to this issue: Great mentors are great advocates. Great mentors have your back. They are in your corner. That's part of the dynamic of mentoring. At the same time, our profession, and others, but APA makes it very clear ... Standard 7 of our ethics code reminds us that trainers have an obligation to give honest, authentic and accurate appraisals of our trainee's performance. Sometimes those two requirements may abut and may seem to conflict, and I'll just suggest to you that the closer you become to a mentee, the more friendly that relationship becomes, the harder giving effective and accurate assessments may be.

If you want evidence for this, we do have some good empirical evidence of this. Number one, we have good data to suggest that psychologists, when asked in surveys, will admit they have, at least at one time or another, inflated deliberately or maybe fraudulently reported that a student is a high performer in an area where they're not, so they haven't given accurate evidence of that, and they have maybe muted or chosen not to include evidence of unprofessional behavior or low competence. Psychologists admit that this

happens for them. I will just hypothesize that that is a greater risk when we're mentoring somebody.

To confirm that data on inflated letters of recommendation, internship directors will tell you in surveys that they have begun not to trust letters of recommendation because they are often so inflated and the correlation between trainee behavior and the letters is almost zero. Really, they're not very helpful, and I think the tension between mentorship and accurate reporting of somebody's performance has much to do with that.

Let's talk about the issue of confidentiality. This is another thing that mentors will note is difficult for them, especially in training context. It's a whole issue of does confidentiality exist for people in training contexts in the way that we think about confidentiality with clients. I think you would agree it's a different dynamic. There is an ethical standard for confidentiality, and when I'm mentoring somebody, I would aspire ethically to keep private information that he or she shares with me. However, I don't think confidentiality applies in quite the same way legally. The conversations that I have with a mentee are not privileged, and remember, I'm usually not record-keeping so that is usually not going to come into play.

I think that psychologists and others that are engaging in mentor roles do need to talk with mentees early on about any situation where you may feel required to go ahead and disclose something that a mentee says in the context of mentoring relationships. I think those will be rare moments, but they may occur, especially when you're in a gate keeping role. You may have some obligation to file a report if somebody is engaged in egregious, unethical behavior. If one of your mentees is suicidal and you happen to be aware of that, there may be moments where you feel that you need to make a disclosure. I think you should have a conversation about that and maybe there will be an iterative ongoing process of informed consent with, in particular, trainees that you might be mentoring, if you're getting the sense that something is being disclosed may have to be passed on at some point.

It is probably better for us to talk more about privacy, not confidentiality, in the context of mentor relationships. Remember, these are not privileged communications for the most part, and you're really talking about the ethical aspiration of protecting privacy. I think you want to have a conversation about that and let your mentee know that in nearly every case, you'll be able to protect privacy, but you want to talk about any potential exceptions.

Okay. Let's deal with this issue. This comes up a lot. It comes up in cross-gender mentorships at times, and the whole issue is the issue of attraction. Let me just suggest this to you. I think that when we have particularly in a graduate experience, graduate context or clinical supervision, we all should be a little bit less shocked when there is occasionally the experience of attraction between a mentor and a mentee. The reason I say that ... Many of these relationship begin

informally, and they begin on the basis of things like frequency of interaction, lots of exposure to one another, chemistry. Often the mentor and mentee are drawn together because they share personality characteristics. They share intellectual interests. They share research interests, and then they go on to spend a significant amount of time together. All of those things are ingredients for shared attraction, and I think we ought to be surprised when that doesn't happen at some point in our experience with mentees.

I will just remind you that former APA President Dr. Sternberg has the famous triangular theory of love, and he says that when you have a relationship that is high in commitment and that also involves intimacy, you're talking about actually a certain kind of love relationship. He calls it companionate love. We don't want to add passion to that combination because now we're talking about a romantic love interest, but in many ways, long term mentoring relationships have the quality of companionate love. At least some of the best mentorships you may experience. And so we've got to be thoughtful about this and about the potential for attraction.

When you survey psychologists and those in training roles, many of them will say that they have experience attraction to a trainee. It's not an unusual experience. There is a huge breakthrough that we often share with people who are maybe concerned about attraction, and that is keeping you on the sidelines and preventing you from engaging in mentoring. It turns out, you do have a frontal lobe on your brain and those are the brake linings of the brain. You can be aware of attraction and manage that appropriately. I think this is an area where it would be great if psychologists did more consultation with one another, especially in training environments, and especially when we're working in long term mentoring relationships with mentees. It would be great if we could be transparent with somebody when attraction does occur and think about how to appropriately manage that. But I do hear about this one maybe more than many of the others, the whole issue of how do I manage this when I suddenly become aware that I'm feeling sexual feelings or attraction to somebody that I'm mentoring.

Okay. Yes. Got a question. Excellent.

Speaker 3: We have about four, so let me know how you want me to handle this.

Dr. Brad J.: Oh, yeah. Want to do a couple now?

Speaker 3: Sure, we could do a couple.

Dr. Brad J.: Yeah, excellent.

Speaker 3: Sounds good.

Here's the first question. How would you recommend that we navigate cultural considerations in mentoring relationships with individuals of color in academia who, due to your shared identities, expect you to follow informal within cultural norms? For example, attending personal events or accepting invitations to activities outside of a professional relationship.

Dr. Brad J.: Yeah, that is such a great question. I am going to say a few more things about cross-cultural relationships as we move on here today, but this is such a great question because it relates to other dynamics as well, like boundaries in multiple relationships.

Here is a moment where a mentee may be hoping that, in the context of cultural norms, I may be involved in more personal familial kinds of events, or other things that might not feel entirely appropriate or comfortable for me in a training, mentoring relationship. Here is a great moment to have a conversation. Here is a great moment to, in a very humble way, talk about the potential downsides of having a multiple relationship, maybe a friendship or family relationship. Share that, I think, very transparently. If your own discomfort is going to get in the way of a mentorship when asked to engage in that kind of multiple relationship, I think you've got to have a conversation about that and see if you can meet your mentee halfway.

But I like the idea of mentors being willing to engage in some very appropriate boundary crossings. Remember, crossing a boundary in the traditional sense is not a boundary violation necessarily, and occasionally engaging in cultural experiences that you're not familiar with may be a nice boundary crossing that is not harmful or risky at all in terms of the mentor relationship.

Great question. Yeah. Got another one here.

Dr. Greg N.: We've got another question here. The other question is this ... What are your thoughts on reciprocal mentoring among colleagues, both lateral and hierarchical relationships?

Dr. Brad J.: Reciprocal mentoring ... I'm so glad someone asked that. This is, I think, a profoundly overlooked area of mentorship, and one of the downsides about the way we construe mentoring is that we tend to construe it as entirely hierarchical. We have the mentor guru who is more experienced, and we have the junior supplicant coming and asking for wisdom. That is a somewhat outdated perspective on mentoring. Mentees will tell you that that model is not very helpful for them. They'll tell you that "I wish we could have more of a collegial relationship," and in fact there are surveys showing that trainees and other mentees like it when there is a bit more friendship and collegiality in the relationship.

I think the we all need to work on that, especially if we've been through a very formal training program. It tends to promote very rigid boundaries in relationships.

Reciprocal mentoring is wonderful, and if you are a psychologist, I encourage you to think about this in the context of other kinds of ongoing consultation or support groups that you may already be involved with. I wonder if some of those could take on a bit of a reciprocal mentorship component, and if not, I encourage you to initiate that with some other colleagues. I think it is an overlooked area of our own maintenance of competence and professional development. I am an enthusiastic supporter of reciprocal relationships.

Excellent question. I'll do a couple more here, and then we'll pause for a few. Keep the questions coming. These are excellent.

Another area we hear about from mentors is a whole issue of self-disclosure and whether to do that in mentoring relationships or not. What are the implications of doing that? I mentioned in the webinar this morning that mentees in surveys will say self-disclosure can be a very powerful mentoring intervention. If I've got a mentee struggling with some area and I've had the same struggle, I share it with them and tell them how I blew it, how I got off the tracks, and then tell them how I resolved it, how I got back on track, how I worked it out. That can be very empowering for mentees. It can be a powerful example. It can also be very humanizing and permission-giving for them to hear that an accomplished mentor had something like this going on themselves.

Gotta use prudence, gotta think about confidentiality, gotta think about boundaries in the self-disclosure. I always use the example if a mentee in graduate school is struggling with marital issues, I just don't know that it would ever be especially helpful for you to disclose your own marital issues as a way to come alongside with a self-disclosure intervention. However, there may be a useful moment where you talk about, well, I've been divorced, too. I know what that's like. I can relate. I have some empathy, but I've got to be thinking about boundaries. You're going to have to walk that tightrope with mentees. Be judicious. Try and think about what is the benefit of this disclosure for the mentee. Is there a point to this message? Is there a point to the disclosure? Is it really like to be in their best interest, or could it make my mentee feel uncomfortable for me to do this disclosure?

Remember that once you make the disclosure, you never get to get that back, and it's out there in the training environment, or it's out there in the community, and that's going to be a one-way moment. Make sure that you're not disclosing just to get your own emotional needs met, and that's always a risk. Certainly it's a risk in psychotherapy, and I think it's a risk in mentoring relationships as well.

This may be an example of a little too much disclosure. You may know faculty and other mentors who maybe just do a little too much self-disclosure, and it can make folks a bit uncomfortable.

Multiple relationships. After this one, let's get some more questions or other concerns you may have. This is a biggie when it comes to mentoring. I can just tell you that one of the reasons this one is such a tension when it comes to mentoring is that, for many of us in academic or training environments, multiple roles are just ubiquitous. I don't get to choose to just be your mentor. Usually I'm also a teacher, I'm an evaluator. Maybe I'm a research supervisor. I could even be an employer if I've got a grant and you're a mentee working on a grant that I've managed to attain. I could have other roles. I may have to be your letter writer at some point. We may also socialize. If we go to conventions or encounter one another in contexts, there may be other times when we're having social relationships. In other circumstances, there may be even a business component. If we're doing something that involves royalties or something else, there could be a business flavor to a mentorship.

For all those reasons, I think mentors may struggle with multiple relationships. This is not unusual at all. Again, I think if you're doing great mentoring, one of the things you're going to have to do is increase your comfort with boundary crossings. I think boundary crossings occur more especially the longer the relationship goes on. I think you're going to have different roles with your mentee, and that can be very healthy. It can be very empowering. The more your mentee feels like a junior colleague and feels like you're endorsing them as a junior colleague, the stronger their professional identity. It's not a bad thing for them.

Of course, you as the psychologist are responsible for making sure this is never an aversive experience or not in your mentee's best interest. I would say the onus is on you to make sure the multiple roles are never harmful.

Remember, there are different kinds of exploitation. It's not just sexual exploitation. There can be business exploitation. Mentors can make their mentees do all their research grunt work for them. There are different ways to exploit a mentee, and I think mentors have got to be accountable for that.

Should we do a couple more questions here? Great.

Speaker 3: Here we have an observation. An observation. This seems one of the issues where the standardized letter of recommendation used by [APIC 00:44:27], which forces the letter writer to consider all aspects of behavior actually creates the opportunity for the letter writer to be more honest and more balanced.

Dr. Brad J.: Yeah. Okay. It sounds right. I've got to be honest, I'm not as familiar with the current APIC standards on letter writing, but I like it that it touches on multiple areas. There are other models that I think psychology actually needs to

consider. I'll just share with you in the military when officers are evaluated every year, there is a number associated with their ranking officer. The person doing the ranking, you can look and see what his or her average ranking is of all officers. That gives you a framework for deciding how does this person usually rank students. There's also a forced ranking quartile system. I can only put certain numbers of folks that I'm ranking in certain categories.

We don't do that, as far as I know, in psychology. I can be quite inflated in my ratings of all my students, and I think without knowing that particular faculty member and his or her average ratings, it's very hard to make an assessment of how valid that might be.

Broadening, as you say, the range of things I'm touching on might make accuracy increase a little bit. That's very interesting.

Yeah. Another item?

Speaker 3: Would you document any concerns regarding a mentee? Example, if you notice unethical behavior.

Dr. Brad J.: Yeah. This is such a great question. I would call it "To document or not to document" dilemma that a lot of training psychologists experience. If you are in a formal, supervisory relationship with a mentee, often there is already a requirement to do some documentation, supervisory evaluations. You're going to be doing some of that already. If it's a more informal mentorship, or you are not required to do any kind of written assessment annually or otherwise, and you have concerns, I would document those. Particularly if you have had to go ahead and have difficult conversations with your mentee. Those are things that I would document because there are occasions where those training relationships go south. There's conflict. There may be a complaint. Those are not very frequent when it is a mentoring context, but they do happen. I would let your judgment be your guide there, but if I'm at a point where I'm having to have a difficult conversation on ethics or professionalism or really significant concerns about competence with a mentee, I think documentation makes great sense.

I wouldn't keep that hidden from your mentee. In the same way that I would have a transparent conversation, I would let my mentees know that I'm making a note that we've had this conversation so there are no secrets about the fact that you've documented the conversation.

Great question. All right, are we okay? Are we caught up?

Speaker 3: Yes. I believe we are.

Dr. Brad J.: Caught up for now? Okay.

Quickly, on the topic of multiple roles, let me just tell you that there is research from surveys showing that mentees prefer relationships that are much more friendly and collegial and non-hierarchical, so if you're meeting your mentees where they would like you to meet them, I think you are going to have to get more comfortable with that.

One more issue on multiple roles. I don't know how some of you feel about this. I am not on Facebook. I have a very low profile in terms of social media. I don't want old clients to track me down and look at my Facebook page, but I know a lot of psychologists have a substantial social media imprint. I think you've got to have this conversation with mentees. Do you have any boundaries on social media, Facebook, other sorts of context? Have that conversation early. Let it be part of the iterative process of establishing boundaries and getting to know your mentee. I think, increasingly, we've got to address this right up front.

Let's get to something very important, and it's the issue of diversity in the people that you mentor. I mentioned in the earlier webinar today that all the data on cross-race mentor relationships suggests that they are equally effective even though they are slower to get started. If there is a consistent finding, it is that we don't reach out as easily across cultural barriers to initiate mentorships with those who are different from us. Once they get started, they are just as effective. The outcome data suggests there is no difference cross-race, same race relationships.

I would challenge you if you are in any kind of training context to look at the folks that you're mentoring right now. Think about who they are, and then ask yourself this question: Are they all the same? Do they all look the same? Do they have the same demographic characteristics that you have? Ask yourself why. If there are some diverse junior professionals or grad students there who are not getting your attention, I think you need to be a bit more deliberate about that and ask yourself if your mentees are a bit too homogenous.

The data on outcomes is pretty clear, that these relationships can be very effective. You may have the question, when I'm mentoring somebody who is culturally different, is it good to discuss that and maybe push a discussion of our cultural differences, or should I not do that? There is a great study on this from somebody at Harvard Business School, and the outcome of cross-race relationships, at least in this study, seemed to be that it doesn't matter so much whether we process out loud our differences. The issue seems to be do we agree on what we'd like to. If one of us wants to talk a lot about our differences and the experience that may contribute to the mentorship and the other doesn't, then conflict may ensue. If neither of us want to process it, those relationships work well. If both of us would like to, those relationships tend to be a bit smoother. Good to maybe test the waters and have a conversation about that.

I also want to just suggest to you that cultural humility may be a more effective way of thinking about cross-culture relationships than cultural competence. I think it's wonderful if you have competence working with different groups clinically, but I'm afraid when mentors or potential mentors stay on the sidelines and don't enter into what could be very helpful mentorships for junior professionals or students because they don't think they have appropriate competence. What I would encourage you to do is think much more about humility. Meaning, could I approach this relationship with a spirit of inquiry and openness and humble questioning, noting that I'm most interested in what is culturally important for you and your experience? And I'd like to learn about that. That, usually, is a terrific way to begin a cross-cultural relationship. Mentees will tell you they really appreciate that. They may not expect you to have specific competence with their own cultural background or experience, but they sure would like cultural humility.

Then, let me just bring up the M-word. What I'm asking you to think about is whether it's appropriate to call yourself a mentor. If you're not formally assigned in a mentor program to be somebody's mentor ... So we understand those titles have been used in the program, I encourage you not to call yourself a mentor. I encourage you to do the work. Be there. Be a champion for their career. Be invested in their personal development. Do the work. Let you mentee, at some point, be the one to label the relationship a mentorship. I think especially with somebody who is culturally different and comes from a culturally less privileged background or group, to call yourself a mentor, demand that term, may communicate privilege in a way that is not appreciated, not helpful in terms of the relationship.

I tell mentors do the work, be there. Once you decide you're all in with somebody, advocate for them. Don't call yourself a mentor. Let's let them do that. I can just tell you, when that happens, it's a wonderful experience to be called a mentor maybe down the road.

Another piece of this is if you're really an ally to people of color, people from different minority cultural groups, there are two parts to this. One, of course, is cultural humility. The other part of this is actually saying something when you see disparities or discrimination, whether it's in the program or in an agency. You have to actually be an ally for people of less privileged groups. You need to say something. You need to do something. You need to point out disparities. If you're not doing that, your mentees are not going to see you as an ally in the full sense of the word.

The research on this is pretty clear. Kendrick Brown and others have looked at what makes for an ally, and cultural humility is only one part. The other part is advocacy, and you need to do that publicly and out loud.

Okay. We're getting near the end here. Any more questions I need to be thinking about right now?

Speaker 3: Yes.

Dr. Brad J.: Yeah. Okay. Let's consider one of them.

Speaker 3: Where'd it go?

Here we go. I lost it. Sorry.

Can you distinguish between supervision, mentoring, coaching, and informal counseling? And has there been any research on the effectiveness and risk of supervisors identified as mentors versus non-supervisory mentors?

Dr. Brad J.: Yeah. Wow. That's a lot. Let me just say that if you want to get all the definitional stuff, you may want to tune into the first webinar we did earlier today on what makes an excellent mentor. But just very quickly ...

Coaching. I think of coaching as a very deliberate intervention when somebody might be missing some crucial skill set or ability. Maybe it's some element of my emotional intelligence is not very good. That's caused conflict at work. Coaching targets that skill and tries to bolster it a little bit.

Occupational counseling can be somewhat the same. I'm giving you feedback on your occupational performance. It doesn't say anything about our ongoing relationship, and that is where I think mentorship is different.

Mentorship connotes a much broader commitment and an ongoing relationship of support. I think that's the big difference.

The second part of the question was can I be a supervisor and be a mentor at the same time? I would say this happens every day. Yes, it adds a different level of ethical tension sometimes because I've got be an evaluator and I'm an advocate for you, but I do think that advisors, supervisors, others that have formal roles with us that are evaluative are very often the ones that become our key mentors over the course of our junior career. I think that's often how it happens, and that's why I think if you're going to be mentoring somebody, you want to just be aware of these ethical issues. Be aware of boundaries. Have transparent discussions about the fact that you're going to give an evaluation. Don't try and keep this relationship secret from anyone in the environment. Go ahead and be very transparent about both your evaluative and your support role for this mentee.

Great question.

We're almost at the end here. I'm going to wrap it up with just the last couple of comments. Be careful of cloning. Let me just tell you this. There's troubling research studies where you go to mentors and you say "Tell me who your top two mentees are of all time," and then you go get those individuals' vitaes and

you compare them with the mentors' and what do you think you find? Well, my best mentees are the ones that did exactly what I did. Our career trajectories are almost identical. We researched in the same area. You made all the training decisions I made. It is an unconscious validation of my career decisions. You've gotta be careful about this. It is a very compelling temptation. Don't try and remake your mentee in your own image.

Let me wrap up with a proposed mentoring code of ethics. These are just some principles and virtues I encourage you to remember as you're going about your mentoring work. These are things just to remind yourself of. These are aspirational guidelines for mentors, and I'll just walk through them rather quickly with you.

First of all, beneficence. Always, whenever possible, promote your mentee's best interest. That one may seem very straightforward, but I think it's an important start.

Non-malfeasance. Always be on guard against anything that may be harmful for your mentee. Same way you might with a client. Sometimes with a mentee, it's not always apparent, but be very cautious about things like exploitation around work and research and that sort of thing.

Autonomy. One of the things mentors have got to be careful about is encouraging autonomy. I don't want my mentee to become sticky or too dependent. I want to be promoting them as an individual ... In our case, psychologists ... As much as I can.

Fidelity. Once I commit to mentoring somebody, I need to follow through. I need to be there. It can be very painful when I make promises to provide certain things as a mentor and then I don't show up.

Justice. Let's ensure equitable treatment, and I would say this also applies to ensuring that diverse mentees have equal access to me as a mentor.

Transparency. Let's be very open and honest, not only that we're having a mentoring relationship, but in terms of the details of our mentorship and anything that I have to do by way of evaluation. Let's be transparent about that.

Boundaries we've talked about. Be very thoughtful about boundaries and be thoughtful about boundaries that will be protective for your mentee in particular. I'd like to protect privacy whenever I'm able to do that in a training context.

Again, I want to be thoughtful about my own competence as a mentor. Thoughtful about that.

Whew. That's a lot of ethics all at one time, but we have another great question here.

Speaker 3: Are you aware of any resources that specifically address the needs of minority mentoring relationships where both the mentee/mentor are people of color?

Dr. Brad J.: That is an excellent question. I don't know that there is a wonderful book specifically on that topic. There are a number of books on the experiences of people of color in minority groups in academe, for example, but in terms of a specific guide or a specific book just on same-cultural mentoring relationships, I'm not aware of that. That might be a need. That might be something that ... Whoever asked that question, maybe that is a book you can contribute. We have stuff on cross-cultural, but not on same culture. I think that's a need we have.

Are we wrapped up?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Dr. Brad J.: And it's exactly one hour. Excellent. Okay.

Well, I wish you all well with your mentoring and with your ethical mentoring. And thanks for joining us today.