Until recently, if you wanted someone to help guide you in your career, the pool of available mentors was limited by geographical location—specifically by your university. And the pool of possible mentors who shared similar values, experiences and backgrounds with you was even smaller.
Now, thanks to mobile devices, email and other technologies, it’s much easier to find the best mentor for your unique needs. You can even find mentors who offer just short-term guidance on specific topics, peer-to-peer mentors or reverse mentoring relationships in which early career psychologists guide already established ones.
APA divisions, psychology leaders, students and others have developed innovative mentoring approaches to help in any form, area or level you need. Here are some of the most interesting developments.
Virtual mentoring
Not all mentoring relationships are built to last for years. For some students, having easy access to a variety of leaders in their field can help meet their immediate mentoring needs.
“Our division has always had a mentoring program, but we ran into some of the same challenges other divisions did—students didn’t feel like they were really connecting well with their mentors long-term,” says Desa Karye Daniel, a counseling education doctoral student at the University of New Mexico and a student representative for APA Div. 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race).
So, in 2017 Daniel and the division’s mentorship committee launched a virtual mentoring program. Rather than matching one student to one mentor, they recruited several Div. 45 psychologists to serve as mentors on specific topics.
For the program’s first year, eight mentors met with students virtually for an hour a week for three weeks. In the first session, the mentor gave a formal talk about a specific topic. The second and third sessions were more informal, giving students a chance to ask questions.
“That first session really gives you an idea of who that mentor is and if you want to actually attend the following sessions,” Daniel explains.
Early feedback indicated that participants wanted more mentors to choose from and fewer sessions. So, in 2018 the program recruited 13 additional mentors who provided just two sessions: an initial overview session and a free-form question and answer session. One of the most popular was a session with Cynthia de las Fuentes, PhD, an Austin, Texas–based psychologist, on how to start a private practice. Another well-liked session was hosted by Div. 45 President Helen A. Neville, PhD, a professor of African-American studies and educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who talked about grant writing and the publication process.
In just two years, the program has blossomed, with more than 150 students participating in real time in the first year and 400 in the second. Hundreds more have since viewed the archived sessions online.
“We’ve had amazing, amazing feedback,” Daniel says. “People were super excited about the topics we offered and about the diversity of the mentors.”
Div. 45 is experimenting with other novel approaches to mentoring as well. These include short-term, goal- oriented mentoring focused on practical topics such as applying for scholarships and submitting proposals to APA. The division also hosts an annual in- person mentoring session at APA’s Annual Convention. Similar to speed dating, these sessions give students a chance to visit one mentor at a table to chat about a specific topic, then move to another table after several minutes. “Our virtual mentorship is super successful, but people still need face-to-face interaction,” Daniel says.
There's an app, of course
Dating is also a good metaphor for another new mentoring tool, a networking and mentoring app called Grip that APA’s Continuing Education Committee is using to bring together people at its conferences.
First used at APA’s 2018 Annual Convention in San Francisco, Grip pulls in registration information about APA members—their division affiliations, interests, fellowship status and more—to come up with matches for a range of purposes.
“Grip can help early career psychologists meet a variety of needs, whether they’re trying to figure out the ins and outs of setting up a private practice, negotiating tenure and promotion or interviewing for a job,” says Greg Neimeyer, PhD, associate executive director of APA’s Office of Continuing Education in Psychology. “Grip can be especially useful at our big meeting, where we’ve got more than 10,000 people, many of whom want to find ways to connect with one another in meaningful ways,” he says.
As with dating apps like Match.com or Tinder, users swipe through potential matches and select those they want to meet with. The app even recommends spots for easy meet ups at the convention.
As Grip begins to generate data from interactions and user feedback, it may become useful for other purposes as well, Neimeyer says. These data may indicate patterns, for example, that reflect the kinds of things early, mid- or late-career psychologists are looking for, which could inspire the creation of formal career development programs offered by the Continuing Education Committee.
Project-based mentoring
Not all mentoring occurs at conferences or in the halls of academia. For psychologists who have been out in the field for a while, learning new skills and acquiring new competencies can be critical for career development. Div. 13 (Society of Consulting Psychology) recognized that its members could benefit from hands-on, project- based mentorship, while also creating a much-needed pipeline of leaders for its board.
“Like all boards, we had a backlog of projects,” recalls Carolyn Humphrey, PhD, founder of the Charlotte, North Carolina–based Consulting Psychology Group. “And it was increasingly difficult to get division members to step up to leadership positions.”
The solution Humphrey and fellow board member Melanie Kinser, PhD, founder of the consulting firm ThinkWyn, hit upon was to kill two birds with one stone by creating a yearlong mentoring program, which they dubbed the Leadership Development Initiative, and having the participants work on projects to advance the board’s mission. Humphrey and Kinser prioritized 10 projects the board needed to complete that corresponded to a set of competencies they identified as important for the field of consulting psychology. Then they recruited 10 mentees through a competitive selection process, bringing them to Seattle for a three-day session before the division’s February 2017 conference, where they did a 360-degree competency assessment, a management simulation, and team-building and peer-coaching exercises.
Over the next 12 months, the mentees met virtually as a cohort, talked regularly with their mentors and worked on their projects, which included creating a membership survey, implementing a branding initiative and updating board policy guidelines.
“We really progressed on some critical projects,” Humphrey says.
Another plus: The program also filled several vacancies on the board, with nine of 10 mentees taking division leadership positions.
“That was not expected,” Humphrey says. “Not only are they in leadership positions, they’re way ahead of the game. Unlike previous incoming boards, this group had already spent a year working together.”
Egalitarian mentoring
Another novel approach to mentoring makes it an explicitly egalitarian enterprise. That’s what APA Div. 35 (Society for the Psychology of Women) is doing with its Mentor Match Program, which it bills as a feminist mentoring program open to both female and male feminist psychologists.
“Historically, mentoring doesn’t necessarily take into account what the mentee thinks, feels or values,” says Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, PhD, a psychologist at the Park School in Brookline, Massachusetts. “All of those things are central in feminist mentoring, which is by definition mutually respectful, nonhierarchical and sometimes bidirectional” ( Mentoring & Tutoring , Vol. 25, No. 5, 2016 opens in new window).
Mentor Match assumes that power is shared and there is mutual agreement about what the mentoring will be about, adds Moorehead-Slaughter, who initiated the program. “The purpose is not for the mentee to be a cookie-cutter copy of the mentor, but for the mentor to be a source of wisdom, advice and support in the areas identified by the mentee,” she says.
“Mentor Match is another outlet for women graduate students to talk through personal and professional challenges in a safe place with someone who’s been there and can relate to their experiences,” says Monica Ellis-Blied, PhD, a psychologist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ VA Loma Linda Healthcare System in California, who organizes Mentor Match along with Alexandra Minieri, PhD, a psychologist at George Mason University Counseling and Psychological Services.
Because of its lack of hierarchy, feminist mentoring can be bidirectional, says Moorehead-Slaughter, with senior career psychologists encouraged to request mentoring from early career psychologists. “Implementing new technology, such as telepsychology and social media marketing, is one area where we really learn a lot from our younger colleagues,” she says.
The student is the teacher
Not only do young people have a wide variety of tech skills they can impart to more senior colleagues, they also often approach problems with a fresh perspective. Reverse mentoring is tapping into this opportunity, says 2016 APA President Susan H. McDaniel, PhD.
“Any time you take an important leadership role, understanding how talented young people think is critical,” she says. “Their viewpoint is different, and they sometimes have the best ideas. But there’s not a systematic way to hear from them.”
McDaniel says the idea of using reverse mentoring occurred to her after working with a group of younger colleagues to pass the policy requiring at least one early career psychologist on every APA board and committee. “When I was elected APA president, I thought it might be really helpful to get a group of seven or eight early career folks representing different facets of psychology and ask them to mentor me. We then organized monthly calls,” she explains. “I would ask the group, ‘Here’s what we’re up against. What do you think I should do about it?’ And then I’d sit back and listen to their points of view, which were often different than those I heard from more experienced leaders across the association. This early career psychologist mentoring group was very helpful to me and informed many of my decisions during my president-elect and presidential years.”
McDaniel was not the only one to benefit from the collaboration: The early career psy chologists gained valuable leadership experience and networking opportunities, says Lindsey Buckman, PsyD, founder of Phoenix-based Buckman Psychological Consultants, who was part of the group. “Having that sort of access to an APA president is certainly unique, and I really appreciated the chance to consult with Susan and provide my feedback,” Buckman says.
Peer-to-peer mentoring
Another growing mentoring relationship is peer-to-peer mentoring, which is the focus of the Peer Collaboration Program run by the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students’ Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CARED).
“The impetus behind the peer-to-peer mentoring was our own personal experiences,” says CARED member Fiona Thomas, a doctoral student in the clinical psychology program at Ryerson University in Toronto. “Being from diverse backgrounds, we wanted to give graduate students a way to connect with fellow students when the opportunity to meet up face-to-face with people in their program or in their area wasn’t available.”
The Peer Collaboration Program was conceived of by former CARED member Shadab “Daisy” Hussain and was initially developed by Hussain and current CARED member Ryan C. Warner in late 2016. The most recent cycle started in March 2018 with 14 groups of three to four people each. The groups meet via email, Google Hangouts or other online platforms to discuss prompts that cover topics relevant to ethnic minorities in psychology such as professional identity development, career goals, self-care, diversity- related advocacy and conducting research related to racially and ethnically diverse populations.
“The program is something that I wish I would have had when I first started my doctoral training—a time when I felt like I was grasping for straws trying to find a community,” says CARED member Mary Odafe, a doctoral student in the clinical psychology program at the University of Houston. “If a program like this had been around, I certainly would have participated, so I’m happy that we get to be a part of bringing that to others.”
