One-on-One Mentoring
In the traditional mentoring type, an established mentor serves to guide an early stage mentee along their career path. These can be formal or informal relationships, pre-assigned pairings by a department or self-selected by the mentee. They can last for decades or have a pre-defined time limit.
Mentoring Panel or Committee
An early stage faculty member has a panel of 2-5 mentors who meet together every 4-12 months. This structure offers the mentee a wide range of guidance from several experienced mentors in one setting.
Functional Mentoring
This involves a project-oriented mentoring relationship in which the mentee finds a content-expert mentor for a specific skill acquisition or pre-defined project. For instance, writing a grant proposal, instituting a clinical program, setting up a fellowship program or writing a focused manuscript.
Peer Mentoring
This is typically a group setting in which faculty at the same level of training, rank or experience meet to share experiences, work on a project or gain feedback. These can be informal lunches, peer support groups, career counseling sessions run by an expert or writing support groups.
Group Mentoring
This can involve several layers of mentors and mentees who vary by rank and experience. Often 1-3 senior faculty members mentor several junior faculty in a group setting. They engage in a flow of conversation to share experiences, ideas and tips. It serves well to offload the mentoring demands on the few senior faculty members.
Mosaic Mentoring
In order to achieve the multi-dimension guidance needed, faculty in academic medicine often require a number of different mentors during their career. Mosaic mentoring can be viewed as a longitudinal landscape of career mentoring for an individual faculty or it can refer to a specific type of group mentoring. In mosaic group mentoring, a diverse range of individuals of different ranks, ages, genders, races, skills and experience come together in a non-hierarchical community. Benefits include collaboration, reduced pressure on mentors, merging small pools together, and success in both gender and minority mentoring.