Mentoring Matters
Stephanie Hansen and Mary Drewnoski
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Top 10 Mentoring Matters Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Mentoring Matters episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Mentoring Matters for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Mentoring Matters episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Resources for our Professional Development
Mentoring Matters
02/05/22 • 28 min
In this episode, we discuss a few resources we’ve found useful for our own professional development. And how we use them with our grad students, of course!
Resources we discuss:
James Clear, Atomic habits, as interviewed by Brene Brown
https://brenebrown.com/podcast/atomic-habits-part-1-of-2/
Goals are about winning the game, and systems are about continuing to play the game. It is not about a single achievement; it is about endless refinement and continuous improvement.
Brene Brown, Dare to Lead (book, or podcast)
We’ve learned a lot from Brene in the last several months. This is one of Mary’s favorites.
https://brenebrown.com/podcast/braving-trust-part-1-of-2/
Clifton Strengths (Gallup)
One of Steph’s favorites. A variety of podcasts, articles and books are available.
Figure out your top strengths so you can adapt your processes to get more energy and productivity out of your life. Strengths can be a great tool for mentoring students as well.
We’ve leaned into Strengths to open discussions about well-being at work. Here are some great resources.
https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/357308/strengths-make-wellbeing-work.aspx
https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/355019/why-is-wellbeing-important.aspx
Your digital mentor podcast
Prof. Jeffrey McDonnell, author of “Navigating an Academic Career: A Brief Guide for PhD Students, Postdocs and Early Career Faculty” on writing skills.
Mary liked this one for the 1 hour work week concept in particular. But there are many great concepts in the episode and he points to a lot of other great resources.
https://soundcloud.com/user-105785173/writing-skills
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
Thriving Together: Cultivating Well-Being in Students and Faculty
Mentoring Matters
07/18/23 • 51 min
Dr. Jodi McGill (Assistant Dean of Research and Graduate Students at Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine) joined us to discuss what we learned in our last grad faculty book club. We read the book "Wellbeing at Work" by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter, which is from Gallup and CliftonStrengths-based. The book focuses on 5 pillars of wellbeing, a topic we've been very interested in lately.
Some takeaways from this episode:
- Faculty need to thrive themselves before they can help students thrive
- Encouraging grad students to be comfortable enough to share their struggles
- Everyone is different, and there are aspects that support wellbeing that may look different between students
- How important it is to model work/life balance and the value we as faculty place on wellbeing
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
Wrangling the Chaos: Tips for Time Management
Mentoring Matters
03/17/23 • 45 min
Time management can be a struggle for graduate students and faculty. In this episode we offer tips to make more efficient use of your time, with the goal of reducing everyone's stress.
We discussed:
- Scheduling "the big rocks" (e.g. the important, big items) first and putting the "sand" around them (e.g. the smaller, urgent things)
- Understanding how much stuff you can really put on your plate, and ways to say "No"
- Calendar management tips
- Being realistic with when you work the best and why this might be different for you and your students
- The necessity of reflection to find what's working and what's not
- Not losing sight of the important/mission serving pieces when the fires (e.g. emails) are such an easy distraction
- Being intentional with how we spend our time
Join us in our LinkedIn Group for more conversation!
The Graduate Mentorship Blueprint: a faculty forum
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
A Behind the Scenes Peek at our Lives as Graduate Mentors
Mentoring Matters
03/07/23 • 31 min
In this episode we take you on a behind the scenes journey to hear about our graduate student interactions over a random week.
Things we discussed:
- Being intentional with our time
- Planning ahead to reduce the student's stress (and ours!!)
- Helping students prepare for job interviews
- Preparing for student presentations
- And that pesky fact that we do these mentoring things in addition to the rest of our faculty responsibilities!
- It takes constant contact to build a strong relationship with our students, which allows for deeper, more meaningful communication.
We hope you found this snapshot of our weeks useful as you consider your own mentoring strategies.
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
Tips for Building Resiliency in Graduate Students
Mentoring Matters
02/11/23 • 36 min
In this episode we share ideas for improving resiliency in our graduate students. Topics covered include:
- Angela Duckworth's book "Grit" and Liz Wiseman's "Impact Players" are two resources we discuss and recommend
- Passion is a part of resiliency, we discuss ways to foster passion in our students
- Deliberate practice: we suggest ways to pressure test our students to build those skills they need later in the defense, etc.
- We discuss how we identify the impact players on our teams and how we help develop others into impact players (ex. helping them maintaining ownership of a situation when it gets tough)
- Balancing building resiliency without causing damage to a student's confidence (and how personality/strengths assessments can help)
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
12/13/22 • 28 min
In this episode we discuss how we've used book clubs with our graduate students to enhance community and habit building.
- Mary talks about reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Steph talks about reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.
- We discuss what worked, what we'd do differently next time, and what the students thought of it (because Mary did a survey!)
Other topics include thinking about mentoring strategies with a big ROI and the importance of relationships. Plus we really want to encourage you to go listen to our Team Culture episode! It is so important!
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
Utilizing Strengths in Graduate Student Mentoring
Mentoring Matters
11/15/22 • 35 min
In this episode: Steph and Mary are on vacation! And nerding out about how we use the Clifton Strengths talent assessment in our graduate student mentoring. Similar to how we use Meyers Briggs Type Indicator, Strengths is another way to help us tailor the mentoring experience to get the most out of every student (in the least stressful way!)
We discussed:
- What Clifton Strengths is (and what it isn't)
- How using Clifton Strengths has increased our self-awareness, helping us understand ourselves better, so we can be more strategic about how we find energy.
- Insights we've gained from using Strengths with our students for a little over a year now.
- Using Strengths as a common vocabulary to have difficult conversations with our students about topics such as wellbeing.
- So much more! This is a good one, folks.
Steph is in the final stages of becoming a Certified Clifton Strengths Coach.
Learn more about Clifton Strengths here.
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
The Power of Recognition
Mentoring Matters
10/26/22 • 22 min
In this episode we discuss what a powerful tool recognition of individual and team success can be, including:
- Why it's important to ask your team members how they want to be recognized.
- Reinforcing the idea that your team is not necessarily just like you!
- Mary and Steph are super different in how they want to be recognized! (Shocking no one that knows us IRL).
- Novices grow more in response to positive praise-how do we balance the critiques we give them with specific and meaningful praise to support their growth?
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Reflection for Student Growth
Mentoring Matters
10/05/22 • 25 min
In this episode we discuss how reflection helps our graduate students learn and grow. We talk about some of the strategies we are already using to cause students to pause and reflect and ways we want to try in the future.
What- Recapping the experience
So what- Why does it matter?
Now what- What's next? What do we do differently next time?
We also decided this was just one more example of using powerful questions in our graduate student mentoring. Prior episodes that might be useful here: Quit bossing, start coaching and Phrases to use in your grad mentoring
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
Let's Talk: Tips to Build Effective Oral Communicators
Mentoring Matters
05/02/21 • 26 min
In this episode of Mentoring Matters we share our tips for helping graduate students become awesome oral communicators.
Don't forget to give them opportunity to practice! Provide low stress opportunities to present such as giving presentations to your lab group.
Have discussions about core concepts of effective communication.
- Always consider the audience, build from their knowledge. Meet them where they are at.
- Ask yourself what you want the audience to do with the information you are providing.
- Start with the big picture! Help the audience see why it matters.
- Keep it simple-no more than three main points. Don’t include everything just because you can.
- Break down a big story into bite-sized pieces so that audience can take it in.
- Focus on the story, walk the audience through your thought process and why you did the work.
- Use visual aids to supplement what is being verbally articulated. Make sure visuals don’t distract the audience.
Have lab members provide feedback to help them think critically about what effective communication looks like. Consider having the student also do a self-assessment. Then have a discussion after the presentation on what worked and what could be better.
A great book to get one thinking about effective science communication is Alan Alda’s book titled “If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?”
If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating or review, and join us over on Twitter to let us know what topics you'd like to hear more about.
You can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group page The Graduate Mentoring Blueprint
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FAQ
How many episodes does Mentoring Matters have?
Mentoring Matters currently has 26 episodes available.
What topics does Mentoring Matters cover?
The podcast is about Learning, How To, Mentor, Podcasts, Self-Improvement, Education and Mentoring.
What is the most popular episode on Mentoring Matters?
The episode title 'Wrangling the Chaos: Tips for Time Management' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Mentoring Matters?
The average episode length on Mentoring Matters is 31 minutes.
How often are episodes of Mentoring Matters released?
Episodes of Mentoring Matters are typically released every 21 days, 20 hours.
When was the first episode of Mentoring Matters?
The first episode of Mentoring Matters was released on Mar 15, 2021.
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