Early-career researchers want empathy from their supervisors

From ScienceMag:

It’s no secret that academic mentors are a common topic of conversation—and source of complaints—among early-career researchers (ECRs). With the power to sway careers, mentors can be a force for good, fostering a supportive environment that gives budding researchers room to grow. They can also be a source of stress, friction, and sometimes outright abuse.

In a preprint posted to bioRxiv this month, a group of ECRs sought to give voice to those whisperings, sharing what 2600 Ph.D. students, postdocs, and other ECRs in 65 countries say are supervisory practices they have experienced that have helped—and hurt. The team of four former Ph.D. students at the University of the Basque Country—Xabier Simón Martínez-Goñi, Agustín Marín-Peña, Mario Corrochano-Monsalve, and Adrián Bozal-Leorri—found that the top three complaints among respondents were that supervisors used dismissive or disrespectful communication, provided little or no feedback on performance, and ignored team members’ personal lives and well-being. A minority of researchers also had more serious complaints, such as verbal threats and sexual harassment.

One key way supervisors can provide support, according to the survey, is through meetings. The vast majority of ECRs found meetings to be important and useful—and only 7% of respondents thought they met too often with their supervisor. Meetings “serve as a key space for involving ECRs in research related decisions, reinforcing their sense of collaboration, shared responsibility and professional growth,” the team writes.

Science spoke with Martínez-Goñi—currently a postdoc at the University of Essex—about the survey and what it says about mentorship in academia. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What’s the origin story of this paper?

A: The four of us co-authors met as students at the University of the Basque Country in the same department. During our Ph.D. journeys, we witnessed a wide variety of supervisory experiences and we realized that how supervisors mentor their Ph.D. students, postdocs, and other researchers has a huge impact, not only on their mental health, but also in how their careers are shaped. Most papers we could find at the time discussing good supervisory practices were written from the supervisor’s perspective. We wondered, “What would early-career researchers think about what traits make an ideal supervisor?” At some point we decided we should do a survey—ask people how they feel.

Q: Did you go into the study with a vision for the ideal supervisor?

A: I don’t think we had the image of an ideal supervisor. We clearly knew what we wouldn’t do as a supervisor, like mistreat people. But on the other side, I don’t think we had a specific idea in mind.

Q: What did you find?

A: The main results can be simplified into one word, which is empathy. If a supervisor is empathetic, this supervisor will understand personal situations of the early-career researchers in their group. They will understand that they have to be supportive, not treat people like production units of papers, but instead like colleagues who are at a different stage of their career. This shouldn’t be shocking. But it seems like sometimes we need to remind people that they need to be empathetic towards those working in their groups.

Q: What does that look like in practice? Are there specific ways supervisors can show empathy?

A: The results of this survey should not be taken like “this has to be done”—because each researcher is different, each situation is different, and that should be taken into account. But I would say that some of the traits that were most valued involved having a supportive supervisor, rather than a boss. Someone who understands the difference—who doesn’t just demand things, but has regular meetings and open discussions about workloads and personal situations, and is flexible about working pace and not fixed to working a specific way. Someone who gives advice, not only based on what the supervisor wants, but also what the early-career researcher needs.

Q: Graduate school is an interesting situation, because it’s an educational setting, and it’s also a workplace. How does that play into the idea of not wanting to have a boss?

A: As we understand it, there are countries that treat graduate students more like students, and there are countries that treat them more like workers. So that could affect how this boss-supervisor thing could work. But in our case, I would say that when talking about having a supervisor rather than a boss, we’re talking about having someone who understands that no matter if you’re a student or you’re a worker, you’re also a colleague that’s in the process of learning.

Q: At Science, we publish personal essays written by scientists. Last week’s essay was by a faculty member who wrote about his journey to figure out the best mentorship approach. Initially, he went into it thinking that when trainees came to him, he should have all the answers. Eventually he came to realize that if he took a step back and provided the structure for trainees to figure out the answers themselves, that that was a better approach. Do you have any thoughts on that?

A: I completely agree. As a supervisor, you are there to provide the platform for early-career researchers to advance, and you’re also there to mentor them. There may be people who require more attention in a specific area, but there may be people who do not, who are fine with having their own structures and are more independent. Each person is different, which means that what works for certain people or researchers may not work for other researchers, and that’s completely fine. Also, it can depend on the stage you’re at. Maybe your first year of a Ph.D. you need more guidance, more help to get settled. But then, as a more senior person, you may not need as much involvement. It’s a matter of understanding what the demands or requirements are for each one of the people in your team or in your group, and trying to meet those requirements.

Q: In the preprint you and your co-authors mention that many challenges only become visible once researchers are inside academic structures. I’m wondering whether you could go back to what you knew before entering grad school. Were you aware how important finding the right supervisor would be?

A: Not really. I’m happy in my personal case. My Ph.D. supervisor was great. But I think it’s important to be aware of mentoring when selecting a supervisor. You talk with people from different stages, different departments, different institutions, and you hear stories or see people that are struggling with supervisors. Sometimes it could be misunderstandings. This happens. But sometimes this could be because of inadequate mentoring.

Q: Do you have examples?

A: It could be a supervisor demanding people not take annual leave or breaks, like Christmas periods, just to stay working. People demanding that early-career researchers meet unrealistic deadlines, so they have to stay and work a lot of hours to meet those deadlines, unless they want to get fired or removed from their program. These power imbalances exist, and we believe that the well-being of early-career researchers should not rely on the goodwill of a PI [principal investigator] or supervisor—that there should be structures to ensure that this kind of abusive situations do not happen.

Q: Do you have recommendations for what institutions can do?

A: We came up with this idea of mentorship metrics. So for example, it could be an anonymous survey that could evaluate how a supervisor is treating or mentoring early-career researchers, to be evaluated by an external entity—such as a national funding agency, a research council, or an independent accreditation body. It could ask, “How did you feel with your supervisor? Do you feel there are things to improve?”

And then have some kind of actual implications for the findings to incentivize good supervisory behaviors, whether it is with increasing salaries, getting more specific funding, some kind of awards. And, on the other hand, also to take accountability when the supervisors are not doing well. It could be having some kind of courses on how to mentor. If it’s something that is recurring, maybe not allowing this person to supervise researchers for a specific span of time.

Q: I can imagine that that kind of feedback could be really helpful to ERCs and institutions, if it’s kept confidential. It could be a little tricky if someone has a small lab, like two people or something.

A: True. But you know what, even if there’s a single person or two people in the lab, then there should be ways for them to express how things are working. I think there should be mechanisms to protect these people and ensure that they can express themselves freely. For instance, institutions could aggregate data over a 3- to 5-year window or combine data from multiple small labs within the same department, so individual responses cannot be traced back to a specific group of people.

Q: What advice would you give to potential grad students weighing where to do their Ph.D.?

A: My main advice when people ask is usually that they look for a nice person, a nice supervisor, rather than focusing on the research line that they love. Because I feel that if you are happy in the working environment, you will end up liking what you’re doing. Particularly when you’re doing a Ph.D., considering the power dynamics at work between the supervisor and the student, I think it’s important to be happy and have a nice person as a supervisor. Find someone who you feel is a good person. Because you will be attached to that person for years. It’s a huge part of your life. And as a Ph.D. student, it’s not as easy as other jobs to quit and look elsewhere.