Mentoring Through a Lens of Equity and Trust

This interactive workshop focuses on cultivating the skills needed to engender trust and foster equity in near-peer mentoring relationships. As residency programs foster diversity in their communities, we have seen an increase in the number of mentor-mentee connections that span differences in identity and experience. Building a dynamic culture of mentoring that examines and focuses on challenges and opportunities for growth is critical to the development of both mentor and mentee. This interactive workshop centers on addressing three core competencies that promote intentionality when mentoring across differences: recognizing the impact of differences on mentorship, developing trust and safety to bridge these differences, and promoting moral courage. While our workshop focuses on applying these skills to mentoring, these skills broadly apply to teaching relationships and relationships among peers and colleagues within the academic environment. We will explore cases that illustrate these three competencies in small groups. Working in pairs, we will adapt communication skills drawn from familiar communication paradigms, including motivational interviewing and other patient-centered approaches, and apply these concepts to near-peer mentoring relationships. Understanding the role of differences in mentoring is critical to building an inclusive mentoring environment within academic medicine. As the next generation of teachers and leaders, chief residents are ideally positioned to develop these skills to create a culture that is welcoming to diverse trainees and faculty and values and rewards mentoring.