Table 3.

Themes and Illustrative Quotes That Characterize Failed Mentoring Relationships From a Qualitative Study on Successful and Failed Mentoring Relationships Through the Departments of Medicine at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, 2010

Theme	Illustrative quotes
Poor communication: including lack of open communication, failure to communicate tactfully, and inability to listen	If there’s a lack of communication for, you know, what the mentor expects and what the mentee expects, that’s a recipe for disaster. If you can’t talk to them, so for example if you’re too intimidated by them to really talk honestly or openly or to really brainstorm about science with them then it’s not a good mentoring relationship. I know mentors get frustrated if their mentees don’t do what they … don’t follow any of their advice. I mean, you give advice and of course sometimes the person for whatever reason chooses not to, can’t follow it, forgot or who knows what but if on a regular basis you’re providing advice and the mentee is not listening and not taking it, I would think that at a certain point the mentor would feel like I’m not being helpful because I’m suggesting these things and you’re not following my advice.
Lack of commitment: lack of time committed to the relationship or waning interest over time	Inability to be able to be engaged in that mentee’s learning needs or mentoring needs in a 100% kind of engaged way, in other words someone who’s only superficially involved. They don’t have to be centrally involved. They can be only peripherally involved but when they’re involved, it’s a serious and intense involvement even if it’s for half an hour or an hour to be able to listen and really understand. But mentors who you know get distracted or mentors who have other things that are clearly engaging their mind and not really able to focus, I think that would be an issue in terms of potentially leading towards a failed relationship. If you don’t get that kind of ongoing interest and commitment, and this stuff does happen sometimes, then you just realize the fit or the appropriateness or the value that the mentee derives from the relationship simply isn’t there anymore.
Personality differences: different personal characteristics between the mentor and mentee	If the personality types are very different, the way they look at the world could be quite different. If you have one person who doesn’t like to think on the fly, wants to have some time to think about it ahead of time and logically work it through, and they’re paired with somebody who just doesn’t think that way and so it’s just sort of the different styles and so the extroverted person is seen perhaps as being a bit flighty and you know unsubstantial and the introspective person is seen as being overcautious and nitpicking and sort of negative.
Perceived (or real) competition: overlapping interests may lead to competition; senior faculty may have difficulty transitioning to mentoring junior faculty rather than trainees because of perceived potential for competition; failure to recognize that a mentee’s success reflects well on his or her mentor; lack of clarity around intellectual property	You have interest areas that overlap and then once you have interest areas that overlap, it’s conceivable that you might be seen as or see each other as competitors. Senior people who feel threatened by junior people … and they may not even realize that they feel threatened and so some of their behaviors kind of comes from a feeling of not wanting to be superseded or overshadowed by an up and coming bright, shooting star. Stealing somebody’s work, that could be a disaster, stealing someone’s intellectual property … that’s a disaster … you know there’s a lot of that out there. If a mentor is actually depending on the mentee’s output for his own research, that could become a problem. If there’s any other agenda or ulterior motives, I think it can really poison the relationship ‘cause you’re just not sure whether the advice you’re getting is good for you or good for them. Often the relationship revolves around working together professionally and then the notion is “Does the mentee get the credit for the work done jointly … how much credit does the mentee get as opposed to the mentor in this large segment of professional relationships where everybody works together in an academic situation?” In order for the mentee to be allowed to step out into the sunlight, it requires the mentor to step back and make sure the mentee receives credit for their portion of the work or maybe even the majority of the credit even though the work was really done by both of them as opposed to what sadly happens not infrequently is the mentor takes credit for work that the mentee has done and that’s a surefire death knell to the relationship.
Conflicts of interest: competing agendas between the mentor and mentee	The mentor should not be in a position of authority over the mentee and should not be someone on whom they are dependent for resources because it can lead to a conflict of interest between the needs of the mentors and mentees.
Lack of experience: mentor may not have relevant knowledge, skills, or experience	It failed because of the mentor’s lack of knowledge base to be able to provide advice. Mentor should be able to link the mentee to others who can fill these gaps.