Want to learn more about our training? Visit career.ucsf.edu/TRAIN-UP-course At UCSF, we're teaching our graduate students and postdocs the professional skills they need to succeed. In TRAIN-UP we focus on supervising, mentoring and teaching competencies to help future faculty support diverse trainees. Check out our case study - can you identify all of the issues at play? What would you do? This initiative is funded by an NSF Advanced Technical Education Grant.

1. WELCOME!
•Sign-in, Get lunch
•Read the case study (see the handout)
•Introduce yourself to your neighbor
•Discussion topics
• Have you ever mentored
anyone in the lab? If so, what
was the experience like?
• Have you had any formal
mentor training? If so, what
did you learn?
• What are your goals for
attending this workshop?
Naledi.saul@ucsf.edu; Laurence.Clement@ucsf.edu; Karen Leung (CCSF)
TRAIN-UP Applied Mentoring Workshop 1
Today’s Case Study:
What should Sam do?

2.  Four months ago, Sam, a postdoc, started working with Lee, a senior
undergraduate volunteer who will be working with Sam for another 6 months on
a project Sam is leading.
 Lee is very confident scientifically, and he performs experiments with care and
precision. However, in several occurrences, Sam has noticed that Lee was
confused about the goals of the experiments, and how they fit into the big
picture of Sam’s project.
 Sam has tried explaining the goals of the projects again, and each time Lee
seemed (again) very confident about what he thought he knew.This has
happened repeatedly, and Sam is now worried that Lee is not realizing that he is
limited in his understanding, and he is concerned that this will impact the future
of the project.
 Additionally, Lee has, on 2 or 3 occasions, not followed through on some of the
experiments Sam had asked him to do.This is a problem for Sam, who doesn’t
feel he can rely on Lee to produce the data he needs.
 Sam is starting to wonder if maybe Lee doesn’t respect him. Sam wishes he had
had a say in who was chosen for this volunteer position.This makes him act a bit
passive-aggressive with Lee, something that he doesn’t like about himself.
 What could Sam do to improve the situation with Lee?
Today’s Case Study:What should Sam do?
Questions: Pair Up!
1. Identify all of the issues
at play in this scenario
2. Are these performance
issues, or conduct issues,
or something else?
3. Prioritize – which issues
do you think Sam should
address first and why?
4. For the issue you select -
Look at the supervisory
assessment instrument –
did Sam do all seven
steps? (set expectations,
delegate effectively, etc.)
5. Take a moment and try
to craft a response –
how would you open the
conversation, address in
the conversation and
close the conversation?
Naledi.saul@ucsf.edu; Laurence.Clement@ucsf.edu; Karen Leung (CCSF)

3. 1. “Lee, can we check in? I noticed that in the last two weeks, you have not
performed two experiments that I asked you to perform including this
most recent one that was due to be finished yesterday. We’re chatting
today because we need figure out what’s going on.”
2. “If you can’t perform an experiment, I need you to communicate with me
about it.”
3. “I’d like to check in about what is happening with both with the
experiments and what we can do to make sure that you are
communicating your progress to me. So, what happened?”
4. “Okay. Moving forward I will need you to communicate with me about
changes in your plans to do experiments right away. Please send me an
email at the end of the day and explain to me why the change in deadline
and give me a new timeline.”
”This is important because I need to be able to track which experiments
have been performed, so I can measure our progress towards our goal of
producing results by the conference in June.”
5. “I’m sure you can do this, but do you have any concerns about doing this,
or are there any questions I can answer for you?”
Naledi.saul@ucsf.edu; Laurence.Clement@ucsf.edu; Karen Leung (CCSF)
Language and the
steps to develop a
response
1. Identify the issue
2. (Re) set expectations
3. Ask them to assess
the issue
4. (Re) set expectations
again, clarifying not
just what you want,
but why you want it
5. Express confidence in
their ability and ask
them is there is
anything that will
prevent them
Sample response to an identified issue:
Lee isn’t communicating (first conversation)
Remember: This is corrective feedback (Please stop doing Y that way. Here’s why.
Do Y this way instead, for this reason. Any questions?)

4. Naledi Saul, MPM
Director
UCSF Office of Career and Professional Development
Laurence Clement, PhD
Program Director, Academic Career Development
Director, Research in Career Education
UCSF Office of Career and Professional Development
Karen Leung, PhD
Biotechnology Faculty
City College of San Francisco
This workshop is
funded by an
NSF Advanced
Technical Education
Grant
We will need to
provide some
evaluation results to
our funders so please
complete the survey
for this workshop and
tell us whether we
should keep offering
these workshops.
For more details, on
why we are collecting
data, visit:
bit.ly/TRAINUP2B
Who We Are