Personality Compatibility Within Faculty Mentoring Dyads and Perceived Mentoring Outcomes: Survey Results of Academic Medicine Institutions in the USA

Mentorship is recognized as a critical approach to support successful careers in academic medicine. Obstacles to successful mentoring relationships include difficulty finding appropriate mentors and poor alignment of mentee/mentor interests and goals. We set out to investigate if concordance or discordance in personality traits of mentees and mentors impacts perceived success of mentoring relationships. Our findings indicated that concordance and discordance on one personality trait, neuroticism, seemed to significantly impact the perceived mentoring relationship success related to career progression. Further work to refine criteria for matching mentees and mentors considering personality traits may impact the effectiveness of mentoring relationships.

Automated summary

This study found that concordance or discordance in the personality trait of neuroticism between mentors and mentees significantly impacts the perceived success of mentoring relationships. Further research is needed to refine criteria for matching mentors and mentees based on personality traits in order to improve the effectiveness of mentoring relationships.