Between Mastery and Guidance
Having reconnected with many colleagues these past few weeks I couldn’t help but to reflect on their many success’ and accomplishments, still very competitive and productive in the field, still holding titles, positions of importance, but how many are also truly mentoring and elevating the next generation of scholars, academicians, scientists, clinicians? When do we know our roles need to shift and how do we transition from being in the spotlight to placing the spotlight on others, especially in academia!
The academic environment rewards visibility. From the first day of a tenure-track appointment, faculty are conditioned to measure success through an individual lens, publications, grants, presentations, and citations. The Review-Tenure-Promotion (RTP) process becomes a treadmill of “I, me, mine.” The louder and more frequently one self-promotes, the more visible one becomes, and visibility is often equated with value.
But this structure creates a difficult transition for faculty who later seek to become true mentors. Mentorship requires stepping out of the limelight to shine it on someone else, something academia rarely trains us to do. The metrics of impact change from personal productivity to collective growth. Yet, those who have built careers on being the “known expert” often struggle to reconcile the loss of spotlight that comes with investing in the development of others.
This inability to stay out of the limelight manifests subtly: faculty inserting themselves into every student’s success story, taking co-authorship where guidance would have sufficed, or redirecting mentees toward projects that maintain the mentor’s relevance rather than the mentee’s growth. The result? A cycle of performative mentorship where guidance is conditional on recognition.
The nursing profession, and academia as a whole, desperately needs mentors who understand that their legacy will not be measured in Google Scholar metrics but in the independence, confidence, and courage of those they uplift. To be a mentor is to accept fading into the background while the next generation thrives. It’s a profound shift: from performer to producer, from scholar to shepherd.
When faculty learn to let go of the need for the spotlight, they often rediscover why they entered academia in the first place, to make a difference. But this time, the impact isn’t tied to a CV entry. It’s reflected in the empowered nurses carrying forward the profession, elevating it to greater heights.
